The sharing of progress on facebook reminded people to go play the game and introduced new people to the game.

Exactly. These people are professionals. Make clear to them not sexually harassing their coworkers is part of being a professional, and that failure to act professionally wont be tolerated. If they cant act like normal human beings, fire them (before you get sued) and hire some normal people. Ive worked with some fairly stereotypical geeks in the past (poor hygiene, drowsy due to playing video games all night last night, not the ebst people skills) but *never* the sort of things the OP describes.

Is it worth it if it drives other countries to invest more in their nuclear arsenals to ensure that their missiles wont all be stopped? The end result is that China and Russia can still nuke anyone they want, and there are a lot more nuclear weapons in the world, increasing the chances of theft, accident, and proliferation. And you have to wonder, if the US gets a working missile defense system, how long will it be before other countries get one working? Meanwhile, this whole process antagonises 2 countries that are essential in nuclear non proliferation efforts, particularly efforts related to countries this defensive system is being built to stop. It is not a cut and dry awesome idea like you seem to think.

I've been telecommuting for ~20 months now. For me, the key things to do to stay focused and productive are: separate work from the rest of your life, have a plan of what you are going to do next, and have a plan for dealing with the inevitable times when you become unfocused.

To keep life and work separate, you can have an office that is only for work (no gaming/web surfing), or, if that isnt in the cards, have a different computer. I really like having the work computer run a different OS. Linux is for work. Windows is for play. That way I am not tempted, and I have that sense of 'being' at work/

Having a plan is crucial to keeping going. If you finish something and think 'what should I do now' youll be reading slashdot within seconds. I try to do my planning at the end of the day, so I have a nice list of bite sized tasks for the next day already waiting for me.

Despite my best efforts, sometimes I realize I am not focusing on work. When that happens, I have a few things I can do to get refocused. The first is to change desks. A change of scenery and position (sitting vs standing) is nice sometimes. Next, I can make coffee. It takes a few minutes, so it gives me a chance to psych myself up, knowing that when the coffee is ready it is time to get back to worrk. Finally, I have ear protection, usually used while chainsawing etc. When I put it on, I cant hear anything but my own breathing, and focusing on your breathing is a common meditation technique, so maybe tat is why it works. Anyway, it really quiets the mind and gets me back to focusing on work.

But isnt that irrelevant when (at least a large part of) the issue is that the US is consistently placing low in exams when compared to other countries? If the students take the same exams, and US students suck while students in other countries do well, the fact that exams arent a perfect way of measuring all types of ability doesnt seem that important. If you are talking about the focus on exam scores within the school system, still, if we are overly focused on exams we should be doing overly well on the exams and failing to develop other skills, but we are sucking at the exams.

Why are we trying to innovate to fix education? A quick search indicates we are around 15th in reading and science, worse in math. Doesn't that mean there are 15 countries doing it better which we could try to emulate them rather than spending money trying to create something cool and new?

I bought an ipad 1 right when it came out, because it was exactly what I had been waiting for, a large screen web surfing/media consumption device. The question is, how is apple going to get me to upgrade it? Sure the ipad 3 will load web pages faster, but I doubt itll be 500$ faster. It may run some applications better, but I just want to consume media. By designing a device that (at least for me) is just about media consumption, the only way I can be driven to upgrade is by some form of media coming out that my ipad cant handle.

He talks a lot about how his 5 things are personal for the user and IT is used to providing uniform solutions, so IT cant help. What he breezes over is that much of what IT does (and is up at night about) isnt really about providing software and services, but data and infrastructure, and that his 5 technologies (well maybe not social media) are all dependent upon IT provided data and infrastructure to be useful. When the unaffiliated device or software tries to connect to the infrastructure or data that IT is responsible for is the interesting problem area here, and he glossed over it without really adding anything new to the conversation.

If in your current position you consider higher management friends, you shouldn't be shy about being honest with them. Tell them your situation. If you have a real relationship with them, they will appreciate the honesty and the opportunity to try to do right by you and keep you for the long haul, rather than have you stick around for a short time out of 'loyalty' and feel bitter.

Maybe they can offer to let you telecommute once or twice a week to save on your commute. Maybe they can give you a raise. Maybe they can't do anything, and will just wish you well. You'll never know if you don't give them the chance.

Why compare read and write speeds on huge (and in a few cases low rpm low energy use) drives like these? For most users, the selling point is huge amount of storage for large files (video etc) in a single drive. Energy usage and heat producion might be relevant, and maybe a quick speed benchmark to give people an idea of what the drives are capable of, but 5 pages of speed benchmarks is silly. The differences in speed are so small really (20% between the fastest and slowest seems about typical) as well. Who buys 3 TB hard drives based on speed benchmarks? Give me big cheap drives with a decent warranty please, Ill use SSDs when I want speed.

In korea, Broodwar is huge, SC2 is growing. In the US and Euope, SC2 is all I really hear about. There are a number of big name tournaments: IPL NASL and MLG being the 3 most well known. With HD web streams and large prize pools, these events are what people go to a bar to see. The smaller more frequent tournaments (often 10+ a week) are promoted on team liquid and reddit

They just want to get him to go to Sweden....

I dont think he meant that all software used by the government must be built by the government coding office, but rather that all software created for government should come from the theoretical government coding office. If that is what he meant, it makes sense to me. Most shops wouldnt let the marketing department, for instance, hire a group of programmers to build some software for them without at least involving IT, and really most shops would require that the software be created by developers in the IT department. Having programmers or contractors working for every government agency imaginable, reporting to people who dont specialize in managing software development, is silly.

exactly. which is why it makes no sense for microsoft to be behind psystar, who are pushing for apple to take that new attitude