You do that once (as a new idealistic developer), get your ass fired and never do it again. The managers are probably friends with someone high up. You probably ain't. And developing things on that level is not about competence, it's all about politics.

Sounds interesting: any links to back that up?

Amen to that. I'm in that situation for two years now, and seriously considering raping my predecessor's face with a chainsaw.

In my experience, duct tape programmers come in two kinds: a project lead who thinks along the lines of "Oh, I was in my previous life a dba, I can do everything myself and they just have to work with what I give them without complaining because I get payed more" and the "oh hi, I am an ex-marketing guy and I know some vba so I obviously know how to program in .net"

I hate to quote an overused quote, but who watches the watchmen?

So their reaction is "Ooh, a mac clone with firefox stickers! You've obviously got too much time! Wanna go out"?

Yeah. I've got to talk (and work) with some marketing girls & boys: they're good at what they do. Some of them are (comparatively speaking) better marketers than I am a software developer. And they are responsible for your paycheck (if your company doesn't sell anything they don't have money to pay you) so before throwing the whole "omg marketeers suck lulz" tantrum try and talk to them. They might just be nice human beings after all.

No, some nerds "get" that google is not interested in whatever the hell it is they are doing.

I think me yelling "give me back my purse" would get met lots of weird looks :)

I might start yelling I'm a vegetarian and that I'm better than the guy or girl tho. Works with greenpeace activists.

Same here. I will ignore you and if you insist on bothering me I will yell.

Isn't it more like banning guns because the majority of the users use it to kill people instead of wildlife or instead as for self defense?

Maybe, just maybe, you could educate them instead of just plain laughing in their face.

well, in 2007 some customers complained, and later it was confirmed (search for "capping", both links are Dutch). However, Telenet isn't talking about it. I wouldn't be surprised if they did however.

True about the not lasting long, but mine was a bad example: I think if I made a page about some obscure subject (that was Wikipedia-viable) the people coming to the wikipedia page would receive wrong information, and since it takes a long time (I think) for the editors to notice & fix the obscure pages the damage may have already been done.

And if i remember correctly there isn't any "fact" checking in the references either. I can make a page saying I rule the universe and wikipedia will gladly accept it as a source (unless, of course, someone removes it as an unreliable source - but if you're learning about the subject you don't know what is reliable/unreliable ...)

Yeah, and there is no possibly way that that could be abused.