... take a look at mens rights groups.

Same here. My wife and I each carry one of those combo tools. She also keeps a can of pepper spray on hers as well ;)

What's on my key chain (besides keys)? A combination window punch/seat belt cutter. Because I live in Florida ;)

In your teens and early 20's you're partying hard with friends, getting laid, and making lots of good memories.

You got *laid* in your teens? Dude, WTF? What are you? Some bizar creature from outer space? ... You're definitely wrong here.

Unlike other methods (and I'm strechting the term "method" here), agile methods rely on excellent optimised and product oriented software production pipelines. This is how you should do it anyway, agile or not. But in my experience roughly 1 in 20 software shops implement even the flakiest of standardised production. Most of the time you still have to explain to people why they should use versioning.

The decision makers, sales people and IT strategists also usually have a very hard time commiting to a product and produktion pipeline. They want to sell whatever goes and have the devs sort it out, understaffed, ill-equipped and with extra weekends.

There are a few companies that have sales and technology and perhaps even industrial design/user experience all on par (Apple for example), but most companies that offer software development have no decision makers that understand even the faintest about software development.

Agile methods such as Scrum are the ones that expose the fastest wether you actually are doing professional development or if your crew is just a bunch of people faking it with poor gouvernment, bad organsiation and a sales and production team that don't communicate professionally with each other. IT mostly is a second and third afterthought with most companies and in such environments the best method won't improve development, no matter what.

If a PM can't tell a client from a server or Java from JavaScript and couldn't be bothered to understand why it is important to make a call and a final decision about tabs or spaces Agile will show how shitty your environment is in an instant. Waterfall (i.e. we don't know what we're doing but we're doing it anyway) will disguise that indefinitely, because there's no fixed model for accountability built in.

Bottom line: Until IT stops being the cellar child of the company no method in the world will professionalise development as it is desperately needed. We're still like medicine in the 16th century in that regard.

I came of age in the late '70s and early '80s, and my musical tastes reflect that.

There have been some new discoveries along the way. I adore Sheryl Crow, and thought Lady Gaga was a breath of fresh air. With those exceptions (and a few others) I haven't heard much of interest since the early '90s.

I remain baffled by rap.

...laura

Meaning the hype around big data has settled and its back to business. I'd say there less than 10 companies worldwide to whom big data actually might make sense. Others clean and aggregate their data in such a way that its actually useful. .... I don't want my bank guessing my balance with big data statistics, I want them to know it. And so do most other people.

If I saw somebody with an aol.com email I'd wonder if they were a tech dinosaur, a total hipster, or somebody who had simply stuck with something that worked.

I've had my Hotmail email address since 1996, prior to Microsoft taking it over. I've stuck with it because it works. It does exactly what Hotmail promised from the start, providing email that is independent of my ISP or employer.

...laura

Nuclear Power plants and solar powered things with no moving parts will probably be the last things still working. Perhaps a solar and condensator powered lamp in some ruggedized military component or something. Correctly built, a device like that could last thousands of years.

If we count decay of artificially saturated nuclear fuel as a man-made "machine" or "device", then we have 200 000 years of "worling devices" ahead of us.The problem here is that they "work", wether we want them to or not. Which sort of is the problem with nuclear waste.

Yes, they do.

An early example of getting it wrong was the City & South London Railway, the first deep-level underground rail line in London. The designers of the rolling stock didn't bother with windows because there was, supposedly, nothing to see. Passengers hated the "padded cells". Even if all you see is tunnel walls rushing by, people need to see outside.

I could see the utility of an airliner with no windows but cameras and viewing screens - it would solve some engineering problems - but for a car, the simplest is still the best. Windows.

...laura

The one thing Germany has going for it is it's privacy and data protection laws. They're being eroded as we speak by EU lobbying, dimwit politicians and clue-/careless citizens, but they still are tight enough that a German court would've given the employer a good public shafting. Without lube, after having a good laugh and concluding the verdict in 10 minutes.

To be honest, I never got what all the rage is about. As with the foaming at the mouth because of Gnome 3.

I do 'get' init and runlevels and I like them. I can change them with a texteditor and they're all fairly neatly sorted in someplace below /etc or something (can't remember exactly, to lazy to check now). I haven't used runlevels in 9 years or so, I'm not an admin, but I know when they're useful and I probably could start editing and switching them within 5 minutes.

I don't know what all the systemd hate is about, but the shrill voices of nerds who don't have enough sex to remain cool irritate me. I can asure you that I'll chime in if I find out somewhere down the line, when I need runlevels or systemd's equivalent and there's no replacement to be found - some neat newfangled click-tool or equaly easy or better neat textfiles and directories to fiddle about with.

I know very well that systemd will die a very quick death if it turns out to be a shitty system in practice. It's FOSS folks - if it's shit and there's a better, working FOSS alternative people will move (back) to it faster than you can say "Mambo out, Joomla in". No reason to get all that worked up as if the world has ended.

AFAICT that won't happen. systemd is with all the new distros - apparently for the simple reasons that it boots faster. Well, it that appears to be a good enough reason for many people, so be it. New issues probably will be patched and the simple fact that systemd has most distros on its side probably is momentum enough to make init a thing of the past.

That aside, there are, IMHO, way more pressing issues plagueing Linux and it annoys me that no one seems to care about those.

Like for instance: Why is monodevelop the only dev-environment that does not crash on me after a regular installation?

Why do Anjuta, KDevelop, Codeblocks etc. crash on me on mint pure native Debian or Ubuntu linux installs when I attempt to compile something? Isn't the C family of languages our native turf?

Why do 49 out of 50 attempts to compile something downloaded in source from Github or SourceForge fail with obscure error messages? Does something like this still happen on software systems in 2015?? Color me suprised.

Why am I tempted to register with Apple, download XCode and be done with it? This doesn't feel right.

How about fixing or getting all worked up about that shit? It's a shame I can't compile native Linux software on Linux simply due to the fact that all the rest of the bunch aren't as disciplined as Linus Torwalds and get their fucking C/C++ pipeline in order.

The truth is, Linux will be going nowhere if we don't fix some basics, simple down a little and perhaps move towards open or at least fixed-standard hardware concepts. Wether some dude or distro thinks systemd is awesome or not shouldn't matter that much.

My wife has more than I do. My 1958 Chevy is not GPS-enabled. My 2011 MBP laptop is not either. My older Nikon DSLR, nope. That leaves my iphone, and the iphone that a friend found on the street and gave to me. I suppose I could include the GPS receiver I bought for the never-finished SCRA [cathodecorner.com] Scope Clock project.

It's a bit long to follow.