The Greek economy is something like 2% of the EU. Germany could pay it all off alone and still be in the comfort zone. There was a time when it looked like many dominoes could fall, but Ireland, Portugal and Spain all seem to be on a slow recovery, Italy still gives grounds for concern. The reason they can't give in to Greece is because many countries have been responsible. Many countries have taken harsh steps to bring their budgets in line. The opposition against giving Greece special treatment is strong all the way from the rich countries to the other poor countries.

Just to add to that list the boss is the natural point of escalation when two people butt heads and won't agree. I don't expect my bosses to know the details or even the subject, but they need to understand technical write-ups listing the pros and cons so we can settle it and move on. If the boss clearly has no understanding of the issue and just goes with the person he likes best, of course he'll lose respect.

The other issue is representation, my boss often have to represent our interests in various formal channels. A tech explaining things to a non-tech might be hard enough but having a non-tech boss explaining to other non-techs in other departments means most will be lost in translation. And while it's natural that you need to bring back some questions or issues they raised, a non-tech will have to do it all the time creating a very long feedback loop.

That said, he does not need to be down into the nitty-gritty details. But really, would you hire a guy with no understanding of sales as sales manager? A guy with no understanding of financials as financial manager? It's very rare that you need just "generic people management" and nothing else, because usually you have a business role too not just an administrative role. And you can't do that without some understanding of the subject matter.

Do you count scheme and clojure? If so, that's nine or so...

Americans have an intriguing tendency to vote as the social class they want to be, not the social class they are which seems heavily linked in to the American Dream. When you work hard, become a big success and make lots of money they don't want socialists to come take their money and give to slackers who haven't risen above the pack. Where in other countries workers allied together to get higher wages and better conditions on the bottom of the ladder, US workers are all about getting up the ladder and into a better job, those who can't don't deserve more.

Which might not be such a bad thing, if everybody started at zero. Reality is that most people are busy just making a living, while those with lots of free cash to invest make even more money so the rich get richer and the poor rarely make their dream come true. I think it goes far beyond rich men's propaganda, it's a cultural thing deeply embedded in Americans. What you've made is your own, I don't want it and when I get mine I don't want nobody taking it either. The rich just float on that attitude.

Running on low margins doesn't help much if the competition is undercutting you with lower costs. At least in the bragging video komplett.no made with AutoStore, they claimed going from a picker performance of 100 pieces/day to 100 pieces/hour = 8x performance as the system lines up the boxes at the picking station. Pick, scan, pick, scan, pick, scan, put in box for shipping, scan shipping box, done as opposed to running around the warehouse, particularly for new employees who have a hard time finding things. It also has other benefits like making employee theft much harder, since nothing silently disappears off the shelves or gets misplaced and they know what boxes you've had access to. The chance of accidents is vastly reduced, the storage area itself can be run in the dark and can operate colder/hotter than humans would like saving money on AC and heating.

Now obviously there's a solid investment cost but the question is how long can you afford to not make the investment? It might only be a nibble each time but higher running costs will add up and eat away at your profits too. Just look at all the other industrial robots, none of them were cheap to start with but those with money to invest will make the business case that in the long run it'll save money. Those who refuse to invest and renew themselves usually ends up on history's scrap yard.

The CEO deserves all the cookies! He is being generous in giving the Tea Party guy a chance to look at the cookie.

All hail the holy CEO's .... for they are our salvation!

"Corporations don't hold guns to their customer's heads."

AS in a physical gun? no not yet. But they hold financial guns to peoples' heads all the time. and many times try to do financial assassinations.

Why kill a person when you can make them suffer for the rest of their lives financially.

Yep, and Carnegie was a horrific evil man.

the things he did to people makes the worlds most notorious criminals seem like saints.

All it takes is time for a honest person to turn into a bought and paid for Politician.

And that is the solution. TAX Intellectual Property.

Sony bitches about $200 million lost in piracy? Let the IRS tax them on their new made up bullshit number. Suddenly IP "losses" go to sane levels.

I want IP taxed at 15% of the value claimed, and any claim in court asking for more due to piracy, is charged RETROACTIVELY by the IRS.

Except it's not agile, what you're describing is iterative waterfall. You're not completing any business requirements, each component is working on a classic interface/function spec like a traditional work breakdown structure would do. When you say it's done, it's the traditional task that is done. You might get feedback from other developers, but the customer has no way to verify that it is done. Waterfall is not static, it's always had change orders and it's not like a revised spec makes it agile. You'll have all the traditional problems that the component you're building might not fit in the final picture, over-engineering to solve the general case creating inner platform effects and so on.

The whole mantra in agile is to deliver functionality, not code modules. Developers write lots and lots of code that may or may not end up actually being useful in solving the business requirements. I wouldn't go so far as saying quick and dirty but the point is to do exactly what is needed to meet the requirement, have it tested and signed off on then call it done and only generalized as needed. Once you start building big and complex components and layers that are supposed to cover all your current and possible future needs you've abandoned the core ideas.

Sure, sometimes you need a lot of plumbing to deliver the first drop of water and it makes sense that you don't dimension the system to deliver just one faucet. But it's not agile. Agile says that the only thing that's worth anything is if the user can turn the faucet and water comes out. If he wants another faucet, we'll modify that when it hits the top of the priority queue. Often a system is a total no-go until certain critical requirements are met, but it terms of building it agile wants you to do it one requirement at the time. It works best with a little moderation, build infrastructure you know you need but don't try to solve all the maybes and nice-to-haves.

The Surface to Air missiles are programmed via a web interface using Active X controls written in Visual Basic 6.

Companies like Dematic have been doing that for decades. Welcome to the 1990's FETCH!

it's a lot simpler for them to quote studies as basis of their policies than to create original research that they never terll anyone about.

however, it makes pork barreling much harder. if they want to protect something or ban something then they need to quote why it's bad.

I don't understand what the fuss is about though, like, isn't this how you would expect EPA to be set up in the first place? like let's say they ban one kind of a plastic and give green light to another kind of plastic, wouldn't the public have the right to know why they think the other is harmful and the other is not? if they don't tell, then it's exactly for this reason why USA is full of conspiracy idiots, creationists etc...

Not freak weather, that is tropospheric ducting. It actually happens a lot more often than you think.