I have the same slight sense of unease because they're a charity doing important work, but the people responsible (the individual[s] and their management) have to be taught a lesson they won't forget. Perhaps naming and shaming them is more appropriate.

My kids did Logo extramural classes at the local school, so they learned what a program is, how to express Boolean logic, and why programs sometimes fail. The eldest "got it" and is now a fully-qualified (although not practising) COBOL programmer (work for a *bank*? the ignominy :-) but still working in IT. The other two are in unrelated fields, but the legacy of having learned how to make a computer do something means they have no problems in understanding pretty much anything user-level IT can throw at them, and often a lot more.

If they fuck it up (and fuck the users over) like they did with the N800, N9, and Meego, then forgeddit.

Because they suffer from what my medical colleagues refer to as Glutaeo-Humeroid Distinction Disability (the medical term for not knowing your ass from your elbow). They had exactly what was needed three times (a pocket computer that was also a phone, or could at least run Skype) and threw it away three times. There is precisely zero evidence that they are even marginally competent nowadays to run a phone company,

On a visit to CERN many years ago I noticed all their keyboards, monitors, etc (stuff in plastic boxes, basically) was not engraved but branded with a heated device that melted their name deep into it. Virtually impossible to remove or obliterate.

Expensive stuff I label with "There is a reward for returning this device to XYZ Corp" followed by a contact number. The only time I lost such an item it was returned anonymously in the mail, so thank you to whoever that was.

Cheaper stuff just gets a label with my company name and contact number.

Right. Go read Charlie Stross's Accelerando

No, if we live in a created universe, then it's one in which evolution is the paradigm used for development once the universe was set going.

<-- It only takes one, and the rest will follow -->

You mean like this?

From what I see, engineers are not well paid; certainly not paid enough for what they do. The comparison with managers is specious: engineers should be paid more than managers, because the work they do is more valuable.

Dyson has seriously misunderstood the problem. There is no shortage of engineers. There is just a shortage of engineers willing to work for peanuts.

This is the USA. Corporate interests own the legislatures.

What do you expect? Who let this asshat in the door?

Good luck with getting that enabled in the USA. I can hear the screams of "Socialism" already.

Don't even get me started about trying to email a customer about their MSEXCHANGE domain...

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How do we persuade new users that spreading fonts across the page like peanut butter across hot toast is not necessarily the route to typographic excellence?

Nope. Sessile Grog.

Until someone cracks their way in. Then the falsity of this economic model is exposed.

This can be done over something other than the Internet, as several people have explained.