Why should he return? Let's even assume for the moment and for shits and giggles that the government would be honest for a change with its promises and even grant him full amnesty. Would you wanna come to a country where the media and even some of its officials spent the better part of the last decade telling every redneck that it would be a blessing for 'murrica if you were killed, preferably painfully? Where you can't even really rely on police and other legal forces to defend you if you were attacked by said rednecks?

That whole deal smells a bit like the GDR offering its fugitives to come back with no jail time waiting for them. A few were stupid enough to go. No, they were not jailed. But their life was made miserable as can be, from no job opportunities being offered to people not wanting to associate with them, fearing the same. And if you say that it cannot happen in the US, think McCarthy and his Commie list.

Or think of companies wanting government contracts, knowing that you're persona non grata.

All sort of true.

First, a bit of background on my context. I'm a software engineer for Google, and I work from home full-time. This is not a common situation in Google, which has an institutional belief in the value of co-located teams in open-plan offices as a way to facilitate communication. Google engineering methodologies are heavy on communication and light on process and documentation. They rely heavily on face to face communication, be it over cubicle walls, in hallways, at the cafes, etc.

On its face, this appears to just about the worst possible organization in which to work remotely. But I've been doing it for over a year now, and it's working just fine -- but only because my co-workers and I make it work. It's challenging, but it absolutely can be done.

Regarding your points:

1) Productivity at home. This depends heavily on the individual. I'm motivated and I like what I do, so even with the distractions at home I'm highly productive. If anything, my challenge is to avoid working too much. That's not the same for everyone, so YMMV.

2) Commuting. Commuting sucks. Even if it's a short commute. Some people do seem to like it, though, as a way of separating home and work life. My home and work lives blend, with more of a dynamic balance between them rather than sharp separation. Personally, I prefer that, but I know not everyone does.

3) Video conferencing is not a panacea, but it can really help. I have a Chromebox on my home office desk and another in my team's "bullpen" area, which are both set to an always-on video conference, so I have a virtual presence in the team area. It's not quite the same as being there, but I can hear and participate in random conversations that happen amongst the rest of my team, at least when they're at their desks. And of course, I attend all of my meetings the same way. It's kind of funny for my co-workers who see my face on the VC unit in the bullpen as they get up to walk to the meeting room, then see me "already arrived" when they get there. Because of course for me "traveling" from the bullpen to the meeting room is instantaneous.

4) Communication is challenging. In my case it helps that Google runs on e-mail, and much communication happens that way. I do find myself out of the loop occasionally, but my colleagues are generally pretty good about letting me know stuff, and sometimes even deliberately deciding to move a conversation to e-mail in order to make sure I'm involved. The inclusive culture is a big help, even at the same time as the co-located culture creates challenges.

The bottom line, to me, is that there are pros and cons, and those pros and cons are different for different employees and different companies. In my personal case, I think I'm probably 95% as effective working from home as I would be in the office, and that only by putting in a little extra time. For me, that's great, though. I'm perfectly happy to spend the time I would have wasted on commuting on work, and I love the flexibility that it gives me to balance my home and work lives.

What do I do with that flexibility? Well, I have no problem dropping what I'm doing (assuming I don't have any meetings scheduled) to go to my kids' school events or other activities. When I worked in the office I did the same, but there was a higher barrier, because I had to add an hour of extra commuting time (30 mins each way) to home and back. I also use the flexibility for recreation and exercise. My home is 12 miles from a ski resort, so I buy a season pass and during the winter I ski 4-5 days per week; most every weekday I start work early (6 AM), work until just before the lift opens then cruise up and ski for an hour or two, then head back to work. During the summer I've been taking my boat to the lake a couple of mornings per week to water ski with my kids (my house is 18 miles from one reservoir and 24 miles from another). I often go for a bike ride or a hike during lunch -- though I actually also did that when I worked in the office.

So I think it's great for me, and the company seems happy with my work. Win/win, even if I work a little more and produce a little less.

My point was that a very small shell script can detect memory conditions on most Unix systems through typical file access mechanisms. Apple will doubtless have overcomplicated this. I wonder if they have also created dependencies on that daemon. Does it do anything else?

The problem with that idea is that these wars are engineered so that certain people can profit, so that's really not what they made a sacrifice for, is it? They were sacrificed on the altar of profit.

Well, no, no I am not. Here we go:

"In the late 1930s and early 1940s Sir Albert Howard and his wife Gabrielle Howard, both accomplished botanists, developed organic agriculture. [...] In the United States another founder of organic agriculture was J.I. Rodale." OK, so now we have decided who might get to define terms, yes? Let us continue. "Howard observed and came to support traditional Indian farming practices over conventional agricultural science. Though he journeyed to India to teach Western agricultural techniques he found that the Indians could in fact teach him more. One important aspect he took notice of was the connection between healthy soil and the villages' healthy populations, livestock and crop. Patrick Holden, Director of the UK Soil Association quoted Howard as saying "the health of soil, plant, animal and man is one and indivisible." The maintenance of the soil is critical. Guess what they do with poop in India? Anyway, moving on. "To Rodale, agriculture and health were inseparable. Healthy soil required compost and eschewing poisonous pesticides and artificial fertilizers. Eating plants grown in such soil would then help humans stay healthier, he expounded." Now, where you do you think compost comes from?

Anyway, as usual, even a quick scan of Wikipedia would have proved my point. And in fact, that's what I did. But this idea was based on a conversation I had with my lady some years ago. She doesn't remember it at all, and I don't remember it very well, so I don't remember precisely what she stated at the time, so I had to go to WP. I didn't even use google. Why not quickly glance at the readily available materials which cost you nothing, before claiming that someone is wrong? While you're reading WP, you could also look up Biodynamic Agriculture, a sort of spiritually-guided precursor to organic gardening which is gaining traction today. I think some of their rituals are a bit hilarious, but the basic fundamental principles basically cover all the original founding principles of "organic" gardening. Agriculture is a cyclical system.

My understanding is that these days many if not most sewage plants are actually cooking their wastes for maximum methane production, capturing it and selling it or burning it on site for power production, where they used to try to minimize it and then flare off the unwanted product. The sludge is sold on for agricultural use. There's an "organic" version of this process known as Advanced Integrated Wastewater Pond Systems (AIWPS) which also produces algae, which can be used as a fuel feedstock... and clean water, even separating out heavy metals. And all it takes to make it is some piping. If you want to also capture the methane, then you also need some other goodies including a sheet of plastic, and you'll probably want a liner for catching the heavy precipitates, but there's not a whole lot to it. And of course, we could be making a whole lot more use of composting toilets, for example the Bason (sorry for PDF, but it's really the best link I know so far. Someday I will build one, and then I will make a nice page on it... even if it is full of shit)

And no matter which one you take, you wake up drugged and sore.

No. That's a false assumption. Sometimes there's nothing you can do to preserve market share. You know what they could have done that would have resulted in market share rising again after it dipped? Nothing. That's right, they should have done nothing. I mean, sure, bug fix, keep up with standards, help drive the standards even. But you don't change things that people like in order to make yourself more popular. That's goddamned idiotic at best.

If Firefox had changed nothing, then when Chrome actually got all the same functionality as Firefox used to have and became bloated and slow and memory-hungry just like Firefox then many users would have come back to Firefox naturally. Instead, they added bloat and crap to the point where it became slower than even the new improved Chrome, and users didn't come back.

They should have done nothing.

Political skullduggery led to WWI led to WWII. So no, without people willing to fight wars and undertake spying there would never have been a WWI, let alone a WWII.

No, because it's not even a valid argument.

Not useful information. Some people are better-spoken at 15 than are others at 51.

Some people never learn this. You tell them how much change they're going to give you and they say "You've got math in your head". Not making this up, even a little bit.

What does that have to do with anything?

Can't ask that in a job interview :p

I know this wasn't all about job interviews, but since most of your questions smelled like interview questions...

Pheromones? If the women around him have had their imperative met? As plausible as any other made-up bullshit, probably moreso

I haven't known too many farmers, but none of them have been 'perfectly healthy'. They've all got aches and pains.

To me the ideal is to be active, but also to have time to rest when you're hurt. That's not the life of a farmer.

Accounts are free, and you think I'm the idiot?

The reality is that Firefox shouldn't be trying to go anywhere. It's a fucking web browser. If I want more bullshit in my browser, I'll open another site. If I want to integrate that site into my browser, I'll go looking for a browser extension. I don't want it done for me. If I did, I'd have opened some site-specific app. I just want the goddamn browser.

Also, the other reality is that Firefox is supposed to be a platform which is highly themeable, so actually changing the GUI shouldn't even be necessary. If it was necessary, then Firefox is nothing it was supposed to be. If it wasn't necessary, then they are big fuckups for forcing the change instead of just making a different theme available to users who wanted to try it. So is Firefox a big piece of shit, or are the devs big fucking idiots? There's no third way.

Uh, no. You get this wrong above in your comment, too. If Google goes off the rails, then there will be a fork of Chromium.

So does Google, with Chrome -> Chromium.

The problem with Firefox ain't the licensing, it's that they're trying to cram five pounds of shit into a five pound sack which already contains a web browser. That only leaves room for shit, and best case your browser will end up shitty.