I saw an interesting movie version of Futurological Congress at SF indiefest a few weeks ago

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

they sort of tacked on the actress's story line to the original (fairly short) novel, but it actually helped raise additional questions about identity and Intellectual Property in addition to the psychopharmacological future...

-I'm just sayin'

SCTV is the closest this country (well, canada, to be fair) ever came to classic english-style absurdist humor a la Goon show, Python, Not the 9 o'clock news, etc

It was consistently funny in the first incarnation and was still decent the 2nd time around, although the 'guest band' part of the format trapped them more into the TV Variety show format -but it was about a fictional TV network, so....

Kids in the Hall, Strangers with Candy and many other American sketch comedy shows definitely owe something to SCTV

-I'm just sayin'

if you pay someone by the hour (or month) to write a document and there are typos, mispellings or factual errors you pay either the writer or an editor to take more time to make corrections.

An exception would be if they are being paid solely upon the delivery of piecework(work for hire), in which case they would still not be liable to to fix if it were signed off (accepted) by the purchaser as having met the agreed upon criteria...

The building analogy does not hold because writing and coding are(hopefully) iterative processes and some times you have to rip up or shift the foundations

-I'm just sayin'

I wonder how this is going to affect Square and the other smartphone based transaction processors?

If it just requires a new swiper that's one thing, but I have to wonder if this might be coming out now to raise the bar for indie merchants and micropayments...

I'm just sayin'

I subscribe to the Chronicle print edition Wed-Sun because of the columnists and local arts, food and news coverage -SFgate.com is then available for free.

If you bemoan the death of independent local journalism then you should try to help support the same

-and yes I realize the whole world is slipping into a post-literate wasteland, but what can you do?

-I'm just sayin'

Her Husband is a billionaire anyway, although there have certainly been some gvernment actions which have served to make him even more money:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/21/senate-husbands-firm-cashes-in-on-crisis/?page=all

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/30/Sen-Diane-Feinstein-s-Husband-Bags-CA-High-Speed-Rail-Construction-Contract

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Blum

-I'm just sayin'

that's been going on since the 70s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

Using shared SIGINT The UK gets the US to spy on it's people to circumvent UK privacy laws The US gets the UK to spy on it's people to circumvent US privacy laws, etc Canada, Australia and New Zealand are all involved in this arrangement known as the FiveEyes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement#Controversy

-I'm just sayin'

oblig simpsons

Homer: Marge. Kids. Everything's going to be just fine. Now go upstairs and pack your bags. We're going to start a new life... under the sea.

[funky calypso music]
              Under the sea,
              Under the sea,
              There'll be no accusations,
              Just friendly crustaceans
              Under the Seeeeeeeeeeeeea!

-I'm just sayin'

reminds me of large scale IT projects I used to do at HP in the '90s/00s

'Do we have a cool name and T-Shirt for the project?'

was often the most important question

-I'm just sayin'

the other strategy all these companies use is a little tax dodge called Vendor Managed Inventory -you make your vendor keep all of your subassemblies and materials in a bonded stores warehouse right next to your assembly plant and keep it off your books until the parts actually hit the assembly line so that they don't show up as inventory until right before they are assembled and shipped leaving the manufacturer with almost no inventory on their books -the vendors then have to eat the taxes for storing the stuff for the manufacturer

I did supply chain for HP and Converge during the .com boom and they were even doing it back then
Looks like it is also popular for Retailers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor-managed_inventory

-I'm just sayin'

Having been brought on late to QA a few death marches/trainwrecks in my time I have found that many projects don't get QA involved until way too late in the game.

This was very common in the .com boom days when everything was developer-centric and testing was seen as an unneeded cost that could be covered by the coders themselves -I don't need to tell anyone here why that is a bad idea.

Ideally QA gets to help validate that the functional requirements are adequately addressed in the design. In many cases, lacking a spec of any kind I would have to create one of my own based on what the product was able to do or close to being able to do at that time in order to make a test plan.

When you are brought on board a sinking ship there is no point in blaming the crew for the state of the ship -all you can do is damage control to validate whatever is working and then lower the bar as to what constitutes 'working' or 'functional' -particularly if some major components or functionality are missing.

You're going to be seen by management as the people who are going to point out what idiots and incompetents the developers were and be seen as the enemy by the developers who were probably led down the rabbit hole by changing or nebulous requirements and unrealistic schedules...

So it is important to try to walk the middle line -making observations about the current situation without casting blame or making guesses about how the project got to that state (although it may be obvious when you look at the principals and the agenda). Gap analysis of both testing and in the product functionality and features is another thing that needs to be done more often in order to present a realistic picture of the current state of the product or project.

As a consultant it is nice to be able to come into these things knowing that you didn't help cause the trainwreck -you are just there doing triage and trying to save the patient....and sometimes management will listen to you about project and requirements that they ignored when brought up by their own people. Even if it is 20/20 hindsight perhaps they will heed the techies the next time they embark upon this path -Nah!

-I'm just sayin'

Tracking Suits are for Chavs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav

-I'm just sayin'

then there is one, two, many (oblig xkcd) http://xkcd.com/764/

http://numberwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/is-one-two-many-a-myth/

-I'm just sayin'

But can it tell a hawk from a handsaw when the wind is southerly?

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamlet/examq/six.html

-I'm just sayin'

anyone read it like that?

Discover doesn't get much love

-I'm just sayin'