The 'view spec' thing is idiocy in its purest form.

It seems that way because you're using it wrong. (Like any powerful language it gives you enough rope to hang yourself if you tell it to do the wrong thing.)

-You create a branch and a view that shows files in the branch on top of the trunk.

And that was your error. You should only use "latest" for YOUR changes.

-You edit file A.
-Some other guy edits files A and B so that B won't work without the changes in A.
-Your branched version blocks the other guy's changes in A so you have broken source code until you merge.

Which is why you NEVER specify the bleeding edge of the trunk as the base of your view spec. You specify a release tag or trunk-(or-shared-branch)-as-of-date/time. Nothing in your view changes unless YOU change it.

When you've got your version working you merge in TWO steps:
  1) Merge the changes in the trunk (or whatever shared branch you're using) TO your branch. (Switch the trunk start time to the moment you start this step and merge the changes.) Build and run tests. (Repeat if this took long enough that the trunk thrashed.)
  2) Merge your changes TO the trunk and build-run again. (The build should be quick because, unless a LOT changed after you started your last iteration of 1) the objects should all-or-mostly be the ones you built in step 1).)

Even the build for the final merge test runs from a tagged or date/time version of the trunk. That way if somebody else checks in THEIR merge during your build you still get the version YOU merged. If your tests passed you can say "I left the trunk working as of (tag or date/time)". This becomes very important when the smoke tests take longer than the mean time between fix merges.

If you're going to switch to diverge/converge you have to switch all the way. Part of the POINT of diverge-converge is that you see NOBODY'S CHANGES BUT YOUR OWN until you have your part working and are ready to merge or you find you MUST incorporate somebody else's fix to get your stuff working.

Clearcase gives you the fine-grained control over what you "see" which makes this style a breeze.

whoa totally pooched that second sentence: It was published and he got some cash out of it...

Damn I need more coffee...

I worked with a guy at a particular defense contractor who, while on company time and on company assets, wrote a decent short story. I was published and her got some cash out of it. His bosses caught wind and trying to "claim" the work as the companies since it was on company time and conpany assets. Apparently (IANAL) though there is this thing called RELEVANCY that factors into this. Since his employers had nothing to do with literary endevors they didn't have a claim to the work, it was irrelivant to his job. For instance jotting down a new formula for a soda on a company provided post-it note while at work doesn't give your employer ownership of that unless they somehow deal in ... well... soda.

You are not a slave and your employer doesn't own you, nor do they own your imagination. As long as what you do personally doesn't involve your work there is a resonable barrier between the two. I haven't heard of someone coming up with a great recipe for BBQ while working at a Ford plant and having Ford try and claim ownership. I think the judge would throw them out on their ear.

However I fear that we might end up slaves all too quickly if we don't raise hell on issues like this. It's already getting so far that former employers can sue you if you go work for a competitor without a non-compete agreement.

Slavery comes in many forms besides whips and chains...

Spot on! That's *exactly* the point. In case you never tought about it, the essence of racism is assuming that a very large group of people that happen to share some phenotypic attributes are all equally bad.

Not to mention evidence. It's more difficult to conduct a reign of terror if you actually have to start proving things.

Take the money.
Buy a second laptop.

One for you, one for them, and if it all turns out well in the end, you get both (though they'll be old and shitty by then probably).

No, you have the Law of Gravitation, which states that two masses attract each other. There is a tremendous amount of data proving it over a long period of time with no unexplainable exceptions.

Thus, it is a Law. There are precious few Laws in Science.
The fact we don't understand the exact mechanism, quantum, space warping, or "It just sucks" does not matter. The effect is what matters.

Less provable ideas become Theories. They have good evidence that is not fully proven under a wide range of circumstances. There are competing ideas and they have some experimental backing as well. Theory of Relativity has this status because we have observed light bending and time dilation in controlled experiments.

Global Warming falls under a hypothesis, it has some data, not enough to qualify as a Theory.

It also has some disturbing issues with data, and people like Green Peace overstating the issue to emotionalize it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC7bE9jopXE

It also has a control, Mars, that shows polar melting and surface warming in the ABSENCE of human industrial activity.

So the change may very well be outside the biosphere, in a Sun cycle or other phenomenon we don't understand.

In other words, we might be able to prove global warning, but the exact mechanism is under depute.

So if we go mucking about by reducing human em missions we might have no effect.

Or we might get more desperate and try crude terraforming, (increase planetary albedo for example) only to discover the external effect swings BACK, plunging us into an ice age.

The whole Green movement is a strange form of Conservative thinking. You are trying to force stability onto a dynamic system... good luck with that.

uh and why do you say that? Where in the link you provide does it say that they aren't paid by oil companies (since we're being all scientific here)? Who are these MEMBERS? It could be two guys, it could be a hundred.

And you are claiming that the APS refutes anthropogenic climate change? Their statement, at the link you provided, actually reinforces their stand that CC IS caused by man made emissions. That these MEMBERS disagree with the APS's statement is of no consequence.

If I write a letter to the pope that says "We, the members of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, Hate God, so please change your policy toward God accordingly," that doesn't mean the Church or its members hates God.

But now everyone can wiretap Skype calls. Isn't it great?

...cleaning up the mess the previous two presidents left (yes, Clinton too). Either you're being disingenuous because it suits your partisan games, or you're just a fool.

Sorry for feeding the trolls.

I realized this a year into my first job when I realized my passion was for coding/FOSS and not supporting back end ERP applications.A lot of my friends did not/still do not realize this and instead run behind the latest cool tech on the market and opportunities for going on site.