So you're paying these developers some kind of contract rate "by the hour" but you then want to impose a fixed scope and hold them to it later? I mean if you're providing them with a complete (perfect) functional spec, then ask them to bid on it as a fixed price, make sure they include a 1 year warranty for any software defects, and then by contract they have to fix the bugs. Sounds like you just want the benefits of paying by the hour without any of the negatives.

This story isn't about 3D printing weapons at home, it's about people doing things that make all people with hobbyist 3D printers at home (myself included) look like gun-nut-freaks to the general public (before that it was just pretty nerdy). The first time I mentioned my printer to my mother, she told me about some cop show (CSI, Criminal Minds?) episode she'd seen the previous night where the killer had 3D printed his handgun to get it through security. This has now become the primary thing that the general public associates with 3D printers. It's sad.

As someone who has a 3D printer, you glossed over the part on how to actually get it to work nicely for you, which is a pain in the butt and takes a long time, with lots and lots of frustrating trial and error. But since it's called "printing" it must just be as simple as clicking a mouse, right?

Any "detector" can detect drugs in a high school, if it tells you to open enough lockers.

Anyone who thinks the PC is in any sense dying hasn't worked in an office that does business with other companies. There is a *huge* amount of work that consists of physically typing stuff into databases (purchase orders anyone?) and retrieving stuff from databases, and all of this work is done with a keyboard and mouse. Spreadsheets. Forms. Stuff still gets printed out and filed! Nobody wants a tablet to do this. I think there might be room for tablets out in the warehouse, but even those are likely to be Windows based. Mac? Sorry, businesses look at the price difference and can't stomach paying nearly twice as much for the hardware. I'm certain that home PC sales are diving, and that's probably a good thing, but in our office we're expanding the number of PCs because we want access to information everywhere, and more data entry everywhere, and they're cheap! PCs are the work-horse of enterprise data. So what if we're buying them with Windows 7 Pro on them instead of Windows 8? MS still makes money.

This is older news now. We've known for a while that wind turbines could be found on Shodan.

As a psychologist in a lot of jurisdictions you *need* a Ph.D. to get licensed and get a job. Lots of people take undergrad psychology and then say, "now what?" That's not a good plan either. I think it pays to research this stuff ahead of time. BTW, you have a degree in literature? Why not become an author? Or, I dunno, get a job at a factory and read books on your lunch break like the rest of us?

At least normal billboards don't fall on my head when they malfunction. Cool swarm behavior though.

There was a recent prediction, in the news, that polar bears might become brown eventually if their habitat stops being as icy. Guess we'll have to wait (a long time) to find out.

Yeah, but nobody was buying cheap Android phones to do that, but they are buying RPi's to do it. So either there's something different about the device (unlikely) or there's something different about the way it's being presented. It's simply better marketing. That doesn't mean there wasn't a need for better marketing. Sometimes you need to present it as a completely different product to get people to accept it (think Windows 7 vs. Vista).

It's the same with grains. Trees were clearly winning over grasses and grains on a lot of this planet before we came along and tipped the scales.

A person who keeps things around because they "might be useful" is not the type of break things "just because it would be cool". Completely opposite personalities there. The reason it's being kept around is because the person sees value in it. Destroying it is devaluing it.

If you think about a virus for a second, it's the same thing. You can't reason with a virus. It doesn't make moral decisions. It just does what its DNA programs it to do, and it's even more dangerous because it's self-replicating. We need to deal with autonomous robots the same way we deal with bio-warfare.

Here's the thing about allowing employees to work remotely. It works for some jobs and *some people*. Clearly there are people who can work remotely and get lots done, usually even more done. These people have motivation and self-discipline. However, I don't know if you've looked around, but self-discipline isn't something that *most* people have. Given the chance they over-indulge in everything from junk food to credit to addictive forms of entertainment even while abstaining from all of these things would be in their own long term best interest. As a manager you certainly wouldn't want *those* people working from home.

So... a company that allows workers to work from home has to be able to say "no" to someone with no self-discipline. This is the *right* thing to do, but it's a potential mess for management. "Sue can work from home and I have the same job, same responsibilities, and same glowing employee evaluations as her, so why can't I work from home?" "Well, I don't think you'd actually function well in that environment." "Why?"

I'm not saying it can't work, but do you see how, as a manager, it's easier to just make everyone come to the office?

This is exactly true. I actually went into the office this morning (Saturday) which is extremely rare for me, but there was an interesting project to work on, and we were limited with equipment time. At any rate, during the morning I said to my co-worker, "coming in on Saturdays is addictive because nobody bothers you so you get so much more done!" He agreed 100%.