How long before the next incoming majority party decides to use the NSA data to clean house? Just to make sure that their government is free of ties to terrorism, foreign governments, and corruption, of course... and to ensure that everyone is loyal and pure of ideology.

Just tell them that your machine got virused and you had to use the restore disk... Seriously though, if it gets that bad, they'll detain you for not having a cellphone for them to suck all your contacts out of. At that point, better not to even travel.

"There's a reason we create police forces and military forces. They represent an elite group of people with the proper training and psychological stability to use firearms for the public good."

And who trains these people?

Someone who is a good shot (as opposed to someone who carries a sidearm simply because it is a condition of their job) must train and practice on a regular basis. Exceptional shooters can be drawn from all walks of life, but like athletes, the younger you start, the sharper your skills can be.

I don't see military or police budgets being used to train the next generation of shooters in this art. I do see private organizations dedicated to fostering competition and martial skill providing the coaching, training, and support of youth sport shooting. Do not forget that the USA fields competitors and teams for firearms competitions in the Olympics. Where do you think the raw talent comes from?

Civilian shooters provide an important pool of talent, not only in times of emergency, but as a community dedicated to maintaining and advancing the shooting arts.

Crap, to clarify, once you get a better *offer*, which values you at market, leave.

Uh... no. What you do is take the position so you have the title. Then you take your resume, beef it up and THEN look for solid offers for positions elsewhere. Once you get the position... leave. Don't bother to educate your organization. Let the market do that. You need to look after yourself and your career. I spent a long time fighting the fight you're proposing to do, in the end, it wasn't worth it. Too much bureaucratic crap that basically condemns you to pay increases that are pegged to your base salary, and not to any real world metric of what you're worth.

1. Go to the woods, record birdsong.
2. Make a bunch of videos and post to YouTube
3. Wait for takedown
4. Sue Rumblefish in small claims court for the ad revenue they got from Google.
5. Profit!!!!

The breakdown of the fine is quite interesting: $1.4M was for not handing over the patient records in a timely manner when requested by the patient. $3M was for not cooperating with the investigation. This was $1.5M a year for two years. It would have been tens of millions more, but the maximum per year was capped at $1.5M. The only reason the fine was even levied was because the company in question didn't even bother to offer an explanation of why their process was fubar.

Clearly, the lesson all developers should be taking from this project manager's example is that:

1. Your work for the current company isn't as valued as the new whiz-bang initiative that the VP is funding.

2. You should allocate your time accordingly. Instead of spending all of your time becoming proficient in the business requirements, and spending your extra hours trying to keep on top of your workload (which only results in their attaching that new kid with the whiz-bang resume like a limpet for you to mentor and transfer your business requirements knowledge), you should instead be spending your time learning new whiz-bang technologies and preparing your resume for jumping ship, since that is what the market is valuing.

3. Thus, by the time they try to screw you over, not only will you have a job at a competitor making a new whiz-bang salary, you'll be helping the rest of us by driving up the average market salary for experienced programmers!

There's a reason you don't want salespeople running a company.

Sales Exec (upon being told that the company is losing a dollar for every unit they sell at current pricing): "That's ok, we'll just make it up in volume!"

The (un)funny thing is that to salespeople, THIS MAKES SENSE - their bonuses are typically based on the amount of sales, not whether the sale actually made money...

Do you want to just write code? Do you want experience? Do you have minimum pay requirements (due to living expenses, loans, etc.)?

You may be better off finding an internship somewhere if you haven't already secured one. Barring that, I'd suggest developing your own software, or doing some contracting work.

Depending on your skill set and your career goals, you may not want an entry-level job.

On the other hand, working a shit job may very well get you the contacts you need to get a non-shit job.

Not to mention, if you want to do an electric vehicle conversion (where the old gas engine is removed and replaced with an electric drivetrain), scrapping old cars effectively destroys your source of donor vehicles!

"Should the bill pass, the "Cash for Clunkers" program would reimburse drivers with a credit of $2,500 to $4,500 for drivers who turn in fuel-inefficient vehicles to be scrapped and purchase a more fuel efficient vehicle."

Sounds like an automotive version of gun buybacks, and equally as silly.

If the goal is to save the environment, tying the credit to the purchase of a new vehicle just takes a perfectly good car whose environmental costs have already been incurred out of circulation.

If the goal is to reduce oil consumption, using taxpayer money to fund the purchase of new cars, instead of getting affordable, useful mass transit, seems like a horrible waste of money.

Clearly, this is designed to prop up the auto industry. By reducing the number of used cars on the market, which compete with new cars, and using taxpayer money for what normally would be the trade-in value of their car, they're artificially reducing the supply of cars in the country in order to drive sales of new cars. This has the effect of screwing over people who would never be able to buy a new car, since there will be a reduction in the supply of used cars.

But that's ok. The government wants you to get deeper into debt to buy things you can't afford. That's the ticket out of this recession!