Agreed. I've been writing software for 32 years, and "We've completely changed your requirements, but that shouldn't affect your schedule or your budget any!" happens all the time. The point is, you have to push back. Tell them exactly what every change is going to cost (padded heavily). Unless they agree to add time and money to the project, then just deliver the originally agreed to project. Don't let people make unilateral changes in the contract after it is signed, unless you actually like working on money-losing projects!

You can automate backing up to the cloud. Much more difficult to automate rotating media through a safe deposit box. Unless you're driving to the bank every day for deposits anyway, I suspect the safe deposit box is not going to get refreshed as often as it should.

He meant that they are commonly referred to as "safe deposit box", not "safety deposit box". However, since we all know what he is talking about, who cares?

How long does the tape media last until it deteriorates to the point where it becomes unreadable?

String theory probably is incorrect, the question is, is it _provably_ incorrect? Come up with a proof that the math is flawed, and you will have greatly advanced the state of the art of physics. Come out with an unsubstantiated rant like the above, and you've accomplished nothing.

Lower prices at what cost? It appears their business model is based on not paying taxes licensing fees and not paying for commercial insurance. Lower cost due to an unfair competitive advantage gained by being scofflaws... is that the kind of business model we want to encourage?

If they accept cash, they're pretty much guaranteed the uber "drivers" are going to lie about the actual distance and short them on their percentage, so it's not much of a revenue stream. I'll bet they are amazed how many of the rides they arrange only travel a single block...

Because it's a bad language that teaches people bad habits. On the bright side, you used to be able to write programs in it on a $99 Timex Sinclair, which was a pretty low barrier to entry.

I haven't used this personally, but: http://sourceforge.net/project...

No, valuing gender above talent is by definition discrimination. The whole point is to be gender-blind in valuing talent. You don't do that by eliminating negotiation, you do that by figuring out WHY women don't to as well in negotiation, then restructuring the negotiation process to eliminate that disadvantage.

How about if women just grow some balls and learn how to negotiate so we don't have to "protect" them -- that only perpetuates the stereotype of the helpless woman, which you'd think real feminists would be against. Women can be every bit as aggressive and vicious as men; I can't see any reason why they would have a "natural" disadvantage in negotiation. It not like having a deep bass voice makes you a better negotiator, is it? Personally, I'd do better negotiating via email, perhaps everyone should do that to eliminate any gender discrepancies.

Go ahead and give him a life sentence and get this over with. He'll die soon enough in prison, especially of the guards "accidentally" happen to be looking the other way. He's pretty recognizable, and he definitely won't be the most popular position no matter where he is sent to.

Can't be done. Languages evolve over time, and regional dialects will inevitably creep in. Also, people frequently live in proximity to speakers of other languages, and tend to "borrow" words and pronunciation. Most languages are a pidgin of 2 or more languages; even if you created a "pure" language, it would evolve into pidgins over time. For example, I tend to use swear words from non-English languages to avoid offending the naive.

I've seen Europeans pick it up in less, although they were extremely bright people and were "helped" by having English speakers constantly correct them. In general, if forced to use a specific language for conversation, you should be able to pick it up in about 2 years and be fluent enough in conversational use to be understood. It helps if you already know a language that comes from common roots (e.g. Latin). The biggest problem is moving to a language that contains phonemes your ear isn't trained to hear and you mouth isn't trained to generate.

We already have a de facto Lingua Franca: Broken English. Prior to that, French and German came close to being "universal" languages. Not sure what the chances are of Mandarin become the Lingua Franca of the future. The problem with languages is, they evolve. Force everyone to use the same language, it would quickly devolve into regional dialects anyway. Eventually you'd get the problem you have with Hindi in India: Everybody speaks it, but the dialects are so diverse that every uses English when they need to converse with someone from a different region.