And reduce the funding to pay for more patent examiners? So the worse they do, the worse they get. Beatings will continue until morale improves.

Some internal controls are warranted. (If n of your patents gets invalidated, you're canned and we hire somebody better to take your place.) Taking money from the gatekeeper so that he can guard the gates better isn't the way.

Having been in IT support in a healthcare environment, we had a term for that: Cranial-rectal colocation. It comes in two kinds, acute (for short periods) or chronic (seemingly all the time). Our group had diagnosed several cases of CCRC before I left for greener pastures, but I still use the term today.

Your design documents specify which control structures you should use?? I want to come work with YOU. Additionally, I was in college when I was pair programming. Of COURSE I was doing it incorrectly.

Everybody poo-poos it, I'm a better coder on my own, the other guy's wasting time, etc. But I tried it and I was never a better coder than when I was working in a pair. You'd get all the "missing semicolon" stuff that everybody talks about, which isn't exactly a waste, but you also have two brains deeply enmeshed in the code and data structures, so you can blend the best of two styles of programming. Sometimes I'd write a braindead construct and the other guy would simplify it, and sometimes he'd create this god-awful structure and I'd clean it up. But you can bounce ideas off another programmer without having to explain the function, show him the code, let him get his head wrapped around it, all that. It's not all grunting and pointing, sometimes it's, "Dude, use a switch/case" or "Just use the library function."

It's not for everybody - nothing is - but it's definitely worth trying with an honest effort.

h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slashdot-dot-slash-slash-colon-h-t-t-p You know they'd do it, too.

If you think Romney or Gingrich wouldn't have, you should absolutely vote for them.

Greetings, Warfighter!

You have been recruited by the United States of America to defend the frontier against Iran and the Middle East Armada.

Way to really not even try to be helpful.

WYSIWYG editors are wildly helpful when it comes to saving time and opportunities to typo your code. If you can put together an error-free 7x9 table in Notepad++ in five seconds, get off Slashdot and get back to your hyperproductive life. (Also, I call BS.) If time and accuracy are no object, it's a hobby or you're learning. In those cases, by all means, use a straight up text editor, because you're writing web pages for the joy of doing it, or you need to do it more to practice and get better at it.

For the rest of us, who do this sort of thing for a living, or as a time-sensitive project, we need pages coded quickly and accurately, which is why we (convince our employers to) pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for products like Dreamweaver. The split view in Dreamweaver is really useful for doing tricky layouts. Let the program do the heavy lifting by dropping in whatever blocks/tables/whatever that you need, tweak the code as necessary to get the desired result, push the changes up to pre-production, and get on to the next thing that needs to be done ALL WITHOUT SWITCHING WINDOWS. It doesn't leave out tags, it doesn't typo parameters, it doesn't forget the name of that one variable you need to change to get what you're looking for.

If you're shunning tools to make you more productive in the name of intellectual purity, you're just being difficult and spiteful to yourself, your boss, your employer, your client, or any number of other stakeholders, people who need to see the work done for a reason other than to demonstrate you can do it.

tl;dr: No.

Ballot stuffs YOU in box!

This isn't entirely new. They're basically expanding "Computer systems analyst, programmer, software engineer" to "anyone working in a computer or IT related occupation". Analysts, designers, coders, testers of software were out before. Looks like they're expanding it to DBAs, IT managers, sysadmins and other IT gigs. IANALegislator, so your read is as good as mine, or better. Presented below for your reference:

CURRENT LAW:
(17) any employee who is a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is—
(A) the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications;
(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
(C) the design, documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C) the performance of which requires the same level of skills, and who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour.

NEW BILL:
(17) any employee working in a computer or information technology occupation (including, but not limited to, work related to computers, information systems, components, networks, software, hardware, databases, security, internet, intranet, or websites) as an analyst, programmer, engineer, designer, developer, administrator, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is--
‘(A) the application of systems, network or database analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine or modify hardware, software, network, database, or system functional specifications;
‘(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, securing, configuration, integration, debugging, modification of computer or information technology, or enabling continuity of systems and applications;
‘(C) directing the work of individuals performing duties described in subparagraph (A) or (B), including training such individuals or leading teams performing such duties; or
‘(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C), the performance of which requires the same level of skill;
who is compensated at an hourly rate of not less than $27.63 an hour or who is paid on a salary basis at a salary level as set forth by the Department of Labor in part 541 of title 29, Code of Federal Regulations. An employee described in this paragraph shall be considered an employee in a professional capacity pursuant to paragraph (1).’.

For the record, I've had my current signature since before the last presidential election.