Or, you know, you could work out those problems with a design before you start.

Can you list the projects you've worked on where there was a complete, correct design at the beginning, and that design was then flawlessly executed? I would like to study and learn from such projects.

As I understand it, in a stand-up, one is supposed to say what one did yesterday (I don't care), what one is going to do today (again, I don't care), and what road-blocks, if any, you have (and, unless your problems affect me doing my work, I still don't care).

So you're saying if a fellow team member is doing something in a way you think could be done better, you just stay silent? If a team member is planning to do something that you think isn't actually necessary because of something you're doing, you just stay silent? If a team member is struggling with a problem you have the skill set to help out with, you just stay silent?

It's true, for Agile to work, you need to have a team. The group you are a part of doesn't seem to fit the definition (or at least you don't).

Interfaces often make sense, but you can tell when somebody has gone interface-crazy when it is no longer possible, by simply looking at the source code, to determine what actually is going to happen -- instead, you're reduced to tracing the code in a debugger to see what actually goes on.

In physics, being wrong by a couple orders of magnitude is no big deal. Call me back when he's off by 10^20.

I love how in your comment you specify that there are "specific programs" that could be cut without elaborating on what those actually are.

War spending. If you're going to force me to state the fucking obvious, there you go.

The same number of dollars could have been cut from specific programs in a way that would have had no noticeable impact on critical and important services. Instead, they chose to impact vital services in order to send a message to the public: "If you ask us to cut budgets, we'll do it in the most painful way possible." It's nothing more than an enormous "fuck you" to the American public.

Suppose the White House DID blow up, and Obama WAS injured. Why the hell should this affect the price of corn?

License plates are a special case. They only have letters and numbers on them. The resolution of a camera may be too low for image processing software to extract an arbitrary image from it. But the fact that it is a license plate gives the algorithm prior knowledge which may help it extract the most likely plate number even if an arbitrary image can't be recognized.

It's not about breaking the bank. The point is, there is still a possibility of something getting through. It's stupid to spend that much money to have a less-than-100% success rate, when you could spend less and get a perfect success rate.

Let's say each MoC gets 200 letters per day -- a reasonable estimate based on some quick Googling. 535 members times 200 letters equals 107000 pieces of mail per day.

Suppose you pay some worker minimum wage to screen mail. They spend on average 20 seconds examining each piece of mail. That's 594 man-hours per day. Minimum wage in DC is $8.25 per hour. So, $4900 per day to screen the mail, just for labor costs.

$4900 per day is a pretty solid base estimate. On top of that, there are costs associated with enhanced checking for "suspicious" items. Assume 1 in 1000 items is deemed suspicious and undergoes extensive chemical testing at a cost of $50 (that's being generous). That's $5350 additional per day. A total of $10,250 per day to check the mail. 52 weeks a year, 6 days a week of mail is 312 days per year. Total cost per year is therefore $3.2 million.

Don't you think such an expenditure is completely idiotic? For one thing, the system can fail, despite all your checks. Something could slip through. On the other hand, you could, for a small fraction of that money, design and implement a robotic system which automatically opens the mail, digitally scans it, and transmits it to the MoC in the form of a PDF. 0% chance of failure, as well as much much cheaper.

Are we seriously testing all mail coming to members of Congress for poisons? How the hell is this accomplished in a reasonable amount of time, with reasonable accuracy, and how much is it costing us?

How about we build a robot that opens the mail, scans the pages into digital form, and skip all that ludicrous bullshit?

Godwin's Law says nothing about losing arguments. It states that as a discussion continues, the probability of an argument involving Nazis approaches 100%. It does not state that the person who makes such an argument loses the debate.

A bigger pity that Google will get down on their knees and deepthroat the MPAA like a good little whore.

Your perspective is skewed. Google isn't doing this because the *AA asks them to, they are doing it because it is the law.

If the *AA's get out of hand, Google could easily just buy the entire industry. Every single one of those companies. With cash. Several times over. You don't seem to understand the amount of money Google has. They aren't kowtowing to private corporate interests at this point, they are simply doing what the law requires them to do. If you get a take-down notice, you have to take it down. If the *AA's begin to make the world suck too bad for Google, they could just purchase them and eradicate all of it.

I find the idea of a rule for which hand holds the fork to be patently ridiculous. Table manners to me means "use a fork."

When eating salad, I usually hold the fork in the right. When eating steak, I hold it in the left, because the right is occupied holding a knife. As long as I'm not eating with my fingers, I figure I'm doing okay.

4. EAT WHAT YOU KILL!

If you kill a person in self defense, this rule still applies.