Since you are now selling access to me, why am I not getting a fiscal benefit as a result?

Is this different from Linkedin's paid messages as those are work/career context that has a precedent?

Is this different from Postal mail?

Exactly. I don't want a touch phone, I want a slider keyboard phone. HTC made great ones and now I can't find any.

How about Larry "Sugarbear" Reyes? You don't need a technical head, just some guy from Rackspace to run around in a straight jacket.

I am a Release manager at Acquity Group and have worked for "Old School" software companies that have their eyes blazing at all the new web companies that release release release all day long.

Here is the abbreviated philosophic path to victory:

DevOps.

Your developers need to act like operations (knowing how the code is deployed and configuration settings, routes and the like) guys and your operations guys need to start coding (as in ruby for puppet and chef, automation and automation and automation)

This leads to...

Infrastructure as Code.

Hire a Release Engineer or convert a sysadmin to start automating builds. Now you start automating code deployments, you start automating infrastructure deployments so they are repeatable.

This leads to...

Test Automation.

Now you need to stop focusing on smoke testing and have test automation engineers write automated test code.

One more thing...

Automated Rollback

When things go nuts, with fast deploys you need fast rollback. Capistrano is a great tool for deploying this way, rollback is very easy.

Now you can ...

Continuous Delivery.

Great, you got this far, your builds, testing, deploys are automated!

For Developers:

Coding for Continuous Delivery is a different paradigm where unfinished code makes it to production. This means that in the production configuration, settings for the new code must be activated by switches to turn new feature sets on. You don't want that unfinished code mucking up your site, right?

People Processes:

Do you have CAB boards and ITIL processes? Great, make them faster and more as DEV/TEST/QA becomes automated and just focus on UAT/Prod environments. See this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Visible-Ops-Handbook-Implementing/dp/0975568612/

I can also gloss over on waterfall/Agile and hybrid software models.

Finally, unless your culture wants to shift, it may be damned near impossible to change the culture unless management wants to. If it's doomed, it's doomed!

Great job on the correct link attributions in summary. Gold star.

All right, we get sick of Slashdot editor bashing, but this needs to be addressed.

The link to the Chicago Tribune is from a Reuters newsfeed. The attribution should be to Reuters, via Chicago Tribune.

For quick reference, any "feed" stories from tribune company are going to have "sns" in the title. Other papers will vary.

(From a former Tribune Co. Employee).

Didn't notice if this was mentioned or not, but there are some commercial solutions like deathswitch.com

They fire off emails to you on a schedule. If you fail to respond, then they suspect maybe you are pushing up daisies... other fail-safes kick in (they check with a designated friend, etc.). If you are, indeed gone, then they spew whatever you want to whomever you designate. You can even program in a follow up or two for later. A year after you are dead, a nice parting practical joke, eh?

There is even more to the story, as the mother "opted-in" for the food inspection program but forgot she did so. It was a non-story story. I forgot about this additional blog post:

Enjoy: http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/02/15/a-north-carolina-non-troversy/

The Turkey Sandwich story is a bunch of hysterical bunk that was rapidly picked up by Fox News and Huffington Post. It was a bunch of poorly worded reporting by the original source, Carolina Journal.

Please read: http://www.carolinajournal.com/jhdailyjournal/display_jhdailyjournal.html?id=8780 for the real deal.

H2?! The Ancient Aliens Bull Shit network? All of History channel, RIP.

What??? Game Programmers are NOT secretive at all. We share virtually everything! I'm sitting right now at the tail end of GDC where we spent a week of doing nothing but sharing. Where did you get that notion?

Seriously.... a book?

Just Google what you want to know.

If you've done C#, then look at XNA. It lets you do game stuff in C#. You know how to program, now just pick up things you don't know to build on that toolbox. On sites like http://create.msdn.com/ you can find all the information you need, and better yet, full functioning examples projects to pick apart and learn from.

Why back in my day there was no Google machine. Much less any book son the subject. Now there is so much information out there, for free, you have no excuse to not just trip over it even if you take 10 seconds to look for it.

ROWE was initiated at Best Buy internally and has grown way past that. It may be the one great thing Best Buy ever came up with.

You can be snarky about it. Or... educate yourself.

Actually, I don't care either way. For those of us who live it, there is absolutely no going back. Ever.

Yes, I was being hyperbolic to make a point and get attention.... :D

We did away with formal vacation time, sick time, etc.

You have unlimited amounts of it.

ROWE is a system where an employeer treats their employees like competent adults who know how to manage their time.

Does everyone know how to do that? No. And those people fail to get good results under ROWE and get fired.

Is measuring results hard? It's as easy or as hard as you want to make it. You can do 360 Reviews and all that BS if you want. Or you can keep it more informal, like we do.

ROWE increases productivity and employee's become amazingly loyal.

The biggest difficulty with it is for the boss(es) who feel like they are somehow losing control. Who fear that the day after they start ROWE no one will come into the office anymore. Know what really happens? People come into the office, they get work done, and they feel far, far less stress.

It is amazing. Its simple. It works. And of all the BS systems that have come and gone, this is the one that just flat out does what it says.

We'd never consider going back. Ever.

At my company, we did away with vacations. You get no vacation time. At. All.

But that was just for starters, we also did away with sick time. None.

Personal days? Don't make me laugh.

I am proud to say that was my initiative.

One might think this could have some impact on moral. But when asked during on camera interviews, how much would people have to pay you to leave? Some said at least double, and most said they couldn't even think of a number.

If you want to know how that's possible, then Google ROWE. Results Only Work Environment. And you'll understand why.

I give talks about our transition to ROWE, and it's been nothing but phenomenal.

David