Honestly, you guys kill each other so often, how the hell was I supposed to know you were serious about this one. Geez, sarcasm mode off, sorry.

Aren't you actually happy to know what kind of back room deals the politicians are making and who's interests they are really serving?

Make it easier for H1-B visa's to transfer and a generous grace period, that way good talent can stay and compete in the job market. Make it easy to do business in the U.S., just take away the ability to hold labor hostage to a visa.

Maybe, maybe the lawsuit helped motivate him to be more generous, but it isn't like he can drastically cut salaries later without insane backlash. A person can do a thing for more than one reason, it could well be that him fighting with his brother over money made him realize how petty they were both being.

Think again, they may not retaliate directly since that really might start WWIII, but with Syria the Russians are in the position of supporting an entrenched government. They are able to start sending all kinds of troops and support to Syria and as they are simply bolstering an existing regime, the assistance will be very direct and effective. What's more the regime, and it ethnic supporters, really have no choice but to fight to survive. Turkey shot down the plane in retaliation for the bombing of Turkmen villages near Turkey's border, this was blatantly to make it hard for Russia to run air missions and no other reason.

First off, Turkey shot down this plane for reasons important to Turkey. The plane may well have crossed into Turkey, though it sounds like it flew over a spit of land on an irregular boarder area, but the Turkish air force pursued it and shot it down over Syria, that is blatantly clear by where it crashed. Sure they "warned" the plane, for 5 whole minutes, but they obviously had the aircraft right there with the finger on the trigger and at the time of the shooting the plane would have been in Syria. Turkey was looking for an excuse an got one. The reason the plane was so easy to down was because the pilot didn't expect them to shoot. The reason for the attack is Turkey is trying to make it as difficult as possible for Russia to use it's air power, not because anyone legitimately thought Turkish forces or civilians were in serious danger. Had Russia actually been dropping bombs in Turkey, that would be a different matter and there would be undeniable proof. If our top priority was to stop ISIS, we would support Assad and simply do our best to make the support conditional on reforms. He clearly only wants to stay in power and has already agreed to any number of reforms. This isn't to say that Assad is a good guy, but rather a statement that our so called allies in the area are pretty weak to non existent. Plus, at the end of the day I don't know that their priorities really match ours, all we really know about them is they aren't Assad and they aren't ISIS. So why are we doing this? This is feeling more like a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia, and less like anyone actually cares about ISIS one way or the other. We aren't going to bomb our way to peace over there, making the war last longer is going to create more terrorists, not less. I don't know what they will call themselves, but I know we are just going to create more people with a grudge against the West, and I suppose Russia as well.

Not too long ago many were saying the common wisdom is the new salaries would ruin the company. Maybe we should all hold our horses and see how it works long term.

That is because most people are quite sensible. The simple fact is all this stuff is already recorded, the phone company knows who you called, the Web site knows you visited and the email hosts knows you sent the email. Most people are relying on secure through obscurity and they know it full well. Even if the government doesn't have your records, the vendor always does and everyone knows full well they would have to turn it over to the government if forced. What people really want to know is the rules of the road and what the government is up to and what they are doing with it, just like they want to know what the business is up to and what they business will do with their data.

Bah, you beat me to it. Well done sir!

Eh, I was unaware code was turned away because it came from either gender. Again I don't know how open source projects collaborate, but on the face of it you would think what a person looks likes matters least there. But maybe it doesn't work the way I think it does.

Do open source coders meet in person much? I am not hip to that scene, but I thought it was mostly done online.

I probably wouldn't agree with Boehner 100% on a lot of issues, but is was pretty clear he didn't believe lots of the nonsense that came out of the far right wing of his party. I think it became too much for him to deal with.

Ouch, my brain exploded. Ignore my post and read this one.

Why all the excitement? It isn't any more interesting than you typical asteroid flyby.

This may have a short term benefit, but by and large happy workers aren't productive, productive workers are happy. At the end of the day, we all like to feel like we succeeded somehow. SOME distraction and downtime that is work sponsored is beneficial, but there is a definite limit, more effective is finding ways to make the needed tasks satisfying to perform has a better long term result.