It's not racism, it's just a sad fact and here's my experience.

For several years I worked as a Software Engineer at Xerox in the UK and we survived for 3 years after the global economic crisis hit in 2008. But management, always looking to save a few percent on the Engineering budget every year (despite always breaking even and returning to profit), finally cut it to below a level where they could continue to fund us as a cohesive unit, so they did a deal with HCL where we were all transferred to HCL who could do the work for the price (allegedly) and provide more engineers!

So HCL's plan was to take as many of us as possible off the Xerox work and to replace us with Indians, sending us newly-acquired, expensive staff to do contract work for better-paying customers (many miles from home for months at a time).

The HCL CEO sold the story that Westerner engineers are spoilt, lazy and ignorant, compared with intelligent, diligent and self-motivated Indians.

What HCL provided was very young, inexperienced and very poorly-paid Indians, perhaps straight out of university, to acquire knowledge, pick up work and to train off-shore teams of similarly-inexperienced staff.

Nothing was impossible. They were instructed to say "yes" to everything.

They were posted here for 3 months at a time, often expected to assimilated decades-worth of institutional knowledge in that time and to work all the hours god sends.

You see, they were brainwashed that everything is possible if you just try hard enough and that success is entirely down to the individual. Managers wielded metaphorical sticks, and let me tell you, they had the pointiest hair I've ever seen.

This is "empowerment."

If you don't succeed, it's because you didn't try hard enough. Not that projects were completely mismanaged...

So these poor young men and women, being paid a pittance and with no living expenses for being in a much more expensive foreign country, were apart from their families for several months at a time and living in tiny rooms, expected to work night and day, to do the work of entire teams of people who'd taken a decade or more to learn their craft and getting shouted at and lied to by their management.

That's the reality, so cut these poor guys a bit of slack. It's not their fault. It's the fault of The System.

They'll bring in fresh Indian graduates for no more than 3 months at a time at 20% each of what you're paying your local developers. When one guy finishes, he'll go back to India and his replacement will arrive. The only fly in the ointment is that he'll have to be trained from zero. And the cycle repeats.

Mounting things to light poles is 10,000 times more practical.

Just what I've been waiting for! Oh, maybe not...

For years, we have had a cut-out in ITAR 121 that applies to Open Source, it is due to a lawsuit that Phil Karn brought against the Federal Government. Thus, you can implement with impunity, and export to anywhere, as long as it's Open Source.

Rather than an encryption gateway, having your email client handle encryption avoids the problem of man-in-the-middle attacks between the gateway and the client.

I don't have much reason to encrypt, but Thunderbird has my certificate installed and does my digital signing. This is not unusual for a modern email client.

Phil the Greek is ace. He produces a never-ending torrent of politically-incorrect and quite amusing quips. LIke the one he asked the local driving instructor on a remote Scottish island: "How do keep the locals sober long enough to get them through the driving test?"

Money and/or votes can't buy that. It's priceless.

This Buzz Lightyear laptop should do it. It has all the fun games and lessons a PHB will ever need,

Anne, Sam, I'm sorry. I'm trying really hard to get this stuff out the door on time. We'll address the Technical Debt after The Deadline and after we've burnt the PHBs at the stake.

none of those links do anything but prove my point - rock is tedious and repetitive.

Aha, Mr Hipster, your irony does not escape me! For you obviously saw the link to the "rock" music that does not involve any guitars and was done entirely on synthesizers (and electronic drums played by a human) on scales that contain no conventional octaves.

don't you ever get bored of manufactured teen angst and synthetic teen rebellion?

Yes, I don't listen to BBC Radio 1, Scuzz or Kerrang! The music's better on Radio 4.

Or even just the sound of rock guitar and drums?

Occasionally, but I always miss my electric guitar adrenaline fix.

I am interested to hear what your definition of "not boring and repetitive" is.

(there's always been more interesting music out there too, but most people just buy rock music in all it's tediously repetitive minor variations)

Rock music is not boring or repetitive.

Indeed, but that's not what happened on the Yorktown. There were no infamous BSOD errors.

Not until the ship's cook tried to print off 100 copies of the day's menu from Word for Windows 6.0 on the NT 4.0 system in the galley.

They can already lock you up for 2 years for failing to divulge encryption keys or passwords.

The thing is, if you are using good encryption, and they really want to see what you're up to, they will ask you to divulge your passwords/keys etc. so at least you will know you are being watched.

I can foresee a time where everyone will have to register their passwords etc. with the authorities (in some sort of official, "secure" database) just in case they want to check on what you get up to. I'm sure the Inland Revenue, for example, would be delighted to see all of our financial transactions as and when they like.

who branded himself as socialist

Ha ha, that's a good one!

Tony and his cronies devised New Labour, which was very much a continuation of Conservative Thatcherism but with a slightly less right-wing attitude to the Welfare State.

The real problem is that no-one is undoing the damage he did.

Quite. They're adding a whole lot of damage of their own and ensuring that the rich get to keep their money while the poor and middle are squeezed to pay for it.

And a dog named "Mongo".