ITIL is a set of best practices. You take what you can use, mold the rest in shape and it gives you a vocabulary with definitions to use in conversation so everyone has a better chance of understanding eachother. I highly recommend it for developers so they can talk the talk with service desk folks.

That said, there are some managers that raise an altar to ITIL and then start praying to the ITIL gods for deliverance. And if you do not follow the Holy Book of ITIL you are DOOOOOOOMED!

If that's the case, you're in for some heavy weather because how you do it is going to be more important than what you do. Get out fast.

On the other hand, if it's an attempt to get problem and error reporting and detection on a better footing, with more data so problems are solved earlier and better, it's a great way to go.

From the description, it's impossible to tell what's happening.

As for the whole "staying in contact with suppliers" and "project management dependencies" - the new guys apparently do like you, but they want you to take on more managerial responsibilities. Overall scope and strategy as opposed to hard-core hacking at terminals. If they didn't like you, they'd leave you alone.

Did you try talking to the managers and discussing your ideas and fears with management? If they freak out, it's time to go. If not, you could maybe have a discussion about how you see your future, versus their vision?

Your use of ad-hominem attacks and posting as an anonymous account says enough about you.

See, we can all do ad-hominem attacks. Join the fun.

The software that comes with my Samsung disables the windows swapfile if you want it to. Since I have plenty of RAM, that's okay with me.

I have the 1TB Samsung 850 Pro, and I'm not giving it up for anything. Any new laptop I buy from now on will have an SSD in it. It's the biggest performance improvement I've ever had, except that time when I installed my first graphics card :)

Interesting idea. I guess we'll know when the scientists that are now studying the object have finished with their calculations.

So if the signal would be chaotic, and the second signal was just an echo of the first signal, for some reason occuring exactly one period after the first, then we would see this? Mmm.... nah. I go for the aliens with neutrino beams :)

Was that before the People's Congres, or after?

It is well-known that the government is still very unwilling to touch the heavy industries that pollute the most, especially in cities where there is just one employer. They're also very hesitant to bring polluters to justice, even if they pour poison freely into the river that supplies the city next door with drinking water.

It's high time Chinese folks understood that pollution is not a natural occurrence that cannot be prevented, but occurs because the cost of doing business is paid out of their health.

True - which is why Gamemaker is installed often in classrooms. Gives you a running game in basically an hour. After that, you get to add stuff and then you start programming.

In The Netherlands the standard installation in classrooms nowadays is "Gamemaker". You can teach kids a lot about the first steps of programming while they get a game up and running. Takes them at most an hour for a basic tutorial, and then they can add stuff.

Now that's amazing. They actually read facebook in other countries? Who'd have thought that posting something on a public website would be read by people you work with? Especially when you do that on a site that sends them a mail when you post something?

Yes, the laws in the UAE are very harsh and oppressive. But it's really hard not to notice that when you work there, so it's not a surprise, I hope, that they use it against foreigners that get uppity.

Is it a disgrace the UAE has these laws? Yes. And putting someone 5 years in jail for an outburst is way overboard. But you get paid good wages in the UAE precisely because not a whole lot of people want to work under those conditions. It's like soldiers complaining about danger: what did you think the pay was for?

No, I just envisage what will happen when this is introduced on Windows, with its huge established software pool that doesnt understand that metadata.

Personally, I'm still rather fond of a capability based OS, instead of a rights based one. And the idea that executables can access ANYTHING outside their own directory without explicit permission was stupid from day one. I can imagine quite a view changes that would make an OS much safer.

But adding metadata to files that is not "in your face" is not the best suggestion I've seen for that. And yes, the Explorer could be changed to show status. And a gazillion older programs would not. Because it could have been done already, and it hasn't.

True. I really long for the day we have that, and AnnaKournikova.jpg is actually an executable file because of some meta-information that's probably hidden by default.

I wonder what could possibly go wrong there.

Given the way insurance works psychologically (people are risk-averse more than they are profit-oriented), you'd be surprised how many takers you'd find at a slightly lower price.

Actually, kickstarter is not allowed to give out equity under US law *yet*, but that may change soon. ANd if they want to stay relevant, they should, because the kickstarter model is starting to show cracks.

A company called Symbid (symbid.nl) has been doing this for quite some time now because they're not in the US and under Dutch law they can already do this. You can invest small sums of money (20 euro and upwards) and in exchange you get equity. That sounds simpler than it is, but it seems to be working for them. They take over all the hassle of the process of issuing shares, the lawyer part of it etc. and make things cheap and easy enough to work for small sums.

If I ever invest money, it will be through something similar. But not through kickstarter. Kickstarter is where you give donations. Investors go elsewhere.