I was involved with H-P in various capacities from 1994 through 1998, pre-Carly, and the high zoot engineers for whom the company was famous were nowhere in evidence. Absolutely nowhere. The company mission statement already said that H-P was a "shareholder driven" company, and the old-timers all lamented that The HP Way was long dead.

I'm not defending Fiorina, as she was in well over her head and everyone except the BOD knew it right from the start, I'm just saying that the company was broken before she got there.

I don't comment much. I figure that if you understand the problem domain, my grammar will suffice... and if you do not understand the problem domain you have no business futzing around with my code in the first place.

I will curse and mock your name after you've left a position because you've context switched ten times to do work that should have been done in one well designed method, and now I've got a server that is puking because you don't know programming nearly as well as you know how to acquire whore points on slashdot.

As my grandfather, a noble and stoic man of few words would say, shut the fuck up.

Spray and pray in the direction from which an invisible enemy might approach. Where there's a blood spray, shoot some more.

Invisible this, bitch!

In my experience, precisely three-quarters of all of my wives have fit your assertion, as have half of all of my children. The other identifiable classes you mentioned I prefer to avoid.

If I had mod points I'd award a quadrillion of them for:

I've seen this too many times. For anyone who hans't: If you want to know what a partnership is like, here's what you do: Come up with a great idea, then work yourself nearly to death over 18 months to two years while ignoring your family, friends, and health. When the idea has been made tangible and needs just a few minor tweaks, hand over all of your work to someone you'll never want to see again.

How did I not know this? Oh, wait... it's because I mostly quit reading the comments years ago.

Thanks for setting me straight!

Uh, with all due respect: To say that "the distinct line between what is a program and what is pure data is blurred beyond recognition" merely proves that you've never understood the difference.

That's kinda why I said, "if the 'cheap gas' doesn't cause pinging". Detonation is a real bitch and can crack pistons, thrash pins and rod bearings, and just generally be a real pain in the wallet come repair time. But a broken piston is a good excuse to increase the bore... :-) Still, if you're not getting detonation, all you get from high octane gasoline is expensive exhaust gas.

If you get pinging only on hot days or only at high altitude, try curing it the same way you'd cure vapor lock on a carbureted engine -- I don't mean clamping wooden clothespins on the fuel lines and leaving them there forever, but that's a good way to prove whether or not that's your problem. If it is, just reroute the fuel lines away from the heat sources and call it good. Sometimes the heat source is the automatic transmission or the exhaust pipes so you have to look all the way back to the tank to find the likely suspects, but if you're doing it yourself the one-time expense of rerouting is a lot less than the every fill-up expense of higher octane fuel.

Uh... if by "higher grade" you mean higher octane, you're mistaken. In fact, if the "cheap gas" doesn't cause pinging in your engine, the "higher grade" fuel gives you nothing but more expensive exhaust gases.

Those ARE American jobs. The corporations of which we are speaking could not exist in their current form anywhere except in the US. We formed the laws that enabled their creation and growth, and have fought illegal immoral wars to expand their wealth and power. They owe us for the blood we've spilled on their behalf.

We are belabored by the insistence on the part of our politicians, businessmen and military leaders, and the claque of scriveners who serve them, that "growth" and "power" are intrinsic goods, of which we can never have enough, or even too much. As if gigantism were an end in itself. As if a commendable rat were a rat twelve hands high at the shoulders -- and still growing. As if we could never have peace on this planet until one state dominates all others.

perl -e 'print "Hello, World!\n"' doesn't seem so difficult to me. Plug that into the command line of any system with a perl interpreter installed and it just works as advertised.

Your arguments against Perl are specious at best, and probably indicate nothing so much as your unfamiliarity with the language.

Perl is a fine first language, very accessible in the early going and very powerful as your skills increase. It's free, and has outstanding community support. The slashdot effect that crushes other sites and servers begins with this one, dynamically generated by a bunch of perl.

Who told you that lie? Once you've been in management for a few years you become unemployable in tech even if you've maintained your skills. For tech jobs I am overqualified/overcompensated and "will quickly grow bored" or "will keep sending resumes out even on your first day on the job". Forget talking the hiring managers out of that notion. I'm a very persuasive guy and have never talked one out of it.

Ain't it amazin' that all those UPS engineers whose workdays are nothing but thinking about the design of systems all arrive at the same conclusion and refuse to start their machines if the battery is failed? It's just incredible that these guys with EE degrees come out of college smart enough to do right things and somehow get it so wrong. Oh wait... I'm being sarcastic, which isn't very nice. I'd never suggest that the idiot isn't them, might instead be you, because that would be bad for my karma.