The possessive form of "yall" is "yall's". Here is an example sentence.

"I saw the car outside and figured it was yall's."

"Yall's" is a contraction of Yours (all of yours).

In the northeast, a variation is "youze guys'es". In the deep south, another variation is "your'n".

Gotta love English.

One of the earlier posts talked about the difficulties around "too big to fail" or "to big to succeed". To me, this is where the concept of finding a Nash Equilibrium is critical.

To resolve this situation optimally, a means to an end must be found where all of the affected parties benefit the greatest as a whole. You can't simply issue a patent judgment and say "have a nice day, you have X days to comply". That might benefit i4i, but it really hurts a lot of other stakeholders in the system -- including consumers (who do you think will bear the cost of that judgment?). Like it or not, by the law, i4i deserves something for the infringement (if the court finds the patent valid).

However, this is where our legal system in the free market breaks down. You've got to make sure you can come to judgments where the market isn't overly harmed, but everyone gets a taste of what they deserve.

Your analogy is off. Let me restate it.

You don't need to have knowledge of engineering to engineer a bridge.

Likewise...

You don't need to have knowledge of programming to write a computer program.

Stop getting the wires crossed. Engineering != Programming. The two are completely orthogonal.

This is so well said.

You are exactly right. It does NOT matter at all who's fault it is.

The reality is, the manager has to address any kind of motivational issues. Regardless of the source of de-motivation. De-motivation kills individual productivity, team productivity, and can even sour an entire organization.

Uh, exactly. If you have an employer that uses terms like "self-motivated", "works smarter and not harder", "ability to work without direction"... et cetera.... RUN (don't walk) for the hills.

These are companies who have incompetent managers who delegate their own management responsibility to their workers.

Managers are supposed to actually serve a purpose.

I'd argue that you don't want to work for such a boss, then.

As a director of a software development organization, I won't be popular for saying this. But... it is your boss' fault. Not yours.

You simply aren't motivated. I want to slap the person somewhere in another post who said... "motivation comes from within". It *rarely* comes from within.

When one of my managers or peers comes to me and complains about "unfocused" or "unmotivated" employees, I tell them to get off their collective ass and motivate their team or their employee. Psychologically, as an employee, you should feel driven by your surroundings to achieve a goal. That feeling should be driven by your team, your boss, your organization.

Being "self-motivated" is the single, biggest path to burnout in existence. Don't even begin to blame yourself.

Here is what I would recommend. Go to your manager. Tell your manager that you simply aren't feeling very motivated about the work you are doing. Have an open and honest conversation about it. You might be surprised. Your boss might actually bring some out some of the motivational mojo that you need. If your boss doesn't come through for you, then think about going to another organization.

But don't quit programming. You probably love it and you probably are pretty decent at it. You just need to be motivated, that's all.

I am a Democrat, and while I think the Mike Huckabee is a complete idiot on the great majority of his stances, I think his income tax abolishment and consumption tax proposal has great merit.

All we need to do is increase the state sales tax rate by the amount of the consumption tax. Then, the state can make tax payments to the federal government. No more income tax. Take a tax whenever money is exchanged for goods or services.

This means that we get all of the tax revenue when illegally acquired revenue gets spent. We also get federal tax revenue from visiting tourists. We also (finally) get the federal tax revenue from churches when they spend money. It also means that people who save (and not spend) actually get an immediate benefit by investing/saving.

Taxing income is moronic. There's too many ways to dodge it, too many ways to loophole it, too many ways to deduct it, too many ways to make exceptions.

Make it fair for everyone. Charge federal tax at the cash register.

It isn't when the person doesn't care. It is when the entire chain of individuals responsible for launching the nuke doesn't care.

This is why MAD works. If MAD was in the hands of any one individual, it wouldn't work.

Even if a crackpot leader wanted to launch a nuke or some other WMD, they couldn't do so if their subordinates couldn't be convinced to follow the order. I'm fairly certain that crackpot leaders have wanted to push the button in the past -- and were rebuked. You are naive if you think this situation hasn't occurred before.

I'm not worried one bit about North Korean or Iranian leaders and their grandstanding.

What does worry me is that world leaders don't do enough to understand and address the motivation behind this grandstanding.

Wow, what amazing genius.

What we have is an MIT CS dork who is bringing everything full circle and realizing that actually rotation, movement, and proximity are important factors in a human-to-machine interface.

NO SHIT SHERLOCK.

Is this really that ground-breaking? My god. Ever see a music mixing board? Ever see a keyboard synthesizer? Ever see a hifi music component? Ever see a car? Ever see a door? All of these machines have knobs, sliders, buttons, handles, and a brain which can alter the behavior of the machine based on the combinations of positions of knobs and sliders and buttons.

So this guy is asserting that these concepts are going to introduce a new and innovative way that humans interact with machines? GIVE ME A BREAK.

Perhaps next, he should create a new tool called a "roundling" which looks exactly like a tire and will revolutionize the way that humans move from one place to another.

I have to say after reading this article -- Stroustrup is a tool. It is just that simple. Nothing more than a pundit at this point. He had a stroke of genius in programming and now is an expert in everything related to programming.

He thinks companies aren't happy with their graduates? Well, I say companies have terrible hiring practices, terrible mentorship programs, and ridiculous expectations.

Balance the theoretical and the practical? Wow. Brilliant observation. Great, Bjarne. Please give us more sweeping Karate-Kid style one-liners.

High schools should teach students to work hard? Great, Bjarne. Thanks again for that. Search out information as needed? Another stroke of brilliance. Express ideas in writing and verbally? WOW. PINCH ME. Such genius can only be dreamed of.

Then, the article closes with him trying to be edgy and go out "with a bang". Sloppy, fat geeks. Nice. This guy is a douchebag. Pure and simple.

Here is my own contribution to douchbaggery... I think we should take aging, isolated, self-important pundits out into a remote area and bury them neck deep in the dirt.