mike_herrera

What is the fee? I couldn't find any reference on the site, easily.

On one-hand it's funny. On the other-hand, it's horribly sad considering that national debt (and taxes, generally) is a constitutionally-mandated crowdfunding scheme.

Having this presented as an April fool's gag rustles my jimmies in an odd fashion.

It's a control issue under the guise of a cost-saving effort. Contractors and vendors are easier to hire and fire compared to employees. Generous advances in worker productivity mean that the same permanent internal workforce is no longer required.

I'm suspiciously seeing, "2,643 people +1'd this."

While I would be excited to see such enthusiasm relating to a government property, this doesn't smell kosher.

I've really been pleased with PaperKarma. https://www.paperkarma.com/

Especially as I move often, I really enjoy having the ability to stop promotional mail from the previous tenants.

> Code and software quality are serious issues. Unmanaged complexity costs companies millions of dollars. This is a direct result of the low average competence of software engineers...

If the executives aren't aware of these facts, then it's a communication error. If they are ignoring the facts then there's little chance they would entertain a push for autonomy.

> ... You'll just end up job hopping in the search for something incredibly rare. Better is to assume that most executives are harmful and minimize your career exposure to their incompetence and malice.

Blame flows downhill, my friend. By accepting autonomy you're opening yourself to the risk of those actions. It's quite the opposite to minimization.

Conceptually, I like your ideas. Empowering smart people is rarely a bad decision. But attempting to change from within an existing behemoth, with their entrenched positions, is a far-fetched dream.

> More autonomy for programmers means more high-quality work is done, which generates higher returns already but also means that programmers improve.

I disagree. The self-motivated path may be "more productive" for that one person, but it does nothing to guarantee returns or value for the larger organization.

Any employee should leave a company if they believe that their executive team is consistently shown to be inept.

Autonomy within an organization sounds novel for morale, but it's a major shift from today's business culture. Strategy would also be incredibly difficult to execute. Organizational leaders need to be able to align their people down a common path.

If autonomy is the end-goal, start a company or go freelance.

Gauge the impact the diversion will have to your core competency. If the actual benefits and time estimates are overwhelmingly positive, do it. If it's anything less, or is just to address a nearly non-existant bullshit edge-case, make note of the thought and move on.

Don't sabotage the larger vision for short-term gratification.

> It's been seven busy days for us since MEGA went live. As millions of users were hitting 50,000 freshly written and barely tested lines of code and dozens of newly installed servers, teething troubles were inevitable. -- Mega blog entry #4

If I were a gambler, my money would be on an infrastructure/man-in-the-middle or social-engineering attack vector. The people are likely stressed and the code is admittedly troublesome.

Godspeed.

It heavily depends on management's alignment.

> ...haml isn't threadsafe.

Could you elaborate on this, please?

If we're just wanting to know what phase of the day it is, at a particular location, a sun projection is a good enough approximation.

e.g. http://www.die.net/earth/

The Masters is cited with a dead link. The title of the citation also has "honorary" in the title...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Cain#cite_note-purdue-8

Certainly. Prior professions may help define a candidate's initial campaign platform and narrative, but they rarely explain political activity once in office. Politics is a game with very few reliable rules but where even minor actions have overwhelming consequences.

No one in their right mind plays this game.