I just quit Micro^h^h^h^h for this exact reason.

Over a period of 5 years:
Hired in.
Report to a guy who looks 12, but turns out to be an Excellent Manager*.
Do my best work in a decade.
Excellent Manager reorg'ed from Inspiring General Manager to Disastrous Director.
Excellent Manager is driven out by political fuckery by Disastrous Director.
Disastrous Director is fired for malfeasance.
Inspiring General Manager won't come back, had enough, quits managing to do research.
Report to Microsoft Lifer, old EM's technical manager a who does a passable job leading.
Microsoft Lifer is reorg'ed under General Manager/Bottlewasher who can't stop micromanaging.
Lifer gets ruthlessly fucked with, has entire team's work credited to incompetent Level 67 Blowhard.
Lifer's team is reorg'ed under Blowhard, except for me+handful.
Old EM's peer Last Asskicking Manager quits because he won't work for Blowhard.
GM/Bottlewasher can't stop micromanaging everyone.
Lifer gives up and takes a non-mgmt job.
Report to McManager hired from military, who used to manage 600.
GM/Bottlewasher can't stop micromanaging everyone.
McManager reorg'ed, team reduced to 5.
Blowhard steals work output from McManager, leaving no credit.
GM/Bottlewasher lines up all resources behind Blowhard.
McManager demoted to my peer.
Report to new guy Perennial Survivor, brought in by another reog.
Lifer demoted to my peer.
Old Excellent Manager quits to work for Amazon, because it's saner(!!!).
Survivor admits 80% of Botlewasher's 2015-16 yearly plan is bullshit makework.
Fuck this noise, quit. Even a startup is saner.

*only one in 5 years.

It's easier for incompetence to hide in large enterprises. They used to write books about how great Redmond managers were. Now the entire enterprise is infested with pointy-haired, risk-averse, beige, wannabe-hipsters who can't make any decisions other than to stab each other in the back. And front. And sides. Precious few people do actual work, when so much effort is devoted to bad management and the shielding of productive people from that bad management.

So if a company doesn't operate in a way I like, the best way to express that... is to invest in them? I don't think you thought that one through completely.

Ok, now Vizio, you have my attention for being a good guy... in this regard. I'm in the market for a couple of new screens every year (home offices for two, couple of tech saavy kids, etc etc), and this sort of corporate behavior is a huge influencer in my decision of whose almost-commodity product to buy.

If you're listening at all: I'll buy your products again this year. How about you try to be better about the GPL?

The other fact is that pure gas cars are getting really good milage.
My Chevy Cruze is averaging over 33 mpg for me.

LOL. My 2002 Prius got 45 mpg (not to mention much, much lower emissions).

33 mpg is in the same class as "can't be bothered". If you want to crow, you need to get more than 50 mpg, son.

Nowhere did I say anything about malware, abuse, or severe annoyance: you are taking a simple hypothetical and using an unstated extreme possibility to suit an unyielding position.

If a website uses one or two small, innocuous ads that aren't animated, I'd see no problem with it. You seem to be taking the extreme stance that any advertising at all is a personal affront to you. If that's the case, you are being unreasonable and such an opinion shouldn't matter to most people.

Now, it may be difficult to find an ad host that doesn't push giant, screaming, in-your-face ads, but that wasn't the point.

You're right: intravenous tuna use doesn't sound healthy at all! Salmon, however, is another matter entirely.

Because newspapers have the resources to get companies to advertise on their pages, it is part of their business model. A small open source project website, for example, can't afford to go out and find people to advertise on their website. But they can get help with hosting costs by using a company whose focus -- and business model -- DOES include finding people to advertise with them.

Most normal website owners are not comparable to newspaper publishers in any meaningful way.

Russian analyst urges nuclear attack on Yellowstone National Park and San Andreas fault line

A Russian geopolitical analyst says the best way to attack the United States is to detonate nuclear weapons to trigger a supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park or along the San Andreas fault line on California's coast.

The president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems based in Moscow, Konstantin Sivkov said in an article for a Russian trade newspaper on Wednesday, VPK News, that Russia needed to increase its military weapons and strategies against the "West" which was "moving to the borders or Russia".

He has a conspiracy theory that NATO - a political and military alliance which counts the US, UK, Canada and many countries in western Europe as members - was amassing strength against Russia and the only way to combat that problem was to attack America's vulnerabilities to ensure a "complete destruction of the enemy".

"Geologists believe that the Yellowstone supervolcano could explode at any moment. There are signs of growing activity there. Therefore it suffices to push the relatively small, for example the impact of the munition megaton class to initiate an eruption. The consequences will be catastrophic for the United States - a country just disappears," he said.

"Another vulnerable area of the United States from the geophysical point of view, is the San Andreas fault - 1300 kilometers between the Pacific and North American plates ... a detonation of a nuclear weapon there can trigger catastrophic events like a coast-scale tsunami which can completely destroy the infrastructure of the United States."

Full story

Because they could recreate anything on a holodeck: why would anyone bother with a camera?

Considering that nuclear power is the safest form of power the world has ever known, I'd say it's worthy of recognition for offsetting carbon more than anything else. To borrow a phrase, "It's the energy density, stupid."

There's a reason why China has 30 nuclear plants under construction, while the US just approved its first new plant in 30 years.

...but they get our shit to space.

You're Tien Shinhan!

I see this sort of news couched in discussions of "What do people /really/ want?" but that has little relation to what would be a market success.
That's like asking "What kind of food do people really want?" when the reality is that people cluster around multiple options in the market.

With plenty of room for debate, there are multiple clusters of success in the mobile market today. For the sake of argument:
- safe, pretty, predictable, simple, stable, walled garden -- apple totally owns this ~20% of the market, populated mostly with 1+gen older iPhone devices
- predictable, pretty, open/powerful, cheap, with a walled garden that's easy to exit -- android devices mostly running 4.3 and prior
- powerful, predictable, pretty, walled garden that's easy to exit -- top-line android devices mostly running 4.4+
- purpose-built, totally walled, predictable, safe (and fugly), designed for easy remote mgmt by corp -- used to be owned by Blackberry
- totally walled, predictable, safe (and very pretty), designed for easy remote mgmt by corp -- top line windows mobile devices

From this view, Windows Mobile doesn't compete in or intersect much with the same success cluster as newer OR older clusters of Android. So you have to ask yourself, what does success look like for Windows mobile? Dominating the market that Blackberry/RIM dropped through their own mismanagement? Not being snide here, but I keep looking at WinOS devices, and see elegant solutions to problems that few people have or that are increasingly becoming solved by feature subsets of other clusters.

Your (and my, and any individual citizen's) personal interpretation of the Constitution is not the measure. It is the interpretation and implementation by our three branches of government. I realize that some reading this believe they have all been compromised, or that they think some particular thing is "obviously unconstitutional" (even though the judicial, legislative, and executive branches say otherwise), but the fact is we have the system of government we have. So how about you consider the alternative: one where you don't assume that everyone working at every/any level of government, e.g., NSA, doesn't have the worst motivations and is actually trying to do their best to honorably, legally, and Constitutionally, protect our nation and its people instead of the opposite. How about that?

If you would actually like to have a discussion, I am more than happy to engage. I have articulated these views (not on this specific topic, of course) long before I ever served in uniform, and they have nothing to do with a "paycheck" -- in fact, it's the inverse: the reason I chose to serve is because of my personal desire to do what I can to support things I believe in, and believe are important for our nation and my family and fellow citizens, not the other way around. Yes, our system of government is imperfect...grossly so -- but I choose to support it over any and all alternatives, warts and all. (And that is not to say that there are not things that cannot be improved.)

And again -- and I sincerely mean this -- if you are actually serious about engaging in a dialogue, I am happy to.