...I would rather that someone have the strength of conviction to make and stick with the choice that they believe is right, rather than flip back and forth to fit the prevailing opinion...

In this particular case, I do agree that GoDaddy has no merit in their change of mind - because they are acting consistently bad with their customers, and don't really seem to have changed their mind at all.

But it seems to me as if in our society we preferred that people stick to their decisions, rather than change their mind if there's overwhelming evidence that they've been wrong. Does it make sense?

Recognizing mistakes and dealing properly with them is IMHO a very rare and positive trait, which should always be encouraged. Think of how much better things would be if this was more widely encouraged.

Not in the job description kind of deflates you argument.

Doing some extra work, good. Doing a lot however, is just asking to be exploited either in this job or his next.

Its sort of unrelated. But my brother was doing some independent audio work for some VIP wedding in Italy, when he realized the electrical hardware & connections were a mess (meaning they were actually dangerous to use). He first talked with the management for the event and let them know about the situation. They ignored him. He quit the job, and was highly criticized for it.

As he was disconnecting all of his hardware with his team, a short circuit caused a fire, which fortunately was controlled easily.

The event's management immediately contacted him to offer him a formal apology and pay for the damages to his hardware. They also offered to hire him back, double the salary. The last part was kind of luck, but had the fire not been controlled as easily as it was, my brother would have shared the responsibility.

Long story short: sometimes you have to know when to step down.

Nope it's not. That was the whole point of my post. :)

You are partially right, but let me rephrase what I meant.

When some client asks you to get a project done by a certain date, and you tell them explicitly that it's impossible to do so, and maintain quality at the same time... yet they decide to go on, or go to another company to get what they want: don't you think they are partially responsible for what they get?

In any case I totally agree with you in that outsourcing companies have a huge part of the responsibility... but most of the times it's all about unrealistic goals from the client's side in the first place.

Having been involved in many outsourced projects, from the other side, this is what I can tell you: 1 - Cost & time over quality: doesn't need much explanation. When a client asks you for a product and puts cost & time above anything else, they shouldn't be surprise when the final product sucks.

2 - Requirements: most of the times, the problem is not that offsourced programmers need more instructions, but that you simply can't talk to them as you would talk to someone who is physically sitting right besides you. You are talking to someone who will spend the next coding day without any other chances to ask for clarification. A simple interpretation mistake can make them have to trash a full working day.

3 - Trust: you need to get people involved from the very beginning - let them know you trust them (otherwise why did you hire them in the first place). This is related to point #2 as well. You need to give people a chance to participate, sometimes make decisions, let them know you trust them, if you want them to care at all for what they do. If you treat people like mindless morons, that's what you will get - and this is something you see plenty of when working for remote customers.

4 - Selection process: get involved in the selection process. Talk to your programmers. Get to know them. Don't let the outsourcing company of choice screen you out on this. Because most often it is NOT the programmers that lie to you, but the very companies that hired them. They will hire just about anyone without any programming skills at all, if you let them do it.

Regards.

I work at a company that does outsourced programming for for US and EU companies. I have been working at this for the last 5 years aproximately (always in programming & analysis roles).

I am really amazed at how much our clients undermine their own goals. I understand that cost is what drives programming jobs to my country - but I still have to see a really successful product come out of this. It would be difficult to find a single cause for this, but all of the following are at least partially responsible:

1 - Low wages.

2 - Lack of good programmers getting involved: some of the programmers you can get for the lower wages are great, some suck. I've seen companies taking just anyone interested to fill programmer positions for such jobs (you can train them, right?). Getting involved in the selection process may help prevent this.

3 - Lack of trust in the the outsourced team: you can't think of the outsourced team as a bunch of mindless morons and expect them to care about your product. In those cases in which the outsourced team was a very good team, it didn't make the slightest difference because people was told what to do, and not to think - which makes hiring inexperienced people a pretty attractive alternative.

4 - Giving more importance to cost & time, than to quality: what would anyone expect to get, when quality is secondary to time & cost? This is a huge way to undermine your projects.

5 - Communication: communication is harder when people is spread all over the world. IMHO you need to compensate this difficulty by having some tool to help you keep in touch. In my current company, we use skype, and we keep in touch at all times with the client, which really helped solve this particular problem.

6 - Planning: planning is much more difficult when delivering work to someone who is not right at your side.

5 - Etc, etc.

No, it's not a fake vulnerability. You should read the report (RTFR?).

The vulnerability is about how apple events can be used to bypass the sandboxing of an application, and in this particular case to gain unrestrained network access even though the app is tagged as "no-network". According to the report it can be used to bypass other restrictions too.

Yes, it is. However, if one submits such a false take down notice, the according to the DMCA they can be charged with perjury. It's too bad that (to my knowledge) no-one has taken advantage of this...

For a single moment forget about everything you know. Forget about laws... forget about your religion... about your studies... forget everything. Now, with a fresh and clean mind go watch the video and tell me: does it look right to you? I sometimes wonder at how we let ourselves be fooled by our own rules, and end up confused to such an extent as to allow and consider appropiate something like this kind of physical punishment on a kid due to "copyright infringement"... whatever the fuck that is supposed to really mean.

Sorry, but the sink or swim way of doing things means that only the people that actually have the intelligence and work ethic make it through to the degree. Changing that means that unqualified people will be getting degrees and industry, and to a much greater extent, Academia will suffer. A society that doesn't want to crumble doesn't want that.

In other words, it isn't a waste of resources. It's the only way to sort the wheat from the chaff.

"""
Replace "hours" with "centuries". Or maybe more. Nobody has ever created a SHA-1 collision.
"""

There is however a theoretical attack (2^{52}) discovered in 2009 (better than prior breaks). It has been recommended to go for SHA-256 or SHA-512 until the next hashing algorithm standard comes out. In fact, this recommendation is years old.

The SHA family is coming to an end; it's just a matter of time. And I would suspect that we'll see that day sooner rather than later (read: decades).

The problem isn't the program, the problem is the students. Essentially, they come to University ill prepared and pay the price (i.e. high-schools are no longer doing their job).

However, when it comes to CS, there is a specific issue that must be brought up. Namely, that students think that Computer Science equals computer programming. Anyone that has studied both can say that they aren't even remotely the same. So, it's no wonder the students fail. They think they'll be learning to be programmers, and then get nailed with an Applied Math.

The solution here isn't to change the curriculum. But, rather to inform students what they will learn at a University (Academia) v.s. Applied Colleges (they're called Colleges in Canada, not sure what they are called in the US) v.s. trade schools, etc. Then send them in their desired direction.

In other words, University professors, stop becoming part of the education problem, think and become part of the solution.

The scientific method also dictates that hypotheses must be testable through experiments and results should be measurable.

In fact the scientific method does not claim to be able to prove something is true, but rather to prove that it is NOT wrong, and to do so it is a basic requirement for the hypotheses to be testable someway.

To say it in other words: intelligent design may or may not be true, but it certainly is outside of the scope of science and cannot be considered to have any relation with it.

Look at the studies. In general, Wellbutrin does decrease appetite leading to weight lose. Please don't think that your experiences can be extrapolated to everyone. Especially, when the evidence contradicts you.