I agree with the part that management is easier said than done. But so is coding, so is engineering... That doesn't change the fact that it was a terrible way to manage the situation.

Different people have different skills. Having all developers being managers for a day wouldn't help at all. Just as I'm expected to be a good developer, the manager is expected be a good manager. This is the type of decision taken by someone that has no idea what the real problem is. And not understanding the problems of your department is a sign of bad management...

Now, if this would classify most managers in the world as idiots, this is another discussion. Most developers in the world have absolutely no idea how code should be written, still, they are the majority.

I agree that this definitely happens in the office, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a terrible management decision. I could argue that the sales guy has the privilege of going out every day while I need to be at the office coding. To make things even, he must be denied the "privilege" to go out to clients, because it is technically possible to sell things by phone or using the internet.

I mean, you are right, these things happen. But the manager that handles this situation like this is an idiot. I had one like this before, and the department had a party when he was fired...

That may work for you, but not for me. I MUST listen to something when I'm doing something serious. And by that I mean that project I really enjoy working on, that code I want finish. Otherwise I can't concentrate. For regular boring work, I don't mind silence... but I tend to forget about the rest of the world easier when I don't hear the sound of phones, keyboards, people talking...And silence won't help. I tend to keep remembering guitar solos during the day that if I don't listen to then I guarantee I won't be able to focus enough to do something really good.

Different people focus in different ways. This manager is just crazy to think he will see any good outcome from this. The only thing that will happen is he will get a lot of unsatisfied employees and less work done.

... do they see the higgs bosons now?

Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/401/

Also, most host providers use the host header to provide access to many the website using a single IP. Unless you access the site by the DNS name or use some programming library to send the packets with the correct header to the host, you cannot access them using the IP address.

Well, I'm sure your dad listened to a lot of other bands in his time. Maybe not as much as you do, but he surely did listen to more things.

What happens is that some music gets stuck in your mind, and as you grow old, the rest of the world changes and you can't find new music that you like anymore, so you stick with the ones you already like.

I bet in 40 years or so, you will be like this too, listening to the same old MP3 you have for 30+ years while your son and grandson make fun of how you listen only to that old crap and how the new format is much better because you can change the instruments while you listen, or change the singer... and you will wonder why the hell they care about that.

Well, that is quite of an stupid argument if you think about. The reason is very simple: because people want to hear that specific person singing that specific song. I could open youtube and get 50 covers of pink floyd, but listening to Davig Gilmour and his feeling is much better.

I agree that there are good stuff out there for free, but that doesn't exclude the good paid stuff that is already out there too. Having the milk available doesn't stop people from wanting cookies.

I like the approach of the Gov't Mule (www.mule.net). They are a really great band, one of the best I have ever heard. And they allow people to record and publish their live performances for free (usually available at bt.etree.org).

So, they have the studio albums they sell, and don't allow people to distribute it. And people usually don't, because the live versions are available for free. And still, they have a huge fan base, enough to do about 20 shows every month. This probably works very well for them. Not everyone can do it, but it surely works as an alternative model for a lot of bands.

This is a problem that won't go away easily. This image is perpetuated every day by stupid people that for some reason hate open source.

The funny fact is that the same people that say that Linux or any other open source software is created by lonely nerds, at the same time see nothing wrong with wikipedia, tvtropes, blogs, twitter, facebook, etc.

So, the bottom line is: if a software is is created by individuals, it is a huge pile of crap done by lonely nerds that have nothing better to do in life. Anything else is actually a great experience that shows how powerful individual contributions are, and how they can change the world.

By your analysis, the largest single group contributing to Linux is actually the "people working for a company" group, with 81.8%.

In almost every case this is only true because we tend to look only to the CPU clock for comparisons. We see a "900 MHz netbook" and say its simple hardware.

But along with this 900MHz CPU there is a hyper threading bus, DDR2 memory, and even that very small 4GB hard disk that can sustain at least 50MB/s easily. It is MUCH faster than a 900MHz desktop you had back then.

You are right, I don't know why people are still talking about this. C# was copied from java, as it was from delphi and c++. This is even officially documented in pages, video interviews, books... Just as java was copied from c++, that came from C...

It is impressive that people still don't realize that any thing that are created today will borrow only the good features from things created yesterday, discarding the bad ones. C++ was no different, Java was no different, C# was no different, and if Sun/Oracle decides to create a new java from scratch today, they will surely copy a lot features from .NET and C#.

You are obviously talking a lot of shit there. I can't give numbers about issue #1, but from experience they are at least equivalent for general use. And its not like if anyone couldn't just open 2 apps in their desktop and compare. Java may be faster here, slower there and vice versa. But you certainly won't find any huge differences in the runtime that makes one seem useless next to the other.

Now, about issues #2 and #3, you are probably smoking something.

What kind of hidden conversions or text substitutions you are talking about? As any language, there are *features* that change the behavior in some way. There are no hidden conversions, there are documented implicit and explicit casts, there is marshalling for interoperability with other platforms that are completely configurable. Any language has this kind of thing to some degree, even java. Also, NET itself have no notion of macros, because macros are a compiler feature, not a runtime one. C# for instance doesn't know what is a macro, it simply has some basic pre-compiler, but nothing like C. It seems you don't understand or don't care about learning how the language works, even though all the reference, compilers and SDK is freely available online. The fact that you can't understand a feature that any VB programmer understands really tells me you shouldn't be spreading shit about it.

As for saying that java has the advantage of having more useful languages than .NET, you must be out of your mind. Simply going from the standard languages that .NET supports out of the box (C#, VB.NET, C++, F#) you have 4x more languages than Java, and they are certainly useful. If you count the other languages that people have created or ported to the CLI, you can even count Java.

You are just a java fanboy that will defend any feature that java implements, and bash any other that java doesn't have, until the day it is implemented. You are no different from the fanboys that love LINQ or extension methods.

The fact is, Java has a lot of benefits over .NET, like *supported* multi-platform runtime from the official vendor, more libraries due to more time in the market, a more open community, etc. You could simply have used them in your argument instead of saying a lot of nonsense shit about stuff you don't want to understand.

Only illegal copies cost $5. You could say also that they cost nothing if I download them from pirate bay. And if you're from Brazil too, you know legal copies of PS2 games here cost a lot more than that. Zeebo is going after a different market, offering legal copies costing $12.

But IMHO, I don't think the poor kids here are looking for the type of games this console is going to have (like Quake, Sonic, etc). I see this working for parents buying this for young kids, but in general, once kids grow up to the age of 12-14, they will ask for newer consoles, newer games.

The problem is that there is no isolated place in the world today. Wanting the latest is not a luxury that only 1st world countries have anymore. Information travels very fast nowadays, and products appear here almost at the same time they appear in USA or Europe. Poor kids on the street here in Brazil may not have anything to eat, but they surely know that a PS3 exists, they see a Wii or Xbox360 demos on stores as they pass by.

So, the fact is that that poor kids/parents will surely prefer to buy a not so old PS2 in the black market free of taxes for $150 or less than buying a legal version of Zeebo with 15 year old games for about the same price.

So, yes, I see this console working for a specific market, but I don't see it as any revolution like being the most popular console ever.