If my boss came in screaming at me, I'd tell him to get the fuck out, send an email to HR detailing his unacceptable behavior causing a hostile work environment and go home- telling him I'd return upon getting a sincere apology, and that I would expect full pay for every day in the interim.

Ah yes, the indispensable programmer, standing up for his (probably not her) inalienable rights!

I used to sincerely agree and act accordingly, with great success. Then I got forced out of the company for which I had built and grown a kickass team. The lesson learned is I should have shut my trap and let my superiors believe their own bullshit occaisionally (or always), instead of letting less talented people do so who then could maneuver me out of the way.

There are times when the boss is always right, no matter how ridiculous their behavior. If you haven't learned this then you've gotten lucky, probably repeatedly.

Not that this applies here of course, the Linux kernel seems a far less politicized space than most ...

Yeah, those crazy women, flying off the handle ... shown evidence of sexist, unfunny bullshit, propagated by their partner in life.

If I was your wife I'd divorce you. Oh wait, I'd never be caught dead with someone as stupid as you in the first place. Indeed if your wife is as intolerable as you describe ... sounds like a match made in heaven!

Seriously though -- thanks for urinating on slashdot with your unoriginal unfunny misogynist nonsense, and bravo to all your brogrammer buddies for modding you up. Gotta keep it real for the real geeks, AMIRITE FELLAS??

Why is this a concern, at least to us evil proprietary engineers? The more free packages incorporated, the less work that needs done. Less work = less employees.

That's weird, I've had a great 15+ year in non-free software development, and free software has *always* plays a central role in:

* faster development of new features by leveraging existing solutions
* use of tools to streamline and rationalize release and operational processes
* standardization in areas like dependency injection, unit testing, configuration
* ability to "use the source" to solve a problem quickly and decisively

All of my work has been in technology solutions for businesses that need it -- web, server-side, message-driven stuff, etc. The requirements are always expanding. I don't know a single developer in this area that is out of work.

On the other hand, if you're selling something to the public and expecting free software to stay out of your playground, that's a different issue. My response to that is adapt or die -- the world does not exist to provide cozy niches for proprietary software.

I suggest that we publish the names and photos of all undercover cops working against organized crime.

That'd be interesting! Let's see how much enforcement is spent actually busting mega-crooks instead of throwing a significant proportion of the minority male population in jail over minor possession and petty theft.

Also, home addresses of the wives of people working covertly in places like North Korea or Yemen.

Cool! Wonder how that stacks up with those undermining democratically-elected governments in places like Bolivia, Palestine or Algeria? Or infiltrating peace and labor organizations stateside?

schedule and routes of moving nuclear material

Would actually like to know where Israel keeps all it's nukes, wouldn't you?

protective custody or witness protecction

Yes, wouldn't want to disrupt the delicate operations of the DEA and FBI allowing high-level criminals to carry out their business in return for fingering minor players ...

talking to political parties in countries that are on the brink of a civil war

Yes, like Syria, or Libya, where the US stands up for open dialog, and wouldn't think of arming Islamist militants or calling in air strikes!

I'd sure like to shine MORE lights on how the US is fighting crime and keeping the world safe for democracy!

Sorry, you may be black (so you say) but you're completely full of shit.

I just witnessed a stop-and-frisk right in front of my house in Bed-Stuy New York, and guess what? No baggy jeans, no baseball caps. I can't comment on their speech (although your writing sounds like you have a monstrous rod up your ass). So, sorry but these stop-and-frisk victims don't meet your standard of people you obviously can't wait to be dragged off to jail.

What can we say about the SAF victims? They were BLACK. As were the plainclothes cops perpetrating this horror show.

You sir should educate yourself by reading some of the people who were courageous enough to stand up to the racist police in US history. Read what Malcolm X has to say about the police in Harlem, for instance. SAF is just the latest variation on targeting minorities to send them off to jail.

Oh and please don't forget that white kids are the largest drug users by far. If there was SAF in the upper west side this would have been yanked in a heartbeat.

Wow, you've got that soothing tone down! "Nothing Is Wrong Here, Move Along." Are you a cop? Did you learn it from your chosen news outlets (Newsweek, Forbes)?

Dispassionate mention of "Targeted Killing" check.

Specious distinction between "ordinary, everyday citizens" and people "linked to terror groups" check.

The "Intel Gap" (don't forget the Mineshaft Gap!)

And lastly: "America's Enemies".

I don't know where to even begin. CIA + War on Drugs + FBI maybe??

Organizations like the NSA (because it isn't unique, after all) amass information secretly, which gives them tremendous power. Power they *will* use, not just to inform on those dusky foreigners you're so worried about, but on "ordinary, everyday citizens", members of government, anybody they feel like. This notion of an innocent, transparent government ceaselessly working to guarantee it's citizens' safety doesn't exist in this world, in the US or anywhere else.

The so-called "Liberal" media (ie mainstream non-crazy-right) has given the Obama admin a big pass on this whole thing. When the TSA first rolled out the Rapiscan machines, only Fox et al were making a stink. Likewise, Repubs in congress were quite vocal whilst Demos were meek.

Liberals really do suck. Let's not forget it was Repubs who voted against the bank bailout. Demos are as sold-out as it gets.

I love unit tests as much as the next refactoring junkie, but there are very significant areas in quality assurance that TDD should not and cannot address, for instance software with emergent behavior.

I've been the unlucky maintainer of monstrous "unit tests" that were instead huge fixtures that create an alternate universe to production. Devs would write code, then spend as much time or more getting the "unit tests" to work, then have QA find brand-new bugs.

The TDD response is decomposition, but some solutions simply do not decompose well. If your s/w is well-architected, the complex parts can be built atop solid APIs that are 90+% covered by real unit tests; the complex functionality can then be exercised in regression tests and simulations, and their invariants verified in QA.

Which brings up my problem with the statement "ensure that QA doesn't find anything": if that's consistently true then one of the following is also true:

* the software is too simple to even warrant QA and indeed should be entirely automated

* the QA process misses huge chunks of functionality

* your software hasn't had a major new feature in, like, forever

* you don't have a GUI (or your GUI has a locked-down platform)

* your developers intimidate and harass QA so they are loath to really test

Effective QA finds bugs, that's what they do, and they are a godsend to a good development team.

It's not hard to get to 300-400k in the financial industry as "just a programmer" (ie not a quant), you just have to become a manager and work up the ranks a little.

The good news there is being in management doesn't mean you stop coding. Depending on the project, tech work can consume upwards of 70% with the rest dealing with PHBs.

The bad news is ... it's the financial industry, which means you're surrounded by workaholics with no sense of how much money they're making. There's a lot of stress surrounding productivity that isn't necessary from a profit-making point of view. Still, it's not as bad as partner-track litigation, and the strategic need for tech makes programming much more rewarding than in many other industries.

So no, you don't need PhDs. In fact if you're good you don't even need a tech degree. You just need to build solid systems.

Wow, can we stop calling every political action that makes us uncomfortable TERRORISM?

This is vandalism, destruction of property, whatever. Nobody is being "terrorized", nobody's life is in danger (except the activists' possibly).

Too bad for you that a) nuclear engineers don't know the first thing about oncology and b) the UN's final report is a tidy piece of apologist nonsense fabricated by the WHO selling out to the IEAE.

Nuke engineers understand how plants run. They are notoriously out to lunch when it comes to the epidemiology.

Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that.

Yeah it really takes guts to be a raving pro-nuke on Slashdot, taking potshots at renewable energy. You really bucked the trend, there.

What really rakes in the mod points on Slashdot: any realistic argument surrounding the horrific health impacts of nuclear power. Nothing gets nerds excited like references to the devastating consequences of Chernobyl on the surrounding population (like say ... Scotland).

Much braver to make the daring claim that "nobody ever died because of a nuclear accident", because all of the respected epidemiogists sounding the alarm are really luddite shareholders in wind and solar companies right? When I want the real dirt on public health, I always ask .. a physicist or nuclear engineer, because they care about health first!

Also gutsy: crying crocodile tears for "all the mine workers killed by coal". Only an evil anti-nerd environmentalist would fault corporate negligence in failing to observe basic safety precautions leading to the needless deaths of thousands of miners. Good thing that nuclear is so safe we don't even have to worry about corporate negligence!

Here you go, HTH ...

The health effects of the Chernobyl accident are massive and demonstrable. They have been studied by many research groups in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, in the USA, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan. The scientific peer reviewed literature is enormous. Hundreds of papers report the effects, increases in cancer and a range of other diseases. ... Alexey Yablokov of the Russian Academy of Sciences published a review of these studies in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2009). Earlier in 2006 he and I collected together reviews of the Russian literature by a group of eminent radiation scientists and published these in the book Chernobyl, 20 Years After. The result: more than a million people have died between 1986 and 2004 as a direct result of Chernobyl.

A study of cancer in Northern Sweden by Martin Tondel and his colleagues at Lynkoping University examined cancer rates by radiation contamination level and showed that in the 10 years after the Chernobyl contamination of Sweden, there was an 11% increase in cancer for every 100kBq/sq metre of contamination. Since the official International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) figures for the Fukushima contamination are from 200 to 900kBq.sq metre out to 78km from the site, we can expect between 22% and 90% increases in cancer in people living in these places in the next 10 years. The other study I want to refer to is one I carried out myself. After Chernobyl, infant leukaemia was reported in 6 countries by 6 different groups, from Scotland, Greece, Wales, Germany, Belarus and the USA. The increases were only in children who had been in the womb at the time of the contamination: this specificity is rare in epidemiology. There is no other explanation than Chernobyl. The leukemias could not be blamed on some as-yet undiscovered virus and population mixing, which is the favourite explanation for the nuclear site child leukemia clusters. There is no population mixing in the womb. Yet the "doses" were very small, much lower than "natural background".

- Chris Busby source

It's no different in software engineering than in running a dangerous power plant:

Heroism indicates failure.

If you need heroism, someone or something has failed: your design; your management; your organization as a whole usually. I've been a "hero" numerous times and it did feel good -- but it's macho BS to think that this is how it should be. Making hard decisions up front -- managing expectations, avoiding feature creep, understanding your operating environment -- prevents it.

In the case of power plants, it's holding the line on safety despite CONSTANT pressure to disregard it -- such as putting more spent fuel than the design allows in Unit 4's storage pond.

All the claims that what's happening at Fukushima are somehow a vindication of nuclear power betray this love for malfunction. Think about all of the heroes we'll need if storage ponds in the US (Shearon Harris anyone?) go up in flames.

What I disagree with - and in this I'm in agreement with one of the founders of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore - is that CO2 is in any way harmful to the environment

Mr Moore has graduated from protesting nuclear proliferation to being pro-nuke, advocates rainforest clearcutting, GMO crops, and appears to be a full-time greenwasher for like-minded companies (source) ...

... which doesn't invalidate his/your view. However, only referring to him as a "founder of Greenpeace" in the context of the AGW debate is a little misleading.