Although I agree with the general gist of your post (not the tone mind you) this need to leave something personal in a major work is not a new thing.
Workers in cathedrals of all times always took a bit of time to leave personal marks, from signatures to most complex features (faces, figures, etc) to sign a piece of work well done.
Electronics Engineers nowadays make minuscule engravings in the circuits they design.
Civil Engineers and Architects very often leave an small sculpture, signature, aesthetic feature that is not in the specifications but that adds a final personal touch.
I can't imagine that a client paying for a service that is delivered in time and budget would object in the terms you are putting to a silly joke, but I tend to agree that in the case of software, unlike an added feature to a bridge or a building, a joke can always bring a system to its knees (even if it is coded carefully and cleanly, software is exponentially complex, so it is almost impossible to foresee all the possible conditions under which an Easter Egg could cause havoc).
I have asked somebody that knows about this ( hi mum!) with 30 years of experience in education and a Masters degree in Pedagogy
According to this most informed source, a computer is simply overkill. A child at that age does not have the coordination or understanding of what a computer (or any complex device for that matter) is, so the implications of what the device is and does will most likely go over the top of his head.
I read several posts quite patronizing (my child can do this or that, if yours can't he must be dull or dumb), commenting this with my expert at hand she commented "pushy parents, they are all the same".
Businesses aren't bankrupt? Just yesterday 2 major UK retailers went tits up. Another couple reported losses of tens of millions one year after having record profits.
but please check the one year view, not the three days one. To say that the stock markets are recovering when the correct interpretation is that they are nervous, jumping all around the place in a downwards trend, is pie in the sky...
You can do exactly the same, perhaps in your own time, and write an agreement to claim a bonus for any efficiencies or new business gained, without any of the risks involved in your frankly insane strategy.
In most (all?) developed countries (and many less developed) water companies have a legal duty to provide water safe to drink.
They are monitored closely and if for any reason they don't deliver they are fined or heads roll.
Bottled water is the biggest scam there is. Even if it is sourced from a fancy place like some fizzy waters are, still the environmental damage caused by shifting those bottles around is a crime.
Since when it is a sacrifice to perform your dream job?
The sacrifice may be to give up some things in order to do it, but most likely are negligible compared with the satisfactions and even risks (people do many risky things for far less rewards).
I have still to meet a piano player that has developed Alzheimer early in life (I am sure they are out there, I am just saying my experience).
Playing piano (or any other instrument, but I favour piano because it is more complex) forces you to exercise your muscular memory (every sportsman does that, but you can play an instrument pretty much all of your life), your concentration and your memory.
The tour de force of piano players is to play the complete cycle of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas (32 of them), very often they do so on the mature years of their careers (50s-60s) and by memorizing all the music (20-25 hours of it).
Something younger technical people forget is that managing a group of people requires more skills than knowing how to obfuscate a perl script.
If technical people are great problem solvers they could apply the skills, allegedly learned doing "fun" stuff, to the problem of implementing productive teams of techies.
This nonsense about management being a dead end for techies needs to be put to rest frankly, a good manager will enable technical people to do their job by isolating them from all the bullshit that comes from higher hierarchical levels while at the same time setting realistic objectives for all the parties involved. Having being a techie should be a great plus for somebody managing other techies, not an artificial hindrance.
It is in-house development, which normally is not closed source BTW.
Closed source companies are scared shitless for good reason: most developers are used to share and reuse code (that is how inhouse development works), so they find natural to do so when it comes to FOSS based projects.
Closed source is an anomaly that got too big for our own good, it will be ironed out eventually since it has no advantages whatsoever for the end user, who is the entity that should be dictating how software is developed.
The Internet was built on free software (if you can't understand that this has nothing to do with price, I don't see what you are doing in this discussion) and open standards.
First email servers and clients, later news (USENET) servers and readers, ftp, DNS, the web.
Honestly. What the heck are you smoking?
Oh, I see. You think computing is circumscribed to the desktop, where some visible applications have had some unwarranted economic success in the back of monopolistic and abusive behaviour.
Keep drinking your KoolAid, the rest of us moved on around 10 years ago.
Lets humour you and accept that baseless fallacy you are ejaculating at face value, so how is that different from closed proprietary software?
How many different versions of Vista do we have? Goodness knows. But the way they are differentiated is by crippling the cheaper versions of the same software. Now tell us again with a straight face that such practice could be attributable to OSS applications exclusively.
The dynamics in building quality products have not changed a single iota: if you are not prepared to support the software for which you are an expert, you are going to fail, the difference is that as a provider of OSS products you have open many more alternatives to deliver a working solution instead of being shut out from markets by means of planned incompatibility, vendor locking and arbitrary obsolescence.
If one project is lousy, there will be incentives for other groups of people to pick that project up and reform it, initially perhaps as a way to "scratch an itch" but from there there is is no reason why a better project acn't be spun off commercially.
In the other hand are you seriously suggesting that today's commercial software is "robust and easy to use"?
If you are, please, don't make me laugh, I am busy being depressed with the financial crush.
The way democracy works you are given choices that are too broad.
Ideally people should be voting for each secretary of state independently, thus selecting carefully each set of policies with base of the wishes of the people.
Given the system we have, people select based on general overall topics (which each candidate made very clear) but it is impossible for the people to micromanage the process.
If McCain would have been elected then we would be seeing all kind of appointments that would be counter intuitive against the main pledges of his campaign.
This is how politics in a democracy works, to be all surprised and gleeful about this is childish frankly.
And since we are not going to agree about this it becomes a moral issue.
In a democracy moral issues should not be legislated, people should b allowed to reach their own conclusions and they should be allowed to act on those conclussion on their personal sphere.
Murder is not a moral issue, it is an universal social value and we all more less agree what it is, reason for which it is possible to legislate about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Although I agree with the general gist of your post (not the tone mind you) this need to leave something personal in a major work is not a new thing.
Workers in cathedrals of all times always took a bit of time to leave personal marks, from signatures to most complex features (faces, figures, etc) to sign a piece of work well done.
Electronics Engineers nowadays make minuscule engravings in the circuits they design.
Civil Engineers and Architects very often leave an small sculpture, signature, aesthetic feature that is not in the specifications but that adds a final personal touch.
I can't imagine that a client paying for a service that is delivered in time and budget would object in the terms you are putting to a silly joke, but I tend to agree that in the case of software, unlike an added feature to a bridge or a building, a joke can always bring a system to its knees (even if it is coded carefully and cleanly, software is exponentially complex, so it is almost impossible to foresee all the possible conditions under which an Easter Egg could cause havoc).
If you need some print out to support your journalistic work you can't wait for other people, maybe trying to report about the same event as you are.
If you are a few minutes late in your work very often that may mean it is no longer relevant.
What are you smoking?
I have asked somebody that knows about this ( hi mum!) with 30 years of experience in education and a Masters degree in Pedagogy
According to this most informed source, a computer is simply overkill. A child at that age does not have the coordination or understanding of what a computer (or any complex device for that matter) is, so the implications of what the device is and does will most likely go over the top of his head.
I read several posts quite patronizing (my child can do this or that, if yours can't he must be dull or dumb), commenting this with my expert at hand she commented "pushy parents, they are all the same".
Some of Apple's ads clearly give the impression of being a realistic representation of how the gadget is actually working.
As for the specific ads you are mentioning I think everybody understands they are exaggerated and meant in an ironic way.
I want to catch the next rocket there.
Businesses aren't bankrupt? Just yesterday 2 major UK retailers went tits up. Another couple reported losses of tens of millions one year after having record profits.
The stock market recovering?
http://finance.google.co.uk/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJX:DJI
but please check the one year view, not the three days one. To say that the stock markets are recovering when the correct interpretation is that they are nervous, jumping all around the place in a downwards trend, is pie in the sky...
I don't see anybody suggesting this.
You can do exactly the same, perhaps in your own time, and write an agreement to claim a bonus for any efficiencies or new business gained, without any of the risks involved in your frankly insane strategy.
Unless you patent them.
In most (all?) developed countries (and many less developed) water companies have a legal duty to provide water safe to drink.
They are monitored closely and if for any reason they don't deliver they are fined or heads roll.
Bottled water is the biggest scam there is. Even if it is sourced from a fancy place like some fizzy waters are, still the environmental damage caused by shifting those bottles around is a crime.
Since when it is a sacrifice to perform your dream job?
The sacrifice may be to give up some things in order to do it, but most likely are negligible compared with the satisfactions and even risks (people do many risky things for far less rewards).
Big corporations use either Red Hat or SuSe, there is no other game in corporate Linux.
Your kind of irrelevance is a very funny one....
I have still to meet a piano player that has developed Alzheimer early in life (I am sure they are out there, I am just saying my experience).
Playing piano (or any other instrument, but I favour piano because it is more complex) forces you to exercise your muscular memory (every sportsman does that, but you can play an instrument pretty much all of your life), your concentration and your memory.
The tour de force of piano players is to play the complete cycle of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas (32 of them), very often they do so on the mature years of their careers (50s-60s) and by memorizing all the music (20-25 hours of it).
Honestly, there is no satisfactory solution to the ageing problem, no snake oil in any form will change that in the long term.
Something younger technical people forget is that managing a group of people requires more skills than knowing how to obfuscate a perl script.
If technical people are great problem solvers they could apply the skills, allegedly learned doing "fun" stuff, to the problem of implementing productive teams of techies.
This nonsense about management being a dead end for techies needs to be put to rest frankly, a good manager will enable technical people to do their job by isolating them from all the bullshit that comes from higher hierarchical levels while at the same time setting realistic objectives for all the parties involved. Having being a techie should be a great plus for somebody managing other techies, not an artificial hindrance.
Closed source is not keeping developers employed.
It is in-house development, which normally is not closed source BTW.
Closed source companies are scared shitless for good reason: most developers are used to share and reuse code (that is how inhouse development works), so they find natural to do so when it comes to FOSS based projects.
Closed source is an anomaly that got too big for our own good, it will be ironed out eventually since it has no advantages whatsoever for the end user, who is the entity that should be dictating how software is developed.
The Internet was built on free software (if you can't understand that this has nothing to do with price, I don't see what you are doing in this discussion) and open standards.
First email servers and clients, later news (USENET) servers and readers, ftp, DNS, the web.
Honestly. What the heck are you smoking?
Oh, I see. You think computing is circumscribed to the desktop, where some visible applications have had some unwarranted economic success in the back of monopolistic and abusive behaviour.
Keep drinking your KoolAid, the rest of us moved on around 10 years ago.
They are a delightful bunch.
Lets humour you and accept that baseless fallacy you are ejaculating at face value, so how is that different from closed proprietary software?
How many different versions of Vista do we have? Goodness knows. But the way they are differentiated is by crippling the cheaper versions of the same software. Now tell us again with a straight face that such practice could be attributable to OSS applications exclusively.
The dynamics in building quality products have not changed a single iota: if you are not prepared to support the software for which you are an expert, you are going to fail, the difference is that as a provider of OSS products you have open many more alternatives to deliver a working solution instead of being shut out from markets by means of planned incompatibility, vendor locking and arbitrary obsolescence.
If one project is lousy, there will be incentives for other groups of people to pick that project up and reform it, initially perhaps as a way to "scratch an itch" but from there there is is no reason why a better project acn't be spun off commercially.
In the other hand are you seriously suggesting that today's commercial software is "robust and easy to use"?
If you are, please, don't make me laugh, I am busy being depressed with the financial crush.
Most development happens in-house.
The immense majority of developers need not to worry about a substantial reduction in the job market.
John "Sick Heart" McCain & Sarah "Sure Shoot" Palin?
There was only one rational choice, that 46% of people in the US did not realize that is the worrisome thing, not the selection of Obama's team.
The way democracy works you are given choices that are too broad.
Ideally people should be voting for each secretary of state independently, thus selecting carefully each set of policies with base of the wishes of the people.
Given the system we have, people select based on general overall topics (which each candidate made very clear) but it is impossible for the people to micromanage the process.
If McCain would have been elected then we would be seeing all kind of appointments that would be counter intuitive against the main pledges of his campaign.
This is how politics in a democracy works, to be all surprised and gleeful about this is childish frankly.
Change is not just an alternative team.
McCain also was claiming change, but we all know that he would have followed many of Bush's policies.
Thus the US people spoke.
It is perfectly reasonable to use experienced people from your own party to carry out your own policies.
Damn the man if he does not deliver on his campaign promises, not on his choice of enablers.
I understood change as a political change, not as a change of faces necessarily.
Since when change has been carried out by outsiders?
Perhaps never since the French Revolution.
And since we are not going to agree about this it becomes a moral issue.
In a democracy moral issues should not be legislated, people should b allowed to reach their own conclusions and they should be allowed to act on those conclussion on their personal sphere.
Murder is not a moral issue, it is an universal social value and we all more less agree what it is, reason for which it is possible to legislate about it.
... in the names of religious deities ???
Er, uhm, no.
Check the names of certain Hitler, Stalin, Mao and their perverse accomplishments.
We also have other monsters like the King Leopold of Belgium, but he "only" killed one million people I think, but his zeal wan not religious neither.
I am atheist and left leaning politically btw....