1. A single, unified intranet with various services and uniform oversight.

2. A patchwork of outsourced-to-the-lowest-bidder Daily-WTF worthy enterprisy "commerical" websites for every separate service (HR, Payroll, Benefits, travel, documents, petty cash etc. etc.). Because that's my reality in the system. Uniform interface? Uniform security policy? Uniform uptime? Try three-times daily outage notices from one-system-or-other, weekly password resets (every one with different rules), piss-poor interface design, etc.

It's not about size-of-government or any other libertarian bullshit fantasy; even a government shrunk by 90% would still need these services. It's the constant drive to privatize these functions driven by the "ooh, the private market is magic and never does anything wrong" mantra that leads to this ugly, wasteful, and inefficient patchwork. Inefficient government? No, it's a government that only gets exactly what this idiot-driven free-market religion allows it to pay for.

No, maybe not fine.

Fine is: Government wants to produce a message. Government writes the message. Government puts production services out for bid, NBC is best by fair assessment (not just on price but possibly quality services). Video is made.

NOT fine is: Message is essentially a corporate message from NBC following NBC interests, so they give/donate/underbid their services in such a way that their corporate message is being sent and endorsed using the government as a mouthpiece.

Ones that float.

You can also donate them to individual classrooms, I know many teachers who happily accept books for their in-class reading without these sorts of hoops.

Or should the last one here just turn out the lights again?

Old mathematics joke: A famous mathematician was lecturing in class: "It is obvious that X..." He paused, stared at the board in silence for a minute, then walked out of the room without a word. The students looked at each other and shrugged. Twenty minutes later he walked back into the class: "It is now obvious that X..."

Moreover, the very act of scientific progress is questioning and experimenting with the assumptions in the spec.

Exactly. My father grew up in that neck of the woods. Basically, every male he knew wasted college/early 20s sitting in Cafes playing chess. It was his generation's WoW. He was a dammed good player, but one thing he told me, many times, was that he regretted the hours of his life wasted on chess. Of course, that was *after* he'd taught me the game...

You mean your first companion, if you're 13 and the companion is Leela.

True quote this year (at the supermarket):
"Are you open on Christmas Day?"
"Yeah, all the Jewish guys come in and make triple-time."

Actually, this is clearly for those who prefer the French Revolutionary Calendar. Happy Frimaire!!

Strange, my loved ones are my data. Who let them out of the experimental tank? Come back, my children!

Devil's advocate: those do in fact include copyright.