The problem with implementing something like this in a US company is the staffing model. European companies tend to have more people doing similar jobs, so that one person actually can fill in for another. Most out of office messages say something like "I'm not here, please contact my manager XYZ for assistance." 9 times out of 10, there's no backup person who can actually provide an answer, simply because there's no backup staff that knows enough to solve a problem.

The other issue is that at least in IT, most places still allow individuals to knowledge-hoard. Often it's unintentional (see understaffing above) because there's simply no time to ensure someone else knows about what you do. But sometimes people do this in a misguided quest for job security. Also, a very small number of people do it to cover something up -- there stories out there about people who found loopholes in purchasing/accounting systems and used them to write checks to themselves or divert equipment...and only got caught when someone else started reviewing things they had been handling themselves.

In my opinion, a lot of the knowledge-hoarding would stop if people were able to trust their employers to keep them employed, or to at least treat them fairly if they had to be laid off. Sure, implementing worker-friendly policies would probably be expensive in the short run, but I can't tell you the number of times I've walked into a new job where the previous individual held all the tribal knowledge about a system or process. I think this policy is a very good one -- especially for employees who work a stressful job and have family commitments, etc. Being able to completely ignore everything during a vacation would be something many employees would stick around to keep. Personally, I have a very busy work schedule and 2 little kids at home. Between not sleeping normally and often having to use my downtime to finish extra work, I would _love_ to be able to say "here, this is your problem now" for 2 weeks. (I wouldn't even have to go anywhere...just put me somewhere to turn off my brain for a couple days.)

It'll never happen here though -- there are too many people who buy into the "job creators" meme and let their employers walk all over them...everyone who even suggests a worker-friendly policy is a lazy entitled socialist here.

Ummm, no. The skills required to be a good engineer are not the skills required to be a good manager of engineers. There's some overlap, sure, but you can be an outstanding engineer but have poor leadership skills, or be an amazing and revered leader but terrible at actually designing the stuff your people are working on.

You should be in charge of exactly as many people as you are good at being in charge of. That's unrelated to how good you are at being one of the workers.

The AP1000 is a worldwide design, and Westinghouse is going to use parts of the supply chain from China for plants around the world (like just about everything else more complicated than a bread box). My point was that they've managed to supply all of the parts for the Chinese facilities very close to on time so the delays are not with Westinghouse, they're with the US based construction contractors.

Part of the problem is that the infrastructure and supply paths for constructing nuclear plants has to be re-constituted as no plants have been built for quite some time.

Not really, the first two AP1000 are basically finished in China, only about 9 months behind the original schedule whereas these US plants are looking to be about 4 years behind the original schedule. I have to assume it's the typical contractor issue where there's plenty of money to be made being part of the problem.

On Melatonin, this study says there is no decrease in testoserone production.

I think one of the things they're missing about college is the overall experience. Adults going back for a degree might want a stripped down experience like this, but I think that students going through their first post-high school education experience benefit from "being somewhere." I graduated about 15 years ago, but even with all the change in the world, there's still no shortage of immature, directionless high school seniors.

Going somewhere to college and dealing with all that this entails gives a student that bridge into the real world. Especially if a student was helicoptered over by their parents and wasn't challenged by K-12 education, gaining experience with failure, stress and dealing with people is very important so you don't get fired from your first job. Some of the things a student has to do during their college career that an online classroom can't provide are:
- Dealing with dorm living and roommates (interpersonal skills, uncomfortable situations, etc.)
- Working to hard deadlines that don't get extended just because you ask
- Getting that first awful set of exam results that makes you realize you actually have to study for the first time in your life
- Getting exposed to classes outside their comfort zone
- Dealing with bad professors, toxic classmates, etc (perfect prep for a real world job)
- Navigating social situations, drinking, partying, drugs, all that stuff
- Learning basic self-care if they live away from home (laundry, cooking)
- Most likely, learning how to hold down a job while balancing all your other responsibilities
- Living on an incredibly limited budget (I remember thinking I was the richest man alive when I got my first real world job after school.)
- Especially if you're at a large state university like I was, learning how to work within a system. (Everything outside the classroom is similar to dealing with a state agency...if you approach it like that it becomes a lot less frustrating.)

So, yes college is incredibly expensive, tuition has to come down, etc. etc. -- but other than the military, how does a high school student make the transition from being a dumb kid to being a responsible adult?

Or Go, which looks a lot like C Done Right, was designed for systems programming, and has a positively minimal learning curve compared to C++. I get why C++ exists and what problems it aims to solve, but I don't think I'd want to have to use it to solve those problems when there are more programmer-friendly alternatives.

I have Comcast, and have native IPv6 over my home-grade Internet connection. I can ping6 www.google.com from my autoconfigured laptop without problems.

I don't doubt that they're slow rolling it out everywhere, because when has Comcast ever been in a great hurry to upgrade their network? But here, at least, it works as advertised.

Wow, your setup sucks. My ISP offers native IPv6 and all our laptops, tablets, etc. come up with both protocols live. I have literally never, not once, zero times, ever had a problem that traced back to having IPv6 enabled. Maybe we just buy better equipment or have a better ISP or something, because it Just Works for everyone in our household.

Note that I'm not actually complaining about faster-than-needed Internet. :-) Comcast had 50Mbps service for a small price bump over 30Mbps when I signed up, so we went with it.

OP said the problem of form timeouts was because they're using HTTPS. That is absolutely not the case, any more than it's because they're using Java or Python or Intel or CAT-5. None of those have anything to do with the real reason, which is that the server is programmed to time out idle connections after a set length of time.