Don't forget to tell all of our food crops that they are adaptable and that it's only a few degrees. Last time I checked, humans don't do well without food. I think another way to look at it is that it's stupid to support a policy that forces us to pay for the mess that is created by big business. If you think it costs a lot to enforce pollution regulations, wait until you get the bill that is going to be caused by massive drought.

I worked at a place like that and they went down in flames. At my current job our total code base is only about 1 million lines of code that runs on OSX, linux, and windows. The difference is we do it with three people, and we also serve as IT for the lab. In and of itself that's not a big deal as the amount of code per developer is similar to your organization. The major difference is that we get it done in 8-10 hours a day Monday through Friday, with weekends off, and 6 weeks totals of paid vacation/holidays. Have fun trashing your body....

I've found agile methodology is a great way to spot people that won't be writing software in 5 years. The more people spend their time trying to solve "meta" problems like what is wrong with the software development process, the more likely it is to be a reflection on their own issues with productively writing software. You can take a talented programmer, put them in a room alone, and get good work. You can also take a bunch of "agile" guys, put them in a room, and get nothing but BS about improving culture. Sorry, but programming is only very slightly about culture or methodology, and good coders get stuff done regardless of what is going on around them. If they can't get it done at work, they take it home with them. If their primary job isn't satisfying, then they work on side projects. I've never seen anything get in the way of talented developers. On the other hand, I have seen a lot of excuses from people that don't belong in the field.

First, as a good developer, you need to check your assumption that this problem is a good target for optimization. You need to assess, as best you possibly can, if what you are accomplishing meets an educated best guess as to what your output would be in an ideal sense. That's how you optimize systems. You don't waste a bunch of time optimizing things that are functioning at full capacity. As far as why people come up with new methods, there is a lot of money in it, and there is constant pressure to find ways to increase productivity from developers. However, just because the pressure exists doesn't mean that it's a good idea to spend a lot of time optimizing a system that quite possibly is already at it's limits.

The next thing you need to remember is that statistically, the chance that you will be writing software at age 40 is slim. Choose how you spend your time wisely. I can't tell you how many younger developers, many of whom won't even be in the field five years from now, spend a significant chunk of their careers on problems that are unsolvable (like making a significant improvement in software methodology), rather than making a significant contribution as a programmer. My advice, spend your time on solving problems that are feasible, instead of chasing pie in the sky dreams of solving a problem that we can hardly even describe, much less solve.

The problem is that the incomes of the majority are dwindling away, and pop music tends to be marketed squarely at average joes, the first people hit in a recession. So, if you are an artist and want to get paid, then you need be progressive, get involved in your community, and take steps to ensure that wages start rising again. Once that happens, I think this problem will sort itself out.

Of course in our free market economy, which is crass to the core, there are no guarantees that labels are even interested in the type of dedicated professional that you present yourself as. Labels are just as happy taking someone with no talent, targeting them at demographic niche, and making tons of money that way. They do it in sports too, if you listen to announcers talk, you would think miracles are being done every 30 seconds. In music, they market musicians as being uber-musicians, at the top of their field. This tactic, of taking otherwise ordinary people, and promoting them to a status slightly below that of your favorite deity, is a transparent attempt to explain why so many millions need to be exchanging hands in order for the concert, show, or game to happen. This severely disincentives the creation of good music, since one can be good but no match for the cynical marketing teams that are owned by the labels. Being good doesn't mean you'll make it.

The industry seeks to constrain choice for artists and consumers, acting as a barrier to music, artist, and fans, while at the same time, keeping them as exploitable as possible. The focus is less on the value of the work, and more about whether or not it will sell (and as a result, be maximally exploitable)., As a result, even talented artists tend to add in a bit of "flair", everything from non-stop vibrato of 80's metal guitar, to walking baselines, to changing accents. While charming at first, it has the (desired, at least for music industry) effect of giving music a short shelf life, which is another goal of music industry. Short shelf-life further constrains our choices by rendering large parts of popular music unlistenable after a decade or two.. Maybe that first year they sounded great, but now you can't get over their annoying accent, or that little signature riff that they use, or their marketing stunts, etc. This shortened shelf-life effectively destroys popular culture. It turns the art of music into something closer to the fashion industry. It also creates many market segments/genres, lowering the bar for talent in many segments.

My two step solution:
1. Make sure your fans are getting paid a fair wage and that they actually have money to spend. If their boss made an extra $50K from their labor while at the same time cutting their employee's pay, then this type of issues should be fixed. You won't have many customers if they are all broke, and I think this issue is causing problems across the board.

If this seems like an impossible task, there is an alternative. You could always turn the idea on it's head and simply acommodate your art to the needs of those that have a lot of money. Corporations love jingle writers, so you could make money that way. You could move your target demographic to one that is more upscale. One upscale market is christian rock. You could talk about how much it means to you. It would basically take selling out to the next level, but would probably work. You may think I'm joking, but much like workers in other parts of the economy, artists are being forced to compromise their values and beliefs.

2. Once you finish with that, then getting an indie label off the ground should be much easier. Either way, you'll win, but our current economic downturn is slowing down the inevitable, which is that eventually artists will produce and distribute their own music, and outsource any PR work to separate agencies, as needed. That's where I see it going.

You must live on a planet where federal funding for scientific research hasn't seen severe budget cuts.

That's an interesting observation. However, I wish that there existed in the sea of posts by population alarmists more people who could see clearly, as I do. Think about it like this. Who uses 23% of the world's oil? The U.S. does (I'm an American so I'm allowed to bash). That's 300 million people using about 25% of the oil, leaving the other 6.5 billion to squable over the other 75%. Are the gears turning yet?

So, rather than worrying about "over-population", and viewing with admiration that the wealthy can manage to have 1.6 kids, you should see things as they are. That is, you should see that it's not "over-population" that's the problem, it's over-consumption. It's over-population of a certain kind of person, one with a voracious appetite who consumes orders of magnitude more than others who he shares the planet with. I could write "a modest proposal" about this, where I could imagine how much further the resources would go if we just eliminated the top 10%, but that's never what anyone means when they talk about over-population. Instead, those who worry about over-population harbor a special kind of elitism where they perform a bunch of hang-wringing over the crumbs consumed by the bottom half of the world's population while simultaneously (and quite amazingly) overlooking the massive over-consumption and waste on the part of the "haves".

One more thing to note. At the root of our over-consumption is capitalism. Our economy drives our appetites, rather than reflecting them. We won't be able to live sustainably in a capitalist economy. It has a never ending need for expansion that will ultimately be our demise if we don't abandon it.

What makes you think they aren't symptoms of the same problem? The problem is a combination of impossible standards on one side and a food industry that is pervasive with 24/7 adverstising that turns food into a drug of choice. Is it any wonder that women are treating food like a drug, with some binging into an early grave, and others completely avoiding it all together to meet impossible physical standards. We're seeing a polarizing effect and I think it largely has to do with food advertising, engineering of foods to make them as addictive as possible, and impossible standards of beauty (causing people to constantly get on and off the wagon in pursuit of better looks when they are on, and when they go off the wagon they go in the opposite direction). A great example of this is the biggest loser. People go from massive overconsumption to extremely over-the-top physical regimens, and many go right back to overconsumption, in a vicious cycle their entire lives. But, you know, over-consumption of food combined with sales of weight loss gimmicks is much more profitable than a sane food industry, so I guess it's ok. We apparently have no problems with being swamped in a mountain of advertising and manipulative messages, but get freaked out by the slightest regulation of it, go figure...

What they should say is that there aren't enough people willing to work very hard for a an ever shrinking piece of the pie. What do they expect researchers to do when they keep cutting basic science funding? The numbers are terrible right now. Something like 10% of those with new Phd's that apply for a grant actually get it. Who in their right mind would get a Phd for a 10% chance of getting funding? They apparently expect Phd's to be happy to work indefinitely as a post-doc for 30K a year. This trend is very similar for recent engineering graduates.

Own your failure, capitalist. If a system turns to shit, the results are still due to capitalism. Communists don't get to blame the USSR on incorrect implementation, nor do we get to blame the current state of the U.S. on fascism. It's capitalism, and repeating the experiment will produce the same results.

What other crime would give them an excuse to invade people's privacy to the extent the CP has? Terrorism or drugs may come close, but nothing allows them to shit on the constitution as much as CP does. I think it's a bit disingenuous for the group that is benefiting the most from the existence of CP to accuse others of being "for" it.

How is this different than the millions of consumers that mercilessly browse a website only to buy the item in store because it's in town. I do that all the time when I want an item right away. As long as the brick and mortar is within 10%, then it's a wash due to shipping costs and waiting for delivery. Sorry, but costs money to run a business and people don't have to buy at your store. If they don't like it then I suppose they could just turn their stores into warehouses, forget the displays, and put up a web presence so that people can view items.

Of course they get some of it. Think about it, why does a gamer sell their games? To get MORE games. The used market drives the new market further, and vice versa. It's a very stupid idea to get rid of market segmentation, since not everyone is willing to pay the same price. That's why CPU manufacturers will sometimes clock chips down and sell them at a lower price (even if they are capable of running faster). It's so they will be able to take advantage of the lower-end market. Game companies have done this through the used market by proxy, and maybe they don't realize but it's a profit source for them.

...it become ATT's "God-given" right to lay their wires on my property, buy some equipment, and then charge usurious rates for me to use that connection. Yes, they need money for maintenance fees, but they don't need, nor is it their "right", to charge as much as they do, not unless I'm allowed to turn around and start charging them sky high "rent" for running their lines through my yard.