Well, yes, but there is no reason to believe that means a secret plan to send him to the US.

Leaving this kind of guarantee is just not standard practice, and for all of his international notoriety, his actual alleged crime is not that unusual.

The company i work for doesn't really do performance reviews in the sense of giving a score. If you're good enough to remain employed after the trial period, management assumes you're capable of doing your job unless given a specific reason to reconsider. Since they know this, whenever an employee underperforms, management's initial assumption is that it's their fault. This has worked remarkably well, and employees overall stay significantly longer than the industry average.

We have regular evaluations, of course, but they are not comparative and mostly serve to give advice on how an employee can improve their job as well as giving credit for what they do well.

The thing about PHP is that it is very easy to get started with, and gets a big user base partially because of that. Because it has a large userbase, people sometimes assume it is by default the best choice.

It is a decent language, and after all, you can use it for most tasks.

However, i'd strongly recommend you to give Python and Django a try before you settle for PHP. It is so much nicer than PHP once you get used to it.

This video is a good (although slightly old) intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-WXiqrzAf8

That's a pretty weird statement. By what standards do you determine whether someone is "right in the head"?

I believe there are multiple reasons, but impostor syndrome could be one.

I am a pretty good programmer. I work as a consultant, roughly the 2-3rd most senior developer in a company of 35, and i usually end up at our toughest and most important clients, and the feedback i get tends to be very good. However, i'm constantly haunted by a feeling that "this could use some refactoring" or "there might be a better way to do this, and i feel stupid about not finding it". Code review really shows these things, and it can be intimidating.

Can anyone else relate to this?

While i do agree with your point, Sweden really isn't socialist. Judging from the heritage foundation's index, we're at place 22 in the list of countries with the most economic freedom. It's worse than the US (9th place), but very close to Japan (20th place) and ahead of countries like Germany (23rd place), South Korea (35th place) and Israel (43rd place).

I'm not sure when "big government" became synonymous with socialism in the US.

Living in Sweden, considered a socialist country by many US commentators, i can note that we have:

* Full civil liberties (free speech, press, etc.)
* Free enterprise (easy to start a company, sensible regulations, etc.)
* Very little corruption (supposedly lower than the US)
* Freedom to invest, and freedom for foreign investors
* Protection of property
* Fair trials (well, unless they relate to intellectual property it would seem)
* High, but sensible, tax rates (It is very possible to get rich, even though the tax rates are rather high on an international level. We don't pay for health care, or college, so the taxes on employees aren't as bad as they look on paper)

Our political system is a social liberal one, not socialist. Socialism is a form of government, and not a measurement of government size. It's a matter of fundamental ideas on law and property, not a matter of taxation.

The best thing is that he actually uses ls once, but then seems to forget about it.

It's probably in his copy-paste-file, but he has no understanding what he's supposed to do with it.

According to this source, circulating on twitter, it's been debunked.
http://screenrant.com/matrix-4-5-bill-and-ted-3-keanu-reeves-rob-97796/

This is actually a fairly smart political move.

With the swedish elections coming up in August, they are sure to gain some much needed notoriety.

Also, they are in a different position to fight the inevitable legal battle. Since they are a political party, they don't have to put economic interests first, but are actually expected to take the fight to the bitter end. If they end up losing, and go bankrupt in the process, at least they've stood up for what they believe in.

Either way, we're up for some good drama. Stay tuned.

While i agree with you overall, there is a flipside to this. The original design, while mature, might have been created in a different context. Typically, as user-requirements change, the architecture gets littered with hacks and workarounds, and the further it moves from the original specification, the harder it is to maintain.

Thus, the programmer preference of rewriting from scratch now and then might actually be quite healthy. Like you said, though, a rewrite should wait until you actually understand a product properly. It must not be an excuse to avoid studying the existing code properly.

It's always an inaccurate science, but since the consulting business seems to be hopelessly dependent on it, here are my best suggestions:

1. Try to break down tasks into the smallest measurable subtask. It's easier to estimate "form for adding new users" than it is to estimate "create the admin site"
2. It's going to take longer than you think, so plan more time than you think you need.
3. If possible, try to add generic "risk hours" to each project, for unexpected issues. This isn't always possible, but it's a great help.

And, finally, the most important one:
4. Beware of timecreeps. This is related to the first tip. If your planning is detailed enough, you can usually say "Oh, you want the create-user form to be submitted by using ajax? Sure, no problem. That would take around 2 more hours. Any problem there?". With a less detailed specification, the customer is more likely to assume it's a part of the original estimation.

The stunts are part of their public image. It's not stupidity. People who are otherwise unbiased are likely to find their positive, humorous attitude more appealing than the strict suit-only approach of their opponents. They are, most likely, very well aware of what they're doing.

This is just wrong, quite frankly.

Christian EngstrÃm (the pirate party's EU representative) is a free software contributor (using LGPL for his work). Also, the pirate party has mentioned running in the municipal elections, with the main intent to work for the use of free software within governmental adminsitrations.

Also, the tone in the pirate party's platform is quite clear. They are focusing on restrictions caused by copyright, not on copyright as such.

Here it is, translated, for anyone who might be interested:
http://translate.google.se/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.piratpartiet.se%2Fpolitik%2Fupphovsratt&sl=sv&tl=en&history_state0=

I think Stallman just can't see the forest for all the trees. The pirate party is a huge asset for the progress of free software.

80k is a fortune! As a student in Stockholm (which is the most expensive swedish city to live in), my total income is 75000sek (less than 10k usd) a year. I save around 25% of that, as well as any money i make from freelance work. Once i graduate, i expect to start off with a salary of 242000sek at most, giving me a gross income of 31-32k a year. After taxation, it goes down to around 22.5k a year.

Even if you can get 80k a year, it's not a broadly sustainable salary. Some top-students might be able to get that right away, but if that's what you need to live, you really need to rethink your standards.