Coke doesn't know if you personal bought a coke based on an ad. But the way they work with test/control markets they can say with a high degree of accuracy that ad A increases sales by X% and ad B increases sales by Y%. I thought marketing was stupid before I got into the business (IT in marketing at a company similar to coke). After a decade I think consumers are easily manipulated.

Also, they may know if you personally are likely to buy a coke after seeing an ad - that's what the coke bottle cap numbers, or McDonald's monopoly pieces and other games where you enter a code on line are for. They know what online ads people saw recently and how that correlates to them entering bottle cap numbers. It may not work for you personally if you clear cookies or block ads, but it works. And it's not all bad for the consumer. My company is looking at how other companies run "loyalty programs". Customers who purchase more (or enter more numbers online) receive more or higher value coupons, cheaper shipping, early access to new products, better customer support and other things they aren't even aware of - in addition to being able to use their points to purchase something like a coffee mug with a coke logo.

Facebook will have to send a 1099 to everyone who earned credits this year and we'll have to pay taxes. My bank sent me one saying I earned $17 in interest. If I earned enough credits to buy 2 movies they'd probably be worth more than that and I'm sure the IRS would want their cut.

My fortune 100 company has branches, subsidiaries, and employees all over the world. We have fired VPs of a region for things like this going on in their geographic area. There are many things we don't allow anywhere globally even though they are legal or the only way to get things done in some countries.

I can't stand all of the business practice, ethics, and legal training I have to go through every year (along with 10s of thousands of other employees) at a pretty high cost to the company. But everyone from the top down to new hires knows that stuff like this won't be tolerated and that responsibility doesn't stop with the person doing the unethical behavior (so the VPs insist on everyone under them being aware of corporate policy and follow it, and you do need the push from that level).

So I know it's possible to control and have have no problem blaming "Google" as well as "Google Kenya". I don't know all the facts here, so google may very well have similar policies to my company and someone high up will be fired. But, if they haven't been making an effort to stop things like this from the corporate level, I will put some blame on them.

That's what most upper management will make decisions on

gaps - what can't you do now that needs to be done. both capabilities and time to execute may be important

risks - what risks do you face with the current organization? (viruses, lack of auditing for any regulations you need to meet, hardware/software at end-of-life etc)

savings - how much money the business saves with a proposed re-organization. this will require determining the costs of the new IT department. If the cost is $0, just do it today and present the savings - but I'd guess it will take at least your time and probably parts of other peoples' time all the way up to the CEO (reading a new department line-item on reports does take time)

It would be best to present ways to fill the gaps and minimized the risks without a reorg as well. Then let management decide if IT department solution is better than the other solutions.

New departments are not always better. There is overhead of creating budgets which can lead to debates over resources, attention from upper management, and allocating time from other departments (HR, legal, etc) You may just need to better define the mission of your department (e.g. include IT services) and annual/quarterly goals and change individual responsibilities and hiring if needed. I'm in a situation with too many departments. Some minor things require 4 people (team lead level) to approve. When I want to start a new project I have 3 department heads I can go to for funding - they'll all start by asking if one of the others will approve and I may end up needing something from each of them which means extra stakeholders to deal with in the project (which isn't always a bad thing)

Every morning my inbox is full of requests from co-workers in Asia, Europe, and South America. They shouldn't be allowed to send email outside of MY working hours.

The summary didn't specify "traffic safety", so

1. red light cameras increase revenue (that's their purpose, so if they can't prove that, get rid of them)

2. more revenue means they have to lay off fewer police officers (easy to fudge some books and threaten layoffs to "prove" this)

3. more police officers result in better public safety (use Biden's quote about fewer officers means more rapes and murders)

Modern tax apps have to deal with things like this. But "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."

I'm sure my company and many others will be doing a test run before issuing 10s of thousands of checks and direct deposits.

I'd bet more than a few companies restore from backup and lose tax rate updates. Probably not big companies, but plenty of small ones where accounting and IT don't have their own "department" and don't have processes that drive everyone crazy most of the time but make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen.

Unless you can find a way to make voters care, nothing else matters. I'm afraid the UI they want has 2 big buttons "R" and "D" for voting and discussion boards where only like-minded people can post.

>but it would be equivalent to declaring war on the entire planet at once, which would be pointless.

You must not be familiar with the way the US government works. If they accept your challenge they'll spend the next 3 months trying to see which party can be most pointless and constantly accusing each other of having a valid point. And they won't even notice all of us shaking our heads and thinking "how did we elect these people"?

stale $5/tub popcorn does nothing for me. But I'll go through a couple bags of microwave stuff during a movie at home. Maybe I'm not the norm, or maybe they need to redo their figures, or maybe they don't care.