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On the surface the payroll company and the company are using the employee wages (earning interest) without paying interest. The transaction fees are part of this "skimming" plan.

Since most landlords are not happy to have anyone pay via credit card because there is a 1-5% service cost there are other issues because the funds cannot be electronically transferred to pay for rent, insurance or other credit debt.

Individuals need to go on record (write a letter) and complain that this is not a fair and equitable arrangement and that they are unhappy with it. No threat to quit, no consequences just a simple registration of dislike.

A copy of the letter should be filed perhaps with a cover letter with state and federal regulators. And yes Spanish and other languages are fine.

Homework assignment: Research the historical context behind the lyrics http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/classic-country/sixteen-tons---tennessee-ernie-ford-14930.html

/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.

We are old now.

I just might have to switch back to FreeBSD for my desktop. I still use BSD for anything headless, Ubuntu just made me lazy when it came to an acceptable UI. All I really need is Firefox, xterm and a video player, oh, and a torrent client. My main three tasks are looking up docs and reading gmail, hacking router and asterisk configs, and watching MasterChef Australia.

I guess I need the Luckenbach, Texas distro.

One can argue that Vista sucks because Microsoft had so many programmers working on it.

It takes a lot of back-end logistics to keep 5000 programmers all working in synch with each other. Everyone who writes code that opens a window needs to know what data structures the guys writing the 'open a window' library have chosen, and those guys need to know what the video device driver team is doing, etcetera. The lines of communication between software module teams are exactly the same as the dependencies in the software.

But when you have 5000 programmers working on a project, it's a full-time job just trying to stay on top of who's doing what. The programmers themselves can't put in that kind of effort and still write any code, so you divide them into teams and assign managers.

That sounds great when you say it fast, but how do you decide what teams to create? You don't know what teams you'll need until you have a detailed design for the product and a list of all the dependencies. Again, that sounds great, but in practice it means you have 5000 programmers sitting around doing nothing for six months while about 25 OS architects work out the design.

Companies don't like doing that. If it's a big, important project, management wants to see some big, important effort going into the thing from day one. Assigning 5000 programmers to the project is their way of letting the stockholders know that This Is Important, and if senior management is going to allocate those kinds of resources, the project manager had damn well better well USE THEM.

So the project starts with 5000 programmers trying to do something to justify their place in The Really Important Project, but having no idea what anyone else is actually doing. Meanwhile, the middle managers are playing politics with each other. The team writing the HTML parser is trying to build something that's fast, efficient and standards compliant, but the team writing the browser is logging every "doesn't support this horribly malformed bullshit that we used to ignore" as a bug in the parser. Fundamental technical decisions get made based on who can suck up to the next higher level of management better, and who can outstare the other across the conference table. (Don't laugh.. I've seen million dollar deals decided exactly that way)

All this pathological crap gets reflected -- even embodied -- in the software. The 'shut down this machine' dialog has nine different buttons and takes 18 months to program because there are four different teams whose work has some effect on system shutdown. All communication has to flow through the one manager high enough up in the org chart to have all four teams under his control, which means it takes up to three months for a design change Team A makes to filter over to Team C. Meanwhile, you have managers from two the other teams and a whole flock of marketing androids bickering over which button will go on top, and what names the buttons will have. (Again.. don't laugh. It happens a LOT)

The final product of such a development process is a giant mess, but somehow everyone supposedly responsible is able to dodge the blame for it being so bad.

And you can't blame the result on the programmers. If you restrict your view of the product to what one programmer or one team could know, you'll see a lot of really good work. It's just a lot of really good work that doesn't fit together as a total product.

Johnny cash has a song called "One Piece At A Time" about a guy who decides to steal a car from the auto plant where he works -- one piece at a time -- over the course of about 30 years. The payoff comes in:

Now, up to now my plan went all right
'Til we tried to put it all together one night
And that's when we noticed that something was definitely wrong.

Anyone else immediately think of this old Kenny Rogers recording when they read this thread's title?

Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton would make good listening here.

To be followed of course by The Battle of Kookamonga by Homer & Jethro.

Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton would make good listening here.

To be followed of course by The Battle of Kookamonga by Homer & Jethro.

Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton would make good listening here.

The stingray couldn't read his sign.

"I was watching one of those animal shows on the Discovery Channel, there was a guy
inventing a shark bite suit. There's only one way to test that.
"Alright Jimmy, you got that shark suit on, it looks good... They want you to jump
into this pool of sharks, and you tell us if it hurts when they bite you."
"Well allright....hold my sign, I don't wanna loose it""

In all honesty though, lots of people do dangerous jobs and put themselves in hazardous situations all the time, often for a cause but sometimes just for the thrill. Many have said your not really living if your not living on the edge. Steve Irwin probably lived life fuller in a day then most of us do in a year or even a lifetime and those crocs were probably more predictable then a house full of crackheads, a town full of guerillas or storm tossed seas.

Furthermore to everyone who seems to think that jokes shouldn't be cracked at times like this, well you just don't know what your talking about. Futhermore if your objecting on Christian grounds, go back and reread your Bible cause you missed a lot in there.

* Disturbing isn't it. Being asked to give your life on command but they can't afford to feed their families? Yeah, It's not a left or right issue: both sides fucked this one up.

It's not disturbing, it's (pardon my French) fucking disgraceful. I'm a scaley brat (translation: my dad was in the RAF) and while airman's married quarters aren't exactly the best they're still a roof over your head and you can afford the bills. An SAC doesn't earn much but even with two kids at least you can eat!

I'm one of those who disagrees with the current clusterfuck in Iraq but I blame that on politicians (see Steve Earle's Rich Man's War), the servicemen risking their lives deserve immense respect and under no circumstances whatsoever should their families need goddamn food stamps in order to eat or have to live in a poxy hotel room because there's no base housing.

I've known a few guys who thought they were pretty smart
But you've got being right down to an art
You think you're a genius--you drive me up the wall
You're a regular original, a know-it-all

Okay, so you're a grammer nazi who understands homophones
That don't impress me much

-- Shania

"And which big iron hardware has been doing since the 1960`s"

Would it be the same big iron that is after SCO?

"You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run." Kenny Rogers, The Gambler

Call their bluff and give me a shot of whiskey.

"Ev'ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away and knowing what to keep.
'Cause ev'ry hand's a winner and ev'ry hand's a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep."

F the CC

One of the coolest parts of the Java tool chain is ant, which uses XML instead of make's ridiculous syntax.

Ant has its limitations because it doesn't provide an actual scripting language. That's one of the problems that Jelly is attempting to address.

Another approach to programming with XML that works well is embedding a traditional programming language like JavaScript in XML text content, and expressions in XML attributes, like OpenLaszlo.

-Don

Brad Paisley
Make a Mistake
Written by - Brad Paisley
From - Mud On the Tires
You over think things

You say what if we're not meant to be
Well you know what so what
Make a mistake with me

Nobody goes through this life and does
Everything perfectly
We're all gonna fail so you might as well
Make a mistake with me

Sometimes, baby, when we take
A chance that has this much at stake
We look back and in hindsight
What seemed wrong looks more like right

So I say worst case we'll be left with
Lots of good memories
This chance we have well it's worth that
So make a mistake with me

I'm tellin' you the right thing to do
Is make a mistake
Make a mistake
Make a mistake with me

In your case, it sounds like you have to look no further than your brother? (Starts humming I'm my own Grandpa)

Big Ted left Alaska in the year '72,
On the Senate Rules Committee, was a real workhorse too,
With George and Michael Powell, and the FCC gang too.
They crossed the Yukon River and found the bonanza gold
Below that white-domed fountain, way the hell southeast of Nome.

Ted crossed the majestic mountains to the valleys far below.
He talked to his team of lobbyists as he mushed on through the snow.
With the northern lights a-running wild in the land of the midnight sun,
Yes, Teddy Stevens, a mighty man, in the year 2001.

Where the river is winding,
Pig nuggets they're finding!
Pork for Alaska!
They bring pork, the rush is on.

George turned to Ted with his pork in his hand,
Said: "Ted you're a-lookin' at a lonely, lonely man.
"I'd trade all the pork that's buried in this land,
"For one small slab of pork to[no, no NO, we are NOT goin' to find out what happened to Ginny in this filk as long as I have any say at the FCC]

To the tune of North to Alaska, Johnny Horton