If the company you worked for was a US company, it sounds like they were in clear violation of the FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act). US companies are barred from bribing foreign officials. I'm surprised to hear that such illegal acts would be included in the budget. Or perhaps were you working for a non-US firm in a country that does not have a similar law?

Damn, where are my mod points today?
SIGSEGV
Forklift is NULL

I love it! My new k5fs format is the superior elastic web-scale storage solution premier!

http://www.amazon.com/Cloverdale-Fresh-Whole-Rabbit/dp/B00012182G/ref=pd_sbs_indust_3

I guess that's better than rotten half rabbit.

Sounds questionable to me. Going by the definition on wikipedia:

"A deflationary spiral is a situation where decreases in price lead to lower production, which in turn leads to lower wages and demand, which leads to further decreases in price.

If nobody is really pricing goods in bitcoins and nobody is getting paid in bitcoins, how could the feedback cycle that would normally cause a deflationary spiral exist? Even if bitcoins deflate massively, I don't think that necessarily proves the Keyensians right.

It was Keynes, and he indeed predict that by now, we'd all be working a lot less and have a lot more leisure time. Turns out he was wrong.

Exactly. In the real world, dev monkey doesn't get to make the decisions. If dev monkey doesn't code around the problem, PHB finds a different code monkey to make the change. Not everyone gets to work for themselves or for a small startup where they can make their own decisions.

While that might sound true, I think the problem is deeper than that. The issue in a lot of cases is developers having to deal with non-ideal SSL/TLS setups that they have no control over.

It usually goes like this:

Dev monkey gets told by PHB, we need to make our communications secure, so implement SSL. Dev monkey adds SSL support to the app. Code seems to work. Testing (or even worse, someone in Production) comes back and says: dev monkey's SSL code doesn't work with our Customer XYZ's server. Dev monkey tests things himself and finds that Customer XYZ is using a self signed cert or an expired cert. Dev monkey tells PHB that Customer XYZ needs to fix their setup. PHB tells dev monkey that the setup cannot be changed because of ABC and that dev monkey needs to "code around the issue". Dev monkey updates app to not choke on bad certs. Code gets released, and Customer XYZ's remote worker gets p0wned by a man in the middle attack. Customer XYZ blames PHB, PHB blames dev monkey. Dev monkey sighs and gets another mountain dew.

Yep. And from there on it will all be down-hill for ARM server growth. I already miss the glory-days of ARM server and we've barely even started.

I see you are new here. Let me help you: subtracting 1 has been considered higher math since this place was called Chips & Dips.

Thank you for pointing that out. Everyone should know that the PAN is indeed stored in plain text on the magstripe. If the hardware was compromised, there's almost no way to stop someone from getting it.

Yeah, and how the hell does the moon work, anyway? Where did it come from? NOBODY KNOWS! NOBODY KNOWS! We'll never know!

My "Next Big Thing" is the best. (Always wish for more wishes!)

The issue isn't that we need one specific "Next Big Thing"; our future requires that we maintain a steady stream of "Next Big Things". So...

If we only had a way we could harness the power of the "crowd" and come up with a method of mining ideas for the "Next Big Thing"... Perhaps a forum for professionals, engineers, and suits where they can post and discuss a stream of ideas about the "Next Big Things". If only such a thing existed...

And don't even think about trying to use this idea. The patent is already applied for and I'll sue you into the ground.

One word:

MEEP

I believe the correct buzzword is Creative Destruction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction