Not necessarily,

I have been working with Agile software development for 3 years now. Delivering working software every 2 or 3 weeks and never had a single day of delay or extra cost. Got extremely satisfied clients.

Now, it is not a religion, it is not the only and best way to view software development. It is just one tool every project manager must have in his toolbox.

Always think, does this software that I am building looks more like a building a bridge or like writing a book?

If you are building a bridge, please use a process oriented methodology that will get you the correct specs. If you already know exactly what you want, why go for a methodology that is made to coupe with change?

If you are venturing into the unknown, and nobody has a clear idea of the final software, but has a vague initial definition. Go Agile

Why would anyone want to be the world's largest exporter?

What everyone wants to be is the largest importer. The richest countries are the ones that get more products (a bigger piece of the pie).

All the developing countries always have been the biggest exporters of everything for the last 50 years. But they also have always had huge external debts to go with that, so the products got out, money got in, and the money got out again to pay interest on those debts (which were made to no benefit of the population during good non-democratic governments. Good because they were helped/sponsored/approved by the developed countries).

What nobody expected was that China would come out of communism to became a huge exporter in 10 years (without debts to balance the cash flow). Nobody expected, because they believed China to be communist like Russia. In fact China never was. China has been an company and run like a company for the last 15 years at least. It has a board of directors and a CEO. It learned the lesson that the western world failed to see: If democracy was the most efficient way to do something, companies would use it. They don't! Employees don't elect the directors. They don't vote for CEO.

I have been in China for a while now and I see their point, even tough they still don't get that people should be represented in any honest form of government, I can't help but think that they got something right that democracy as we know cannot compete with. Its like seem the end of Feudalism.

Yes, my bad.

Speaking about fail... I meant that by the year 10, Christ was 9.

Yes, this is pedantic. But not incorrect. Now comes the real pedantic part: If you say the best of "the decade" you are implicitly referring to the current decade as counted from the first one until now. The same goes to "the century" and "the millennium". It is correct to refer to the 80's as the period from 1980 until 1989. Every one of those years really belongs to the 80s. Buts. as you said, the first year of our calendar was 1. There was no year 0. This makes the first decade go from 1 to 10. So, it is correct to say that the [current] decade will end next year. It really makes little sense to start on year 1 if you think about it. They wanted to mark the birth of Christ as the start of the calendar, but they made it in a way that by the year 10, Christ was 11. If you ask me that was a major fail.

That is true, but then again, if we must be pedantic about it, since a decade can be any 10 year period, they should specify which decade they are referring to.

We all know the horrible death and destruction that it would cause, but would a meteor impact bring any positive side effects? Has anyone ever stop to consider this?

...but won't do it to actually prevent it from happening. If there is a small chance that this may hit us, we should prepare. And if it doesn't, we have a perfect chance to practice. Do you really want to wait until a meteor is coming dead center to find out if we can figure out how to divert it?

I mean, I get the whole we like to do concurrent staff. But does the world really need another programming language? There has been a literal outbreak of new or revamped programming languages in the last few years. Are we seeing now with programming languages what happened to linux distros a while back? If so, what languages will emerge and what will just merge with others?

Actually, I don't think the election numbers are manipulated in any way in Brazil. Simply because there is no need... People keep voting on these guys and these guys keep the people dumb enough to elect them. If democracy worked, companies would use it. Companies strive to always use the most effective and cost efficient system to manage themselves. It is the law of capitalism, if there is a better way and you don't adapt, you are going out of business. The fact that companies do not use ask the employees to vote on their board of directors should speak enough about how much democracy works.

No You don't. You have to pay about R$4 (USD 2) per election you miss, with a maximum of three elections. So you would have to pay about R$12 if you never go to vote, but need your voter id normalized (in case you decide to vote or get a public job). That is it. The only inconvenience is that you have to go to the voting registry place to do this, and it usually only opens in business hours.

You are right of course. I just could not resist the opportunity. There are better alternatives to sugar cane, I saw somewhere there was a research to produce ethanol using a special kind of bacteria, so it would convert solar power straight to ethanol, without using up crop space. I think that is promising if it works.

Oh come on, There isn't a sugar cane farm within 1000km radius of the amazon rain forest. That is another issue entirely.

Yeah, I am Brazilian and we have our ethanol program (Pro-alcool) since the 70s. It is true that the Engine needs to be specially prepared to handle ethanol. You can't just put ethanol on a regular gas powered car. In Brazil today, almost all cars run on both Gas and Ethanol. It really does work, and has been working for almost 40 years. Making ethanol out of corn? Newbies!

I find PERL very nice for poetry.