No matter how good your hiring practices are you will end up hiring some people that just don't work out. If you don't encourage them to look elsewhere, that bottom 10% will just grow (under performers tend to accumulate in safe organizations; while high performers are not afraid to move on to other organizations when it benefits them). Automotive productivity productive worker to unproductive one tends to be a 2:1 ratio. This balloons to 12:1 for programmers.... in some cases you can even get programmers that are net negative in productivity (they consume more resources than they put back - i.e. code constantly having to be re-written / debugged; corporate overhead). Not only does hanging onto these underperformers destroy team moral, but it puts all the productive team members at risk since business is a competitive environment.... eventually, your unproductive fat organization will fall to those that are leaner.

One of the better organizations I worked for if someone was significantly lower than the mean -- then they were "counceled out". There will always be some people that are not meant for the position they hold, and you have to move them out and make that position available to someone that can fit in. If you start holding onto everyone that is below average, your organization will sink and not excel. Any responsibility the organization has to it's employees is to keep it healthy and vibrant for the majority....

You can't clean up all that garbage without sifting through all the ice...... Thanks, I needed an excuse to continue helping melt the ice cap :p

The same standards should be applied to AT&T acquisition.... and they should be blocked since it would reduce competition in markets where AT&T already has a terrestrial cable monopoly/duopoly.

Well then it just has to spin off a copy of the AI onto a long running thread which just sleeps between the "1000's of years" equivalence of communicating with a human. If it is sound asleep time is not an issue :p

The simple solution is to have municipal public exchanges that all ISPs must connect to. Then all services that are made available locally have to connect up to that exchange. This same model was used in phone service to break up local and long distance services many decades ago. It is also a model that is used for exchanges all around the world for co-location and interconnection between networks. This allows for a more regulated local connection, while allowing anyone to off "add-on" services to those customers. I would be able to tell my local ISP -- route all my traffic through the exchange to another service provider which provides interconnections to the rest of the world. Local cable TV, or phone service could then be able to connect up to the exchange and offer service. It would allow for more competition in offering services. For business this is already done with carriers like Cogent, Level 3, etc.

It does sound as though the primary blame has to be put at the Oregon's officials since Oregon was the lead on the project. The lead is always 100% responsible for the project, after the project failed they are trying to say "ohh, not my fault"... If the project was off the rails early on, they should have seen it -- regardless of communications and adjusted (and if Oracle was not doing it's job - fired them). Obviously Oregon wants to have a scapegoat, but apparently forgot to pay them for that service.

That would be IE6 - and if they are still running that version they are not supported by Microsoft properly since even Microsoft moved on long ago. The most popular (surprised me, I just assumed IE was still due to bundling) browser now is Chrome. Most browsers including IE are closer together in their use of standards so they are becoming interchangeable.

Well maybe I read it in combination with experience with Windows 8 UI which is "one" now. The problem is that even when talking about one kernel, that is already a problem from a properly designed system point of view. The kernel is a collection of services, not all services are required for all platforms.

The links have long disappeared due to DCMA takedowns.....

finally a use for facebook "like"

One code base in a well designed componentized system is ideal, but the last time the windows code was leaked it was a disaster area....

I have a large monitor and I sit 2 arms lengths away, but Microsoft in their wisdom thinks that the interface for that should lean towards touch. If they treat the small phone screen the same as a large screen interface, and that everyone is going to use touch interface - then you're not creating a usable platform for any since you are constantly making compromises. You can use the same operating system core, the same API, and make things interoperate without having the same interface. If I wrote a desktop app to have the same interface as my phone app - either my desktop app is wasting a lot of real-estate and making inefficient use of resources - or I am making it very difficult on the phone user since he is constantly zooming in and out to fill in a bloody form...... the operating system interface is no different.

They have a long way to go, one user interface for all idioms is kinda stupid..... that is why they are getting all the bad press with Windows 8.

I find it funny that many "westerners" here say that they eat spicy chilies and that somehow equates into a spicy dish. I doubt people here just pull a 100,000 scoville chili and eat it directly, it is usually diluted in a dish and/or the spiciness cooked out. Indians I know will often tell me that they eat spicy foods, and have no problem with it. I once made a co-worker a papaya salad (Som Tam) with the average spiciness (small handful of thai chilies) thrown into the salad because he said that he ate spicy all the time and had no problems with any dish (this is a typical dish, typical spiciness in Thailand)...... he ate a little then went running to the kitchen to try and cool off his pallet.... The dish that I made for the co-worker would be spicy for me, but nicely so.... Spiciness is affected by what it is eaten with, the quantity, if it is cooked into a sauce, etc. Eat a raw thai chili by itself, and it will make me sweat.... eat it with a small piece of bbq sausage (isan sausage) and the spiciness is reduced considerably.