As a manager, here are the two pieces of advice I'd pass on:

1. We don't use passive voice in our memos. College is wrong. I've been out of college for a long time, but I always want to write to the business writing prof I had and let him know. We stress active voice.

2. I picked this up from a Murawski course (which deals with active voice writing). It was, "Doing work is bringing your supervisor a solution, not problems." That is, me going to my boss and saying, "Hey, I've got a problem here," isn't doing work. The work is going to my boss and bringing him or her a solution to the problem. Now, sometimes you get stuck and need help, and that's fine, and I'm happy to help - but your goal as an employee should be to bring me proposed solutions to problems (or, better yet, just take care of it, if you can).

Note, I have yet to meet anyone who calls them "Freedom Fries". Most Europeans probably understand the difference between a publicity stunt and reality.

From what I read, it sounded like even if the car had the feature, it would have been deactivated because he was accelerating - in other words, the car assumes the driver is behaving in a sane manner and deactivates the feature.

...because people don't want to pay for features they won't use? We don't have a sunroof in our truck, because we know we'd use it only rarely. Someone else might use that sunroof all the time. On the other hand, for our car, we paid extra for the memory driver's seat, because my wife is much shorter than I am, so we're always readjusting the driver's seat between us, and it's a time saver, plus there's probably a small safety bonus from getting the seat in the same position every time. But for a car that's normally only going to be driven by one person, a memory seat is kind of a useless feature.

When's the last time it was every six months?

Hint: It was probably sometime back when the release was two CDs, and not 6 CDs and 2 double-sided DVDs.

Where's my pothead hippie atheist science enthusiast candidate? Preferably one that also likes the military.

And yes, one can be a pacifist *and* still carry a wicked weapon. Speak softly, and carry a big stick?

I am frustrated to no end with the current political climate, and by extension the slow steady decline of this nation (usa) in the past 30+ years.

One is the car "key" (that round mini / bmw thing), that has a cast metal enamel Wakko Warner in a rather acrobatic pose dangling from it. Looks great when I'm hard left and he's sticking almost sideways

The other is the rest of the keys, on that i have a piston (complete with connecting rod and piston pin - the whole thing is maybe an inch long), a small pill bottle, a maglite led solitaire, the fob to get into the building i work at, and that's it. The rest is keys.

When I had an RX8 the fob had a working model of a rotary engine -- just one rotor though. But it did make the motions of a real wankel rotary. Great to illustrate to people how they work.

Actually we're building a large scale data collection operation using iPads, Android tablets, smartphones, and the like. We just have to develop the apps. The hardware is taken care of for us!

If their plan is to get more third parties to go along with their DRM, then they haven't really learned a thing yet.

Oh come *on!* It's not too hard to guess, it's the same one in 10 Downing St!

Scr3w7h3pr0le5

Simple - those things have reached a certain degree of maturity - just like microwave ovens, hi-fi, TV/monitors, cars, airplanes, etc. For the most part we're just refining things that existed many decades ago in slightly different forms.

Generally speaking, the only places left to innovate are software ("apps") and integration of All Of The Above -- so really, the only place left for true innovation is the Internet of Things -- and even then.. it's just mashing disparate technologies together using a 40+ year old network.

Every now and then some genuine innovation does come along - smartphones, UCS, SSD, Moonshot, that new intel computer-on-a-usb-stick.

We're doomed. Dooooooomed!

Yeah, when I switched back to iOS that was definitely something that took getting used to. It didn't bother me before I switched to Android, but after coming back to iOS, it was like, "Hey, what's wrong with the shift button?" Neither platform is perfect, though. Android irritated me with some of its quirks, too.

Blind spots don't exist because car design makes for them, blind spots exist because drivers never were taught, or never learned, how to properly set up their car.

I've had old cars and new cars, and none of them have had blind spots. Including the Miata what with it's "huge" c-pillars when top-up, an Rx-8 that people insist had huge blind spots and bad visibility, and a Mini with a small back window and fat c-pillars. All these criticisms are bogus, but people *hate* being told they're wrong.

I could spend many bytes explaining why there is no such thing as blind spots, but you'll likely dismiss my explanation. So here, spend some time educating yourself on the problem and the solution.

One way.

Car and Driver's Way.

This is the one I use, they all mean the same thing anyway.