The reason is that "a single source for services" wasn't their plan. Their plan was "to greatly boost their numbers to make it look like they were winning versus Facebook, by cooking the books and padding the numbers by going absolutely nuts pushing G+".

TFTFY.
 
Seriously, Google was very late to the party, screwed up their implementation, screwed up the launch, and was desperate to make it look like G+ was *huge* and growing exponentially. Pretty much their only even remotely legitimate option was to force everyone who used a Google service (or later an Android product) to sign up for Facebook. Sadly, pretty numbers didn't equate to user engagement and G+ was soon a dying wasteland.

technical question like listing all the container classes in STL from the top of my head

Do experienced devs even know this? I've programmed in several languages and I could never give a list of functions on demand. That's what reference material is for.

You honestly dodged a bullet with that one; any company that asks for such a thing has a damaged tech culture.

Technical questioning, even if often misused in the corporate world, is a fine art with many subtleties.
 
When I was in the Navy and giving qualification signature interviews and sitting qualification boards, I kept a stock of that kind of question to hand with 'malice aforethought'. Why? Specifically to separate out the guys who memorized everything without thinking (which was undesirable) from the guys who thought and prioritized and learned (which isn't the same thing as memorizing and is desirable). Depending on the system/situation "grab OP46189 volume 7 and look it up" was exactly the right answer. You didn't need to know everything, but you did need to know where and when to look it up.

Also, to give me a chance to verbally smack twerps like you who hadn't grasped this yet upside the head.

Want to know WHY we have so damn many warheads?

Presuming you're talking about nuclear warheads (the topic of the discussion)... Back in the 50's and 60's it was mostly determined by how many weapons we could produce - the unholy alliance between SAC and the nuclear weapons production labs was the "military-inductrial alliance" Eisenhower was warning us against. From the 70's onward it was determined by a complex interaction of internal (US) politics and treaty negotiations.
 

The weapon folks try to figure out what the target defenses are capable of before the warheads reach their target, the really smart people start crunching numbers and come up with a solution designed to over-saturate their ( known ) defenses. We don't throw one warhead at a target, we throw several to ensure one gets through.

Um... nonsense. (The fact that there isn't effective defenses against most classes of nuclear weapons aside.) We throw (threw, since we're talking before the reductions of the 1990's) several at what appears to be a single target to the ignorant and the uninitiated to justify the massive number of warheads. To the way of thinking of the military planners - that HQ is a target, and the airfield is a target, and that hangar complex is a target... so even if a single warhead would get all three in actuality, they sent three anyhow.
 
As far as conventional weapons... you're partly right, partly wrong, and partly hallucinating. But I'm not going there as conventional weapons aren't the topic of discussion.
 

TBH though, our land based delivery systems are pretty much honeypot targets anymore. Bomber, sub and cruise missile delivery are much harder to target due to their mobility and not knowing if a sub is sitting just off your coast in the event you do something stupid is quite a deterrent in its own right.

Since bombers are landbased delivery systems... you really haven't thought this through very well. Nor do we have sub launched nuclear tipped cruise missiles. We do have submarine launched ballistic missiles, but they stay well the hell back out in the deeps where it's safe... and don't go anywhere near coastlines except for liberty ports and home ports.
 

However, put one of these weapons in the hands of a fanatic who has no issues about beheading folks, or volunteering to become a suicide bomber to kill infidels in the name of some pretend deity in the sky and all the deterrent in the world isn't going to stop them. Deterrent doesn't work with these types. You have to render them inoperable for lack of a better way to phrase it.

Thank you Captain Obvious.

Further, we can only hope that some other countries like China and India are being honest with the numbers they claim. The US and Russia may be completely outpaced and not know it.

That's the folly of the Cold War and the Cold Warrior mentality - WE MUST HAVE MORE THAN THE OTHER GUY. Weapons piled on weapons piled on weapons neither increases security nor improves the chances of "winning" a nuclear exchange. Once you have enough to dismember the Other Guy (or to at least put him in the national equivalent of an ICU), more weapons just means you have more weapons - you can only destroy him once no matter how many weapons you have. That's the essential philosophy of Minimal Deterrence.

*Sigh* A former cold warrior you may be, but all you do is give proof to what I've long said - a worm's eye view doesn't make you an expert. Or even knowledgeable. (And yeah, the view of a launch control officer is pretty low level). Having been an SSBN weapons tech (and FTB to be precise), I'm quite aware of just how little can be seen from the operating level.

America's nuclear strategy isn't MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), and hasn't been for a couple of decades now. The strategy we're working towards now is Minimal Deterrence - the smallest number of weapons needed for deterrence.

Is that so bad, though?

Let's say, hypothetically, that if you spend an hour exercising each and every day for 40 years, you can extend your life by an extra decade. Assuming a constant 8 hours of sleep daily, that's a four-fold return on investment!

Of course, due to the effects of aging, it very well could easily take me twice as long to do anything, and I could easily get only half as much enjoyment out of it. Sure, I keep pushing that number higher, but by a self-assessment of how good my life is, I'm only breaking even. Considering the risks associated with aging, is it even worth the investment?

My grandmother has said many times that the only thing wrong with her is that she hasn't died yet. She's well into her 90's, with no serious physical deterioration, but life has gotten boring. Her life-long friends have all died, and many of her new friends have died, too. Her children have grown up and moved on, and so have her grandchildren. She's traveled the world multiple times, and gone on every adventure that she wanted to. She was expecting to die twenty years ago, having lived a complete and happy life.

Now what's left? Seeing yet another round of new miracles being taken for granted by a generation that assumes such technology is a basic necessity for life? Watching $THIS_GUY slaughter $THOSE_GUYS in the name of $SUBJECTIVELY_JUST_CAUSE? Spending another year alone in her home?

More personally, I have a medical condition that will deteriorate rapidly when I hit about 50, and faster if I partake in strenuous exercise. The only treatment option includes the term "replacement vertebrae". Is it somehow morally wrong for me to plan my life such that I spend every waking moment now using my limited health in ways that I enjoy the most? I doubt I'll survive as long as my grandmother, and my condition effectively assures me of problems by that age, anyway. Hitting 75 and signing off sounds like a good plan to me.

Regular finance account reporting of how the money is being used should be required. If you can't handle it, don't ask for money.

Such production of reporting and auditing of reports has costs and could consume significant amount of project funds.

Nonsense. If it's a serious project, they should already have an accountant or at least some form of accounting software - once you have that, it's pretty simple to produce a basic cash flow report. Regardless of what your business is, tracking the financials is basic to it. If not just to know whether or not you can afford that widget or software package, because come the end of the year you have to let the IRS know. If the project doesn't have financial tracking, it's a sign to run - far and fast.
 

It should be up to the backers and an agreement with the backers made in advance, regarding what will be required, not up to some random third party to decide what reporting will be imposed on them both.

Kickstarter isn't a random third party. As the great-grandparent said, they're essentially assuming the role of the stock exchange - as the middleman and facilitator of the process. Thus they have an interest in seeing that the process is transparent and to some degree regulated. Even for private investment, sans the market, the SEC has rules separating investors into two classes based on their ability to determine and withstand risk. As the arbiter of the market, Kickstarter has similar motivations to protect investors.

Now this being Slashdot, there will be a chorus of people insisting we don't need a middleman or and arbiter... to which I say, go try and raise significant funds on your own sans such a middleman. Then you'll understand why a central marketplace with at least some level of consumer (investor) protection is an idea that has recurred throughout human history. It's a win-win situation for all parties. (And before you rant and froth about Wall Street - I'll point out the problems there are implementation and QA errors, not specification errors.)

Still, with mass at a premium it would be more efficient to send up a stockpile of raw plastic rather than many combinations of different spare parts.

For the relatively small fraction of parts that will break that are printable plastics - that's a great thing. (At least with anything resembling current technology.) For everything else, especially the electronics parts that will represent the greatest proportion of the failures... not so much.

I have to agree here. The submitter should talk to their boss again, and keep asking, trying to work out something acceptable. An agreement to stay at the job for some amount of time can alleviate fears of competitors hiring away fresh knowledge, for example. If the company's as small as is implied, that may be feasible.

I've rarely had requests approved on the first try, but changing companies because they didn't want to fund a weekend bender in Vegas is absurd. Make a case for your requests, and present it as an investment cost for the business.

As do some theologists, like the Unitarian Universalists.

My eyes were extremely bad, perhaps if I wasn't so nearsighted it would have been cheaper but I'd still rather have a single payer system.

From what I've read, about the only things they won't correct is retinal and vitreous defects. I know that they will correct astigmatism.

And after you do all of those things, sometimes something breaks that you don't have a spare for. And when the nearest replacement part is nine months away, you're screwed.

Sure, there's that one-in-a-million chance. I never argued that point - only that you have no idea how the world works. And by insisting that we must take into account that one-in-a-million chance, I'd add the argument that you're resistant to any suggestion that you might know less than you do.
 

Being able to make spare parts is a GOOD thing.

Another point I never argued against. I merely pointed out just how far we are from being anywhere near that stage.
 

And the fewer things you have to carry along to make spare parts with, the better.

Again, a point I never argued against. (Etc... etc... just repeating the above.)

If you get a cataract, spend the extra money on a CrystaLens. Unlike 45 year old natural lenses and implants available before 2003, they will actually focus. Of course they're under patent so they're about a thousand dollars each more expensive than other implants. I'm sure I'll have a cataract in the other eye not too long from now, the last eye doctor I saw said "a couple of years" and it's been longer than that.

I think I'll wait until 2023 when the patent runs out and everybody makes them, the ones like my mom has will be obsolete. I only use that eye to look at tiny things, anyway.

Insurance paid for all but the extra thousand, it was the best thousand dollars I ever spent. The device inside my eye is my favorite device of all.

3D printing is one of those things that will be pretty much essential for successful manned missions farther away than the moon.

Once 3D printing develops from it's current "stone knives and bearskins" stage of development and reaches the 21st century, sure. But even once the far off day arrives where we can print in a wide variety of materials (I.E. those suited to the task of the parts being replaced) and assuming it reaches the stage where the printed parts don't require substantial hand finishing for precision... it's highly unlikely to be able to print electrical and electronic components, particularly the IC's that will represent a very large component of the failed parts.
 

Being unable to fix broken things will be fatal if the nearest spare parts are nine months away, and a 3D printer or two can, conceivably, replace a great many individual spare parts....

That's why you carry spare parts with you. And why you "design for maintenance". And why you do extensive development and testing beforehand to figure out what parts are most likely to break. And design parts to be reliable. And reinforce the parts where you can. And... well, there's a vast amount of and dedicated sub fields of engineering dedicated to this kind of thing. No professional goes off the beaten path with the attitude of "oh well, I'm just gonna die if something breaks". There's a reason why "lack of spares" pretty much has never come up in any serious discussion of lunar colonies or missions to Mars. (Not until the amateurs, being largely blithely unaware of how the world works, started playing around with 3D printing.)
 
Disclaimer: In addition to years of actually seriously studying the space program... I've lived where high reliability could mean the difference between life and death and spares were limited to what was on hand as there was no parts place up on the main road or next day mail. (I.E. a crewman on an SSBN.)

Translation: You're an ignorant jackass with the IQ of a rotting roadkill.