Being from the UK myself, I asked some of my American colleagues who also work here ("here" being Sweden... more about that in a moment).
The response from two of the Americans was that they had no idea what to call people from that region, as they had no real idea of where those countries were. The other 3 promptly came up with "Terrorist", and were apparently not joking, judging by the lack of humour in voice or demeanour.

Anyway, regarding Sweden, this country currently has a degree of nationalist racism against "Invandrare" - effectively immigrants, but used as a catch-all for those immigrants who are obviously not Swedish, have poor language skills or education, and typically who come from near/middle eastern countries or central/eastern Europe, but Asians can also be included. Broadly speaking, immigrants from other Nordic/Scandinavian countries are ok, and immigrants from the UK or USA are loved unless they are complete assholes.
Historically however, there has never been a huge problem with racism, particularly against "coloured" people - and in this sense I use the term "coloured" to refer to anyone who does not have the typical Nordic/Scandinavian/Aryan light skin/light hair/blue eyes combination, not specifically people of African descent. So up until very recently (10-20 years), it was possible to buy "negerbollar" - literally "Nigger Balls" - which are a small chocolate-based pastry typically dusted in coconut, and many people still call them negerbollar without feeling any discomfort or embarrassment. Now, though, their official name is "chokladboll" to avoid any problems.

This is the part that I have a problem with - if a Canadian judge wants to mandate that all discussions of the health benefits of eating less Maple Syrup are blocked in Canada, I have no problem with that. If I live in Canada or if I live in China, then I expect what I see on the Internet to have to comply with local laws, and while I expect censorship in both Canada and China, I expect a hell of a lot more of it in China.
The precedent it sets, though, could allow a fundamentalist Islamic cleric to order Google to not index (and therefore censor) discussions about the interpretation of Islamic Sharia law so that his interpretation is dominant, not just in his country, but around the world as well.

This instance of the problem - a couple of embittered former employees of a company selling knock-off products - is not a bad idea. While I would like to know that they used to sell these goods, if I am looking to buy said equipment, I do not need to be able to see the actual site they were using as a sales portal. But the precedent it sets is a dangerous one.
Consider (not trying to derail the topic, honestly) the recent EU ruling that establishes the "right to be forgotten". If you look at it as the right for a woman who, as a dumb teenager, posted naked pictures of herself to show off a new tattoo, who now wants to see those pictures fade into obscurity, then it is a good thing. But many of the requests Google are receiving are from people who want to hide criminal convictions or other information which can legitimately fall under the heading of "in the Public Interest to know", so while Google can use that as a way to refuse the request, it shows that "good idea" precedents are often used to justify "bad idea" changes.

From my perspective, the most interesting thing about this is not the pro-Tesla/Elon Musk choir, or the Automotive lobbying juggernaut against it, but the fact that this is happening in America (statement of the bloody obvious, I know).
America, being the home and religious temple for Capitalism - Capitalism being an economic system where, if a new supplier in the market can provide more desirable products or with a more efficient/cheaper supply chain, that new supplier can gain a foothold in the market and offer their products/services in competition with the established actors, without political interference in the process.
The capitalist approach would be for the authorities in America to say to Tesla "You think you have a product which customers will want, which they will buy, and which will not blow up in their faces? Power to your elbow, go ahead and sell to Joe Public*!"
Instead, allowing the established automotive manufacturers to try and dictate "we sell through our Dealerships, they are a 'Good Thing' so you need to do the same, so that we are all doing things the same way smacks of something. I do not want to call it Socialism, but I cannot think what else to call it, because even collectivist Keynesian Capitalism does not really cover it.

* With the caveats that applicable advertising laws and standards are met.

The car analogy would be accurate if the order was for the internet to be removed. In the Google case, it is more like "Someone is using a road to drive recklessly in Arse-end-of-nowhere, Ontario, CA. People who go to this God-forsaken place usually have a paper map made by Company X, so we are ordering Company X to remove Arse-end-of-nowhere from their maps."

Note, I am NOT suggesting that Ontario is the Arse-end-of-nowhere, but I do find it very troubling that a judge half way around the world from me thinks that my access to information on this matter should be curtailed. If the content is so objectionable, then the web host should be ordered to take the site down. As the plaintiffs in this case have named two Google entities as the non-party entities targeted for action, and the defendants as the individuals responsible for the actions that led to the case being brought, I see no action being taken to order the hosting provider to do anything.
If the rationale behind that lack of action on the hosting provider is that the hosting provider is outside Canadian jurisdiction, then the same rule must also apply to Google Inc., who are being ordered to comply with this ruling.

As a European, regarding the "right to be forgotten", I think it is a potentially good idea in some circumstances which is let down by dumb-assed execution opening the door for abuse by people and other entities looking to remove information of valid public interest.

Out of bed by 5:00, because Monday to Friday I am on-call for "the shit hits the fan" stuff at the office from 5:30. I then start doing actual work at 7:00. For weekends and vacations, I am on call from 07:00. And yes, I am paid a lot extra for being on call :) One of the benefits of unionization!

The most obvious thing I can think of that you will encounter is a road-side kerb.
The physics of the situation means that, if the impact point of your wheel on the obstacle you are trying to get over is greater than or equal to the radius of the front tyre, then you will need to take action (lifting the front end of the bike) to get over the obstacle. In practice, you will have to take action for objects that are smaller than the radius, because the force required to mount the obstacle increases dramatically, increasing beyond the tyre and rim's ability to maintain structural integrity as the height of the obstacle-tyre impact point approaches the tyre radius.
As someone who has riden city bikes with small radius wheels and also mountain bikes with 29" rims, I definitely appreciate the ride quality differences that come with tyre properties beyond the wheel radius, but the ride is much smoother anyway with the larger rims, simply because the impact height of the obstacle is so much less than the diameter of the wheel.

Personally, if I was going to inflict ads on my enemies (as opposed to, for example, repeatedly stabbing their genitalia with a fork until they fall off), I would probably go for pop-over (always on-top, of course) ads that claim to be either security alerts or flashing advice that they have won something, and all they have to do to claim their $1 million is click on the ad, which then move when you try to click on them.

ok, this is more about what programmers should "do" than what they should "read". But for anyone involved in working as part of a team or dealing with either managers or subordinates (holy crap, I have just described everyone not working completely alone), I strongly recommend going to a few Toastmasters meetings.
No matter what programming language you use, development style, methodology, or approach, programmers today spend more time communicating with other people than they ever have done before.

Toastmasters - both in terms of giving speeches and also performing leadership tasks based on running the meetings, helps to improve communication and leadership skills (dramatically, in most cases).

If you are ok with being the anti-social loner who sits in the corner churning out code, and who thinks of communication with others as "one grunt for no, two for yes", then you need not bother. But for everyone else, it is a great place to go.

Hampshire CC is at least a partially Microsoft environment, as their SAP ERP system is hosted on SQL Server (M$ have a case study from 2012 on the migration from Oracle/Unix), so their IT admins probably already have significant experience with the administration of MS packages.
http://www.microsoft.com/cases...

Based on the wording of their "Hantsweb" site detailing their software standards, the standard desktop OS is Windows 7, with Vista/XP being phased out or supported on a "best effort" basis and other operating systems not allowed to connect to the domain, so with the exception of any Unix admins left who used to look after their old database servers for the SAP environment, they are an exclusively MS shop possibly with some iOS expertise so that they can look after iPhones and iPads. They do not even support non-IE web browsers, having standardised on IE8...
http://www3.hants.gov.uk/itsch...

On that basis, the cost of user training and admin training for non-MS systems plus the added complexity of a platform change within the organisation is going to make the TCO of future MS solutions lower than an open-source alternative, especially if they get a good discount in return for another positive case-study.

The open source options may well be a better technical fit, once the pain of a platform migration is out of the way, though.

No, it stops the "competing" company hiring employees of the other company. The standard employee contract in most companies typically includes a clause that everything the employee does on company time and hardware belongs to the company, and that if/when the employee leaves they acknowledge that the IP to all work performed or used by the employee stays with the company and cannot be taken, copied or used by the employee once they leave.

Non-competes limit the free flow of employees (resources, if you like) around the marketplace. If a company feels they need to justify a non-compete by citing IP concerns, then they are being disingenuous. Sorry, I mis-typed there... I meant to type "they are lying through their ass".

I think the thing that has most people worried about the Facebook purchase of Oculus is the difference in emphasis between the two companies - Oculus are/were looking to bring a reasonably-priced viable VR display to the market. Facebook are a social media powerhouse which makes revenue by monetizing it's users' details for advertising purposes. There is very little obvious synergy there, meaning it is not clear which direction the Facebook-piloted Oculus ship is going to go, but very few business lay down this kind of money and just let things carry on as they are, so there will almost certainly be some form of redirection.

If Oculus had been bought by a VR competitor, the direction would be largely unchanged; if the purchaser was an OS company - Microsoft, for example, the approach would probably be one of monitor-replacement for the Xbox and also for the Windows OS, other buyers with their own agendas, and so on. If the purchaser was Google, the synergies are again less apparent and the deal would probably be greeted with some skepticism laced with hope/expectation for what improvements might come when paired with Google's resources, but the question is - what is Facebook doing at the moment that makes a VR display the last piece of the puzzle for a killer app? VR Social Media? (Would not really work if the interaction is real-time, as all you will see are loads of people with Oculus headsets on. Not very social...)

Journalists (as the world's professional content creators) versus Bloggers (the world's amateur - sometimes very much so - content creators) are similar in the same way that the guy hacking together application code in his bedroom in his spare time is the same as the salaried analyst programmer employed full time to do that.

They both produce content, and the amateur may produce content which would be considered of an acceptable standard by the professional. But the average amateur produces content which is of a much lower standard than the average professional (no, I have no specific citation to prove that, other than my own experience of working with both types on projects).

Granted, the vast majority of CEOs and lobbyists are good at what they do, but their jobs do not involve finding an engineer. The lobbyists do not need engineers, and the CEOs have minions who can find engineers for them. I suspect that the typical CEO thinks that an engineer is a cross between Dilbert, middle management, and a random faceless guy with a pocket full of pens and bad personal hygeine plus the social skills of Sheldon Cooper - "if all those factors are not present, the person is not an engineer, and I am right because I am the CEO".
I would, however, be interested to see how strong the correlation is between people who say that there is a shortage of scientists and engineers, and the groups who are advocating for broader H1B visa use, because I suspect that what the CEOs and lobbyists really mean is not "there is a shortage of trained engineers and scientists", but "there is a shortage of qualified individuals who are willing to work the hours we demand for the wages we are willing to pay".

The coder/designer would be an Analyst/Programmer. However, the title "Engineer" is both a very specific one (referring to someone who maintains and operates an engine), and also a very generic one (a catch-all title for people trained and *hopefully* skilled in the design/construction of various types of machines or structures - Mechanical Engineer, Civil Engineer, Electrical Engineer, and so on).
I would suggest that a programmer or analyst/programmer is a specific class of engineer.

Paying to skip the whole boring leveling process is going to be a wet dream for a lot of impatient wannabes. But from my experience with MMOs based on leveling skills, you pretty much need to go through the leveling process to get to know the class, limitations, effective playstyles, rotations, and so on. Starting at max level is going to mean that you know nothing about the character class, so you will be a waste of a group/raid slot.
Cue lfg messages where the caller asks for members who have not bought their max level character...