Because a good design doesn't overcome bad code.

In theory, a good design ought to be provide some insight into how that design can be tested.

Often tests only look at 'correctness'; does the code yield the proper output given the right input.

Ideally there should be some code quality metrics included in testing, and also performance benchmarking including resource usage.

E.g. in addition to required input/required output; required satisfactory runtime characteristics and code quality metrics (CQM)

Anyways; it may be a challenge, if the code quality metric is good enough, it could be used to overcome bad code by flagging it for review and rewrite

$99,000 makes the developer a demi-god.

I'm not sure what kind of methods used to calculate this 99,000 number comes from anyways. Maybe stock grants for developers involved in startups? Or maybe it's a geographic thing.

I've been professional in this field for 6 years; I have a bachelor of science in CS, 8 programming languages, and I don't see nearly half of that.

Admittedly i'm the only developer in my organization, and I get hit with system engineering tasks and working with IT technicians as well, to provide them the help they need to understand what actions they need to be taking.

But I think the 99,000 number is a fiction.

Compensation probably varies from company to company... so where appreciation from stock option grants is considered in some companies 99,000 may be Demo-God status... in other companies 99,000 might be feh...

Companies are unlikely to pay programmers more than their CEO though; furthermore, pay decreases down the chain of managers, and the more managers there are above the developer.... probably, the more people there are that the programmers' definitely won't get paid more than.

Share value increases most when jobs are cut. Any idiot can cut salaries and jobs to get a quarterly bump in share price. The success of US corporations has more to do with corporate consolidation increasing pricing power than it does brilliant management.

Share value increases when jobs are cut, and the resulting decrease in costs is more than the resulting decrease in revenue and future revenue prospects.

The ultimate corporation(TM) is one that has sky-high revenue expected to be repeated and increase every year into the future and no employees or costs required to support this revenue.

Don't know what to tell you except to say that I don't view my manager as a "bastard", nor do I think those two statements of mine would be received identically.

That makes sense... it's not your manager's job to be "the bastard"; its to manage appropriately.

Now your manager's manager may order your manager to do something that is adverse to you; regardless of how nicely you have handled the situation with your manager.

Your manager might not be able to approve the raise, without in essence the counteroffer; your manager's manager when informed of this, may order that your manager start going about the process to replace their person who has done this.

Having accepted then changed his mind, he didn't realize what the other company had put into the process. They had spent hours screening candidates, performing phone interviews, calling people in for personal interview, etc. And then when they had offered him a job that he'd accepted, they had needed to call up the other candidates

If you're going to be seeking a counteroffer, don't lie and accept the offer, until you are finally able to commit to it.

You better inform the prospective employer of your actual intentions

Except there are ways to get around that. Ever known anyone who got a loan from parents/friends/ to start a business? Spin it as debt rather than equity.

If you could avoid it looking to the government like a fixed income security; maybe they could work out a mechanism involving an optional promise to return contributors money after giving out the reward, plus the imputed interest to compensate for cost of capital at the fair market value for consumer debt; conditioned on the project generating revenue or obtaining future funding; less the fixed cost of production.

In other words: a promise that you as an enabling contributor will recapture your contribution, before the project creator is allowed to generate revenue from the project and pocket profit.

It makes sense; but I think the liability to the contributor would have to be a liability from Kickstarter's to the contributor; instead of a liability of the project creator in order for it to possibly be legal.
Because I don't see every project creator going through the paperwork and expense to register individuall with the SEC.

Its not supposed to be you con people into giving you money, let them take the risk that you can't complete development (or that you're just a scam), and then profit as well.

Kickstarter doesn't fully transfer the risk. According to the terms of the site, if the project creator cannot deliver the rewards, they are liable to the contributors, to refund the amount of their contributions; otherwise, they could be sued by the contributors.

So the contributors have the risk if the project creator becomes insolvent, but they don't have the risk if the project creator has other resources, or is not insolvent but just fails to deliver

It would be interesting to have some statistics about Kickstarter projects that were funded but failed to deliver, regarding... what exactly the result was.

Did the contributors just accept their loss, with no legal issues; was the project creator insolvent (as in unable to pay their liabilities to the contributors); did they refund; or did a class action lawsuit result?

Except there are ways to get around that. Ever known anyone who got a loan from parents/friends/ to start a business? Spin it as debt rather than equity.

Are you familiar with the case of Prosper.com ?

On November 24, 2008, the SEC found Prosper.com to be in violation of the Securities Act of 1933. As a result of these findings, the SEC imposed a cease and desist order on Prosper.[11] Due primarily to the novel nature of the peer to peer lending models, the SEC, after review, now treats all peer to peer lending transactions as sales of securities and requires that all platforms must register with the SEC.

Then let me invest, rather than prebuy. Let me buy a tiny part of the profits.

This would be in violation of SEC regulations against selling unregistered securities to the public.

The only way they would potentially be able to do so would be to require that all site members prove they are accredited investors; E.g. by providing a copy of their paystub, showing sufficient income to meet the $200,000 per year income minimum set by the government for accredited investor status.

Yes. And I feel like the community is being abused by the VC people, if they can just get kickstarter funding, and then go grab additional VC funding at the same time.

Why the VC people can just make 'starting a kickstarter' project as a precondition to obtaining VC funding, and approve the funding, after success of the kickstarter project; so the venture capitalists take the equity of the business, anyways, instead of the project founders.

If they could get VC funding, from the bankers, then the VC should be funding development too.

I don't see the resolution as to ban VC funding.

I think Kickstarter project creators should be required to disclose, if they are also seeking or obtaining VC funding, or other investments, prior to the completion of their project and fullfillment; In other words, any other funding should be disclosed.

That way, the crowd can if they choose to, rank/sort their projects that they are considering gifting to, based on their perceived need for those funds.

Why not in addition to requiring a password... give the user a 255x255 grid (Total 65,000 boxes). Require the user to place 3 symbols on the grid, by clicking, not within the vicinity of any two symbols lining up horizontally, diagonally, or vertically, and not within a certain euclidian distance of any other symbol.

The symbol in a box can be placed in the center, left edge, right edge, bottom edge, top edge, upper-left corner, upper-right corner, lower-right corner, or lower-left corner.

In addition to the password, the placement of the symbols must be remembered (which box, and where in each box, each marker was placed).

The result is an extra ~19 bit field.

Then a heavy work-factor PBKDF2, BCrypt, or SCrypt hash of this 19-bit field could be appended to the password.

Thereby, creating a password augmentation that will be very difficult to brute force

You agree that Microsoft respects your privacy more than Google?

They both "respect" your privacy; your private information is very important to them, and they want to be sure they are the ones that get to monetize it first and foremost.

If they weren't careful in safeguarding your data sufficiently well against the prying eyes of others, they might be in danger of losing monetary value to competitors in the advertising biz.

How about this: Gold's innate value is about 3 to 5% more than Copper's innate value, but less than silver's innate value.

Their "financing" is 0% APR. A Galaxy S4 is $20/mo for 24 months and $149 down, the same $629 as pay-up-front.

Time value of money says there's no thing as a 0% APR. The vendor is making back the cost of that capital somehow, probably by including it up front, by increasing the initial loan amount, in the price of the phone, or in the price of the subscription.

I'd say that's very good for T-Mobile, except the predatory anti-consumer term that you immediately owe the remaining balance if you stop the service. That should hint at you that some part of the subscription fee is actually being used quietly to fund the cost of capital, including the risk component.

It does seem in poor taste that the original author choose to vent over a personal experience with some contact at Voltage in an Ask slashdot article, having perhaps done inadequate research, and/or asked inadequate questions to learn sufficiently about the solution before presenting to stakeholders.

I don't understand that... taking a trial of an enterprise software product, or at least reading all the technical manuals, should be key, before presenting it to stakeholders within one's own organization, as the solution, just as much as getting the pricing.