If you did before, you're an idiot. (I'm talking about outlook.com here, not the software of the same name).

My bets are strongly on nobody getting anything, at least as far as legal consequences go. These people have been busy building and buying themselves immunity from the law for the past 20 years.

Not to worry. The NSA puts careful safeguards on the data: For all persons known to be US citizens, a software filter converts their in-home images into stick figures before saving.

There's a lot of "fourth monkey" dynamics that goes into it. It's especially hard to stop infighting when you've spent decades selecting employees to be, what's a polite word, "competitive".

They could even bring back a former executive.

I've been through enough reorganisations myself to know one thing:

Changing the labels on the executives doors doesn't change a fucking thing, and neither does painting a new org chart.

The really important things are all in the implementation. Putting people into the same division doesn't mean they magically start working with each other. Announcing a vision or strategy doesn't create it.

So, as far as I'm concerned, nothing interesting has happened - yet.

Except that the Canadian experience refutes this.

We don't "up or out" - and we also have fairly stringent gateways and goalposts for promotion (specifically, courses that must be taken prior to moving up - courses that are ranked and merited, with only so many serials running each year)

We have plenty of Captains who will never make Major, Majors who will never make LCol, etc. Some of these guys are dead wood, but the majority of them are solid officers who perform productive work and who retain vast stores of corporate knowledge. They may not be rock stars, but they (mostly) aren't idiots - and they never get Peter Principled (where a solid Captain becomes a shitty Major).

It makes for a much more effective - and happier - organization.

The biggest problem is that there are a lot of people whose job it is to take a piece of paper from one bin and put it in another. All of those jobs would be put at risk were you to actually do something substantive about this problem. They're far more concerned with their jobs than actually getting anything done.

No, the problem is you don't understand the problem domain and thus just repeat platitudes on the assumption that doing so makes you look wise. This system has been in place for years, all the old paper movers are long gone.
 

Of course what really needs to be done is to document the actual process and system requirements, and then just put up a modern payroll processing system.

Everything *is* well documented - the problem is, the military pay system is way, way more complex than any civilian system. None of my old pay statements are handy (buried somewhere out in the garage if I still have them), but here's what went into my paycheck in the last year or so of my enlistment;

• • Base Pay: E-5 with over eight years of service.
  • Submarine pay. (But only so long as I was eligible for submarine duty - I was on shore duty, and if I'd gone under nine months with transferring to a sea command I'd no longer be eligible for that pay. This pay also varied with the number of years I'd been submarine eligible.)
  • COMRATS. Rather than issuing me a mess card to eat in the chow hall, I got cash instead.
  • BAQ - since I didn't live in the barracks, I got a cash allowance to live off base.
  • _____ I don't remember the name, but it was a differential to BAQ to account for the cost of living here. Someone in San Diego got more, someone in bumfuck Nebraska got less.
• Then there were all the deductions (not so different from civilian practice, so no need for details.)
• Then there were all the annual payouts, like my re-enlistment bonus and my uniform maintenance allowance.

 
Had I gone back to sea, I'd have gotten sea pay - which amount depends on the total number of months served at a sea command during my career to date, so those months have to be tracked and the clock started and stopped as appropriate. (The services have a whole host of incentive, qualification, and duty status pay and allowances - jump, hazardous duty, onerous duty, etc... etc...)
 
Then there's annual leave (which isn't so different from the civilian world.)
 
On top of that, the system has to manage travel pay, the civilian pay system, retirees...
 
It's a complex system, and nowhere as simple as just 'parsing a text file'.

No it isn't.

Yes, it is.
 

The corporations have just distorted things.

No, ignorant jackasses like yourself have distorted things - because you not only have no fecking clue what you're talking about, you've swallowed the bullshit, lies, and propaganda of equally ignorant people wholesale.

Yeah; I was thinking that seven million lines of COBOL is what? Maybe 5 lines of perl? 8 lines of python?

Someone was right about COBOL variable names often being all the documentation you need. That may be right, considering that your typical COBOL variable name pretty much qualifies as a line of code all by itself. Of course, most of each name is assorted illegible acronyms and "Hungarian" style attribute indicators that are different for every program, and thus meaningless to anyone other than the original coders.

Here's all the information you could ever want: West Antarctica.

"It underscores the general sentiment of the copyright monopoly not protecting the creator of artwork, but protecting the big distribution monopolies, no matter who actually created the art."

I'm not sure that outside of small bubble of people who don't believe in copyright at all (let alone understand the concept that others have rights in the first place), that such sentiment is general.

No, the actual point is that subtitles are derivative works - which require permission from the holders of the copyright to create. Which is an example of copyright getting it exactly right. You aren't allowed to muck with someone else's work without their permission. That's the whole point of copyright,

Have you ever said, "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I'll fight to death for your right to say it."?

If you have said it, you lied.

If you have not said this or anything similar to it, then my comment didn't apply to you. You are honest about not supporting people who have opinions different than your own and do your best to silence all who disagree with you so that America may one day be of one mind. All who oppose you, including their families, must be punished into submission and silenced until they think the same way you do. You are one who is proud to be against differing ideas and cultures and feel that everyone in the world should... no.... MUST think correct thoughts.

Um, that's the Bill of Rights, not the Constitution. The Bill of Rights restricts the government. The rest of The Constitution actually gives the federal government lots of power. For example, see Article 1, Section 8 for the powers given to Congress. There's a bit too much to quote, so I'll just quote the last one:

This is also known as the "necessary and proper clause.
...all other Powers vested by this Constitution...

Why would the Constitution say this if it did not give any powers to the government?

May I suggest taking your own advice?

Um, the First Amendment actually "enshrines the religious bigotry of these Christians into law" and forbids government from getting involved in religious concepts. If the federal government is not allowed to recognize the Ten Commandments, how can mandate licenses and set rules for marriage?