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Comment Re:"Cashless" is meaningless (Score 2) 294

The funny thing is that the Germans have already substantially bailed out Greece's existing debt, and everyone expects that they'll take massive debt write-offs. But the real problem is that the bailout was finite, so suddenly Greece needed to run a balanced budget -- instead of a 10% deficit. Greek politicians have sold their public on the idea that these cuts are the fault of the Germans being really mean and obnoxious and demanding onerous repayment schedules. This is part of an impressively effective propaganda machine for an increasingly authoritarian government where Syriza officials are characterizing dissent from their policies as treasonous "fifth column" collaboration with the shadowy outside capitalist conspiracies.

What Greece really needs is reform that will allow its private sector to actually conduct capitalist, profit-making businesses. Presently it is hampered by an onerous and corrupt bureaucracy that enjoys bribery and favors existing cartels over new businesses, some of the world's strongest labor unions who will fight any reform that would make new employers interested in establishing a business, and a population which views more government spending and government jobs as the answer to all economic woes (the public sector is an awesome 40% of Greece's economy) even as the government has run out of tax revenues to spend. Speaking of which, Greece also needs to somehow move from "taxes are stupidly high because most people evade them anyway" to a normal regime.

Instead, Greece will stifle dissent and double down on a system that has made universal healthcare available to anyone who can afford to bribe their doctor. Their exit from the Euro and further economic stagnation is probably inevitable.

Comment Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired? (Score 2) 296

I have never, not once, heard a programmer use the word "brogrammer". I have only heard it used by SJWs when denigrating programmers, and the companies they work for (Amazon in this case).

I'm a programmer, and I've met some brogrammers in my lifetime. They were easy enough to tell from regular programmers: they're the ones on Caltrain sipping Budweiser and talking about how great it is to work at Zynga and how those people who got their RSUs revoked last week had it coming and don't deserve any sympathy. (Remember that episode?) Typically there's a bit of a scruffy look to them. I cannot make a solid characterization of their actual programming skills (or lack thereof).

I'd be surprised to find tons of brogrammers at Amazon; it struck me as less "bro" and more "nerd". I am generally dubious of the submitter's characterization.

Comment Re:Canadian Memorial to Vietnam opponents (Score 2) 161

You can tell me all you want that the US intervention in Vietnam was disastrous and should have been avoided. You can say what you will about its execution, and your public policy interpretation. Have fun. And maybe all the draft-dodgers gone up to Canada believed this verbatim. Sure.

But while you're considering US motives, please pause a moment to pay some respect for the million or so (South) Vietnamese who were killed in the war proper (the majority civilian), and for the millions who died afterwards in re-education camps, doing hard labor, escaping the country on ramshackle boats, executed for being enemies of the state, or simply starved through disastrous implementation of collectivized agriculture policies.

Comment Re:Motive (Score 4, Interesting) 203

Yeah... If anything this is a better justification than they had before. There were looters running through stores, rioters burning down buildings, and the one guy even puncturing the fire hose when the fire department tried to put the flames out. There is a much more credible, obvious, proximate threat to life and property than there would be with some shadowy nonspecific radical-jihadist plot. Things were literally on fire, people.

Comment Re:Halt Trading? (Score 2) 185

NASDAQ will halt trading any time your stock suddenly starts doing badly enough (in terms of percentage drop during an individual trading session) but it won't do you much good if people have fundamentally lost faith in your business. All it does in that case is postpone the inevitable by a couple hours at best.

Comment Re:Agile has saved and will save many companies. (Score 1) 208

The problem with agile is that it's a brand that has no owner. You can see this as a tragedy-of-the-commons or as an extension of Gresham's Law (when people can't tell the difference, bad "agile" firms will drive out the good)... and assessing the quality of the efforts by which people have actually attempted to pursue principles associated with agile like "incremental delivery" or "extensive test suites to support refactoring efforts", as opposed to mere devotion to superficial components of the formula, is very difficult given the closed-door nature of most corporate development shops, especially as regards their failures.

While this is not an indictment of any "true Scotsman" agile, it does point out a real risk associated with the actual pursuit of the quality of your Scotsman when adopting agile processes, which will be the first risk that a company will face in the process.

Comment Meh, New-Maps. (Score 5, Insightful) 222

The vectors are shiny but the user interface looks like it was designed by a team of managers more concerned about slickness than usability. Moreover it's only fractionally as powerful as the old system. (Among other things, I bet several people in places like San Francisco are really going to miss the combination bicycle/terrain maps.)

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