Why would everybody "in charge" have gotten there by kissing ass? My previous boss managed 5 teams (of 1 to 3 persons, I was a one-man team), none of which he would have been able to replace because he didn't know the technical details of any team's work. But he was a great boss, great manager and did exactly what he needed to do, i.e. from all management decisions filter out the things any of his people needed to do, tell them and follow-up. And give them the resources.

Without these "glorified secretaries", most companies would collapse.

Seriously, they're people. You make it sound like you're some exotic zoo keeper and you need to know what to do when they present their glowing red ass.

To be honest, judging from some of the comments here, that is an idea programmers seem to want to promote themselves, because they are more special and gifted than normal human beings.

I'm not trolling here. Just scroll up and you'll see.

Reports are generally useful if many people work on something together. It may all be in your mind, and you may know what you are doing, but that doesn't necessarily mean everyone knows about it, or that in a year you won't have forgotten stuff that is obvious today. Some paperwork is useful, even for the Greatest on Earth. Not all of it is control and waste of time. If "I-do-my-job" is so high on your list, apparently, why can't you accept that reporting is also a part of your job, and asking you to report is part of your boss's job?

Who says the term "piracy" can't have two meanings? If the rest of the world is ok with calling this form of copyright infringement "piracy", even though no physical is stolen, then that is what it means.

Besides -and this is not addressed at somersault- it is beyond me why this type of topic always leads to semantic discussions. I, for one, whould not be shouting off the roofs that I am reaping the fruits of another's labor, against his will, whether this is called theft, piracy, copyright onfringement or whatever. I do it, like everybody, but at least I don't try to make it ok with Newspeak.

And how well have we been able to harness that power so far? There is a difference between more or less random phenomena in nature and being able to generate as well as capture an 800W power beam. I have also seen mountains that are higher than skyscrapers. So what?

You overestimate how much society changes. Given the ENORMOUS gulf between 1900 and 2000, you could reanimate a person who died in 1908, and it would take them very little effort at all to adjust to 21st century life.

And you know this because?

I'm an English teacher at a good school

You must be a masochist, reading Slashdot.
As a non-native speaker, I don't understand that even in a discussion on the quality of the educational system in the UK (and US), even I see mistakes in half the posts. Maybe I'm just a grammar nazi, though...

Imagine a Beowul cluter of these...

Oh wait. It's called college.

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...

Oh wait, it's called college.

Without that generous donation the researchers concerned would have squat.

Whereas now they have squid?

Good analogy. The problem is that sometimes it is hard to know if the quality is unaffected, or it may be in a way you didn't think of. Better be safe than sorry. This may be a chicken attitude, but I prefer jokes of which the possible fallout can be assessed and kept under control a bit more than software that will also be used by people you don't know.

What a loser that guy was, because nothing is more fun than biting your teeth trying to clean out the code of your predecessor, looking for a bug, and being confronted with stupid comment where a usefull one could have been, and having to guess at the function of "My_funnyvariable_rotfl[x]".

In a professional environment, I would recommend to be VERY good at what you do before introducing tricks that could compromise the product.

Considering how much time we spend talking about the other kind, I think it's worth paying attention to the real problems out there.

Maybe I'm just old-fashiond and boring, but it's not because you couldn't care less about piracy that it isn't someone lese's real problem...

Your name isn't Hertz by any chance?

Do this for 40 years, and you'll be just as sharp at 50 as you were at 20.

Damn! Why didn't you tell me to start when I was still 10?