They are trying to block the layoffs from their mind

I think [MS products] will get worse...

Uh, how is that a change?

A lot of people think the tiles are cool. They just didn't have to make everything else stupid.

Same thing that's in my wallet

When the announcement that cuts were coming I made a comment on /. about how everyone at Microsoft would be looking over their shoulder wondering whether their job would be cut.

Howling responses insisted that no, the only jobs being cut were going to be in Finland and tied to Nokia.

Now we find out that jobs are being cut in Washington, Silicon Valley, and Fargo. Hmmm, thats a long way from Finland.

"We desperately need more H1B's to manage the staff reduction! We cannot afford to retrain our existing employees in staff reduction management technologies." -MS

The irony is that you can only really accomplish the needed sustainability if you do NOT try to accomplish the former.

Communism and to a lesser extent Socialism always attack the rich and promise the spoils to "the people". In the end the people always end up with nearly nothing (see Venezuela).

Whereas that evil vile capitalism has only ever just pulled millions upon millions of people out of poverty, worldwide, over the past 60 years.

I remember the original Saccharin scare in the '70's, and several of the hippy chicks in my extended family warning me and my parents off artificially sweetened "poison." Yeah, they actually said "poison." Hippy chicks are like that. Fast forward to the late '90's and the food companies start pushing the idea that "No, they're fine! Really!" As annoying as the hippy chicks are, I'm more inclined to trust them over some corporation whose entire profit-driven reason for existing is to turn me into a fat fuck. The guys who own them probably also own the pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs that try to fix all the side effects of being a fat fuck, too. That's a win-win for them, right there.

Ultimately if you want to solve this problem, don't eat sugar OR artificial sweeteners. Don't put anything that could be found in a vending machine in your body. Good dietary tip right there. If everyone in the world just stopped drinking soft drinks, that'd be an enormous win for humanity's overall health. Sure, it would destroy a few of the most powerful companies on the planet in the process, but you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

If I recall correctly, most of that is coming from the universal service fund. It's designed so that some farmer who's the only guy for 40-50 miles can get phone service at all. The last mile problem gets MUCH worse when that last mile is 50 miles.

It this country, we have an expectation that phone service will just work everywhere, that you can turn on your tap and get drinkable water, that you can turn on the lights and they'll always work and that you can get on the road and drive anywhere. Out west, none of those things has ever been guaranteed. I can see a future where "We the People" make it increasingly difficult to pay for the infrastructure that makes these things possible. There have been several instances in the news recently where some city or other can't (or won't) provide drinkable water to its people. In other "Advanced, industrialized" countries (like India,) daily blackouts are a thing in a lot of places. We only avoid that because we had the foresight to build our infrastructure. Once all that falls to shit (Which it's doing rapidly) it's going to be a LOT more expensive to get back to this state than it would have been if we'd just maintained it in the first place. I'm getting older and will probably die before the country REALLY starts to collapse, but you kids might want to start getting used to farm living now. It looks like that's all the previous couple of generations is going to leave you.

These new batches of "Capitalist Commie" countries sometimes have the worst of both capitalism and communism, such as 1) wage slavery, and 2) no ability to do anything about it politically.

One could argue the US was such a country during the late 1800's. The "big 3" mega-oligopolies bribed the system up the wazoo such that democracy was a zombie at the time. (Some argue we are headed back that way now.)

Wow, your original post fits my experience in my Blue days to a "t". I was going to swap serial numbers with you. I am now working at a Huge Plant and while Agile is badly done, partly due to the huge geographic nature of the projects, the environment and culture is very different.

And Faith Based QA.

Shops like that end up with a reputation. They work by burning through suckers who haven't heard about them yet. Turnover rate's usually fast and pretty close to 100%, The recruiters for one of the local grind-houses are getting desperate and don't tell you who they're recruiting for until you get to the end of their pitch about the "great opportunity" they have. In the past year I've heard two separate co-workers listen through the whole thing, get to that part and say "Oh, them? No thanks, I'm not interested."

Funnily enough, contractors are usually get a better work/life balance at the grind-houses I've seen lately. The companies will abuse their salaried work base for as many free hours as they can get, but contractors put in their 40 a week and are done. You can tell when they're actually desperate to get something out the door because that's when they ask the contractors to work paid overtime.

How much financial penalty is there for having insecure routes (or routers?) Hmm... None, basically. Ok. How much is this upgrade going to cost? Wow...that much? Well, there's your problem!

A: Not much