I want WKL to continue to do what it has been doing, which is focusing on the first four choices all at the same time.

WKL is a long term force for good in our world, despite the fact that the short term effects are bad for some who are mostly bad people/corrupt politicians. For example, Bush Jr and Obama - both violators of the US constitution's intent regarding torture and due process.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Cruel_and_unusual_punishments

According to the Supreme Court, the Eighth Amendment forbids some punishments entirely, and forbids some other punishments that are excessive when compared to the crime, or compared to the competence of the perpetrator.
In Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459 (1947), the Supreme Court assumed arguendo that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause applied to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962), the Court ruled that it did apply to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Robinson was the first case in which the Supreme Court applied the Eighth Amendment against the state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment. Before Robinson, the Eighth Amendment had only been applied against the federal government.[10]
Justice Potter Stewart's opinion for the Robinson Court held that "infliction of cruel and unusual punishment [is] in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, such as John Bingham, had discussed this subject:
[M]any instances of State injustice and oppression have already occurred in the State legislation of this Union, of flagrant violations of the guarantied privileges of citizens of the United States, for which the national Government furnished and could furnish by law no remedy whatever. Contrary to the express letter of your Constitution, "cruel and unusual punishments" have been inflicted under State laws within this Union upon citizens, not only for crimes committed, but for sacred duty done, for which and against which the Government of the United States had provided no remedy and could provide none.[11]
In Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), Justice Brennan wrote, "There are, then, four principles by which we may determine whether a particular punishment is 'cruel and unusual'."
The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity," especially torture.
"A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion."
"A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society."
"A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary."
Continuing, he wrote that he expected that no state would pass a law obviously violating any one of these principles, so court decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment would involve a "cumulative" analysis of the implication of each of the four principles.
[edit]Punishments forbidden regardless of the crime
In Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130 (1878), the Supreme Court commented that drawing and quartering, public dissecting, burning alive, or disemboweling would constitute cruel and unusual punishment regardless of the crime. The Supreme Court declared executing the mentally handicapped in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), and executing people who were under age 18 at the time the crime was committed in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), to be violations of the Eighth Amendment, regardless of the crime.
[edit]Punishments forbidden for certain crimes
The case of Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349 (1910), marked the first time that the Supreme Court exercised judicial review to overturn a criminal sentence as cruel and unusual.[12] The Court overturned a punishment called cadena temporal, which mandated "hard and painful labor," shackling for the duration of incarceration, and permanent civil disabilities. This case is often viewed as establishing a principle of proportionality under the Eighth Amendment.[13] However, others have written that "it is hard to view Weems as announcing a constitutional requirement of proportionality."[14]

Dogs noses are orders of magnitude more sensitive than ours.
To the dog, that bowl smells like food "all the time".

In fact, unless the bowl's made of a material that's completely non-permeable,
the dog can smell food on it even after you have washed it in very hot, very soapy water.

according to WP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_anatomy#Smell
Dogs have nearly 220 million smell-sensitive cells over an area about the size of a pocket handkerchief (compared to 5 million over an area the size of a postage stamp for humans).[12][13] According to nhm.org, dogs can sense odours at concentrations nearly 100 million times lower than humans can.[14] According to Dummies.com, the percentage of the dog's brain that is devoted to analyzing smells is actually 40 times larger than that of a human.[12] Some dog breeds have been selectively bred for excellence in detecting scents, even compared to their canine brethren.

Interestingly you can say exactly the same thing about medical Doctors. Ego's the size of -ridiculously large object- and the bigger the ego, the stupider and less scientifically they practice medicine. From a GP all the way "up" ($$$$$) to the surgical specialists, its the same for all of them. God help you if you're not an "average" patient. If you don't fit in their pre-conceived "box" they'll keep stuffing you in and slamming the lid shut until you die, leave their practice or get well on your own. And if you get well on your own, they will take the credit for that.

Whats the actual real error rate for Doctors on diagnoses and treatments? Here's a hint - Its around 50%.

What "profession" gets paid just as much when they are wrong as they do when they are right? Yes, Doctors.

Think this is all nuts? Start keeping track. At each sick visit to a doctor ask these final questions: (And record each answer! )

( Aside: After doing this a while, using a strict "if its not right, then its wrong" scoring rubric, I found my doctors to be around the 50% range. Note that they don't view it this way, they view being wrong as part of the process. [ Note: being wrong means "Follow up visit!" which they charge for as well. gee my mechanic doesn't do that.... Please be aware that I'm not only talking about fatal, near fatal or crippling mistakes made by the doctor, but also about how many things they just get wrong in daily practice even if the mistake results in no injury. Once you see just how bad doctors are most of the time, you may start thinking you want a better system. I know I do!. :-) End Aside)

Questions for every visit:
#1 - So what is the diagnosis, what do I have? (doctor must identify the illness or say I don't know (yet). if the latter, the doctor must map out the next part of the diagnostic path for the patient, identifying what the likely "diagnosis candidates" are at this point in time. )

#2 - if the doctor has identified your illness, Ask: "What is the recommended treatment?" or "How is it treated?" follow up with "What are the side effects to this treatment? what percentage of the treated population gets each type of side effect? and How are those side effects treated? Are any of the side effects permanent? can any part of the treatment harm me in any way? Again, record all answers. In fact - really record the session. Watch as your specialist flips out when you tell them you're recording because you're too stressed out to take notes, (or your carpal tunnel is acting up)

#3 - before the next visit, pull out the notes from #1 and #2 and see how well the doctor did against their predictions. if you're not cured yet, repeat #1 and #2 . Also - note how often you have to repeat #1 and #2. :)

Note - if you run into any Harvard educated neurosurgeons who want to put any magnetically affected metals into your neck (* say to repair some disc problems by fusing vertebrae) take the following emergency actions:

#1 - Tase the neurosurgeon heavily until they pass out.
#2 - apply a tourniquet to the arm of the Dr's dominant hand. If its not clear which hand is dominant, apply a tourniquet to both.
#3 - remove hands from any arm that is tourniquetted, using what ever tools are nearby. Remember neatness is not a goal here, speed and separation are the desired effect.
#4 - if no tourniquet material is available, proceed with step 3 and assume that both hands must be removed.

Why: Why don't you want this doctor operating on you - any doctor who even suggests putting ferrous metals ( or any magnetically reactive materials ) inside your body, especially anywhere near the head, is a GOD of clueless-ness. MRI Imaging is one of the best diagnostic imaging tools medicine has. MRI systems are extremely powerful and if your body has any metal in it near the MRI fields, that metal will cook your body from the inside out. [Basically MRI's heat the metal by induction ] So if your body has any magnetically active metal in it, You can't have an MRI on that part of your body.. Any person with cervical disc issues is going to need to have multiple MRI exams at various points for the rest of their life, so having any metal in there kind screws that up for them. Yay, Hah-vahd educated neurosurgeon! You're a fuck up! Hint - Stainless Steel bad, Titanium Good.

( NB: People tend to subvert their own survival instincts in the presence of doctors. ["Oh, they're a doctor, they must be right!" ] As a result many many people go ahead and have 'recommended procedures" even though they have internal misgivings. By removing the doctor's ability to perform surgery you remove the possibility that you will follow their recommendation for surgery. Yay! Safe from stupid surgeon! )

I'm announcing the start of the worlds first totally transparent and open health care system. "Great Open Sores Health With Thematically Fewer Dubious Overego'd Caregivers" aka "GOSH WTF DOC"!

In phase 1 of the implementation of "GOSH WTF DOC" we will re-write the software in these little devices:

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000725.php Explains the background to the device.

http://www.firebox.com/product/817/20Q includes a small review

http://www.amazon.com/Radica-I6026-20Q-Colors-Vary/dp/B000SKLREA/ref=dp_cp_ob_t_title_1. $6 at Amazon!

But so What?

here's what - Databases for software based medical diagnostics trees have existed for decades. Why aren't the medical professionals using them?

Because - once they do use them it becomes clear that most of what a doctor does is a memorized, mechanical process that any halfway intelligent teenager can do, once they spend 8 years memorizing all that crap and "paying their dues" to get into the "Doctoring profession"

[And its quite literally a "Paying dues" situation, spend a few hundred K on college and medical school, work 8- to 120 hours per week at a hospital as a "Doctor in training" and you get to join the guild! Becoming a doctor used to only require 3 years of training AFTER HIGH SCHOOL! Why is it so hard to get into and then through medical school? Hey - If we doctors allow there to be a lot of doctors.... Supply up, price down. 'nuff said. ]

Once a well trained medical diagnosis system is packaged at a low cost AND ---- the AMA approves its use by doctors ---- primary medical care costs will start dropping. This will never happen in the USA unless the AMA is disbanded. {is this rant long enough yet? Good! }

Please note that the "GOSH WTF DOC" will not be using the 20Q style diagnostic systems in the USA. Instead they will first be deployed in third world countries where the examiner will be a nurse who has been trained to observe and record information used in the diagnostic tree. eg - palpate the abdomen, examine white of the eye for yellowish or blueish tint. record blood pressure and temp etc.. Once it is a proven system over there, people will begin smuggling them back into the US for use here. [in free medical clinics?] Then when people discover you get better health care from a free clinic that uses one of these tools, even the US partner practices will have to start using them.

Parent's comment is spot on. Please, (if you are so inclined), take a gander at the book "Fat land : how Americans became the fattest people in the world" by Greg Critser.

This book details exactly how the USA's food industries stopped being mainly suppliers of food, but instead learned to market by "addiction stimulation profiles", focusing on how to get people to eat not just more, but much much more. And in the process added chemically prepared materials to the food to enhance those addictive properties and lower costs by replacing nutritious content with junk or waste products.

In my 30+ years of experience in the American High Tech and Finance businesses, I have seen what happens to personal morals and integrity: For most employees who design, or develop products any comments about treating the customer fairly, or "but thats not right" are met with silence, or outright derision. Socially aware employees learn quickly that such statements are career enders and never make them.

In finance and mass market software application companies employees who make such statements, especially more than once, are taken note of and never promoted into management positions that have input on company policy or decision making. Please note that there are many first/second level "management" positions which are simply group leader positions and have no influence on company direction. Employees with good people skills and personal integrity will often be used in these positions because they are respected and liked by their peers but are never promoted beyond those levels. Their careers have dead ended because they have not shown the proper attitude about how to treat/exploit the masses for the benefit of the company.

In companies where scientists are the product developers, like food companies or chemical companies, it is harder to "retrain the employee's thinking" because of the academic emphasis on scientific integrity. Phd's are much harder to redirect into the "proper way of thinking". In these companies the censorship is initially subtle but over time, for a specific employee, can actually become directly confrontational. "Do this or its your job", eg - you will be fired. Note all such companies have employees sign aggressively proprietary NDA's to prevent whistleblowing, (as well as leaking competitive information of course :) )

Over time the end result is that everyone in upper management has the same attitude and the only constraints or requirements on thinking are "Will this make more money for the company?" and "if this is illegal, can we get away with it?".

I'm sure there are exceptions to the above generalizations, especially in other industries. But we should all be aware of the tendency of businesses to this acquire and follow these characteristics. As mentioned in the parent, the Top executives from the largest tobacco companies in the world were willing to go in front of congress, under oath and blatantly lie right to their faces. Further, they had been so completely aware of the actual facts of tobacco's harmful attributes that they made sure that all paper trails, all data that was streamed upward in the company, never ever contained any such claims. The internal social/corporate pressure within each organization was so complete and so well thought out in advance that the entire plan to suppress all such information internally was done completely by word of mouth, off the record, never written down, No incriminating documents at all.

As an interesting corollary, look up the rate of arrests for cocaine use/sale in Silicon Valley and the Massachusetts 128 tech belt and plot those over time and on the same graph, plot the High Tech industry booms and busts. There will be an interesting correspondence. I leave it to the reader to decide what, if anything, it means.

For an excellent dramatized story about this, see the movie "The Insider" with Russel Crowe about a reluctant whistleblower in the tobacco industry, This movie also shows how pernicious business influences are and how the famed investigative TV Show "60 minutes" was stopped dead in its tracks just on the eve of a tremendous expose on the industry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rappeling

I've been able to read cleartext SSN's out of college's for the past 30 years without ANY authorization, so all I can say is that this is better late than never.

The only refinement I can think of that would improve it is that any MIS/IT/CIO Director who authorizes any form of non-encrypted storage of this type of information should also have to pay a personal fine of $500 per record.

Funny how when its your own money that's on the line your perspective changes.

No the startup does not claim to have busted the famous "adding manpower to a late project makes it later" rule.

Why is this different from the scenario Fred Brooks described in his book (and the death marches many of us have experienced)?

#1 - No critical path dependencies on intern deliverables:
The items the interns had to deliver were independent of the main project. While the functionality was desirable, no part of the mainline project would be held up if that functionality was not delivered.

#2 - Fixed endpoint.
The intern staff had a fixed period of employment. 1 month, no extensions possible. Software projects almost never have a fixed end date. Yes, they claim to, but the reality is those deadlines are never real.

#3 Staffing:
I'm sorry to have to say this but the caliber of the staffing matters. The competition to get into MIT is one of the most intense in the USA, if not the world. Many people are smart enough to get into MIT, but the ones who make the cut are the ones who have focused on MIT as a goal for years before they ever got there and kept working towards that goal steadily, (or are the 0.000000006% of the population that are spectacular geniuses). These people are extremely quick at picking up new ideas and concepts and are the type that only have to hear something once, AND, unlike most people in the world, grasp the implications and inferential relationships of what they have been told/given very quickly. These abilities, combined with MIT's intense technical curriculum which provides both a broad and deep understanding of the underlying technical principles, and an academic environment that requires students to be strongly self-reliant, (most US primary school systems stamp out self reliance rather than enhancing it.) means that the talent pool this startup was drawing on had a superb set of talent, drive, self-initiative, and technical knowledge.

#4 culture
The people recruited into the company shared a common set of experiences with each other and also with a number of the already existing full time staff. This "common culture" meant that they were able to instantly relate to their mentors the rest of the company people. It allowed a much better level of communication than one will see in a more randomly sourced population.

There is more to this, and much of it is more complex than I have described here. (no relocation logistics/distractions, no social isolation, existing support group, etc etc etc .... ) but I have gone on long enough.

Please note - none of the above implies perfection or super human abilities of these people, just simple human attributes skewed towards one end of the curve. (And in some cases, really really skewed in their social metrics :-) )

I've met MIT grads who were not able to function outside the academic world and those who were superb and those who were lousy. The above is a general discussion of why the startup was able to do well with this, but does not attempt to cover the true scope of the complexity of the issue. Remember, this is Slashdot.
 

I have to disagree, but I thank you for partially supporting my position. There are very few "real world" environments which are both "large" and able to get by only on software which has been packaged in msi format.
[[what you are calling the "Windows installer system" which is a fine label.]]
From my real world experiences, Financial firms, HMO's, Insurance companies, Large Corporations, Call centers and the like, which all can be quite large, very distinctly do not have nice neat environments like the one you describe.

They try to. They know it would greatly simplify their existence if they could. But reality intrudes.

If IT were driving the business, there is a chance the environment could be simplified, but, alas, businesses that are driven by their IT depts rather than by their business, don't stay in business. :)

A few other points:
SLA - ? provided by who and to who? The IT Dept has an SLA with the rest of the company? And it prohibts the business the company is in from requiring anything not supported by the existing group policy software? That will last right up to the first "not supportable" item that has a negative revenue affect. At that point management will override the SLA, or throw it out completely.

"IN any complex environment" was the first premise of my statement. Are you saying then, that most large scale
  environments today are not complex? Great. I guess we can start reducing the IT budgets and headcounts. Most people who think Windows administration is easier to do than *NIX administration just haven't ever seen how easily automated administering a large network of *NIX systems can be. Having the ability to login to any remote system has existed for roughly 30 years. And automating remote adminsitration has been there almost that long. As for locking things down, that too has been built in since the beginning of *NIX multi-user capabilities. These capabilities (and nice stuff like the new windows powershell [ Finally! ] ) are very nice additions to Windows that are mostly or partially inspired by analogues that existed in *NIX (and other) traditions, in some cases for decades before Windows acquired them. Again, I congratulate Microsoft on their ability to add in ideas from other places. I'm just surprised it took as long as it did.

Microsoft clearly isn't dumb, but the company's actual policy of "Churn to earn", [[ try to get every customer to buy a new Windows license every three years ]] has always forced then to work on flash before actual useful needs. Tell me how many times did they re-invent (and rename) the COM system? 5? or was it six? and where is it now?

I suspect your allegation is true only when specific, narrow conditiosn are in place. Those conditions might include things like, comparing one version of windows platform against multiple versions of UNIX, Not being required to do anything not already supported by the capabilities in the group policy system, or the windows installer system, and not having to use any software that is not packaged with the MSI system, and others.

In any complex environment, I suspect the allegation will fail. In those environments size would make the issue(s) worse. However, I do congratulate MS for addrressing many issues in the adminjstrative domain in recent years, now they are only 20 years behind in security.