In 1941, the Red Army was generally badly led, primarily because of Stalin's purges. These left officers in command of formations they had little idea how to command (promotion was very rapid, if you escaped the purges), and too frightened to do anything the least bit suspicious or original. The top commanders were mostly politically reliable and militarily inept (Kirponos, in the south, being something of an exception). By the end of 1941, the Red Army had had a lot of deadwood shaken out. Officers were still in commands they didn't have the experience for, but they were capable of learning and not afraid to do what it took to win. However, the Germans had taken millions of prisoners by then, and due to incredibly brutal treatment very few of them survived to the end of the war.

The water problems come from the same source as the budgetary problems. Both farmers and city dwellers have been doing a good job reducing their water usage (by letting their lawns die or by using more efficient irrigation techniques). But every time there's a surplus of water, someone says, "Hey, let's use that water for my project over here!" That's poor management, though. You need to save up for the dry years.

That is beautiful. I haven't seen code like that for a long time.

Of course, if you look at the individual page of code for a while, you'll decipher it easily enough. Whether it's manageable or not depends on whether the overall structure is reasonable or not.

Give everyone in the office a vote every 30 minutes. The unused votes accumulate up to a months worth. The election determines if and how the temperature changes during that period. Add a time window during which there aren't normally workers in the office and set a baseline temp based on energy conservation, if there are any votes during that period the baseline is overruled and reverts to the last temp of "in office" hours for maybe 4 periods to be extended with any additional periods with votes.

The theromostat automatically drifts to the most stable temperature range everyone is good with and both accounts for empty offices and people working late. This minimizes people with big thermal swings causing big swings in office temp so there is no need for dummy thermostats.

That's why office thermostats are pretty much universally dummies. They don't actually change the temperature.

Hardly, unless you are wearing a suit or a sweater 68F is cold. That's a good temp to be able to snuggle with your partner under a comforter with nobody getting sweaty as long as you don't mind the freeze should anyone open the blanket layer.

The amount of money Google makes from this is almost negligible. Something north of 95% of Google's revenue comes from advertising so whatever they are charging to access Google Play it doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Microsoft on the other hand basically makes all their revenue from software sales so they pretty much have to charge something for it since they lack a supporting revenue stream. (unless you want to count desktop software sales but that would be kind of dumb of them)

Marketing isn't some magical pixie dust you can waive over a company to make people want their products. Marketing at its core is relationship development and that takes a lot of careful work and time. Microsoft has mostly done a terrible job developing relationships with customers. They've been the beneficiary of a monopoly so their survival never depended heavily on people having warm fuzzies when they think about Microsoft. Apple on the other hand has been arguably brilliant at it, almost from their beginning. Think about how many Apple stickers you've seen on the backs of cars. Probably quite a few - I see them regularly. People LOVE Apple even when they shouldn't. Apple has one of those brands like Harley-Davidson that people have almost a fetish for. Now how many Microsoft stickers have you seen? Probably none. By and large people don't love Microsoft or their products. Microsoft has the money to change this I suppose but it will take a lot of careful effort and time and frankly I doubt they have the corporate culture to pull it off.

It's a nice comfortable temperature for the house in summer. As for winter, wear a coat during the trips to and from the car and wear summer like clothes underneath. Drop the requirements for formal wear from the office dress code altogether. In most cases, drop the requirement to go to the office altogether.

"Those men can not remove clothes to become cooler without incurring the wrath of HR (quite rightly)."

They can't remove clothes but there is nothing right about dressing cooler being something that incurs the wrath of HR. We could as a society get rid of the suits and antiquated formal wear that men are expected to wear in the office. Seems preferable to contributing to global warming.

I keep getting her confused with Linda Lovelace...

Canadians: they only destroy things when they lose a hockey game!

The problem with relying on human nature of hundreds of humans in succession to send this experiment on it's way is obvious: it only takes one a-hole to break the chain. Didn't somebody try a similar experiment years ago, with a mobile robot that relied on passers-by to point it in the right direction? Again, relying on the kindness of strangers is only dependable in an environment with no griefers... kind of the same reason the internet sucks.

Note, the ATF (and I guess now ITAR) is who determines if what you are doing constitutes "for personal use" on a case-by-case basis.

Basically, you run in to the problem as a drug user who stocks up to minimize his risk. If you have too much they could decide it automatically proves your intention to distribute with no additional evidence.

"However, I have added scopes to a number of rifles that did not come with them. I wonder what the take is on add-on laser scopes? How about if you have rails and attach a scope? Is a pointing device a scope?"

You are probably fine. You can still "manufacture" by yourself for personal use. In practice this mostly impacts those with an FFL who do what was "gunsmithing" but is now called "gun manufacturing". Most FFL 01's are individuals without shops who just source from wholesalers and can legally receive transfers for people shopping online. Maybe you clean it up to get shavings out and check it over. Possibly do some minor trigger cleanup and that kind of thing. The FFL isn't what makes you subject to the requirement but it is what makes you easy to find.

At first people jumped to the FFL 07 which is double the cost but covers "manufacturing". Plus they could pick up a couple hundred bucks here and there drilling out an AR lower, stamping with a serial (logging of course) and building a custom rifle out of it for someone. Then ITAR starting cracking down on people with the 07 who weren't registered with them. As far as I know this is the only place it's been enforced so far.

It would legally kick in if you helped a buddy who was just getting in to shooting put on a quad rail, drill out an AR lower, or even install a scope.

No we are talking about the book value of the company and to some degree the intrinsic value. The secondary market value of the company is a separate concern.

Wrong. It decreases the assets of the company and increases expenses. It also affects the equity of the company because assets decreased and so equity must decrease also if you aren't adding liabilities. The write off also means that the expected future earnings from the asset are reduced which reduces the net present value of the enterprise. The notion that the only thing that is affected is the profits in that one financial period is demonstrably wrong and any accountant should be able to easily show you why.

If you have an impaired asset you record the difference as a loss but it is no different than any other investment gone south. Put in simple terms what you are suggesting is selling a $2 bill for $1 to try to intentionally realize a $0.15 tax savings. The company is worse off by $0.85 so worrying about the $0.15 in reduced tax is idiotic. Any reduced tax liability should be small consolation for shareholders in the face of a $7 billion writedown.