But is /dev/null web-scale?: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6995033/mongo-db-is-web-scale :-)

This. I would shower you with mod points, if I could.

As a professional developer since the early 2000s, I've been saying the exact same things about agile processes ever since I was introduced to them. I've come to like TDD (if it's taken as a guideline rather than an ideology in which perfect code-coverage is achieved), if it's combined with heavy, Waterfall-like requirements analysis up-front, and a reasonable amount of documentation.

But on the whole, everything else seems to be a management trick to try to screw devs into longer hours for no extra pay, and into producing more-frequent status reports, more-fragile/less-error-handling software, with a shorter time-to-delivery.

After seeing dozens of projects numbering in the double-digits this way (a few of which I've participated in), across almost as many organizations, I'm convinced that most of agile methodology -- in practice, if not in ideal -- is bullshit snake-oil sold to senior management to try to make junior management look "proactive" and up-to-date on the latest tech and management trends. These junior managers are complicit with consulting firms selling their business process services to convert clients to using agile methodology (I was once such a consultant paid partly to spread the gospel). But frankly, this is the standard relationship seen between consulting firms and their clients: clients buy-into the idea that the unearned perception of competence propounded by the consultancy, and believe (wrongly, in a significant percentage of cases) that the consultancy's employees are more-competent than their own... "A fool and his money are soon parted".

The best I can say about Agile is that I believe at the time it was created (back around 2000), by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, etc., it may have been a clever way to stanch the offshoring trend of the time, by claiming that close face-to-face interaction between project stakeholders (devs, managers, BAs, end-users, etc.) was critical to project success. I've found this is actually very, very true -- but this is frankly a very, very old management lesson. That, and I don't think Waterfall (which I've also spent lots of time doing) is the right methodology, either. The least-bad methodology really depends on the purpose and reliability requirements of the software project...

That is a really cool map! Thanks for posting! :)

Indeed. Moreover, Jefferson himself fought in Congress to abolish slavery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery

In the Virginia Assembly, in the 1780s Jefferson supported a bill to prohibit the state from importing slaves. In the 1784 Congress, Jefferson proposed federal legislation banning slavery in the New Territories of the Northwest, but it was not passed.[4] In 1804 as president, he refused to recognize Haiti, a new republic established by a slave rebellion, and in 1805 and 1806 enacted an arms and trade embargo against them. In 1807 he signed a bill prohibiting the US from participating in the international slave trade; it had been protected from federal regulation for 20 years under compromises of the United States Constitution.[5]

True, it was philosophically-hypocritical of him to own slaves and only free two of them. But, it also believed that Jefferson believed that if freed, his slaves would be re-captured and would be treated much-worse elsewhere (so I learned from a tour guide when I visited his Monticello home several years ago). His position, then, seems to have been one of pragmatic harm-minimization, rather than ideological purity. For his time, his anti-slave stance was quite progressive, even though by today's standards, he would be (rightly) demonized and considered a laughingstock.

...recent Western culture has shown that a higher percentage of men have become fathers in the past few generations than before that.

As more and more males become adjusted to the instant high of popular culture, we'll just return to the times when a tinier percentage of men were having all the babies.

Marriage is already on a decline, in some races good husbands are hard to find so women have more biracial babies, and the powerful men won't stop spreading their seed.

Does it matter to me if the weak male class doesn't have kids? Hell no -- and they make good employees, too. Maybe better ones.

If they went all out enforcing every law on the books, A) serious crimes would be neglected, and B) lots (more) innocent people would be caught up in things that aren't their fault, or even worth wasting everyone's time over.

True enough insofar as the quantity of laws exist. But anything less than perfect enforcement of the law has the following consequences:

1) Selective enforcement, which tends to imply arbitrary enforcement, which tends to coincide with discriminatory (racist, sexist, etc.) enforcement.

2) The proliferation of laws you rightly note make enforcing the law in-full so difficult. (If a law is not fully-enforced, then when somebody breaks that law and nothing happens, what is the response of the victim? "There oughta be a law!")

I submit to you that if the law were enforced fully and to the letter, citizens would pay more attention to the laws on the books and -- because "ignorance is no defense", and because even lawyers and IRS agents do not understand all the laws that they specialize in (much less the ones *outside* their specialties) -- we would have far-fewer laws... laws, which, as Ayn Rand said, are created so that we may classify people as criminals who previously would not have been so-classified.

I want every speed limit in my city enforced as strictly as possible -- so that people will get pissed-off at the low limits and demand they be raised. (It happened in Illinois after the 1995 federal highway speed limit was repealed: the governor wanted to keep the speed limit at 55mi/h, but almost overnight, due to a torrent of angry phone calls and letters, he backed-away from that position.) Likewise with every other law, for the same reason.

Oh, really? In what way is police brutality not condoned by our government (and even moreso by many other governments around the world)? For example, the police officers depicted on this site?: http://www.theagitator.com/

And why aren't those officers behind bars?

On the plus side, at least the privatized security theaters could compete against each other -- assuming an agglomeration of security services doesn't corner the market. (e.g., Blackwater/Xe/Academi providing screening for >= 90% of airports)

And, unlike with the Federal government, at least you can sue businesses, as well as file criminal charges against their employees (assuming Congresscritters don't insert immunity clauses - which seems likely).

The >3000 people who died on 9/11 might disagree.

Then millions of Americans who were not killed on 9/11 apparently (from various news reports) disagree with those 3,000. Your argument is classic post-hoc reasoning: the 3,000 did not experience the security-state Medusa that is the DHS and its subsidiary TSA. Those unfortunate individuals would have had only the same pre-9/11 experience those of us older than a teenager had.

Given that information, they *might* have come to your assumed conclusion -- but given our experiences of the TSA in response to 9/11, they might *not* have come to your conclusion.

One who thinks in probabilities does not think as you do. In assessing terror risk, you sound like somebody who failed Probability 101, or one who is a timid, whiny person, easily-frightened by bearded men speaking a foreign language while carrying box-cutters.

An aside: Also, it is morally-presumptious, arrogant, and intellectually-flatulent of you to claim to know what the victims (or anyone else, living or dead) would say.

They never said:

1. Unlimited speeds
2. Unlimited data

The term "unlimited" is from the AOL-centric dial-up days where you had a limited amount of connection hours.

Unlimited still means *unlimited connection time*.

It's been discussed before. Read your TOS and the fine print on advertising.

Primes have no patterns, so why not just map sounds/beats to prime numbers?

I have two B&N nooks, and I've always been able to share any of the books I buy with friends.

There's a limitation (8 weeks or something), and you can't loan the same book to the same friend twice.

I can also "check out" books from my local library via their website, and I've done that before trips where I won't have good Internet coverage.

How does B&N get away with being able to do it, but Amazon can't?

If they would let the developers choose to add sponsored results within the map (with a category to pick so as not to compete), maybe they can offset the price.

I wouldn't have a problem if my map showed Taco Bell or Red Box locations.

Of course, I guess the app or website could filter the sponsored results out, but I'm sure Google's smart spiders and human TOS verifiers could detect it and remove the free access. If only 0.35% of their API users are affected, it's not like they've got that much work to confirm proper TOS compliance.

I think a lot of a woman's security has to do with city and neighborhood, too. I have a few friends who are college educated or better and who also have entered the amateur porn field (here in Chicago there are plenty of jobs and they pay well) -- none of them feel the least bit afraid of stalkers and fans. One gal I know has been performing mostly solo work (full nudity, though) and she has guys come up to her at bars and during the day and are all really nice.

On the other hand, practically EVERY waitress I know who works a late shift (diner or bar) has people follow her home -- even in the dead of Chicago's winter.

Dr. Sbaitso? Is that you???