It's not unusual - we still persist with pencil and paper as tools of choice. Nothing ever gets totally discarded.

A manifesto is ultimately an opinion or philosophy, not a fact of life or immutable physical laws. My objections don't lie with the intent but rather the substitution of logic with belief. All religious creeds begin with a "manifesto" establishing common belief systems. I think Agile is another form of belief, not backed up by much more than anecdotes.

That's why I can't take the Agile Manifesto seriously. Any group that thinks a semantical term used and misued by many a fanatical political grouping (see where I'm going here) as a substitue for reasoned and nuanced thinking (there is no silver bullet) deserves serious scorn and derision.

Toyota's Total Production System was about squeezing 'waste' (i.e. costs) out of the system, as well as creating a pull system from demand to supply. In many respects, TPS is pure Taylorism with more than a splash of Demming - every activity is subject to analysis and refinement. Managers set the targets; employees are responsible for the quality; everybody must eliminate waste. Lutz is attempting is rewrite history and most bloggers are engaging in MBA versus Engineering stereotypes without having a clue as to the specifics of GM's (many) failures. (I have an engineering degree and an MBA and worked in the automotive industry for three years, including product development for GM and others.) Interestingly one of the biggest factors behind GM's (and other US vehicle manufacturer's) demise was the rewriting of accounting rules governing corporate pension and medical liabilities. In Lutz's day those liabilities were hidden; GM managers could negotiate sweetheart deals with the various unions without having to account for them fully. When the rules were restructured, those liabilities had to appear on the corporate accounts resulting on a large increase in costs per vehicle.

I seem to remember a posting on Slashdot regarding "anti-intellectualism" amongst nerds. Not everything in life has to have a direct dollar value. Pure research may not have a direct practical outcome - ever - and when it does, it involves decades-long pay-off times, but I would not be arrogant enough to write it off totally. Some things have a 'utlity' value - it's valuable because we derive satsifaction from discovering new knowledge. (And I'm an ex-engineer having been involved in the most utilitarian of industries, i.e. telecoms switching, automotive electronics, airborne radar, etc. all of which rely on somebody else having done the basic physics covering electronics design over previous decades of research.)

I would have thought "chilling out" would be more appropriate.

That statement is grossly inaccurate. I think you'll find with a little checking that JRR Tolkien's sold the rights to the film over 40 years ago to settle a tax debt. The only thing the family have turned down is the opportunity to participate in the development or production (however they are happy to reap royalties based on the film). They have no control over any film rights associated with his writings and haven't had for decades.

I should said "fault-tolerant" in place of "fault-free". Those systems do exist with minimal planned and unplanned down-time.

Not stupid at all. This guy is into root cause analysis as a process of understanding faults and finding lasting solutions. (See reference to "bandaids".) Covers up your tracks until the next crash. A fully functioning fault-free system working as designed should not require a reboot except for the cases outlined. Unless unix systems aren't as reliable as people like to assume...

Didn't Arthur C. Clarke write about tethered space elevators as a substitute technology. (I think the original idea came from a Russian physicist.). I'm guessing the necessary materials or construction technology isn't available yet, not to mention the massive amount of capital to fund the infrastructure.

Your point is well-taken. Assets do include intangibles, which for a technology company like Apple is not insignificant. The art of investing - as opposed to the strict (and necessary) technical analysis of cashflows payable to investors - is to assess just how valuable intangible assets will remain and for how long in an industry that is synonymous with innovation and change. Apple is exclusively priced on the basis of being a growth stock into the indefinite future. On that basis, investors are betting (I use that word deliberately) that the product/service innovation will continue to roll on.

They have every right to poke their noses in if they own the company. Don't be hypocritical - you would do so yourself if you owned your own company. Count your blessings that somebody thinks you're worth paying a salary.

You just pointed out one of the attributes of a non-rational sharemarket buyer. Theoretically the share price should be at max - sans cashflow from dividends - the value of it's net assets only. On the other hand, if reinvestment of corporate cashflows that would otherwise go to paying dividends earns a greater return than individual shareholders can achieve then it makes sense for Apple investors to let the company continue investing on their behalf rather than pay dividends. It all goes pear-shaped if growth companies can't maintain their internal rate of return I think I just agreed and disagreed simultaneously...

Will they stick him in the same freezer as Walt?

The comments within the article were more informative than the article itself. A number of commentators pointed out the context in which the Stuxnet developers were working and presumed tradeoffs in complexity behind covering their tracks versus achieving their objective. (Which by most accounts appears to have been successful at covering their tracks long enough to permanently damage the uranium centrifuges. Sounds like a solid achievement to me and not whatif conjecture on how good it could have been.) As usual the self-appointed /. experts assume that their "hive" hindsight knowledge could conquer the day. More likely you'd just flame one another over irrelevant technical details, and boast whose toolkit was bigger and more colourful.