Before I click the assassination link, are those people carrying guns in a war zone while fighting against America?

Yes, after clicking it, it looks like they are. This isn't some guy they shot in New York for being a political enemy, it's someone who moved overseas, to Yemen, and joined a known terrorist cell which is currently waging war on America. The idea that they are actually going to walk in and arrest him before taking him to trial is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Why? For one thing, how are people supposed to "work their way through uni" except by unskilled labor? Lowering minimum wage just means that people who are born poor will find it harder and harder to work their way out. It's not like American unskilled labor doesn't get paid terrible wages already compared to any other first world country.

So your saying that the best way to regain America's strength is to drop working conditions to match India, that's the best way to make life better for Americans? Have I misjudged the argument, tell me if I've misinterpreted you.

That's a fun story, but you completely missed the point. Of course if you make all the decisions for people they'll never learn, but the flipside to that isn't to make them suffer for your crappy teaching methods.

That sounds like two positives. Everybody else should be judged fairly on their actions, and if their actions are bad, they should be ashamed.

What seems stupid to you doesn't seem as stupid to other people, but the reverse is also true. Just wait till you get defrauded over a rental agreement and it won't seem like such a silly idea.

A lot of historical societies dealt with these kinds of problems by being "king of resource mountain". If you get your ceasefire broken once, that makes you a victim of betrayal, but the third time it happens you're just being gullible.

I'm pretty sure that in America the H-1Bs have to be paid the same as a local, except that practically they are often underpaid and if they complain they are shipped out before the matter gets to court. There's no point in having laws if they're never enforced.

Personally I don't see the problem. For a lot of those project managers they wouldn't be able to get the cash through regular channels anyway and Kickstarter lets them get their business off the ground. There are also loads of people who refuse to fund anything that doesn't already have some work put into it; eg, they don't want to bankroll someone's vacation. They want proof that the person running the project is serious and capable of doing the work.

I think that being too focused on making sure you only donate to things where there's no output is a bit elitist. I'd rather put cash into something that'll be self sustaining after my input, not something that has to be kept running by regular cash infusions. I've heard it said that banks will give loans for pretty much any business plan, except a plan that depends on people putting in work or money for no reward.

I dunno, after using both I still trust Windows more than Linux. That being said, Windows had loads of problems in the past so it's not surprising that governments moved away from it in their weapons.If you were implementing a Solaris based solution or something custom based on a real-time OS I could understand wanting to use a UNIX based system. However, it's possible for someone to submit a slightly broken feature as part of a patch and insert a backdoor into a linux system; you're assuming that you'll actually bother to look through all the code eventually or that you'll know the security holes when you see them.

Yeah, pay based on performance of the product are for the founders. Employees and contractors generally expect to make a fixed sum. I'd personally prefer a fixed amount based on fixed goals for the finished product, just make sure to specify everything you need in the contract and leave enough in the budget for stuff you forgot to include the second time.

When the customer starts changing the contract, the proper answer is always "No". It's tempting to think that they can only change their minds once. They can change their minds over and over until you get driven out of business, especially if they think they can buy your product directly from the manufacturer, which is now a local company. If your only contribution is capital and an idea, you've made yourself irrelevant once the product hits the production stage. Especially if the buyer and the manufacturer are in the same place, while you are on the other side of the world. This is something anyone could have told them, if they'd bothered to ask around. It's not like this sort of thing never happens, in China it's considered fairly common.

They would have been much better off doing the production and development locally, where they can have constant dialogue with a manufacturer that they trust. Preferably because someone on their team had worked with them before. It would then be much easier for them to say "No" to a changed contract, and sell their product directly to their targets, either to private schools in India or to other places worldwide.

I think Advertising and Marketing are overrated. There's only so much you can do to push Linux into the market when it's not supported by common software, where APIs change and people can still spend entirely too much time to get too little done.

That's not really the problem though. If you're starting with the fundamental assumption that the users won't know what's best for them, and will just give up everything they've been using so far and switch sides if only your subject is sufficiently polished; that approach can only be unhelpful.

There needs to be an acceptance among the current linux community that there are still flaws with the basic system, a taking of responsibility for actually fixing those flaws. Then fixing the flaws. Currently anyone pointing out a problem gets bombarded with a huge list of patches and long explanations about why it's not really a problem. They're missing the point that users won't really care who is responsible or to spend the time implementing a workaround. At least those users who aren't accused of being subversives working for Microsoft and spreading FUD; that's not doing the movement any favours either.

Linux as a whole would be better off by setting up something like "Kickstarter" for getting bugs fixed. Not a bounty system, because that won't persuade people to invest time, but a system where people are funded to start working on basic system features. So we can have professional programmers investing their time to solidifying the groundwork and porting or replicating windows applications.

I've had some experience running marketing and I can't say it's ever done me that much good. I got far more business by word of mouth and I suspect it works pretty similarly for larger businesses too. When Microsoft pushes out Windows 8, it'll probably have some ads that everyone blocks out; people will buy it because it's the next version of the Windows that they've had experience with before, and they'll buy it because they've had good experiences with Windows in the past.

I've had the same experiences with Visual Studio, with some libraries more than others. The way I've started to see it is that it's just not worth using "clever" tricks. Doing stuff the really basic way guarantees that your code won't instantly break when the environment changes, especially when it comes to passing information out of your functions. Of course, maybe I'm not experienced enough to see the reasons for some of those implementations.

If it's a valid tactic or not, her experience matches mine pretty closely. Though seriously, if your first thought to someone disagreeing with you is that they're a spy planted by a multinational organization; I seriously suggest you consider getting help.