Idiots in charge. The Mayor is complaining that it took weeks to get email on his smartphone. That certainly is not a Linux problem. And if their groupware is still based on Exchange that needs some bizar mobile setup, it's quite a stupid idea to switch to Linux in the first place, if you aren't ready to switch your groupware aswell.

Apparently they think it's ok to put your fingers in, so long as you pay.

If the ISP is redirecting every port coming from your IP, it doesn't matter what protocol you use. Instead of getting the "hotel" like page, you get nothing.

Exactly and literally. Smokey and the Bandit was still in or just coming out of theaters when I was 14. And yes, we were trolls (not on CB though). We did real world trolling. Smoke bombs, bottle rockets, bb guns, sling shots, chunking wax balls from those stupid wax sippy candy at cars (no damage, in case you got busted) etc. We used to do all kinds of crap that would have gotten our asses kicked if we didn't know the alleys and yards you could jump fences in without a dog biting you. Trolling on the internet is for pussies. We were bored, but we got a good work out, without inflicting TOO much damage. I don't recommend what I did, but kids that think that they are breaking the rules, trolling, from behind a laptop that mummy and daddy bought them aren't exactly rebels. They are just cowards.

Nuke the server from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Does it say when we can start looting?

Yes! At Tunguska, even before they existed!

You conflate "intelligence" with being coldly logical and rational in purely monetary terms.

In my experience, human psychology is not purely logical. For example, people will often respect someone- or something- more if they are paying more for them; and, conversely, less if they are getting something on the cheap or free.

An employer that does that is probably paying through the nose for the minor privilege of being able to treat some people with such "contempt".

It would smack of someone who was more interested in indulging his bullying than running a business competently and thus raise two sets of alarms for any potential employee(!)

But even assuming the company's long-term survival was assured... Some people *will* undoubtedly accept this if they're being paid enough, but in *some* cases (which will vary depending upon the psychology of the persons involved and their motivation), it's unlikely that you'll ever get their best work, regardless of how much you pay, if you treat them with contempt.

Which, of course, makes them worth less.

Again, you are imposing your own pseudo-logical values on the concept of "intelligence". I say "pseudo-logical" because since human beings *don't* always behave as the purely rational, logical, self-interest-maximising idealised entities you assume, anything that relies on this being the case is ultimately flawed. Which, ironically, makes it illogical.

Once again, this assumes that all human behaviour is purely logical and can be traded off and gamed in such terms.

I would guess that you are probably more suited to the "in and out", supposedly demonstrable-value contractor style of doing things, as it's probably closer to the situation you describe above. If that's what suits you, then fair enough, but your chosen way of working isn't how everything works.

Remind me never, *ever* to work for you.

I wasn't particularly worried about a 2880pocalypse to begin with.

Ironically, by (possibly unintentionally) personalising the role of "investor/owner" you undermine the case I thought you were making (i.e. that of a corporation being an abstract, purely profit-maximising entity with no feelings and behaviour that would be considered "sociopathic" if they were human).

If the "investor/owner" was a single individual (or small group) that had personally planned out and set up every aspect of the functioning of the company- as the tone of your argument suggests- one could argue that he/she is a human being, and unless they are a sociopath, it'd be quite reasonable to expect him or her to view fellow human beings as more than just cogs in a machine, a means to an end. (*)

Of course, as mentioned above, in reality even the set up- let alone the running- of a larger company will require many people, to the point that people *are* cogs in a money-making machine, leading to the abstract, soulless "company" becoming something distinct from any of its employees.

That's the case I thought you were making at first, but even that well-worn argument would miss the point here.

Companies are still made up of individual people with a generally-shared group culture and values, and it's *those* values that one is ultimately talking about when we speak about companies "understanding" (or not understanding) and "respecting" engineers.

A "group" is- after all- just a set of individuals, but we talk about what certain groups of people think, their behaviours, their value judgements, etc. etc. because human beings *are* social creatures.

And even when such people are constrained by the fact they're working for a company whose ultimate aim is to make money, their interactions with each other still reflect the values and culture associated with that company. Those values may have been explicitly encouraged by those that run the company, they may have arisen indirectly due to the mentality of those at the top (e.g. lack of respect for engineers) percolating down, they might reflect behaviour that the structure of the company has encouraged.... whatever the reason, groups of humans share values even when that group is made up of millions of individuals (e.g. nations).

(*) Of course, many people running companies small and large *are* sociopaths anyway. But that'd be a reflection on them personally, and not the same thing as the purely profit-maximising "sociopathic" behaviour often ascribed to the abstract concept of a corporation.

If that's the case, I'd suggest that all the money MS paid those consultants for endless rebrandings has ultimately proved to be hugely counter-productive. As I commented on another site a couple of years back:-

I'm guessing that either:-
(i) MS were throwing money at consultants for repeated relaunches because they had no focus
(ii) The environment was conducive to consultants making money out of MS by constantly encouraging pricey rebrandings and relaunches
(iii) The constant rebranding was a reflection of the politics, internal power struggles and identity-stamping going in within MS, or
(iv) All of the above.

At any rate, I'd be interested to find out how on the money- if at all- this guesswork is, from someone like yourself who actually worked at MS. :-)

Since Chevrolet is a GM brand anyway (and has been since the early 20th century), I'd assume that's redundant unless Chevrolet is run and/or seen as being significantly separate from GM's other operations in North America?

I specifically noted North America because I live in the UK, and your mention of those brands brought up and issue- the European market is quite different, both in terms of cars and in perception of brands. Chevrolet was virtually nonexistent here until the mid-2000s, when GM started using it for Korean-built lower-end models formerly sold under the Daewoo Motors brand (which they'd bought out). *That* probably bears little resemblance to what the brand is associated with in North America.

(The Chrysler brand is interesting in that- following its reintroduction in the UK and Ireland (*) after the Fiat takeover a few years back - they *did* use an all-American voiceover and American-style ads relating to their heritage... hinting at, but never explicitly linking it to America. Which is probably because the cars being sold as "Chryslers" in those ads were those sold elsewhere in Europe under the Italian "Lancia" brand! (**))

Similarly, Vauxhall and Opel, GM's "main" brands in the UK, and in the rest of Europe respectively (***) have a generally decent reputation, and even though Ford sells cars under its own name here, it doesn't have the generally-bad reputation it does over there. In both cases, this is almost certainly because most models sold by those companies in Europe are entirely different to the North American lineup, and also because they're generally either built in Europe or imported from Asia, not North America.

In fact, to some extent, it's not so much North America and Europe, as it is North America and the rest of the world. It's been pointed out that the North American car industry may be an example of the Galapagos syndrome relative to the rest of the world. (For example, I can imagine many Japanese cars being usable on British streets, but some of the larger American models would be massively out of place and impractical on smaller and twistier British roads).

But the tl;dr bottom line is that the repuation of such companies and their brands is often very different outside the US- often to their advantage!

(*) Chrysler apparently tried entering the European market in the 1960s, but- unlike GM and Ford- didn't succeed, and left in the late 1970s.
(**) Lancias were taken off the UK market after they gained a notorious reputation for corrosion problems in the 1980s- probably exacerbated by the climate here- and I suspect Fiat's decision not to use the brand here may still be for this reason, i.e. a European example of a hard-to-shake bad reputation.
(**) Vauxhall has long been to all intents and purposes just the UK counterpart brand for Opel cars- the models are virtually identical.

What chemicals spilled, other than all the radioactive water?

And since when have people not been interested in the effects of chemical spills, genetic or otherwise?

Bah, you're making the radical assumption that scientists have a clue about the things they study.

Yes, if there's a reactor meltdown in your neighborhood you should stay put and ignore the panic mongers. A little radiation never did anything.