I'd remind them that the *point* of a process is to cover for the quality. (That's why McDonald's hamburgers are consistently "OK").

If your company is full of AAA+++ ROCKSTAR DEVELOPER GODS, then who cares what methodology you use? But the real world is full of average, middle of the bell curve coders, who will come and go at arbitrary moments, and the methodology is there to keep things organized when Bob needs to replace Adam.

So... if the methodology isn't getting you there (because it requires above-the-curve people), you've got a niche market, not a save-us-all must-do design.

(I have no illusions that I'm any more than an average coder, myself - I just happen to be the one-eyed king in this office of blind men.)

Easy - because they're "not profit". Right in the title. And if they're not making a profit, they're not bringing in a lot of money, obviously

Seriously - there's a lot of people out there who haven't figured out that you can "not show a profit" by simply raising expenses to match income. It's why NCAA has sponsorships but manages to never show a profit.

I don't fault them either - but I'd rather they sell it that way (as "if we get $X, it's all lollypops and candy from here on out!") rather than "the lights could go out AT ANY MOMENT unless you give us money RIGHT NOW". Because right now, they've got 20 years of bank, and probably longer if they invest it wisely. Not to mention that they're over 80% of the way to their 25x figure, so the lights ain't going out any time soon.

Also worth noting that folks that I know who are 24/7 on call (either for emergencies, or because the job involves a lot of weekend/evening work) are both well compensated and have flexible hours (so if you keep them up all night with your emergency, there's no talk of "why aren't you at your desk at 8am?")

Folks always forget that part of the point of salary is that you're getting paid to get the work done, not to be there X hours. If you want to track my hours, then make me an hourly employee, with the overtime pay that entails.

(And in-before-internet-tough-guy, I have had this exact conversation with a boss in the past who decided that even though I'd stayed til midnight the night before putting out fires, I still had to be at my desk at 8:00. I pointed out the extra hours, he played the salary card. I suggested that we should put me on the time clock, and we'll see in a month who owed who. Never heard about that again.)

.. and is compensated accordingly. On the other hand, Mike the equipment manager makes a lot less money, but no-one cares what he does in his off-hours.

But reading the article, they've glossed over one very important point - it's a company-provided phone. Which means the company has a fairly easy defense here - it's their box, they can put whatever they want on it. And she was making 7K a month, so it's not like she couldn't afford to buy a personal phone for off hours.

I think she still has a case, but it's certainly going to be a tougher slog than the summary suggests.

Sure, ROI could be a lot of things, but remember that ROI is measured by who gets the returns. The shareholders invested dollars, and they expect their return to be in dollars. Not a lot of investers put money in and are happy to "improve quality of life" (they can donate to charities and get tax deductions and free press).

So, let's back up the problem - you're at work, and your boss brings in a passel of new folks and tells you to train them. Why are you doing this? At the least, unless your job description is "Trainer", you should be chasing the boss for more pay. You may say "but they'll just tell me to shut up" or "they'll fire me". Guess what - they're already planning on firing you. The only leverage you have is your knowledge, so why are you giving it away?

My read was that he planned to sit on an iceberg while it melted (presumably to draw attention to global warming)? It's a stunt, but sometimes those are fun too.

Personally, I'd take one of those 10-man ones for houseboating. Just pop that sucker in the middle of the lake, and float around for a couple weeks...

Check the math again.

The $1.7 mil is how much the companies have invested in those jobs. The state has spent $53 million on this project.

So, New York is getting about 3 cents on the dollar in value here. (Or, to be more perverse, the companies that signed up are getting $31 back for every dollar they invested. Great value for the companies who got in on the deal, less so for the taxpayers.

The middle books grind down because Jordan kept wandering into side plots that would have been better served as standalone books (say, similar to how the Dragonlance books were handled). He knew where the finish line was, just wasn't in a hurry to get there.

Sanderson, on the other hand, was brought in to do the "last" book. (Yes, Jordan had claimed there was only *one* book left). It's pretty easy to see Sanderson picking out the leftover plots, punting them to the curb, and goosing the accelerator to get the plot train home ASAP. Which also made the books way better, since we finally get to the finale.

I think it could make a good mini-series, though - you can consolidate a bunch of points, ditch some of the sideplots that aren't necessary, and keep the plot train moving.

And I've always thought WoT would make a decent mini-series, since all that futz turns into action - it's far less annoying to watch those tics than to read it over and over.

My wife is the real WoT fan in the house, though - not sure if I should tell her this exists...

Not saying it was the wrong software (and the second laptop I tried worked fine out of the box).

My point was intended towards the tendency in the new distros (at least in my experience) to insulate the user from details, even when they're looking for them. For instance, the Network Manager (which cheerfully pre-install found both wired and wireless networks), after install refused to accept that a network card might exist, and didn't expose any method to see that a blacklist existed, much less change it. And installing packages wouldn't help because the package is already there - the install disabled it and didn't tell me.

My daughter is actually enjoying her new Linux box (now that it has a network and runs Minecraft) a great deal - my issue was that the installation has moved a bit too far from the old "OK, I hope the user knows what he's doing because the OS ain't gonna help" to the new "OK, I hope the OS knows what it's doing because we're not going to tell the user anything" model.

Was the current version of Ubuntu, an old Dell, and I booted using a USB key, network worked there, installed from that, no network.

Google seems to say it's a known issue of some sort. Didn't need to install anything, just edit some obscure file and type the usual arcane words into a terminal.

But the take-away is that requiring a network connection doesn't help if your system disables all the network connections. (And worse, the GUI was no help in correcting the problem.)

Not enough mod points in the world for this

Oliver on HBO has it made. Weekly vs. Daily means he has time to really dig into an issue. He can spend ten minutes ripping a particular topic to shreds and that doesn't mess with advertiser time. And having no sponsors or ads to deal with means that he can go for the jugular Each And Every Time.

Going back to CC would mean less time to prep, more oversight, and more restrictions. Unless that came with a *really* big briefcase of money (and really, are we counting on Comedy Central to outbid HBO?), Oliver ain't going nowhere.

Unless it does what it did to me last weekend, where the step in-between is: Linux blacklists *all* the network-drivers, so on reboot you have a machine that says you don't have a network card. Proceed to spend several hours walking between computers while figuring out that it was blacklisted, and how to fix the blacklist and manually reset the drivers.

I'm all for making things simpler, but I do miss the 90s-era installs where you were asked what components you wanted. (And I'm fine if there's a "shut-up and give me the usual" button - I just want the *ability* to pick and choose, y'know?)

My favorite "scale" was the Penny Arcade Report format, where the game was listed, the names of folks were across the top, and it was a straight "this guy liked it, this guy didn't, this guy hasn't played it yet".

What worked is that you could quickly get a sense of what sort of games each person liked, and that gave you a lot better information - you don't really care what *Everyone* thinks, just people who enjoy the same sorts of games you do.