Gorobei's point is that the simulation approach to SC5 is fundamentally different to the older "Sim" games - the older games, as you say, modelled the entire organism (theme park, in the case of Rollercoaster Tycoon) and generated the actors within that simulation based on a group of relatively simple statistical behaviours - a certain percentage will head for the next ride, a certain percentage will puke as they come off the rollercoaster (always a goal of mine when playing that game), some will go and eat, and so on. The graphics are then generated to put a visual representation on those statistical behaviours.
SC5, on the other hand, turns that model upside down - now, instead of having a single simulated organism (the theme park or city) with a small number of centres for behaviour collection (rides in the theme park, city zones/buildings/events in Sim City) for which to generate the statistical behaviours that your actors will show, now each individual actor is their own organism - the model is too complex to resort to "averaging" and modeling the overall system, but it is not complex enough to give each actor enough behaviours to be able to form creative solutions such as taking a detour around a road block.
In that sense, SC5 is going in the right direction, but until the models for the actors are complex enough that they can appear semi-intelligent, the gameplay result is going to feel inferior to what it has replaced.

Madoff had a serious impact on the lives of thousands of people who invested in his investment vehicle/Ponzi scheme, including a large number of people who could not afford to lose their investment money.
If you want to be an idiot and assume that only rish people invest money, then I suggest you avoid reading this WSJ article on the arftermath of the Madoff scandal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324339204578171422302043906.html

Funny, but even that would not work in this case. The "conflict of interest" element is not about whether Autonomy would fiddle the results, but about the fact that the investigating party (the Serious Fraud Office) already has a financial relationship with one of the parties involved in the investigation.
That creates a situation where the SFO cannot be guaranteed to be impartial - if they investigate and find that Autonomy did not artificially and fraudulently inflate their value, then HP have the option of crying that the pre-existing relationship predisposed the SFO toward that verdict.

Bottom line, there is no law that says an employer has to reimburse you, unless that reimbursement is covered in your employment contract.
Most employers will take a flexible approach unless they are in a cost-cutting phase (even then, if you can show that your training course will allow you to do both your job and that of the smelly antisocial guy next to you that the manager hates, the manager will probably swing to the cost of the certification materials, on-the-job training time and exam, with a contract caveat that you will be liable for those costs if you voluntarily leave the company within 2-3 years), but it is a relatively simple balancing act:
What added value will this certification provide to the company vs. what is the cost of the certification process in materials, lost work hours and financial expenditure.
Also, how easy is it to replace you with a lower/same paid person if you decide to leave should the training request be turned down; or will this training course make you more likely to stay with the employer/more likely to leave or be head-hunted.

Working as a consultant, certification in relevant and recognized skill areas helps my company open opportunities with other clients, or new areas within the same client. However, if the company does not get any more per-head revenue for those areas then I am not going to see any direct financial benefit (maybe something unofficial, that the company can write off against tax, but that is about it).
Fundamentally, the company has to earn enough from my contract to pay me and make my mandatory benefits contributions. If the contract mandates 40 man-hours per week for X, then that sets a ceiling for my remuneration. If my certification does not enable the company to renegotiate the cost of the contract, then my employer has to reduce their share of the pie (make less profit) in order to reward me. However, if that certification makes me more attractive to another potential client who is willing to cover my contract at 40 hours per week for 1.5*X, then the employer can move me to the new client, give me a pay rise, and bring in a new body to replace me. The old client may not be too happy to lose me, but the contract is not for MY services at 40 hours per week, it is for 40 man-hours.

The question is an interesting one - police are (in most countries, at least, including Canada afaik) not allowed to monitor communications between a lawyer and their client, with that "no monitoring" also extending to their initial attempts to locate/contact their lawyer. Presumably if the police allow the accused to log into their gmail account to email a lawyer, they would not be allowed to retain those login details for future evidence searches. Of course, if the internet access is used purely to find a directory of lawyers and go down them one by one to find one willing/able to represent the accused, that is another thing. But if a police officer offered me a PC and said "just login to your email account here, find a lawyer and send them an email asking for help", I am not sure if I would laugh or cry at such a bad attempt at password phishing.

Option 1: Agree, and pay up. However, the licence agreement you sign will probably be walled and worded so that only the one patent under discussion is covered in the settlement. When the troll comes back with another vague-sounding patent, because you paid up on the first without a fight, you are back in the same situation.
Option 2: Tell them to print a copy of the licence agreement, scrunch it up and insert it into an appropriate cavity on their CEO.
Option 3: Ignore it. The troll has probably sent out quite a few of these letters, and the best way to get their attention is to send back some kind of a response (either the "yes we will pay" or "no we will not pay" type).
Option 4: Several people have already listed a few law firms with people specialized in IP law, and asking around will typically find you one who is able/willing to take on a case like this on a pro-bono or no win-no fee basis. However, I would suggest asking what happens in the event that you win the case and the troll is required to pay your costs, but the troll gets wound up on the day of the judgement as a shell company with no assets.

One other thing - I would suggest contacting the maker of the wi-fi gear you are using. On the up-side (ideal world), they should be willing to get their legal people to deal with the issue as it will directly affect their future product sales. If they say "your lawsuit, your problem", then you know they are a bunch of idiots not deserving of your money, so you know not to buy their stuff in future.

6/7 years ago, the Finnish parliament voted in the current "pussi paskaa" copyright law. Now, assuming that more than 1% of the population adds their names to a poll in favour of that law being amended (probably a racing certainty), the Finnish parliament has to vote yes/no on the question "did we make a huge mistake here?".

Given that Finland is part of the Euro currency group within the EU, there will probably be significant pressure from political groups within the EU that are backed by the European copyright lobby, as well as significant pressure generated by the RIAA/MPAA. There will also be pressure domestically from the Finnish copyright lobby, which was powerful enough to get the law passed in the first place.

So unless the number of people signing up for a review of the law exceeds 50% (probably not even then... 75% or even 90% might be needed) of the population of Finland, I doubt there is much chance of a vote on the subject gaining the required parliamentary support to overturn or amend the law.

If by "Product" people, the OP means sales/marketing people, then this will be a constant problem, the development team will always be to blame, and you will always feel like a cross between Sisyphus and a dung beetle.
First, you will need a development manager with the authority to hold the release of a product version.
Second, you will need a development manager with the backbone to stand up to pressure from the "product" people and push back.
Third, you will need a development manager who protects you from the "product" people who are used to coming to you directly and dropping tasks on you.
Fourth, you will need a development manager who will inspire your development team to change their coding habits from fighting fires to development based on a plan. Whether than inspiration comes from higher pay, a kick up the arse, threat of firing or good old-fashioned physical intimidation/sexual innuendo is dependent on whatever works on the individual developers.
Finally, you need all of those development managers to be the same person.
Once you have that person in place, they need to adopt a specific development methodology - Scrum, Agile, fundamentally it does not matter at this point. You are starting from such a low level of code quality that it sounds as though just about anything will be an improvement, as long as all the developers are pulling in the same direction.
The development manager sits down with the "product" people, establishes a list of required features for the next version, and either talks to the team about estimated development times or comes up with that figure themselves. Add time for comprehensive testing and bug fixing (not all bugs, just the major ones), plus a little extra time. That gives the release date. Product people want it sooner? Fine... what features shall we take out? Once the feature list and timeline is established, if the product people want to add features or change their mind, then either the release date is moved or those changes are held over to the next version, or other pre-agreed features that have not yet been developed are held over.
The development manager will be the most hated person in the office for about 6 months, and (s)he will need the full backing of the company directors because you can be sure that the product people will be on the directors' cases 24x7 complaining about the obstructive person. It is not an easy job, it is not a nice job, but it is one that I have done at a couple of companies, and once the product people see a release come out on time and relatively bug-free, they will start to come around.

Whether or not he should be prosecuted is one thing, but for (presumably) one count of Breaking & Entering, and multiple counts of Copyright Violation, the circus that grew up around Swartz before the state dropped those original charges was disproportionate.
As for the punishment, Massachusetts State Law on the subject of Breaking & Entering with intent to commit a felony (what he was originally charged with) has this to say:
"Section 16. Whoever, in the night time, breaks and enters a building, ship, vessel or vehicle, with intent to commit a felony, or who attempts to or does break, burn, blow up or otherwise injures or destroys a safe, vault or other depository of money, bonds or other valuables in any building, vehicle or place, with intent to commit a larceny or felony, whether he succeeds or fails in the perpetration of such larceny or felony, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than twenty years or in a jail or house of correction for not more than two and one-half years."

That in itself raises questions - Swartz's intention was to commit Copyright Violation, which in itself is only a felony under certain circumstances - Copyright infringement is a felony only if the infringement involved reproduction or distribution of at least 10 copies of copyrighted works worth more than $2,500 in a 180-day period, or involved distribution of a "work being prepared for commercial distribution" over a publicly-accessible computer network. As we are talking about much more than 10 articles, where access to the articles is free under restricted circumstances, which were downloaded over a period of a few weeks, a felony charge is not beyond the bounds of possibility with a penalty of 20 years in State Prison, or a Correction Facility for 2.5 years. However, that charge was dropped in early 2012.
Carmen Ortiz et al then opened a case based on Wire Fraud, Computer Fraud, unlawfully obtaining information, and reckless damage. Effectively, this was to be a prosecution under 18 USC 1343 - Fraud by wire, radio, or television, and 18 U.S.C. 1030 - Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Both of those pieces of legislation are so vaguely worded that their use as legislative statues cannot easily be established by reading the Acts themselves, so a body of case law needs to be built up to establish the actual meaning of the wording of the Acts. In the case of 18 USC 1343, the law has been on the books since the 1950's, so there is a substantial (but not entirely consistent) body of case law to define its scope. In the case of CFAA, the body of case law is still being formed so the result is probably a crapshoot, with the prosecutors hoping to use Swartz's violation of the JSTOR ToS as grounds for prosecution... which brings me to the question of the day - when was the last time anyone (apart from me) read through the ToS for a web site or the EULA for a piece of software to see what it did or did not allow, and whether your intended use would violate those ToS, thus making you potentially liable for prosecution under the CFAA?

Sorry for raising what might be a Straw Man, but I tend to assume that if you give someone in power a weapon, they will at some point find a way to use it in a way that is more in their own interest than the peoples' interest. Call me a cynic...

It is possible that the chess equivalent of a lower-league football player could find incredible reserves of concentration and mental clarity for the first time in his career. It is equally possible that he could have solicited help in some imaginative form-
Take athletics as an example - an athlete who improves their personal best performances year on year has not yet reached their peak. But if they improve too much in one year, then the suspicion of drug-assistance is raised and they can be tested for that. Sometimes, the athlete is guilty, but the drug is so new that their tests return a negative result, so they are allowed to continue competing. Subsequent improvements in the test process allow for re-evaluation and retesting, and retrospective bans.
However, with a chess match, no such retrospective action can be taken because if the person cheated and was not caught, how are the invigilators (referees) going to retest? Was the cheating mechanism some kind of visual signal from the audience? If an audience is allowed to live-observe the games, you can have cameras on them, so that can be tested. But just about any other option involves the accused having some kind of signal receiver on their person, and that is not something that can be checked reliably retrospectively.
So if they are accused on the spot, then the onus must be on the accuser to prove the accusation on the spot. No proof? Then not guilty, resume the games.

If you work on the basis that people trying to get into a position of power are doing so for one of two reasons:
1. Personal gain, money, power, influence, and the chance to live the high life; or
2. A genuine desire to help people and with the conviction that they are able to improve the lot of all people,

then when the people get into power, one of three things will happen.
Those who go in for reason 1 (and who are not dumb enough to get caught) will line their pockets. Those who go in for reason 2 will be offered the inducements that the "reason 1" people get. They will probably be tempted, and if they give in to temptation they will turn into more "reason 1" people, possibly without really realizing it. If the reason 2 group are tempted but resist, stay true to their ideals, and see everyone around them behaving like pigs at the feeding bucket, they will probably be tempted to expose the problems and educate the masses about what is going on. At that point, the "reason 1" people, with a collective will borne out of self-preservation instincts, will do everything they can to neutralize, silence, or otherwise discredit/eject the honest people from their sphere of influence.

If my (rather low) opinions of the people who seek power and influence is correct, then the honest types who could make a positive difference become ineffective, while the rest just do whatever they can to keep the gravy train rolling.

The only way to prevent that is to have oversight of those in power. The only way to prevent the corruption of those responsible for the oversight of the people in power is for the oversight to be performed by the broader community, not by specific individuals. That way, the cost of bribery/corruption becomes too high, and while human nature makes a group individually lazy, it also makes the group generally more honest as there is more scrutiny and less possibility of corruption.

Quoting from the Wikipedia article for Iodine,
"Iodine sensitivity is rare but has a considerable effect given the extremely widespread use of iodine-based contrast media".

So I would say that using Diatrizoic acid/diatrizoate as a Barium replacement (Hypaque, Gastrografin and Ultravist are the trade names) in cases where there is no flagged Iodine sensitivity in the patient is viable, with Barium being used in those rare cases (if in doubt, do a quick Iodine test, as far as I can recall the results are pretty quick - a drop of iodine on the inside of the wrist or elbow, a small rash will form if the recipient is sensitive, and the rash can be treated with standard rash creams (if the recipient is REALLY sensitive, anaphylactic shock is a possibility if a large amount of Ioidine is applied - you dip the person's arm in it - but if the sensitivity is that bad, it should already be flagged). This also has a positive effect for most people, who are generally short of the daily Iodine intake levels they should have.

Disclaimer, my medical knowledge is limited by the fact that I dated and lived with a med student for 7 years, helping her study and revise for exams. Talk to your doctor if you have concerns about your own potential Iodine sensitivity or Gastro-intestinal issues. Do not come to /. and expect sane medical opinions here...

My personal definition of the terms are that programming/developing are akin to seeing a problem and writing an application to solve that problem. Coding is taking a problem description and solution specification developed by someone else, and translating that specification into a computer program.
The "coding" option only requires familiarity with the language and the coding tool being used, and seems to be closer to the process I think Adam and Bonnie are aiming for.
However, the "programming/developing" option requires much more mental effort on the part of the programmer, which is completely unrelated to the tool or language used. It involves an understanding of the problem space and the ability to identify areas where the assumptions you make about how things should work will not always hold true (the "what if..." scenarios that several other comments refer to.

As for the "fire it up instantly... get useful things done right away" approach, I am almost certain that a silent installer and a couple of select chapters of a "Dummies guide to " for just about any development tool will get you to the point where you can do something as "useful" as someone would be able to do when opening Excel for the first time - a basic arithmetic calculator.

When I was working in the US (in California), I found Mexican Spanish to be the most useful. That was because the companies I worked at had a lot of Mexicans in cleaning and service roles, and when I was there in the evenings or pulling an all-nighter, almost everyone else in the building spoke Spanish as their first language and English as their second. I was never any good, but they all appreciated my attempts to avoid murdering their language, and they usually found it very funny when I said something wrong. If you are wondering about the value of that effort, my desk was cleaned when I asked for it to be cleaned, and left alone when I had a mess of papers all over it. No cords were moved, things broken or containers spilled.

If you are looking for a second language to use for communicating work issues, my advice would be to not bother with anything other than the very basic stuff, or focus on learning to understand the language without really speaking it. The outlook "I speak English so the world can talk to me in my language" is not the point of my suggestion - if you are speaking to a native Chinese person, in order for it to be logical to communicate in Cantonese or Mandarin, your Cantonese/Mandarin skills and technical vocabulary need to be better than that person's English skills/technical vocabulary. That is not going to happen, irrespective of whether you are talking to someone from China, India, Brazil...

You will sometimes find people who are not comfortable speaking English. If you can at least understand some of their language and make an effort at some basic phrases, they should feel better about their English level once they realize that their English is better than your ability with their language, and be willing to give it a go.

At some of the companies I have worked in, the manager is exactly that - a manager, they are there to motivate, attend meetings, provide direction, and organize. At other places, the manager is effectively a project manager who is expected to jump in and write code when needed.
If they are expected to be the first type (the best type, in my opinion, if they are any good and their management style matches mine), then describe a generalized instance of a conflict within your team and ask how he solves it. Find out how he deals with an employee who is brilliant but not a team player (for example, a coder who writes birds nest code that only he can maintain, but something that is relevant to your company's field).
If they are expected to be the second type, dig into their technical skills and ask them how they plan to get up to speed on the specific technical aspects of the job, while carrying out their management role.
Also, consider turning the interview around for a few minutes half way through - give the candidate a BRIEF copy of your CV (half a side of A4 paper, rendered as 6-10 bullet points) and a couple of minutes to read it, then ask them to interview you for your current role. That will give you an idea of how well they mentally switch gears from one role to the other, and it also gives you a view of them as a manager that you otherwise would not get in the interview.

However, as with any relationship, you will probably not really get to know your potential manager until your relationship breaks down, and that is something you want to put off as long as possible, so try not to trash your relationship in the interview, just in case the person (a) gets the job, and (b) holds a grudge!