There is no measure of productivity that does not have huge flaws. We'd like to measure quality but there isn't even a reliable definition of quality.

Other posters have mentioned that developers will game the system. That is true. Even if the metric is simply personal observation, people will exceptional and sometimes devious social skills will game the system. That is what office politics and the good old boy network are about.

If trick is to combine subjective and object metrics (even if flawed). You need the objective metrics to catch the social slackers. You need subjective measurements to catch deliberate distortions and account for variations in working styles.

Granted, there will always be idiots who will a tool inappropriately but that does not mean it is a bad tool.

eHarmony matches conservative mariage minded people with other conservative mariage minded people. The more extreme and fringe types are rejected. They famously reject gays but, really, they only work with simple cogs. That might actually be the key: Super "normal" people can find each other more quickly and with less drama if the "freeks" are excluded.

When an article about fsck has a tag line of "What's the damage", I expect to see some discussion of how fsck deals with a damaged file system.

The time required to fsck a file system that doesn't need checking is less interesting and inconsistant with the title. Although, if fsck had complained about the known clean file system that would be interesting.

I think this is great idea in principle but problematic to put into practice.

One is enforcement costs to importing country (In your example, the US) Are you going to send EPA and OSHA inspectors all over the world? Who pays for that? Will foreign governments even allow the inspectors to operate?

Another is the cost of compliance born by the company. Complying with one set of rules can be difficult. Complying with two sets of rules can be impractical. Complying with n sets of rules may be impossible because they will almost certainly contradict. Back in the late 80's/early 90's US automakers were trying to export to Japan. Japan had complicated rules for vehicles sold there that, in the view of US manufactures, made it impossible for foreign makes to profitably participate in the Japanese market.

Because of the second point, such rules become trade barriers and run afoul with treaty obligations.

Ultimately, I think the rules need to be standardized world-wide but that is a long term task given the difficulty in getting nations to agree on even the simplest things.

More accurately:
The most succesful and better known Islamic empires in the Middle East were more advanced and open than the ravaged remains of the West Romain Empire and yet uncivilized lands of Western Europe where held sway.

This doesn't execuse the religious persecutiong by the Byzantines but socities do tend to be less tollerant when they are on the defensive. Also, even the more elightened socities were rather intollerant by modern standards.

For most people, the first priority is to pay the bills: food, clothing, housing, health care. While a good laymen's knowledge of science and technology is a good thing it is a challenge to get much beyond that with the time and energy that remains after working a full time job. And that's for the fields where it practical at all to pursue as hobbies. Many fields have no effective "cottege" form. Without a lot of money, a lot of time, and quite a few people, you can't build anything.

Holidays are very short or they don't happen every year. Those two weeks often include sick days. Taking vacation adjacent to holidays is a common technique to eak out an extra day or two. In good years you get ridiculous things like flying to Hawaii for a long weekend. And it gets worse. Even when there are enough vacation days accrued for a real trip, it can be difficult to get the boss to agree to let you take all those days consecutive.

You obviously don't work in the US. Around here, two weeks is minimum, three weeks is generous, and four weeks is fat. Four weeks is something you only get by working many years at a generous company.

I'm surprised that 10Mb/s is outpolling 4Mb/s by 3:1. Few ADSL links in the US are close enough to the CO with the right technology (ADSL2) to land in the 10Mb/s bucket. This suggests that a lot more people than expected are either:

1. Outside the US
2. On Cable
3. On VDSL
4. On some more exotic technology, like fiber
5. Listing their work or school connection
6. Are a bit confused and listing the theoretical throughput of the technology they use rather than what it actually delivered

On the last item: I'm on ADSL2, which could deliver 20Mb/s over unrealistically short links. Since I don't live across the street from the CO, the best I get from a local speed test is 7.2Mb/s. I'm sure I get even less from real Internet sites. If I swap in my old ADSL1 modem, the speed drops to 5Mb/s which is probably 6Mb/s sync rate just like my prior service.