More like train HR to not make unrealistic barriers to getting people interviewed who can do the job

At the last place I worked, we had the most awesome HR manager I've ever seen. She was smart as hell, listened to what the managers were saying, and got the hell out of the way when it came to technical evaluations - she hired people she personally didn't like on the basis of the team's recommendations, and they turned out to be good for the company. She knew enough about what we did to know when a resume was mostly BS, and when she wasn't sure she came to us to ask. She also was truly interested in the employees' needs, and often would go out of her way to do stuff for the employees to make them feel appreciated. *Everyone* loved her, and she had a real gift for interacting with people.

Until...

...the company was bought out and hired a "VP of HR" to be her boss that thought she (the new VP) knew everything there was to know because of all of her certifications, and was more interested in making the C-level execs happy than what was actually best for the company. She dressed up as an ice queen for her first Halloween party at the company, and the universal opinion was, "wow, totally appropriate costume".

The awesome HR manager left about 18 months later (after having been with the company for 8 years), and from what I hear, morale and productivity hasn't ever been lower. The new VP made it quite clear that the employees are looked upon as replaceable cogs, and that they should be happy that management deigns to let them keep their jobs. My former co-workers have lamented the quality of interviews of late, simply because Ms. VP thinks she has all of the answers in regards to hiring, and doesn't pay much attention to what the team thinks now.

"Well Mr. Smith, the good news is that your wife doesn't have cancer. The bad news is that the diagnostic equipment ate her."

Unless you own a pawn shop. Florida (and I'm guessing other states too) effectively makes them immune to action for trading in stolen property, and makes you jump through ridiculous legal hoops to get your stuff back even if you can prove it's yours.

Perhaps if Blue is smart, they will offer X a free license to use their 'technology' in exchange for dropping any attempt to squash the patent.

Wouldn't it kind of defeat the purpose of patenting the idea if the only company that would have the need to use the patented invention was given permission to use it for free? Granted, the patent still has 15 years to go before it runs out, but SpaceX is likely to be the only company using the technology in the near future.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com... [nakedcapitalism.com]

Well, that might explain why it's practically impossible to get a Rickenbacker 4003 through Musician's Friend. They're almost never in stock, which I could understand if RIC is demanding cash up front for them now.

That wasn't spotted for ages, discovered only in 2013, when it was only 10 times the moon's distance away (nearly a Mars distance)

Math check - you missed a zero. The closest Earth and Mars can get is about 34 million miles, or about 140 times the Earth-Moon distance.

And it's free. Option #3 requires that you actually pay to receive the abuse.

He didn't realize the headers defined how structures were laid out in memory.

How does anyone that's worked with C/C++ (assuming from your reference to a .h file) for any length of time NOT understand this?

My suspicion is that the term railroad engineer for the guy who drives a train derives from the fact that the first men who drove trains were the same men who designed trains.

I think it's probably more that the engineer was responsible for controlling primary aspects of the locomotive's engine back in the early steam days (boiler pressure, signalling, etc.), much as the fireman's role was maintaining the fire that heated the boiler, and the brakemen's job was controlling the brakes on one or more cars.

Me, I'm just a programmer - thank you very much. I am not an engineer because I do not have an engineering degree, the experience or the exams that says I am.

I actually feel the same way. I've got a few decades of professional coding experience, and would like to think I don't completely suck at it, but I much prefer the title "programmer", "developer", or even "analyst". The title "engineer" implies training and responsibilities that the vast majority of code monkeys like me don't have.

Not exactly, the torpedoes can travel some distance away from the sub before turning and acquiring the target.

Firing a torpedo isn't exactly a silent operation, regardless of where it goes. Just flooding the tubes makes enough noise to hear from miles away.

and interfaces with an analog finger.

Fingers are digit-al. ;-)

Have you installed Windows recently? OK, I haven't since Windows 7, myself, but that install just asked me for timezone, language, and maybe which keyboard I was using (but the default was right), and the rest was just "next, next, next" and that was it, it ran for a while and rebooted 2x and was done with no further input.

It's more or less the same now with 8, except for the extra non-intuitive steps you have to take to avoid signing up for a Microsoft user account. Unfortunately there's still the continued lack of an option in the setup process to create a regular user account for everyday use in addition to an account with admin privileges (and no, UAC doesn't count because people still blindly click through the dialogs asking for permission to do stuff).

The Internet is killing a lot of the traditional retailers like Radio Shack and Sears

IMO Sears is doing more to kill Sears than the Internet is. When you order an item that costs several hundred dollars, and not only does it not get shipped to the store for pickup but no one even follows up on the order, you can't expect to keep very many customers.

Sears will be next.

And I won't be the least bit surprised when it happens. Last year I ordered a drill press from Sears online, to be picked up and paid for at the local store. No confirmation of the order via email, and when it was supposed to have arrived, the store said they hadn't received it but would call to make sure it was delivered the next week when they received their regular shipment from the warehouse. Called the next week, still not there. I went out and bought a press from another place, and never heard back again from Sears.

When someone orders several hundred dollars' worth of product and you can't even be bothered to follow up on that order (or even deliver it), you don't have a sunny financial future ahead of you. Sears used to be a great store, but management at all levels seems to be a pack of idiots hell-bent on driving it into the ground.