Absolutely, this ^^^^. Agile just strongly promotes the things which are important to any delivery using any delivery methodology: ability to react to change, fast feedback, small measurable iterations with predicable milestones, open communications and collaboration, outcomes versus tasks and complete products (ie. product + docs + support tools + training etc.) You absolutely cannot impose and off-the-shelf agile framework onto a waterfall organisation and hope for a positive outcome. Using agile thinking (note - not an agile framework) has always allowed me to address the kinds of inefficiencies which result from an organisation which has evolved into distinct silos who no longer engage effectively with each other. Plus the docs are actually of better quality if you get it right.

This is the kind of result you get when clever people are presented with a problem and allowed to attempt to solve it.

Totally agree with this: meetings kill innovation. I've worked over video links with suppliers and customers for years and it does take a little while to get used to. I don't miss awful conference call quality and struggling to listen to a call in a noisy open-plan office. I also find remote working makes it easier for those less dominant to get their point across. Video calls seem to neutralise alpha males (another innovation killer). It's tough for new starters, unless mentoring is more formal - ie. the new starter is invited to everything by their mentor to get going as it's easier to do intros as part of other conversations. Agree that ideas need to be fleshed-out too. Business proposals with clarity and demo material work wonders.

The key to extradition between countries is that the accusation needs to be for a crime for which an extradition treaty exists. Between the US and NZ, here is a listing (which is typical of other country treaties with the US): https://internationalextraditi... ... I did RTFA, but did not find a link to the NZ court ruling to confirm the extent to which this bilateral extradition treaty was the basis for the ruling.

Dotcom is accused of racketeering and money laundering, which would seem to be covered in the treaty section on fraud: "16. Obtaining property, money or valuable securities by false pretenses or by conspiracy to defraud the public or any person by deceit or falsehood or other fraudulent means, whether such deceit or falsehood or any fraudulent means would or would not amount to a false pretense." The definition of racketeering is something like, "dishonest and fraudulent business dealings."

International extradition treaties are part of why plaintiffs and prosecutors seek such high crimes, in their charges. The article links to the US court filing, if you want to see the full list. Another reason is that, in the US, criminal charges are made at the highest possible level of seriousness, so that there will be a plea bargain for a lower charge, rather than bringing a case all the way to the end. Federal prosecutions in the US very rarely result in Not Guilty or in charges being dismissed (under 5%).

That EU law that got struck down yesterday was part of an industry effort to add copyright infringement to the set of laws that would let enforcement cross national boundaries. For copyright, there is no current international extradition (at least, not with the US -- the EU has been doing its own thing). The Berne Convention, and associated treaties under WIPO, are the applicable international treaties for copyright, and do not make provisions for extradition or international enforcement for copyright violation. The fact that international boundaries are usually very easy to cross via Internet traffic is a big concern for publishers, media companies, etc., and they have been trying for a long time to extend reach of copyright laws beyond national boundaries.

One of the earliest such cases was in 2000, and involved a US copyright law forbidding reverse engineering of encryption. The DeCSS case, https://www.technewsworld.com/..., was to bring charges against Jon Johansen in Norway for posting a decryption program. Nowadays, I would expect charges in US courts would also include crimes for which extradition treaties apply, like fraud and larceny. This is easily achieved by stipulating large $ damages (due to lost revenue, piracy, etc.).

More recently, we know that Julian Assange is concerned about being extradited to the US under a secret indictment in the US courts. The rape charges in Sweden were sufficient for extradition from the UK (https://www.government.se/government-of-sweden/ministry-of-justice/international-judicial-co-operation/extradition-for-criminal-offences/), but Ecuador has an approach that gives higher priority to avoiding torture than the bilateral treaties. The Guardian has a nice short cheeky piece about why Edward Snowden was also thought to be en route to Ecuador, before he ended up staying in Russia: https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

We are getting the picture, right? The US isn't the only country that seeks very high-level crimes in what are basically copyright cases, nor are they the only country where moneyed business interests are able to get the ear of criminal courts for issues that are, essentially, civil cases (a distinction that matters a lot in countries that follow common law... less so for countries with different legal heritage, like Germany).

In the US, the first thing the big media companies or other large copyright holders do when considering a case is to count up the potential damages. Once they are in the $millions, they can get federal criminal courts and the federal police (the FBI) interested. An early case where this technique was used was the 1995-1999 prosecution and incarceration of Kevin Mitnick (https://www.wired.com/2012/02/feb-15-1995-mitnick-arrested/). He had exfiltrated source code and other "trade secrets" from Sun and Motorola, which valued that code in the $100s of millions. It was those incredibly high damage estimates that inspired the US federal prosecutors to pursue a case against Mitnick.

You have a point.

The StackExchange sites have a weak spot for late answers. The voting and sorting system reward mediocre answers that are posted early over great answers that are posted months or years later. That means that the best answer is sometimes half way down the page and may never reach the top.

It is often problematic that the person who asked the question gets sole control over which answer is at the top via the green check mark that "accepts" the answer. I've seen them choose some really bone-headed answers as accepted on occasion. There is just no way for the community to over-ride them, even with at 10:1 ratio of votes on some other answer.

My other pet-peeve is the large number of separate StackExchange sites with somewhat overlapping topics. It is almost impossible to figure out where to post a question sometimes. Most of the sites have non-obvious rules about what is off-topic. You are likely to ask in the wrong place and get your question closed the way it is set up. For example if you have a question about the security of Google Analytics for your WordPress website running on IIS. You might ask it on Security, WordPress, Webmasters, WebApps, or Server Fault. Most people seem to just ask it on StackOverflow because it is the one they know.

I don't even see why it should be all that effing difficult. A 200dpi phone screen is super low resolution now. it's hard to imagine that one of those techs (AMOLED, perchance?) couldn't be upscaled to an 8k, or a 4k tall x 12k wide, curved screen with older tech.
 

44" is the 8K I want. If I could get a 4320 px tall screen in a 2.35:1 ratio - curved, preferably, for a 1m viewing distance, that would be ideal. I just want a true 200 dpi desktop monitor (yes, I have a big desk).

Oh, I don't know. The last time I got locked out I called a local representative who sells locks and he came and unlocked it in a few seconds. No serial number, just a set of picks. These are residential locks, not some vault at a high security location which has been designed to be uncircumventable.

Are you saying that they're likely not to use some type of extra-visible patterning, like Windows Hello, which cannot be unlocked with a photo?

So you're not okay with it recognizing your face, which is probably in dozens of hundred of pictures already on the phone, but you're okay with it storing your fingerprints and using them for access?

Half the stuff I'm looking for that shows up on Walmart is something sold by Zoro, not Walmart, which means it comes with exactly zero CS support should something not go right (and 9 times out of 10 stuff from Zoro is horribly overpriced, though I'v also gotten my share of deals directly from their website).

Oh, hey - look - your capacitor came from Zoro. Surprise (not). Might as well go straight to their store.