Yes, it's very trendy to get a new phone every year. And yes, it's fun to laugh at those neanderthals and troglodytes who have *gasp* last generation's iPod.

Now trace all those discarded electronics to their end-of-life graves and see how we're poisoning the environment with arsenic, plastics, cadmium and other toxic chemicals, all just to satisfy our craving for shiny things.

I would be proud to own a 12-year-old piece of electronic gear that still functions and does what I need. I have a five-year-old phone (Nokia N900) and bought my daughter's iPod third-hand for $30; it plays my music just fine. No plans to replace the phone or the iPod any time soon.

Yes, that whole model is flawed. SV may be making lots of money, but it's ruining people's lives if it expects insane work hours.

I work in the tech field (actually, I own a 10-person tech company) in Canada and I have never made my employees work overtime. Ever.

Unfortunately, given free reign, businesses will exploit employees and the labour laws in the US offer hardly any protection to workers.

No, I don't think Snowden gave the Russians much... that's why I said they've already got all they can. And the PR value diminishes daily; no-one cares about old news.

I expect Russia has already got everything out of Snowden that it ever will.

Actually, I do not rely on stories from the media, but on talking to Russian friends who have left Russia. Say what you like, but people vote with their feet... hence the huge flow of "enslaved" Americans into "free" Russia... yeah, that's it.

When all is said and done, the US is still a helluva lot freer than Russia. But I was being facetious; the last place he should go is the USA or we'd see a Snowden - Durov swap in the blink of an eye.

With Putin giving the US a black eye by harbouring Edward Snowden, maybe this guy will find sanctuary in the US? :)

Before you think about how to run your shop, ask these questions:

Do you have a product?

Is there a market for that product? How do you know?

Do you have a business plan including a marketing plan?

Once you get past those questions, the rest is easy. Outsource anything that doesn't make sense (HR, accounting, payroll) and keep your core expertise in-house. Don't obsess about coding standards, etc. until you have cash flow. It's far more important to do your utmost to get the business making money thatn to worry about programming minutiae.

I did start a software product business back in 2000 and it's going strong. The very first person I hired was our VP of Sales and Marketing. I didn't hire another technical person until employee #5, so didn't have to worry about imposing coding standards on others. :)

I wonder how the OPP would react if they were required by law to stream video of all their officers' activities in real-time. Suddenly they'd like a little privacy and anonymity, thank you very much!

I was involved in some quite heated discussions on the DMARC list about one problem. DMARC is supposed to prevent someone from forging the From: header sender (and to a lesser extent if used with SPF, the envelope sender.)

The problem is that most MUAs (mail clients) do not show the full email address of the sender. They only show the full name. For example, a header that looks like this:

From: American Express Fraud Dept <bozo@example.com>

will be displayed in a typical mail client as just American Express Fraud Dept with not a single complaint from DMARC.

Even worse, a scammer can use a header like this:

From: "American Express Fraud Dept - fraud@aexp.com" <bozo@example.com>

and the mail client will display the fake fraud@aexp.com address with nary a DMARC complaint.

Mail sucks. User-interfaces suck. People suck. Bah.

My company (Roaring Penguin) uses SPF for outbound mail and we DKIM-sign our mail too. Our antispam software also supports SPF and DKIM. We don't yet support DMARC, but probably will at some point. The problem with fully supporting DMARC is the reporting component. It's a real bear to send DMARC reports, but obeying DMARC policies is much easier. We'll start by doing DMARC-policy-obeying first and then think about reporting.

He's (big) bang on! No more aping the creationists; Francis is a dinosaur no more.

This is what we get for blindly following the states^W^W^W^W being a Western democracy and refusing to be dhimmis to Islamist nutters.

FTFY.

It is not time to panic. It is time to get serious about taking on and defeating the terrorists. That doesn't mean curtailing our civil liberties, but it does mean taking sensible precautions and not spouting Trudeau-esque bullshit about finding the "root causes" of terrorism.

There's a war on against Western democracies. We have to win it.

I bet the reaction of the "Muslim Community" will be to wring their hands about how they're now going to be subject to discrimination. I have very little time for that sort of bullshit woe-is-us attitude.