They've been doing it in civil and mechanical engineering for decades. That's what plans are for. They're cheap to change before you start building something. If your clients can't discover that you are going about it wrong, then you didn't give them sufficient planning documents. Try walking into a commercial building under construction and telling the engineers you hired that -- oops -- you want 12 foot ceilings instead of 8 foot ceilings, but you didn't realize that until you actually saw the building. Without hesitation, the engineering firm will whip out the spec that you signed and say, "well, that's not what you agreed to."

All Agile does is hide the true cost of allowing design changes at arbitrary points in the process. Whether with waterfall or Agile, changes are expensive. With waterfall, when you properly manage expectations and thus don't have to deal with significant changes, you know exactly what is required throughout the project -- redundancies, opportunities for abstraction, and overall design efficiencies are evident from the beginning -- so you save on cost AND build things efficiently. With Agile, on the other hand, those extra costs are already built in and unavoidable. You're never looking at the big picture, so design efficiencies are not always evident until part of the work has been done. The iterative builds and deployments take up valuable coding time. So even you DO properly manage expectations with Agile and don't keep chasing your tail with changes, the cost will be far greater, and the efficiency much lower, when all is said and done.

I'm one of them. I'm lucky enough to work only a few miles from my house, but not everyone wants to arrive at work drenched in sweat, soaked by rain or snow, or with frostbite. I'll postpone the bike ride until after I get home, on a nice day, when I don't have to maintain a professional appearance at my destination.

These anti-car people have an awfully narrow view of the world, insisting that their favorite niche mode of transportation will work for everyone. The ones in Europe assume that efficient, accessible public transportation is ubiquitous. The ones in American cities don't realize that some people actually have reason to leave the city. The ones advocating bikes assume that the weather is fair, the commute is short, and people can show up to work smelling like they just came from the gym.

Give me a viable alternative to a car that meets my needs without causing congestion and I'll consider it. But don't assume that what works for your personal circumstances will work for everyone.

But.. but... but... I thought the US was the center of the world??? Isn't /everything/ about the US unless explicitly declared otherwise???

-American

It would be nice to see the IRS threatened mafia-style for gouging the rich just "because they can afford it." I'm sure the poorest of the poor would consider the middle class as being able to afford a near-40% marginal tax rate on their earnings, because relative to them, the middle class is "rich." But the middle class would beg to differ, and would argue that millionaires should pay huge tax bills. They fail to recognize the hypocrisy in taking that position.

I'm sure the safest place to be during an bank robbery is outside and down the road, but I'm probably not going to run past the guy with the gun to get there.

Even when the incumbents receive a majority of 'withhold' votes, they often continue to serve. According to one report (PDF), only 5-8% of directors who receive a majority of withhold votes depart as a result.

Yes, let's replace those who have skill and initiative with those who are unwilling or unable to make their own way in the world. I've always found it quite ironic that the "proletariat" has such disdain for the capitalists upon whom they depend to make their living.

I'm suddenly reminded of Mr. Gradgrind speaking to schoolchildren in Dickens' Hard Times. "You don't find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls."

Vanity? Am I vain because I moved to another city? Or rearranged my furniture? Or painted my house a different color? Sometimes people just want a change.

Nor does TSA need to let you on your flight. There's nothing to stop them from questioning you for four hours when you don't bring an ID.

That's a pretty compelling case for accepting the idea of intellectual property. If the good guys don't assert ownership and control then the bad guys certainly will. The thing is, not everyone agrees on who the good guys are...

While we're at it, let's forgo backups. Do you really think a hard drive is going to die? And insurance. What are the chances your house will burn down? And seat belts. And safety harnesses. Because if it's not likely, it's not worth the trouble of protecting against, right?

Exactly. There's a time component left out of the 0.1 rem figure. I probably took Tylenol every week last year. 400 milligrams per dose * 52 weeks = 20,800 mg. That doesn't mean I'd take 104 Tylenol in a day.

Some do, apparently. See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/us/cell-carriers-see-uptick-in-requests-to-aid-surveillance.html?pagewanted=all

How many new substantial business ventures do you think got off the ground or went public in the last several decades without a loan? I'm talking about those large enough to have a national or even regional impact. Many businesses that provide the products we now use in our daily lives and the profits we have in our retirement portfolios simply wouldn't exist without bankers extending the loans. Whether the bankers benefit themselves or not is irrelevant (I can anticipate someone making the point that they were motivated by their own profit) -- the point is that these successful businesses are considered "good things" by a large segment of the population.