Sounds like "work from home" doesn't work at the USPTO. Even if it costs a bunch of money to get them into an office, it will be money more effectively spent than paying people to do fuck all.

I'm not sure I get this need to bash hobby programming. I believe Microsoft and Apple started with hobby level programming. You could say they were 'professional' at the beginning because they started a company, but seriously the only difference at the beginning was the fact they incorporated a name. Some very big things, some very big concepts can come out of "hobby programming". Many people's next big business venture come out of it. I think it is poor thinking to outright slag people's small scale projects they start at home. I think one should at least look at what someone has done before it is trashed.

And when it is a red tide... red tinged algal bloom... it is almost always very harmful and contaminates all the shell fish in the affected area making them toxic to humans... highly toxic. And the effect can last for years. Being sea water people are not likely to drink it, so that is one difference from Ohio.

And when GW Bush did it he was a patriot, right? Fuck off asshole. So far Obama is on track to less use of executive orders than Bush. And here's your citation, so bite me. Fuck I'm tired of these Carl Rove say it enough and it must then be true assholes. GW Bush was an idiot. But quite frankly I'm less than impressed with Obama too, other than his Obamacare. And the Democrats in Congress fucked that up royally when they had the majority in his first term. Tea party clowns and that cunt Pelosi and her gang are both shite eating fucktards too. It's no wonder the USA is in tough these days.

But why even bitch about America? This post was about Putin and Russia.

Well played. Laugh while you can, Monkey Boy!

'nough said.

If they would have used an Oscillation Overthruster they would have got better results.

Actually, it was Magnus Pyke who said it. He was a presenter on one of my favourite 70s TV shows, Don't Ask Me. The PBS show Newton's Apple was pretty much an Americanized version of it.

I worked on project at a telco a little under 10 years ago and much of the provisioning code was written in Moscow. I couldn't help but think even back then what would happen if Putin really got out of control. It was already apparent that he had overwhelming nostalgia for the CCCP. Sooner or later we'd be in some sort of conflict with him; was it really a good idea to allow this kind of software to go to a potential belligerent. Never mind code for financial and payment systems. Same with China. It probably isn't the case here, but maybe we should think about these things more.

The cautionary tale has turned into a tragedy.

Ha. For those old enough to remember, it's kind of like 'new coke' vs 'coke classic'. When W9 comes out it will be like coke classic and everyone will come flocking back and buying new PCs. Then MS will claim that W8 was a marketing ploy to get more sales of W9 as a way to save face with all the losses from W8.

How is everyone at Sony Corp? Tell them to make a new game called "Sockpuppets On Astroturf."

I used to code with vi on various *nix systems. Now like you said, it is the constant, and I can do stuff reasonably quickly when it is the only thing available... And sometimes it is good to get a few old school licks in. But the point of the new editors is that they don't take a big learning curve or time in order to be more productive. I like newer editors, but to each their own. I think it is more that than requiring effort to learn something new. Because the newer editors don't take much effort. And of course this assumes you like working on a workstation with a GUI desktop environment. :)

The Russian law is to expose anonymous bloggers so Putin and his cronies know where to send the assassins when they see someone criticizing them or exposing their corruption. Same as when they had all the dissenting mainstream Russian journalists assassinated. Now Chairman Putin and his friends control the mainstream media, so on to phase 2: online journalists and bloggers. Of course they are thinking that announcing the law might save some money too, by intimidating people into not exposing the Chairman's lies (like the bullshit about Ukrainians needing any outside impetus to oust a corrupt Russian-backed president who syphoned off billions of dollars into his own pocket while sliding deeper into Chairman Putin's pocket).

So you are coding to the (database) implementation?