Right idea, but we have two tabs, two laptops, two phones, etc. Everything that is fixed, yes, hardwired.

Well... not really. It just came across- or so it seemed originally- as a bad hybrid of stock cliche Italian and Chinese accents (which may well be considered racist now, but it's not like *I* was the one doing them! Mind you, we can't blame Jeremiah Cornelius for that either, at least not in intent- his only crime was being very bad at Scottish accents :-) ).

On reflection, though, it's *not* actually that much like Chinese at all- not even the most offensively stereotyped version- and it only looked cod-Italian because of the vowel at the end of "need(a)"- not sure how that's even incorrectly reminiscent of a Scottish accent!

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure *what* the fsck it *does* resemble, to be honest.... oh yeah, a very bad Scots accent. :-)

Thank you for your half-baked opinion on why Scotland is "proving itself stupid".

In fact, the freedom to speak Gaelic (which is the "mother tongue" of very few Scots, and still only spoken by a small proportion) has little to do with the push for independence.

Your er.... *eloquent* speech on remaining together did nothing to address the contradiction that traditional Tory voters in their south-east England heartlands are moving against EU membership. The Tories-- afraid of losing votes to UKIP (the UK Independence party) who are pushing this policy- are pandering to *their* potential voters by promising a referendum on EU membership in 2017, which- if they win- would result in the UK leaving the EU.

Scotland is (in general) much more in favour of the EU, and UKIP support here is *much* lower than it is in the south-east of England. But, of course, if the English vote is sufficiently against EU membership... tough for poor Scotland who (hypothetically) remained attached to Little England. Should Scotland "stand together" with the people who didn't "stand together" with the EU?

Devolution has improved things somewhat, but control of the UK overall- including the economy and many devolved matters- remains with Westminster, which is run by an increasingly right-wing Tory government which the Scots did *not* elect, and whose political trajectory has been veering away from Scottish values for a generation. (Some readers may be surprised to note that the Tories once had a significant share of the Scottish vote. In the 1955 general election, they gained a majority of votes and a majority of the seats here. Such a prospect would be unthinkable now- there is only one Scottish Tory MP).

This has been happening since Thatcher came to power in the late-1970s, promising "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony"- either hugely ironic or intentionally hypocritical since she was a divide-and-rule politician with a "them and us" mentality that abandoned any notion of "one nation conservatism", decimated Scottish industry, squandered revenues from North Sea Oil- most of which would have belonged to Scotland if independent- on funding the unemployment her policies caused. In short, she pandered to the Tory heartland of the South East (England), and foisted her values on Scots who profoundly disagreed with them.

In the post-Thatcher era, we got the once left-wing Labour party selling out to stand any chance of being elected by the South East, to the point they were arguably more right wing and more pro free market than the pre-Thatcher Conservatives. Following Blair's nauseating arse-licking of George W Bush (which bought him nothing- as any idiot could see at the time- and was a result of his egotism, hubris and messiah complex) we got the Tories again, even more right wing despite initial promises, and the Liberal Democrats selling out to become their meaningless lapdogs, and Labour giving laughably diluted wishy-washy concessions to their socialist past. All three promising nothing I- and many other Scots- find of value.

And that's partly what it comes down to. Some people clearly did vote for all this- but not the Scots. If the "Yes" campaign loses, it'll be because the "No"s cast sufficient doubt on Scotland's ability to go it alone, not because they had anything inspiring or positive to say about the Union.

I could go on about this all day, but I have other things to get on with. But once again, thank you for your patronising opinion on our stupidity. Cheers!

... so Agile can fuck off, yeah?

It's bad enough having to put up with all the "agile" bullshit at work, from their utterly pointless daily stand-up meetings to their fucking little cards on the wall everywhere (managers of the world: WE USE ELECTRONIC TRACKING SYSTEMS NOW). Add to that the unbearable Friday "retrospective" meetings (yeah, the last fucking thing I want to do on a Friday is sit in another pointless meeting talking about our problems) and then the Monday three hour meetings where we waste time voting on how long it should take other people to do their job instead of just fucking doing it.

I suppose you're talking about Scrum. As a Scrum Master, maybe I should give some hints.

Let me fill you in on some details:

1.) You're supposed to stand at dailies, so you are eager to finish them fast and so you're quick to move your cards on the board. That's why Scrums are timeboxed (with me it's 15mins max) and limitied to what you can discuss about. If the team doens't get through, no matter. Scrums over. Move your remaining cards and get coding. Be more brief tomorrow. It's that simple.

2.) After trying various electronic tracking systems we moved to cards on a wall. The crew gets away from their PCs and are forced to communicate with each other. And even the secretary and the sales team can use a pinboard without futher explaination, and when they join a Scrum they don't feel like standing in a room full of antisocial douchebags just typing away at their desks. Plus, when you are using it, everyone is watching, which helps you stick to the method. That's why I advocate pinboards for scrum tasking ever since. For huge amount of tasks managed in backlog software, printing the cards might be an option - we did that once - but a Pinboard it should be. People get their coffee or water and meet at the pinboard, not at the watercooler or the kitchen. Does wonders to project awareness and awareness of what others are doing.

3.) Backlog assembly meeting (BAM) - apparently your Monday 3 hour thing (makes me sleepy just thinking of it) - should be done by those who need to do it you don't need the entire team for BAM, especially if 300 tasks need to be judged. You do need the team for assigning complexitiy points, but that can be done if there's something the BAM team has no clue of. BAM task-complexity is temporary anyway, as is the setup of the team. If there's only editing and no programming to be done for the next 4 weeks, it's beyond pointless having a progger do BAM - unless you've got nobody else to do it and the programmer has some spare time. And only in Sprint Planning is complexity set in stone. And Sprint Planning / Sprint Assembly is a different meeting, also timeboxed (1 hour with me, Fridays (I've got weekly sprints)).

Complexity assignment should be done with planning poker, and shouldn't cover microtasking. It should only cover sellable features and one tasklayer below that. Also, BAMs should take place when you need them, not on a fixed date. That's a recipe for timewasting. That aside, planning poker is fun and lets you walk through droves of tasks in no time. You get to judge effort and requirements and *everybody* on the team has an impression of what's coming up in the next few weeks. That is *very* important. ... This should happen in sprint planning the latest. Very often people of a certain field notice things that have been forgotten by management, long before the task is even due. Also very helpful and a big plus of a formalised method such as scrum.

4.) Yes, Scrum has an overhead, just like any other method. Quit whining. The job of Scrum is to keep the overhead to an *absolute* minimum while keeping everything else tightly organised and flexible on a sprint to sprint basis at the same time. If that doesn't happen, you or your Scrum Master is doing it wrong.

5.) Scrum gives your Scrum Master the power to tell you boss "Leave my guy alone, we're full up with tasks, unless you want me to bust this sprint and push everything ahead for the amount of sprintdays left." Keeping the bosses at bay is one big upside of scrum and one of the many tasks of work-organisation. ... Imagine what that would be like if it weren't for the method. ...

Thinking of it, maybe your Scrum Master should take you out of the team and hand you over to your boss and his sales team as their personal coding monkey for a few weeks - maybe that would change your mind. I'd do that. You'll come back loving Scrum and Agile so much, you'll want children from it. :-)

My 2 cents.

It's actually quite impressive that you didn't even say anything out loud, yet still managed to convincingly give the impression of the least-convincing Scots accent *ever*. :-)

I mean, what does the Italian-Chinese community have to do with it?!

So long as you don't blame it on Tesla, Bitcoin, or Starts with a Bang, everyone here will cool with it.

AlienOn. Apply directly to the forehead.
AlienOn. Apply directly to the forehead.
AlienOn. Apply directly to the forehead.
AlienOn. Apply directly to the forehead.

You're making quite a big assumption there- we didn't actually *see* any of this. (*) It's far more likely that Kirk- being Kirk- is engaging in what we can euphemistically call "inter-species sex" (cough) and just doesn't give that much of a ****. (**) I'm sure that if there wasn't a... compatible hole, he'd find one that fits closely enough.

That looks a lot worse now that it's been typed out. :-/

(*) Though I'm sure that one or more geeks have attempted an unofficial porno version focusing on this anyway.

(*) And no, post-hoc rationalisation 30 years down the line doesn't count. Pretty sure that as far as the original authors were concerned, Kirk was banging green-skinned alien, er, chicks, and that was it.

Obligatory.

While we're here, what's up with that Ancient Aliens guy's hair? Is he a massive Babylon 5 fan or something?!

Glad to hear you survived! ^^;

FWIW, windmills and skyscrapers kill a lot of birds too.

And automobiles, for that matter.

Why not skip all the expensive equipment and just use birds for fuel?

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.