Which part is cruel and which the unusual ?

Only one of those was in the valley.

I think there's probably more it it than that.

When we grew up (rural England in the early 70s) we had what would now be called a highly nutrious diet - we grew all our own "organic" vegetables (we got cow shit for free, pesticides cost money) and had chickens (fresh eggs daily). Ended up only buying meat and milk...

So did my cousins next door.

They were certainly richer than us - it seemed a lot, but it probably wasn't...

Only my sister and I went to university (the only people to have done in any generation), they took low level white collar jobs (bank teller/hairdresser)

Nature certainly has a hand in it, but I think its more likely nurture that has the bigger hand.

For taking one for the team. He single handedly managed to do what India, Argentina, Mexico, the British Labour party couldn't.

And all he had to do was be incompetent at his job - his job, quite simply is to get the best from the show.

Congratulations Oison.

Or should it be Judas ?

Seriously, I'm torn - I love the show, but obviously the BBC had to fire him. I'm hoping that the boys take their antics to a new channel where they have more freedom to give the viewers the show they want - not what the BBC allows them to do in its pitifully correct public broadcaster role. I don't think that would be ITV or even Sky.

I'd really like to see them move to Netflix - they have the money and "freedom" to do what they want with less political climate since its not a broadcaster in the traditional sense (public service requirements).

It might also be an interesting avenue for the the intellectual challenge of "can we do this"... Its never too late to do a start-up...

Yes its a two edged sword - you can leave, but you can also be fired for no reason.

I know prefer to work in a free environment than an English manufacturing company where the union was in control....

But that's me... others maybe are lazy/stupid and prefer to work somewhere that has no risks and no gains and expect others to look after them...

Third (with caveat) this.

I'd suggest a (retina) Mac Book Pro - not an Air.

Since its not upgradable - get the most CPU/memory/disk you can afford.

I have the 15inch - but only because I wanted quad core (I expected to run VMs). In the end I don't run VMs - so the 13" would have been better for me with hindsight.

If I want to work on Linux (all my code runs on Linux) I just ssh into the build machine, MacVim runs local over SMB to the Linux host. Works well for me. I've ported the Linux code to Mac as an exercise - but still use the Linux version everyday.

Check the talking heads physicists on TV - you'll often see a Mac and I bet its not running Linux.

Anything that gets between you and your end-game (physics) is adding an inefficiency. If you're end-game is FOSS, then install Linux, if its leaning physics do you really want to waste time on in-efficienies - just run OS X.

I agree. Who gets to decide - the majority.

Why don't we pick on the top 2% - not just the top 1%, that's fair, they almost as rich...

Hang on, we can get the top 10%, no - the top 49%.

That's it - those rich 49% bastards.... They're all morally bankrupt...make them pay...

Here's my rule - if you don't pay the tax/fine you don't get to vote on it.

How is it fair to vote on a tax that you don't have to pay ?

Everyone thinks that of course it will be different for them (everyone is of course above average morally) - bullshit it isn't. Just try writing a (extra) cheque to CA for $40k and see how you feel about it...its your hard-earned money that you have to hand over to the state because the majority thought it would be great to have a tax they don't have to pay... Obviously the issue isn't important enough that everyone should contribute towards it...

Punishment cup-cakes.

If you break the build you have to bring cake ( not necessarily cupcakes) for everyone the next day - "to say sorry for negitively impacting them"

Some buy, some bake... It's now a relaxed company joke

ObMontyPython: Being chased over a cliff by naked women...

I agree, it's what I'd do for my kids.

It' seems to be a lot cheaper and easier to renounce citizenship that to get it the hard way - h1b +5 years.

Taxes only become an issue when you have investments, if you just have employment income filing a 1040 is easy - no state taxes...

It's their life, the best you can do for them is to give them opportunities, I'd say that giving your kid the right to work in the US at any point in their life is is a worth a bit of paperwork...if they want to give up that right it's their call...

Richard - originally UK citizen, then added USA, married USA citizen, now living in UK but working in USA. Trying to coordinate UK and US taxes makes my accountants bill probably higher than most people's tax bill :-(

We use two E-Beam Edges, one in the US (with projector) and one in the UK (large TV).

I'm pretty happy with them - I'd recommend them.

Coupled with video-conferencing using TelyHD gives use an effective remote office presence in the UK.

It means I can still participate in interactive design meetings while I'm in the UK.

As a hiring manager I see this all the time.

If you put something on your resume that you consider a "skill", we will ask questions on it. If the interviewee then doesn't know the answer on something that they have declared they think they are good at - what confidence would I have about things that I might assume I don't need to ask questions on (i.e. can you handle command line build systems)

One of the last people put HTTP as a skill and then didn't know/explain how one might architect handling a long running request with HTTP....

Part of me wonders if open source and now apps, while democracizing software development has harmed the profession.

After working for two years, I had a software engineer that didn't even know where in the system to start looking for a given filename.

20years ago with a couple of years experience I could recognize where I was in each of the files in the Motif source tree - just by its line indentation. Why ? because I was interested in all software - not just my little bit....

And no - Motif isn't on my resume anymore :-(

And emacs is an editor trying to be an OS.

Make emacs the replacement for init. It would at least have support from 50% of the community and able to use it.

Fingers crossed I'll be dead before RHEL 6 is EOL...

Maybe the reason for only 30% of Philosophy PhDs being female is because it takes a bucket full of BS to do philosophy and women are too practical...

Or maybe they don't like wearing tweed and corduroy...

Maybe if everyone just stopped posting comments to stories by Bennett, he'd get bored and go somewhere else.

Active hostility doesn't seem to be working, maybe good old ignoring will.