Don't show them all the bad offshore outsourcing news either...

As a professional developer with a little over a decade of commercial experience, I can assure you that the jobs where you have to write TPS reports, attend constant meetings, write reports about attending meetings, attend meetings about reports, and occasionally meetings about meetings or reports about reports are toxic worthless environments. About 5 years ago now this trendy thing called "Agile" happened to the software development world as a way to put a bullet in crap like this.

One of four things is going on with software companies now 1.) Agile is understood and people will find creative ways to fire anyone who want's to build a Dilbert empire 2.) Agile is being adopted and the toxic environments get transformed into livable ventures as Agile practices get successfully adopted and the toxic people are pushed out, 3.) Agile is subverted by PHBs and the toxic sources kill it's adoption while all the worthwhile people leave it to fester 4.) Agile is ignored/blocked - the environment is already dead AND toxic.

You can fight like hell to get into or stay in company #1, pitch in to help company #2, avoid or flee from company #3, and short sell the stock on company #4. Also, as a programmer, you should be writing code that either makes money or reduces costs in a niche or market that is growing. If the market isn't growing, move on to another domain. If there is no revenue associated with the lines of code you write, go where there is. As a buddy of mine says, "NEVER be part of the cost center - ALWAYS be in the profit center!".

At any rate, if you don't want to write code - no offense, but get the hell out of the way and make room for those of us who do.

There's still the "continuous improvement"
problem. Where schools with 98% testing and
content standards have no way to improve more and face funding cuts because they haven't shown year over year improvement. How the hell that bit of logic made it in the originally, I'll never understand..

My wife is a HS English teacher in Washington state. If Obama want to seriously help schools, priority 1 should be to put a bullet in Bush's collossal screw up that is "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). It's too flawed to "fix" other than flat out removal. Bush has been too stupid to admit it's a failure and correct it (just like everything else he's done), so this is the only option.

Next, in Washington state there's a bill called the Becca bill that requires the little monsters to be contained by the state in schools up until age 18 because some stupid brat ran away from school and got herself killed. Unfortunately, this also means that kids that would rather quit and go jockey a McRegister between times passing the bong are instead required to stay in school and suck up resources they don't care about. Get rid of this in Washington state (and similar laws in other states) and teachers can look the kids in the eye and tell them to leave and come back when (if) they care about learning something.
Then, get back to helping the kids that are going to do something with themselves.

Last but not least, get rid of the stupid state teaching certificates in all 50 flavors. There's a shockingly fantastic National Board Certification (federal gov't too... go figure!) program that uses a peer evaluation system to focus teachers on becoming good teachers IN PRACTICE in their own environment. My wife did this certification and is now contributing to the mentoring portion. Interestingly enough, teachers who can't "reach these keeds" don't cut it in these programs because it requires them to learn, grow, and be self-reflective about how they teach and continue to grow, unlike the the rubber stamp Master's degree (a.k.a "Masters in Ed.") programs that set teachers up for either a check-mark in the "has masters" box and unwarranted pay raise or a future as yet another worthless administrator (and a MUCH greater unwarranted pay raise).

Bottom line, schools need more funding to train and retain good teachers. "Education" has a latin root word "educare" meaning "to bring out". It's not about throwing stuff at kids and hoping it sticks. It's about bringing out the best. You've never needed broadband or computers to do that.

There's a series of natural parallels here. Capitalists accumulate; workers unionize; consumers boycott. Sometimes I wonder if management hostility toward unions is partly motivated by the fact that management was countered by their own method: the accumulation of social resources. It makes sense that it would work for consumers as well.

ah, why does no-one see the irony. if Douglas Adams was still alive, he'd find it deliciously funny that the universe couldn't quite manage to spell 1337 correctly...

Personally I hope they don't bother to put book 12 together, I stopped at 9.

There are thousands of people who have hung on for 17 years to reach the end of the tale, regardless of how much it had deteriorated in the later books. I have been unhappy with the most recent books myself, but I still wanted to find out what happens nonetheless. I probably speak for the majority of his readers in this. I'm saddened by his passing, and it would be even sadder if the story were never finished. It's almost certainly what he would have wanted.

I hope his notes at least reveal the outcome to whomever picks up the story. (Orson Scott Card, are you available?)