To translate to the "agile" buzwords of the day, they use a 2 week sprint cycle, and at the end of each sprint, the features for that sprint are complete and working, and the product is stable. They ensure this by doing daily builds and testing on those builds. Everyone runs the current build (he implies they run the daily build, but I expect that is too much hassle to upgrade every day, so in fact everyone runs the last sprint build (which is less than 2 weeks old, and has had a brief stabalizaiton period).

It's not rocket science, the notion of small "sprints" and a releasable product ready at the end of each sprint is fairly well known. All it requires is more discipline than 99% of development teams have. :-) Kudos to them for having the discipline to make it work.

If you're going to be discussing "legal rights", you may want to mention the country and state where these "rights" are supposed to exist. Otherwise it's hard to prove yourself right (and the other poster wrong).

Your father (and you, probably) do know more than the average member of the public. Your father understands the statistics behind the studies. He understands that "happens 95% of the time" does not mean "unpredictable". He understands the process of conjecture -> experiment -> evidence -> theory -> new conjecture to refine theory -> new experiments -> etc. He understands that "scientific fact" can and will change once new evidence is available, but as long as there is a very large body of evidence for the current theory, it should be accepted.

He even understands the difference between "fact", "theory" and "conjecture" which so confuses the general public.

But this "for $1 you can get..." has nothing to do with network security, that is all about user stupidity. If I put up my "wireless internet" sign up in one of those disused airline rewards plan program booths that litter most of the airports I go through, and ask for people's credit cards, I'm also going to get money. Heck, I could probably find an unused visa application booth, and stand next to it with my customized application form and get all sorts of personal banking information from idiots. If you're dumb enough to type in a credit card number on a web site you haven't confirmed, then you're an idiot. And the only network security process that will help you is for someone to take your computer away from you.

Always assume public networks (wifi or cheap motel wired) are being recorded by someone who wants to steal your money. Always use SSL enabled sites, and always verify the contents of the certificate. Make sure your webmail is on an SSL enabled site, and if you are using other apps that use the network (thick-client mail), ensure it is configured to use SSL.

I know it's bad form to reply to your own posting, but my pilot wife points out that mechanics are usually eager to fly in the plane that they just fixed. After all, she's got to get home somehow, and faced with flying in the plane that she *knows* is fixed correctly because she just worked on it, or another plane that she has no idea who has been working on, the typical mechanic would put more trust in the plane she just fixed.

She's also told me an amusing story about a flight attendant who is also an AME (aircraft mechanic). Alas, that story didn't end so well, because although she was a licensed AME, she didn't have the bit of paper that allowed her to legally work on that particular type of plane, and even though the problem was trivial to fix, she had to sit there and glare at it for several hours until the proper mechanic arrived. It's kind of like not being allowed to change the oil in a Chevy Sprint because you are only licensed to work on the Suzuki Swift (and yes, they are identical cars).

It is quite a coincidence that a qualified mechanic from a company with a co-maint agreement happens to be on the flight, I agree.

The article doesn't say anything about him fixing it for free. He probably filled out a time-card for overtime as soon as he got to work the next day.

When an engineer is flown into a remote airport to fix something, she's got to get home somehow. I bet she takes a ride on whichever airplane is going in the direction she needs to go, regardless of whether it is the one she just fixed or not. These people are professionals, if they didn't think it was safe to fly in, they would not have signed off on the work. Forcing the mechanic to fly in the aircraft that was just fixed isn't going to make it any safer, it will just lead to more mechanics getting paid to sit in airplanes rather than fixing them.

First of all, many small airlines are not unionized. And even if they are, emergency maintenance is unscheduled by definition, so any union agreement would allow the company to send in the first qualified mechanic they could find. Secondly, what makes you assume the work was unpaid? I think it is reasonable to assume his company, Thompsonfly, approved the work under the existing cross-maintenance agreement, and that the AME was paid for the work just as if he was the on-call mechanic and got the phone call from his company dispatcher. He was probably paid the standard "callout" rate for his 1/2 hour work. They had to verify his identity and his credentials, which means that Thomas Cook Airlines needed to phone Thompsonfly for that information. Since they had them on the phone anyway, it's reasonable to assume they also got his company to authorize the work and assign him to the job.

In a remedial summer school class? He should be teaching the class. The GP is posted by the principal, right?

There's lots more the newspaper could have done (and, for all I know, they may have done some of this as well):

• a front-page "we screwed up" headline and an article explaining exactly what they did, and why it was immoral and unethical.
• a human-interest story about how this mob mentality destroyed this business.
• a clear criticism of how the towns people behaved.
• financial assistance for the family.

Just quietly firing the person who causes embarrassment for the company is frequently all a company will do, but it's never all the company can do.

The problem isn't the use of password asterisks, but the use of passwords in the first place. Good password usage requires a password to be 8 or 14 characters long, contain lower case, UPPER CASE, &ymbols, numb3rs, etc., and be unique: never repeat a password on multiple systems.

This is a lot of work, and these rules are being applied in cases where they are completely unnecessary.

In the real world, we understand that some situations require a solid steel door with a $300 deadbolt, and other situations only require a plywood door with a $1.99 padlock. And some don't require a lock at all, a simple "keep out" sign is enough.

We need to have better conventions to deal with trivial sites like Slashdot and Facebook, where it really is not at all serious if someone hacks my account, and important sites like my credit card company or Paypall, where a hacker can cause significant financial damage.

I'd love it if every site that required a login would offer 3 levels of security:
a) No security: anyone who types in my username can pretend to be me. This site is not allowed to store any financial details about me, and everyone knows that it is trivial to impersonate someone.
b) Minimal security: A simple password or browser cookie is enough. Someone hacking my account might embarrass me, but it's no great damage. This site is not allowed to store any financial details about me.
c) Significant security: SSL and a good password, or client certificate based security. Anyone hacking this site can get access to my bank account or credit cards.

The "cannot be stopped" part of the summary is complete nonsense. All you need to do to stop the internet is show it something shiny. Public opinion and passion is notoriously fickle.

If there are a thousand crimes committed, the police will make a real effort to investigate all of them, allocating their resources reasonably according to the severity of the crime and the likelyhood of a successful investigation. They will work on an investigation for days, weeks, months or years as required.

The internet "angry mob", on the other hand, will only investigate the single most exciting, dramatic, attention-getting crime. They will devote 100% of their effort to finding a scapegoat for that crime, until they get bored or something more exciting comes along.

A smart police force can and will use the power of the masses (think "Amber alert"), but it is still in control of the investigation.

My wife and I were discussing these kinds of childhood adventures. She once missed a stop on her bus, and didn't get to school. The bus happened to drive past her daddy's office building, and she recognized it (from car trips where it was pointed out "that's where daddy works!". She got off the bus, and went to the building's courtyard. She played by herself all morning. At lunchtime, lots of people came out to eat their lunch. One person talked to her, and asked who she was and why she was there. She (happy to talk to a complete stranger) gave her name and said her daddy works here. The person got the daddy's name, daddy was notified, and she was quickly taken to school.

Likewise, I had lots of adventures when I was 4 or 5, taking my bicycle and dog and wandering far from home until I was hopelessly lost, hours later. But I always found my way home, or found someone whom I could trust to help me, and it all worked out in the end.

This generation of children will never experience these adventures, since parents are able to keep 24x7 connection to their children.

If you don't get lost in your neighborhood at age 4, how are you going to handle backpacking in Thailand when you're 21?
If you never have to look at strange adults and judge which one is the safest to talk to when you have a problem, how are you going to be able to approach a member of the opposite sex at a high-school dance?
If you never practice getting out of a bad situation when you're 5, how are you going to deal with pressure from your boyfriend when you're 16?
If you are afraid to march into unknown territory when you are 6, how will you create a new product and a new market when you're CEO at age 46?

Life is all about getting hurt, healing, and becoming stronger as a result. Kids need to live.

I don't actually blame the parents, I blame the technology. Parenthood does strange things to a person's brain, and it is impossible for a healthy parent to want a child to suffer, even if it is good for the child. I'm sure that if our parents could have shacked us with love the way current parents can, they would have. And I'm sure we both would have been worse for the experience.

Why not do both? Protocol is: get fingerprint. If you cannot get a fingerprint, then you should use your discretion and initiative, e.g.:
- carefully and thoroughly interview the visitor.
- understand and verify the person's reason for not having a fingerprint.
- understand why the person is visiting the country.
- determine whether this person is likely to be a risk or not.
- decide if the person should be allowed into the country despite the lack of fingerprints.

If the border guards didn't want to think, they would have just deported him right away. They were willing to think. They did think. They interviewed him, thought about what he said,possibly spent some time verifying what he said, maybe consulted other people, and in the end they decided he was an acceptable risk. The process took 4 hours. It seems reasonable to me.

I think this shows a system working perfectly. The normal case (over 99% of the time, I would guess) is a few seconds for a fingerprint. The exceptions are dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with a thorough interview and careful consideration (not a stupid snap judgment).

Actually, the problem is that ordinary people don't realize that chaotic systems ARE predictable. You cannot predict precise specific events, but you can predict broad trends with very good accuracy.

However, ordinary people simply don't think in terms of broad trends, they only think in terms of specifics. Because "the scientists" are unable to accurately predict the exact temperature in their home town on the Sunday of the big football game, they feel climate science is worthless. And what the climate scientists can predict (things like the average temperature going up 0.5 degree year-by-year) is too small and distributed for an average person to even notice, yet it has huge effects on the world.

The problem is that people are allowed to graduate high school without a basic understanding of statistics and probability, so instead they rely on personal experience and anecdote. They think "I didn't see it happen, so it won't happen." or "I saw it happen, so it is likely to happen."

A couple of examples that I like to use to give probability-impaired something to ponder:
* Almost every week, someone wins the lottery. But lottery tickets are still a very bad investment.
* 5 out of 6 times you play "Russian Roulette", nothing bad happens. But it is still a very bad idea to play.

My first thought was "Well, duh! Of course it's going to hurt if you stop taking a stimulant your body is accustomed to." What kind of idiots don't know caffeine is an addictive drug?

Then I realized most don't know it, and I blame the War On Drugs. It has led to oversimplified thoughts like "Cocaine, heroin, cannabis are drugs, and drugs are evil. Alcohol, caffeine and nicotine are not evil, so they must not be drugs."

In fact, all drugs have some effects on mind and body. Depending on the quantity of the drug, the individual taking the drug, and the context of the usage, some of those effects are good, some are bad. Some drugs are illegal, because their bad effects generally outweigh the good, and some are legal because society has decided that the bad effects are generally not too bad. Some are restricted because they have good effects in only very specific contexts, and the potential for very bad effects in most other contexts.

When can we get past the "all evil" propaganda and get to a more nuanced "be aware of the effect it will have, take appropriate precautions." mindset?