I find the truth is almost the opposite. The REST API is pretty good, at least compared to anything the OGC has put out. While ESRI's tools are okay for authoring maps, their server software is some of the worst crap I've ever had to work with. It's slow, and buggy. And slow. Map tile generation takes 7000 longer than on open source software, on the same hardware.

While technically all their stuff is documented, they have a nasty habit of creating a new documentation portal for every major release. And Google always takes me to the version from three releases back.

Rather than standardization, I just want a way to take a map document and turn out cartocss, or mapnik styles.

There's your problem.

When buying my last dishwasher, the salesperson gave me the big list of things that can go wrong, was really going for the hard sell on the extended warranty. I put on my best concerned face and replied "Oh gosh! Is it really that likely to break? I certainly don't want to buy such a poorly made appliance."

It's always fun watching them back-pedal like mad.

In Klingon?

Oddly, in Canada, the opposite is true. Rifles are widely owned for sporting purposes. Handguns associated with law enforcement and criminals. As such, it's pretty easy to get a rifle, but much harder to get a license to buy a handgun. Unless you're a drug dealer, self defence rarely enters into it.

As an aside, we tried having a registry for firearms, but that idea was so flawed I have a hard time imagining why any Americans think it would work. What does work is licensing the gun owner.

You're almost right. There's little evidence to suggest that women are biologically more obedient than men. More likely, women are better students because the metrics used to measure success in education are crap. In the past, they favoured boys. Currently they favour girls by a small margin.

The easiest solution is to stop using grades for inappropriate purposes, such as employment selection. GPA should be a relative number used only internally by the school. Externally distributed transcripts should show only pass or fail.

The increased staffing required to develop and maintain it will drive your little town's population up to 20,000 in short order. Best of all, most of those new jobs will be for highly paid SharePoint consultants, so the town should get a lot more property tax revenues!

Who distributes a 60 page PDF when the whole rest of the operation is a web site? If they all needed internet access to use the app, why didn't the web application just give each volunteer their customized list?

As always, the group of technomorons at the top tell you it's all digital, then give out a PDF of a scan of a fax.

I have missionaries in my family. After 20 years in Africa, they report that nobody listens to the there, either.

Exactly! And if I wanted to develop an office suite, I wouldn't be able to sell it because OpenOffice is available for free. And what's more, nobody is paying to watch videos of me scratching my ass! I assume unfair competition by legions of people posting cat videos on Youtube.

What do you think you are doing? You don't bring evidence to a argument here!

Try for an ad-hominem. Those are totally acceptable.

So, if you don't give the poor the tools to succeed, but leave them illiterate and starving on the streets, they will see how right you are, and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? Brilliant! I hear that's exactly how the French Revolution went!

We maintain a semblance of equality (equality of opportunity, not necessarily of wealth) because to fail to do so invites social unrest.

You have a broken arm. Do you really have something better to be doing?

The last few times I went into Emerg at my local Canadian hospital, I received excellent care. People with life threatening or deteriorating conditions were seen immediately. Those who were either stable, or who should have just gone to a walk-in clinic had to wait longer.