Agreed. A manager who says that turnover is not a problem is a manager that has no inkling of what engineers do, what exactly their company produces, or how badly they are in trouble when knowledge and experience walk out the door. Either that, or they're lying to your face.

There's that tipping point when the work gets harder, the code is even more rotted, the "process" is even more constricting, because they know something is wrong but they need to "measure" everything to figure out why. That's when people are running, not walking out the door.

My observation has been that resort hotels (the ones with restaurants in them) charge an arm and a leg because they are targeting two type of customers:

1. Tourists/Vacationers
2. Convention/Conference goers

In the case of #1, you're probably not a repeat customer (or at least, repeat often enough for them to care). They want to wring every last dollar out of you while they can.

In the case of #2, you're a captive customer (the con is nearby or in this hotel, unless you have a car you're not going to wander far), and you might possibly be able to expense things.

If you were a high-roller that stayed regularly, I'll bet you they wouldn't nickle and dime you, not unless they were morons and wanted to drive you into the hands of the competition. The rest of us are just sheep to be fleeced.

For the lower cost hotels (like the Holiday Inn Expresses), where there is no built in restaurant, and they offer amenities like free wifi and free continental breakfast, they're targeting repeat business and price sensitive travelers. They often don't have the best location compared to the resort hotels (you *will* need a car), but as a consequence their expenses are probably lower. The more extreme version of this are the Extended Stay type hotels, which have kitchens and refrigerators.

The really dumpy hotels have no choice. Their plant is run down, and they may be a no-name. Unless they offer free amenities, nobody in their right mind is going to stay at their place (assuming similar nightly rents) unless there's no choice.

So... Getty Images, instead of using the power of image-matching algorithms to get more customers for its library by setting up a checkout point at the end of the auto-slideshow and/or tack on advertising (ala YouTube) just torpedoed the whole thing instead.

You figure they had the tech to identify the infringing images to begin with. Why not just say to Microsoft "hey, we have this set of algorithms that you're welcome to use to improve your widget. Let's talk about blanket licensing for Bing in exchange for downstream revenue."

Chris Hadfield is a Canadian. Of course he wants international cooperation, otherwise, how is any non-US or non-Russian governmental astronaut/cosmonaut supposed to hitch a ride up and get a berth in orbit?

So... why not small claims? If every person who was in the right on YouTube filed a small claims case against a media entity, they could be bled to death through a thousand cuts, and it would either put a stop to the practice, or make judges aware that the big media companies are abusing their power, which could be very helpful once someone wants to do a class action to stop what is essentially private taxation (running ads on independently produced content) for the benefit of corporations. I mean, seriously - we've seen this before. Independent artist releases album. Independent artist's track gets licensed and used for some big movie studio trailer. Big movie studio trailer gets uploaded to YouTube by big movie studio. Next thing you know, independent artist's promo videos get banned or adjacked because some idiot matching algorithm looks at big movie studio trailer, automatically assumes big movie studio owns the independent artist's works, and now independent artist is screwed and has to do double the work to reclaim the rights to their own work.

Go to hell Beta! or you broke slashdot on my mobile device and never fixed it, so now what are you doing?

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!