I agree with your point, but given the popularity of RPGs that force the player to perform inventory management this task must actually be enjoyable to many gamers. It does force the player to make decisions about the relative worth of loot.

They're going to lock up everyone who tries to access internet porn? I doubt there are enough prisons in China to hold every man with a computer.

How can a company that is shaping up to gross 60 billion dollars a year and earn a 20% profit margin possibly not be at least partly evil?

Sadly I agree that many developers will put up with awful working conditions, but that is mostly because they are paid pretty well. I disagree that you don't need brilliant developers, but it can be difficult finding the right balance between folks that write "profound code" and folks that are willing to copy that code and finish all the required functionality. Software development is still growing rapidly, so any company that thinks their developers are willing to put up with anything to keep their jobs is going to lose out when the economy gets good and there are many jobs available.

If everyone followed your suggestion then developers would all work in the equivalent of a college computer lab - long tables with closely packed workstations and no personal space. I have never seen anyone try this, but even when companies use relatively small, open cubes it can be distracting to many developers. OTOH I have worked in a building where every developer had an office with a door that closed, and that didn't really help either since it made collaboration kind of tough. I think it is worth thinking about productivity when it comes to setting up an office. The incremental costs are not that high compared to the cost of even a single-digit change in a typical developer's productivity.

It can be difficult to determine the size of a program when you are first starting to write it. Obviously it would be faster to hack together a trivial program like "Hello World" in a simple text editor. IDEs are more useful when you are solving non-trivial problems, like maintaining a couple hundred source files and integrating dozens of external libraries.

That sounds like a project manager to me - an experienced professional with leadership experience that doesn't participate in the day-to-day work of the development team. The best sprints I have participated in have been facilitated by project managers.

How is a website supposed to know the difference between a visitor and a crawler? Both send HTTP requests for pages. Crawlers could use special user agent strings, but they don't have to. The only way to keep automated systems off of a website is to use a CAPTCHA, which tends to be annoying to legitimate users, and therefore used sparingly.

Apparently some folks in Zimbabwe had to start posting signs on restroom doors to ask people not to wipe their asses with money, since it's cheaper than toilet paper but clogs up the plumbing.

Can the C64 be overclocked? Yes. My friend has a souped up C64 with a turbo switch. I believe you can crank up the clock from 1Mhz to 2-4Mhz.

Not to mention the added luster of nostalgia. I was showing my mom Fallout 3 and her comment was like "wow, it looks almost as good as Myst!"

Many folks cannot call 911. Local civil services are mobilizing to ensure that folks can get critical services if needed. Banks are closed, businesses are unable to process credit card transactions. And I can't work from home today. I would call this havoc.

Python? Luxury! Back in the day we had to write a solution for the Towers of Hanoi in assembly! And we didn't have PCs with gigabytes of memory, large color monitors and local processing resources. We had to make do with VT220 terminals (in green or amber) connected to a DEC minicomputer, which today wouldn't be trusted to control a modern toaster.