Problem there is that doing so pretty well blacklists you from ever working in the industry again if your name ever gets out. Not feasible unless you're getting enough to retire on. In this case, I don't want to screw the company just to get a policy changed. My boss went ballistic when I reported what I'd found, and legit licenses were immediately ordered. This was just a case of someone (no longer employed) acting without permission.

Of course, if you really want to get vindictive when leaving, report your company's OSHA violations (practically every company has them, regardless of their claims of OSHA compliance). Nothing like a surprise visit from an OSHA inspector to really make the owners love you.

Honestly, it really isn't that complicated. Like most "problems", really.

--Eat healthy. You need the right balance of chemicals in the brain.
--Sleep more. Studies consistently show the link between sleep and memory. Doesn't have to be 8 hours. I recall hearing that sleep goes through 90-minute cycles, so a multiple of that might be optimal.
--Exercise. Increased cardiovascular fitness means more blood travels to the brain.

A normal body doesn't require any kind of special help to function well. Just like dieting. You lose weight by eating less and exercising, not by living off grapefruit or cutting out all carbs. Just let your body do what it was meant to do.

Now, if you have some sort of genetic anomaly, this may not apply.

Agreed. Many of my problems come from not having the machines locked down (I've been able to reverse a few long-standing convenience-over-security decisions, but not this one). I've found BitTorrent clients installed, cracked copies of extremely expensive software (many thousands of $$$ per 1-user license), etc. Every machine has a different mix of software, different set of app patches, different versions of apps. No consistency at all.

Locked machines with preset deployment builds for each department would make my life so much easier.

For the accountants, a nice big "A" emblazoned on the breast. Perhaps in a lovely scarlet color.

I'm remembering the BOFH episode with the branded shirts.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/08/11/bofh_and_the_art/

Yeah, it is insane, I'm not arguing that. But it happens all the time.

What often ends up happening is the client rejects (A) because of the incurred cost of rescheduling deployment and marketing, refuses (B) and points out some key clauses buried in the million-page contract, leading to: (C) you cave, because the contract you signed has so many clauses and penalties that the client has you by the short hairs and you, being a small development shop, don't have the capital to sustain a protracted legal battle over the contractual obligations. At that point, development processes go out the window and the company does whatever it has to just to get paid.

It sucks, but it happens far too often.

No, they want a product just good enough not to get sued into oblivion for breach of contract, and they want it done as cheaply as possible.

Look at the code for some random app. Chances are you'll see the same crap over and over: basic library functions reinvented (multiple permutations of IsDigit() in the same "utility" file, DateTime classes, etc), short-sighted moves like hard-coding TLDs in email address field validators, etc. These programmers (be they American or H1B) weren't hired because they are competent, they were hired because they are *cheap*.

Doesn't surprise me in the least. Freezing a code base months in advance is extremely *rare*. If you're building an OS, maybe. But for a business app, you might freeze a week or two at most.

And anyone who has been around has seen this scenario play out at least once: you freeze the code, run your final tests, and the boss hands down a list of alterations from the client at the last minute. You aren't allowed to delay the release because the client has spent a ton of money on promotional media, and the changes *must* be in place for the release. It sucks, but coding right down to the wire happens all the time. That's what happens when you let bosses slash development time.

I've had similar experiences. I have a larger-sized Swiss Army Knife that I carry around. I've taken it traveling numerous times, and only *once* has it been found. Where? Asheville, NC of all places. Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale, Charlotte, Atlanta, no problem getting through. The only place it gets caught is a little podunk airport with so few commercial flights that the ticket agent actually remembers you if you fly through more than once a month.

The one time they caught it is actually a great story highlighting the absurdness of the whole system. When the screener spotted the knife, he gave me two choices: surrender it, or take it out to my car. I chose the latter. Only instead of going to my car (parked too far away), I went into the little store and got a plastic bag. I went outside, wrapped the knife in the bag and buried it in a potted plant two feet outside the terminal. When I flew back in a few days later, I dug it back up and went home.

Now, where we my bags during all of this? At the security checkpoint. That's right, they allowed me to exit the building while leaving my bags at the checkpoint, so that I wouldn't have to take them through the scanners a second time.

From my perspective, I ran out of checks over 6 months ago and have yet to reorder.

Every bill I have, I can pay online: electric, cable/internet, credit card, student loans, rent/mortgage, car/house insurance, car loan, etc.

A lot of places nowadays are even offering incentives to go paperless. My CC company was going to start billing for sending out printed statements ($2 a month), my bank gave a 0.25% discount on car loan interest rates if you set up debiting from your bank account so they wouldn't have to send out bills every month.

You do have some options. I can't speak for Halo, as I hate that series, but I can say that my guild when I played WoW was almost entirely female. Just getting an invite as a guy was a challenge. Recommendations from three existing members, socializing with the members to assess my "maturity level", etc. Completely worth it though, without a doubt the best guild I've been in.

Way back in my Quake II days, my clan was "partnered" with a couple others, one of which was an all-female clan. Public servers were always a pain for them, but we hosted private servers where that middle-school "ZOMG!!! U R a girl?!?!" crap was verboten.

I seem to recall one game where you could actually control breast size when creating your character. There was a big outcry from the feminist segment about how sexist the devs were for specifically targeting that feature. You either leave them at a fixed size and piss off a segment of gamers, or make them adjustable and piss off the feminists. Damned either way.

I personally would like to see more realistic character models, though. Mirror's Edge was a nice example (even though I know I'm the only person on Earth who actually played it). Faith and Celeste were certainly endowed, but not to the point of being ridiculous (a la Bloodrayne). Reasonable size, if still somewhat above average. Same for male characters. I don't want to play a character who looks like a poster child for doping.

The bulk of the installs can automated. Once you have a boot environment up with SSH, a remote script can handle the actual install process. Most of the random hardware can still be autodetected in a lot of distros. Sure, it'll take a while, but most of the work is really just watching a script run. I can think of worse ways to spend my day (like babysitting a SQL Server 2008 install).

PB is still around in Europe. Last year they were acquired by Acer as a ride-along from the Acer buyout of Gateway.

And yeah, their machines were the pinnacle of shittiness.

You'd be surprised at how slowly some companies change.

I recently had to deal with a support issue involving a certain Fortune 500 company that some of our employees collaborate with. They were having trouble chatting with the other company's employees. Do they use Office Communicator? Live Meeting? GoToMeeting? Any of a thousand other modern meeting clients? No, the Fortune 500 company still uses NETMEETING.

Hell, our old website (currently being redesigned) included scripting to bypass a bug in NN 4.X. That browser was dead 6 years ago, and the site was only 4 years old.

True, but in reality *very* few bugs can actually prevent you from playing. The majority of bugs are the mostly harmless variety: terrain glitches, unexpected AI behavior, etc.

Those are gameplay bugs. Game *breaking* bugs are another matter.