Oddly, not original. I worked for a company specializing in a particular business utility segment, the market leader in mainframe software at the time, which was contracted by a minicomputer company to release a version of the business utility for that minicomputer line. Flat fee plus royalty on sales, and the item was already on the price list. The guy who negotiated that contract got a big bonus. What nobody realized until 2 years later was that to support an iron-clad policy of never discounting their hardware, the minicomputer salespeople had flexibility to discount *software* - like, say, utilities. Our product, 10x or more the performance of the previous in-house release, was sold for a dollar. Another layoff story. :-)

Second the motion. Though my herniated discs may be in different positions than yours. A recliner is very comfortable while I'm still, and then when I try to get up I pay for it.

I'm picturing you delivering this speech from a lectern in a 1950s sci-fi movie, and right at the end of this sentence the music gets really foreboding. And maybe even some heckler asks: "Yes, but for how long?"

And at what point do they realize, like offshore workers, that they don't really need the managers?

Well . . . if bob is incompetent and turns out shoddy work, and jack is excellent at what he does, I'd rather hire jack. Certainly any /.er has seen the debates about the 10x programmer; we all know people who can't cook and people who can, or people who can make music and people who you would pay to stay silent. I used to carpool with a woman engineer who bought inexpensive clothing and re-tailored it so that she looked 1000% couture; I, on the other hand, can just about fix a button on my shirt. There's a bell curve in every skill, and at least 50% of bobs and jacks are below average.

Maybe, just maybe, the universe doesn't need quite so many people.

Welcome to the Matrix. Why not use it for good? There was a science fiction story from the 60s or 70s about elderly infirm being plugged in to fantasy virtual worlds as their bodies were tended to, with the concern that their minds seemed to be going - until someone "visiting" an elder relative retired professor (using a temporary headset) realizes that her mind is going because she's BORED. Policy change time! The next time he "visits", the elder is working papers and calculator at a desk with a blackboard behind her (hey, old story), doing real and practical work in the purely mental domain, unencumbered by the condition of her real-world body. They go to "dinner" with a wave of a hand: "Oh, I know the food's not there, but it feels like it tastes good, and besides, this place has live music!" because other electronic citizens are "playing". It's not quite the Singularity, but it's heading there.

It's one thing to read about finding traces of ancient civilization using new RADAR and LIDAR technology over the South American jungle, a huge area where ground travel is rare and difficult; it's another to find "new" ancient ruins (not so ruined!) in a mostly modern country like Greece. Also, as with so many other constructs, impressive to see how much was done with sheer muscle power (including animals) and what we consider a low level of technology.

There was a science fiction story in Analog, many years ago, involving one character who could supposedly "read auras" when seeing someone in person. The punch line [spoiler alert!] was that this character saw further into the infrared than normal, and saw the patterns of blood flow on the face and skin, like a visual polygraph.

Just as some people have perfect pitch while others are tone-deaf, and others might have the equivalent with color sensitivity, how many people might have such extended ranges - nothing weird or alien, just the edges of the bell curve into the red or the violet?

Color sensitivity can also be affected by many medications. The best-known effect of ED pills making vision blue is not at all unique. Worse, some of these effects can become permanent, and neither doctors nor patients are aware of this. Any change in color vision after starting or changing medications should be reported to your doctor, and if the doctor doesn't care, I would find another doctor.

Absolutely! Get the high-index plastic, and then get progressive lenses (I'm old), and there's aberration all over the place. The blue and red Bank of America logo is particularly annoying when lit; as I turn my head, the smaller section moves relative to the larger section. The problem is that if I wore glass, they would be Coke bottle bottoms.

That tradition goes back to mainframes. One difference is that in the IBM mainframe days, a "version" came out every blue moon, thoroughly tested by an itty bitty monopoly, and justifying similar thorough testing by users; whereas today a "version" can arrive every few days (or faster for people who watch commits to the archive) and testing would almost be continuous.

What are these strange and mystic words you use?

Take it to the next step: Mechanics have realized that the benefit of others not knowing how to fix cars is that Mechanics have a skill for which they can ask to be paid. They can be as arrogant as they want about their superior car knowledge, as long as they don't tick off the paying customers. The programmer who has thrown his incomplete hack on a server and called it FOSS is not getting paid, and sees no reason to put in any "extra" effort.

If I might review your scenario from a slightly different perspective, we might see why Linux has still not taken over the desktop.

The programmer has implemented something that doesn't fully work, because it's "good enough" and/or the programmer can't be bothered to make it right. The writer, like a normal user, is surprised when a casual experiment fails dismally. The programmer might (in a dream world) be embarrassed by the poor quality of his/her work, or (more likely) reacts with anger at the implied accusation of low quality (rather than accept the input as a feature request/prioritization), which anger is reflected back by the writer inferring that the programmer is not just uncaring but incompetent.

Someone offering to handle documentation *is* offering an altruistic gift of time and effort, just like any other open source contributor, though expecting gratefulness is sort of hopeless, mainly because most programmers would *not* see the documentation as an aspect of the project at all, but as a separate afterthought.

Normal people want stuff to work, and they don't want to remanufacture stuff first to make it work. Normal people assume that "published" or "released" stuff is ready to be used, not an experiment or a hobby project. Yes, they're getting stuff for free; but they're still comparing it against other stuff where people worked on the dull parts as well as the fun parts.