Already done. They've been ordered to lie on the floor for dogs to sniff them for over two decades. The generation that bends over for every security excess is now in it's twenties and thirties, and we see in every way the outcome of that conditioning. There is no fight in them, no rebellion, no sense. They don't even know what the hell the point is about security *in your own person* and privacy in general. They've been prisoners in an open-air prison their entire lives, like the Soviets used to be and the Chinese now are. If you can't move, talk, or write without scrutiny and punishment, you are in a prison, no matter how many times you get to watch Netflix.

Can't wait until the first time someone looks into a scanner and is blinded by an intentionally amped-up light. Easy hack, no? I do not, ever, wish to put my eye against a mystery light source in a box. You see, I believe that people, even white rich people, can spawn evil assholes.

We'll give up every freedom we have for "security", yet we'll put our eyes into a laser/light on demand.

I resemble this remark. Same here. Made it through high school with a GPA of 3.5 without much effort. Barely succeeded at college with a GPA of 2.6 because of it.

I kept thinking "There must be some way to use computer memory instead of human memory for this stuff". Today, I think I'd be recording lectures on my smart phone and listening to them at night when I'm asleep on loop.

This. Having said this, however, my software engineering program had a 75% drop out rate- within the first three terms. This was back when they were telling EVERYBODY that programming was the career of the future (they lied) and that it was easy. C and Advanced C at OIT were *all* visual/tangible results within two weeks- short two week programming projects that introduced basic concepts such as looping and data structures.

There was a backup degree called "Management in Information Systems", we had a saying by the time I graduated "God Bless those little MIS students, they interview for the same jobs we do and make us look good".

I wouldn't say that the Xbox was "done right". It still had massive technical problems, forcing recalls. Since announcing the Xbox One, they've reversed many of the decisions that they had made, since those decisions had angered their target audience. Even with those things fixed, I still won't be buying one, even though I'm just the kind of person who buys expensive consoles.

And a poorly executing thing, at that. I mean, really, printing is still a mess. What makes Microsoft think they can handle 3D printing?

Politely. With guile.

I don't know what you expect me to say. I've had to convince some hardass bosses of various things, and either I convinced them, or they convinced me, or I lived with it, or I quit. There's no magical answer here.

The question seemed to be, in effect, "Everyone expects things to be done in an unreasonable way. What technical thing can you do to meet the unreasonable demands?"

So my answer would be, "If their expectations are actually unreasonable, you won't meet them, so instead try to change them."

I'm not a developer, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I *do* manage technical projects on a regular basis. I try to stick to the rule that deadlines are dependent on requirements. If you ask for something to be added to the project, then the deadline (and budget) must be reviewed and altered to account for the changes. It only makes sense.

But if you're trying to make a regular release schedule, then I'd suggest that you basically stop accepting new requests for each release some number of days ahead of time.

The key sentence in your post is, "But we still have to deal with constant incoming feature changes and requests that are expected to be included in this week's package." Change that expectation. Maybe tell people that all requested changes for Friday's release must be submitted at least a week in advance, and then set the task on Monday morning to review those requests and set them on a realistic schedule.

Of course, I might be talking out of my ass because I don't program and I don't really understand what Agile development is.

If you change one, you can only keep one of the others fixed. This is an immutable law of any sort of work.

Where I work, we have an agile process, but we're rigid about one thing...sprint plans don't change. Once a sprint plan is finalized and developers have accepted it, managers have two options...blow up the sprint and create a new plan (with a new deadline) or wait until the next sprint. The former option is supposed to be an extreme case and all checkins for the sprint, whether complete or not, are reverted to the previous sprint state. This allows management the flexibility to not wait in emergencies (i.e. we signed a multi-million-dollar partnership with XYZ but their shrink-wrapped software releases two weeks from now and we need our integration by next week) and yet provides enough of a penalty that they don't do it very often.

For one thing, Chrome doesn't really advertise new versions at all. I'm suprised to even see it noted that we're at v28. My Chrome is running Version 28 already, but if you had asked me what version I was running, I would have guessed 26.

In each upgrade, nothing breaks. There are almost no visual changes. You might just notice something new and go, "When did that happen?"

Sure, I did not mean to suggest Confucianism always provides optimal results (for whatever optimum one may be seeking). I only meant that misunderstanding deference to one's elders may not be an issue of hate.

That said, my experience with this aspect of Confucianism--of being deferential to one's elders--has little to do with wisdom. It's simply the way hierarchy is established and observed among Koreans. Many times, younger Koreans will complain to their same-age peers when selfish, greedy, and foolish elders are not present to be offended.

For example, when an elder asks juniors to work with little to no compensation, the younger group may (will!) grouse about how greedy and insufferable the elder is (a direct confrontation is likely to cause drama and this, too, happens very frequently). Confucianism can "prescribe" roles for both inter- and intragenerational behavior, in this case bonding members of one group while enabling the "superior" to extract a profit.

Not to say such roles are good or bad. My take is that Confucianism produces a different set of cultural effects than, say, Western Individualism. Declaring one approach to be "better" than the other is not the same as trying to understand and describe how different ideologies condition cultural behavior.

You're right that Confucianism is not the only ideology that inculcates hierarchical deferentiality. However, the types of behavior that prevail in hierarchies in the (general) US context are distinct from the deference to one's elders that prevails among Koreans (and Korean Americans) who have been raised with Confucian principles.

I can't speak to whether Confucianism contributed to any human error for Asiana Flight 214, but I do know that Confucianism will frequently allow poor judgements rendered by elder persons to carry over the (often unexpressed) better judgements of younger people.

According to MetaFilter user backseatpilot:

According to the recorded meteorological reports (METARs), the weather was good and the airport was conducting visual operations, which means the pilots use their view out the cockpit window to approach and land. However, the NTSB is probably going to be investing [sic] this Notice to Airmen (NOTAM):

06/005 (A1056/13) - NAV ILS RWY 28L GP U/S. 01 JUN 14:00 2013 UNTIL 22 AUG 23:59 2013. CREATED: 01 JUN 13:40 2013

The Instrument Landing System (ILS) for runway 28L has been out of service since June 1. What that means for a pilot flying is unclear right now; if the pilots were trying to use the ILS as supplementary guidance for their visual approach it may have simply not worked (red flag shows up on the panel and no information is given), or it may give erroneous information with no indication that the system is not working. I can see a situation (and this is PURE SPECULATION) with a flight crew with little experience flying into SFO, not checking the NOTAMs or forgetting them, flying the approach with an ILS giving false readings, getting distracted in the cockpit for one reason or another, and suddenly half the plane is floating in the bay.

My sense (IANAP) is an automatic landing would not have been possible given that the Instrument Landing System for runway 28L has been out os service since 1 June.