This is why I've given up on Airbnb, reverting to hotels for my 90 days on the road each year.
Staying in someone's home, which they care about, can be nice. The guy with 12 apartments and untrained cleaning staff doesn't care about worn-out linens, dodgy guests, missing locks, dirty surfaces or leaking faucets.
Opportunists like these are the raison d'être for hospitality industry regulation.
I'm pointing a camera at you when I read the messages on my phone too. After all, the camera on the back is facing you. Doesn't mean I'm using the camera.
The "camera in my face" is just an excuse. You're actually being recorded by other things. Anyone who takes the time to learn about Glass would know that the battery would last about 10 seconds if I had the damn camera on :)
People don't actually care about the camera thing. It is a stated reason to dislike Glass, but the average person gets recorded in all manner of forms while traveling in public that it is hard to believe that the camera aspect is really what matters to people, not to imply it is the same as a CC security camera or a smartphone.
It is a small computer that's strapped to your head with a titanium band. I've worn one for extended periods, and I want to make fun of people I see wearing one; it is jarring and looks absurd. It is also socially acceptable to make fun of it, and how often is that true for something that looks absurd?
It would almost certainly depend on the country, but if the structure has some kind of copyright, miniature replicas would likely not be legal without permission.
In some countries, building facades and similar can be copyrighted, which is mostly discussed in the context of photography. Some countries have an exception called "freedom of panorama", which gives some fair-use rights for photographs of things that can be photographed from a public street. How broad such permission is varies: in some jurisdictions it's fairly broad permission, while in other countries it may only apply to photographs of a general street scene that contains the building as one element, but may not apply to detailed architectural photography focused on a particular building.
But that's only for photography, at least so far, not for 3d reproductions. To take an existing area where the distinction between the two comes up, in some jurisdictions you can take (and sell) photographs of sculptures that are installed in public squares under freedom-of-panorama, but still cannot sell reproductions of the sculpture, whether full-size or miniature, if it's new enough to be copyrighted.
The above doesn't typically to things old enough to be out of copyright, like Big Ben, or Rodin sculptures, though I wouldn't be surprised if some jurisdictions have special-case laws about use of their famous landmarks.
I'd definitely find it useful, and would pay for it. The trick is figuring out how to recruit/pay the "experts" who would need to be fairly high-value people but who would nevertheless have to make themselves available on a moment's notice.
And it had better not be implemented as one of those stupid unsolicited pop-up chat windows.
Only partially. It's a combined measure of your knowledge and participation on the site.
> As a registered user, your reputation on the site is a part of your identity on the site. It reflects, to an extent, your familiarity with the site, the amount of subject matter expertise you have and the level of respect your peers have for you.
In addition to that, it is possible to write well written, but highly specialized answers that gain few upvotes, or relatively simple answers that accrue large number of upvotes simply because it is a common question. In this sense, reputation is a measure of how 'valuable' your contribution to the site is, which is often, but not always aligned with how knowledgeable you are. There are other outliers too, like answers that get featured on Proggit or HN, but those are far less common.
(It also used to be possible to gain large amount of reputation by simply being the first to reply to a poll with a popular answer, but those type of questions are no longer acceptable).
Nope. On SO at least there are lots of folks who amassed hundreds of thousands of reputation merely for being on the site early enough to be able to answer simple and common questions like "how I can remove an array member" and the like.
Sure there are a few questions with highly voted up answers because they are widely useful, but there is certainly the minority of high rep earners. Even the new people who are gaining lots of rep are doing it by answering hundreds of questions.
...and in a lot of cases, account age. I haven't participated in Stack Overflow for years, but there's still a steady trickle of points accumulating from my mediocre questions and answers of old.
Fools aside, this is a horrible idea. There are no experts here. There are loud people, and people with friends, but no community votes up the experts, only the eloquent, or the charismatic. Einstein wasn't president, JFK was. Some occasions, that's okay, but if I'm paying actual money, it certainly isn't.
It's worse than the article describes. Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly. From what I can gather, the total may be double the quoted number. In addition, morale is at rock bottom, with a number of people leaving on their own. Opera as we knew it is gone.
I worked for Opera for seven years, three of them managing the core testing team. I left a year ago. It breaks my heart to see how the current management treats some of the best engineers I've ever met, loyal to the company for a decade, like disposable rubbish. Here's your ten-year watch, now fuck off.
In the 2010 downsizing (described by the HR VP as "rightsizing"), they at least tried to make the decisions look good internally, blaming the economic downturn. The last two rounds they didn't even bother. No explainations, just individual talks - and a wave of fear.
The only good news is that there's plenty of fantastically skilled engineers available. I've hired one myself. If you need anyone, drop me a line, and I'd be happy to recommend someone for your open position. My loyalty is to my old team and the technology - not the current mismanagement. /c:
I can only speculate, and I don't think that's particularly helpful. The 2010 downsizing was quite transparent. This time no ordinary employees seem to have the full picture of what exactly is going in.
Who says employees don't have the full picture? The reasons are even stated in public.
Why would they be terrified of speaking in public -- and if they are, why are several people doing it?
You say that speculating is not particularly useful, and you still speculate that people are terrified of Opera Software, and that the company is lying to its investors about the number of employees?
I’m not sure there are many former employees that are speaking out in public. The ones I’ve seen are my own (obviously), Chaals, and Wilhelm’s comment here. All of us left of our own free will, (long) before these latest layoffs happened. I‘m not sure I’ve seen anything from anyone directly effected (not that this doesn't mean people have and I missed it).
I‘m not saying there is any fear involved, or a conspiracy theory, just that I haven't seen this as the case, bar private posts, and tweets from some that they left the company. When Google laid a large number off at Motorola (of which I was included), there was some sort of agreement in the package about not speaking bad of the company or products. This could be the case here, I don't know.
It breaks my heart to see how the current management treats some of the best engineers I've ever met, loyal to the company for a decade, like disposable rubbish.
Well now, were those engineers not paid every month for a decade? What more does Opera owe them?
Oh, they were paid. About 20-30% less than they could have made elsewhere. Money matters less when you love what you do, and you know the company is struggling.
And when the company yields record profits, they are kicked out.
You are leaving out employee benefits. Free, hot lunch every day. Generous pension savings. Free insurance of various kinds covering not just the employee, but also the family. Free phone + subscription. Subsidized gym memberships. Massage. The list goes on.
If you factor in all the employee benefits the result is a much higher "salary."
The 90 or so people who decided to leave (some couldn't accept the technology change) or were laid off included not only engineers (QA and development), but also marketing, sales, and other departments.
I read somewhere that about half of the people leaving were engineers. Since engineers make up the majority of the company, it actually seems like the development teams weren't hit as hard as non-development teams.
> In addition, morale is at rock bottom, with a number of people leaving on their own. Opera as we knew it is gone.
I think some people were offered voluntary severance packages. I'm guessing that some were disappointed by the move to WebKit, and this was a golden opportunity for them to move on to something else. Those who remain, then, should be committed to the new engine (and those who remain are the vast majority, as far a I can tell).
I don't know about morale being at rock bottom. It's pretty liberating to not have to deal with those site compatibility problems (to such an extent) anymore. Morale usually increases when people get to do cool things instead of grinding on the same old compatibility problems forever. Of course, downsizings are never fun, but I've been through probably 5 or 6 of them in my years at Opera. People get over it eventually.
Is the Opera you knew gone? That depends on what the Opera you knew was. The company has been under constant change for as long as I've been here at least. With the growth of the company and the changes in the market in general, that is quite inevitable.
> In the 2010 downsizing (described by the HR VP as "rightsizing"), they at least tried to make the decisions look good internally, blaming the economic downturn. The last two rounds they didn't even bother. No explainations, just individual talks - and a wave of fear.
We had a department meeting, and to their credit, they actually told the affected people right away. They didn't have to wait for days or weeks to hear the judgment, which is what happened under the previous management.
As for reasons, the change in technology is obvious. Then there's the acquisition of Skyfire which seems to be the biggest one in Opera's history. It's going to cost a lot of money, so it seems logical that the company wishes to save money where they can.
> My loyalty is to my old team and the technology - not the current mismanagement.
In a comment elsewhere you started that the switch to WebKit was the inevitable result of Opera's past missteps. Does that not mean that you are actually arguing that the change done by the current management is caused by the mistakes of the former management which you now praise? That the former "good management" actually forced the hands of the current "bad management" with its mistakes?
> Is the Opera you knew gone? That depends on what the Opera you knew was.
The Opera Software I knew and loved was a technology company filled with some of the most brilliant engineers I have ever met. Despite being a tiny company halfway across the world from where the real action happened, it managed to conjure up some amazing stuff.
The financial margins were slim, the salaries crappy, and the the roof of our derelict office building was literally leaking. But that was _fine_, as we were all in this together. Even the new guy received token stock options, owning a tiny share of something big.
The company culture was egalitarian. Decisions were not made in some ivory tower, but the CEO himself would roam the hallways, discussing with individual engineers. Even as the company passed 500 employees, we managed to retain very much of the startup culture.
The company had its share of problems, of course. Problems that, if not solved, would doom the company long term. Opera tried to be all things to all people, completely lacking focus. It allowed itself to be pushed around by OEMs that didn't understand the browser game. Its greatest strength was that the engine was portable to any platform, any device. But this was gained at a huge penalty to the development speed and agility.
With the lacking focus, Opera also failed to understand the importance of design. Having engineers in charge is great. Having engineers in charge of _design_ is a terrible, terrible idea. Opera was a great engine - with a very mediocre UI.
However, most worrying of all was that Opera grew complacent from having unsurpassed standards support, the fastest rendering engine, and so on. When things got difficult, one would blame Microsoft, as if taking the moral high ground would make any difference.
The decline and fall of Opera has been a gradual process. Just praising the old regime and blaming the new is too easy, too simple.
As the competition came back to the game around 2003-2004, Opera wasn't too slow to react. It didn't react at all. We should have thrown out that ugly ad-banner instantly. Dropped the old paid model the moment Phoenix came into existence. We should have made the project open source the moment Safari/WebKit became public. Or even better: before.
I was just a 20-yearold brat when I joined in 2004, fresh out of high school. I don't blame management for not listening to me then. But I'm sad that they didn't figure this stuff out themselves.
From there on, we were playing the catch-up game half the time, and pushing the boundaries of the Web the other half. I remember the rush to get XHR ready to ship just after Google Maps made use of it in 2005, making our browser look pretty bad. But I also remember the scramble to support Acid2 (2006) first, the rush to remain on top of the layout performance benchmarks - and the crazy experiments we did. Opera Platform, which was essentially Firefox OS many years ahead of its time, was pretty cool.
The platform work we did was amazing, too. We had the full web available on the most crappy devices you can imagine. The release of the Motorola A1200 (2005) was one of my proudest achievements. As was the fantastic adaptive zoom we made for the Wii (2006). The iPhone, made public a little later, had the exact same feature as we had come up with.
Apple and Mozilla's products, at this time, struggled with the same site compatibility issues as we did in this Microsoft era. But unlike us, they were focused on shipping one thing well. Their products became nice and pretty, while ours looked like something out of a hobbyist shed.
I believe our engine was _better_ than the competition for a very long time, but we kept shooting ourselves in the foot. Over and over again. And by this time, the competition was picking up speed. They were loading the big guns, while we were not.
Even as the money started coming into the company in 2006-2009, we failed to make the necessary investments in our future. I became department manager in 2007, and remember losing people over petty salary issues. Minor to the company, but significant to the employee. Some of the people I lost I had to hire two new guys to replace - and train for a year before they could really step up. Man-years of wasted productivity, thanks to the holy quarterly numbers.
Not to mention the failed projects we poured resources into, draining all departments for the people they needed just to _catch_up_ to the competition. (Opera employees will know what I'm referring to. :)
Or the fact that when the testing systems I was in charge of became a major bottleneck of our development process, I had to scavenge discarded hardware from the trash to speed it up. I don't even want to know how many developer hours were wasted waiting for test results. I offered to have my recruitment budget cut to zero if I could just have the damned servers I needed to do my job, but burning out my team was apparently a better option.
These were just some of the issues I could see from where I was standing. Elsewhere in the organization, there were similar issues. Many of these things improved over the years, but it was too little, too late.
And as the old regime was slowly replaced by the new, they started making new mistakes. The way the 2008 reorganization was handled was atrocious. I kept my mouth shut then, to keep my department from worrying. The 2010 layoffs is a story of its own.
It eventually dawned on me that upper management didn't actually give a shit about the rank-and-file employees. We had become replaceable cogs in the machine. They abused the startup culture for a long while. Despite good margins, salaries were kept crappy, playing on the engineers' idealistic love for what they were doing. The token options were soon gone, too. The leftover money turned into impressive bonuses for the selected few.
We knew from the start that Opera Mini (2005) was a transitional technology, to be made obsolete as devices became more powerful. But there was no plan then, and I doubt there is any sensible plan now, for how to remain relevant after that era is over. We started with the best, most portable engine, and were surpassed by the competition while we were asleep.
The desktop browser has remained stagnant for years. We kept shooting ourselves in the foot with rushed, buggy releases. The same, crappy UI. The wrong, new features - instead of what people actually wanted and needed.
At some point, the cumulative mistakes made doomed Opera as a technology company. I knew we could have turned things around in 2007, if we wanted to - and knew how. Doing the same in 2009-2010 would have been very, very difficult, but possible.
By 2011, I knew it was game over and left.
You see, I'm not angry about the switch to WebKit. I'm disappointed that due to years of mistakes, this has become inevitable. Saying "18 years of development has been futile - our codebase is worthless, and will be dropped" is no victory. It's surrender. We lost, and it's our own fault. Stop blaming others - we brought this onto ourselves.
I'm not surprised about the layoffs. I'm angry that my friends and old co-workers, who I care a lot about, are treated like crap. The last half of the layoffs, mentioned in the Q4 report, seem to have been handled moderately well. The first half (affecting Core) seemed random and arbitrary, lasting weeks - and nobody knew who was next. Suddenly, without warning, the guy next to you - who had been there for a decade - would be leaving. WTF was going on?
And that's just the Scandiavian offices. Tokyo has suffered four rounds of this shit, without the benefits of Norwegian labour law.
I'm sad that the influential, aggressive Opera Software that used to push progressive agendas in standards bodies has become irrelevant. Its influence stemmed from having its own realm, its own voice. Now it will be playing third violin in the WebKit orchestra, following the lead of Google and Apple. Brilliant core engineers will be making a skin for Chromium, wasting precious talent.
I spent seven years of my life on this project. Now it's gone.
I'd like to briefly return to your first comment, because I've been trying to understand the essence of your criticism:
> You see, I'm not angry about the switch to WebKit. I'm disappointed that due to years of mistakes, this has become inevitable. Saying "18 years of development has been futile - our codebase is worthless, and will be dropped" is no victory. It's surrender. We lost, and it's our own fault. Stop blaming others - we brought this onto ourselves.
> I'm not surprised about the layoffs. I'm angry that my friends and old co-workers, who I care a lot about, are treated like crap. The last half of the layoffs, mentioned in the Q4 report, seem to have been handled moderately well. The first half (affecting Core) seemed random and arbitrary, lasting weeks - and nobody knew who was next. Suddenly, without warning, the guy next to you - who had been there for a decade - would be leaving. WTF was going on?
I thought I'd focus a bit on this part, because it seems to explain the source of your frustration.
To recap:
You are not angry about the switch to WebKit (decision by the "new management"). You are disappointed in the mistakes by the "old management" which resulted in the "new management" making the switch. So it seems you don't like the move to WebKit after all.
You are OK with the second part of the process (where you seemed to say that people should have been lied to like you claimed happene under the old management instead of what actually happened), but not the first part.
But the first part is where people were given an offer rather than outright fired. I'm assuming that those who had a specific role in the new organization did not get an offer, while those who may not have a specific role yet did. Does this make sense to you?
That the first part of the process lasted for a while is probably because it took a while to figure out what position needed to be filled across the company. If there is no specific position to fill for someone, should he be allowed to choose to get another job, or wait even longer to see if there's a position he can fill when it all settles down?
So what it all boils down to is that you think the first part (where parts the company was restructured, and roles and tasks were not clear right away) was handled poorly. Was it really? I don't know all the details, but I can see a clear and logical reason for why things were done this way, rather than anything being arbitrary, sudden and unfair.
And those who could not accept the move to WebKit at least had a chance to get out with a decent severance package.
Ok, you didn't really answer most of my questions, but you did have a really long reply for one of them.
I'm still somewhat confused. Your description seems to contradict most your previous statements. You seem to be saying that the new management actually had to clean up after the old one because of all the bad decisions you claim were made. You seem to be saying that "the former management made terrible decisions for the company and product, but at least we all had a good time". I don't necessarily agree, but that seems to be the gist of what you are saying.
You are disappointed in the "new management" and yet your comment is about the "old management".
In fact, judging by your description, motivation at the company must have been at rock bottom even several years ago, when your previous comments would have people believe that everything was fine. Once again, I don't necessarily agree. I'm just going by your own description here.
> The company culture was egalitarian. Decisions were not made in some ivory tower
And those decisions, you later claim, were apparently the wrong ones. How does that fit your argument?
> Apple and Mozilla's products, at this time, struggled with the same site compatibility issues as we did in this Microsoft era.
I wouldn't say that. Mozilla had the advantage of the Netscape legacy, and Apple had the advantage of designers usually being on Macs (and despite its limited market share, Apple was loved by the press, giving the company far more influence than its market position would otherwise indicate).
> Not to mention the failed projects we poured resources into, draining all departments for the people they needed just to _catch_up_ to the competition.
Weren't these projects started by the old management, in the old egalitarian company culture you claim existed but is now gone?
> Suddenly, without warning, the guy next to you - who had been there for a decade - would be leaving.
But wasn't that his own decision? Wasn't that guy given the chance to choose himself whether to leave or not? Whether he felt he could live with the technology switch?
See, I have another problem with your criticism of the new management and praise of the old management. You mentioned the 2010 layoffs, and you seem to be saying that it was better to come up with what you claim was a bullshit excuse (economic downturn) to justify it? Once again I must stress that I am not saying that you are right or wrong as that is not my point. I'm questioning the consistency of your claims.
I think most people would agree that it's better to say nothing than to tell a lie. You seems to be accusing the old management of telling lies during the downsizing in 2010.
At least now we have made a major acquisition, which the management obviously could not discuss when the downsizing actually took place. It seems logical that one wishes to save money when buying something expensive, and try to avoid too large of a loan.
> When things got difficult, one would blame Microsoft, as if taking the moral high ground would make any difference.
Isn't this the old management again? And have you not just been arguing that taking the moral high ground is good? That morals are more important than doing what's right for the business? The egalitarian company which makes all the wrong decisions but everyone is having fun is better than the top management making a technology decision that some in the company may not agree with (or God forbid, passionate former employees do not agree with)?
> We should have thrown out that ugly ad-banner instantly. Dropped the old paid model the moment Phoenix came into existence.
You may not recall the round of layoffs back then. A company can't support further development without any revenue, after all. You can't just drop one of your main sources of revenue without knowing that you can replace it. And even when we did remove the ads, it was not certain that it would work. It probably would, but it was not a certainty.
> I spent seven years of my life on this project. Now it's gone.
Yes, I'm sure it's frustrating to see someting you've worked hard on for years disappear, but that doesn't mean it's the wrong decision.
Opera as you knew it is gone, you say. But the Opera you knew doesn't sound all that great if we are to judge by your passionate description of the state of affairs at the time.
All those decisions that you say were so terrible... they were made under the old "good management", in the culture you have just praised. It seems to me you can't have it both ways. You can't have engineers make all the decisions, and then first complain that this power was taken away from them, and later complain that the decision that were made under the system you praised were bad ones.
You want a technology-driven company where everyone gets to make or influence decisions, but you also claim that this led to major problems.
See, I can't get it to make any sense. While you seem passionate about this, it just doesn't sound logical or consistent.
Your conspiracy theory kind of falls flat on its face, since former employees have in fact spoken publicly on this.
What you can gather doesn't seem to be very useful either since the quoted number is correct. It's the number of employees reported by Opera to the authorities. But maybe in your conspiracy, Opera manipulates those numbers to lie to the authorities for some unknown, sinister reason?
How is the current management different from the previous management? Didn't the previous management fire anyone? Oh, they did? And they made up some BS reason to justify it?
Do you know what the reason is stated to be this time around, or did you just assume that they are firing random people to strike fear in people's hearts?
My Gawd.
Edit: Regarding people living in fear, here's one of the former employees speaking out:
"The process, from Opera’s side, was done, IMO, very professionally and the severance package we were offered was voluntary as well as substantial."
That's assuming that what they said was said truthfully and not under the threat of a loaded gun. Opera the company shows signs of being on track be acquired (with the founder reportedly selling part of his shares to not have a majority stake anymore [1]) and management would probably like to minimize dissent and bad press.
Are you seriously suggesting that the company is using threats of physical violence to shut former employees up?
Who cares about the founder? He previously said he wouldn't necessarily block an acquisition. And if Opera wanted to be acquired, why are they doing business like usual, and even buying up other companies?
All of this may be true. What are you going to do about it? Remain in that hole of sweet self-pity until retirement? As the song goes: "it's not going to stop - till you wise up". It's easy and comfortable to give up and whine instead. I know. I've been there.
First, get a shrink. Yes, really.
Second, get to work! It takes ten thousand hours to truly master a craft. That's about five working years. You'll probably be working until you're 67 or so. If you start learning a new skill now, you'll master it at 37 - and for the remaining 30 years of your working life, you'll do great.
Sure, the ambitious 20-somethings may have a head start. But over the next decade, that'll even out. Just stop feeling sorry for youself and do the damn work that's needed.
(Note: The following paragraph assumes you're not supporting a family.)
If you hate your job, quit. Yes, I know you probably don't have enough savings to feel good about that. But there's no better motivation than impending doom. If you know your runway is up in two months, you'll hustle like mad thouse two months. And you'll get there. Really, what's the worst thing that can happen?
This is a sad day, although probably inevitable. This is the beginning of the end for Presto. I put years of my life into that engine. A fool's errand, of course, since we were completely outgunned and outmanned by the competition.
I'm glad I jumped ship when I did. But it was a fun ride.
Opera has always been outmanned and yet consistently been close to or ahead of the curve.
I would say this is more about arbitrary and unhelpful platform restrictions and Opera being characteristically pragmatic about that (lawsuits notwithstanding).
Going forward, are Microsoft and Opera now both to be contributors to the WebKit project? :)
> Opera has always been outmanned and yet consistently been close to or ahead of the curve.
No, not the last three or four years.
Although Opera has been doing great in minor areas due to the sheer brilliance of individual engineers, the topic of every single roadmap meeting in the Core department has been "How can we catch up to the competition? Which missing feature hurts the most right now?".
Given the resource constraints, they've done _great_. But it's not sustainable. When I left a year ago, there were about 60 developers and 30 testers working on the actual engine, supported by a pitiful array of hardware. Upper management could have played their cards differently five years ago, but now it's too late.
(I used to be core test manager of this fine organization.)
We really only have two options. Removing the convicted criminal completely from society forever - or rehabilitation. We have chosen the latter.
The horrible crime Breivik is convicted of is far beyond anything our lawmakers ever took into account, so this is a painful edge case, testing the bounds of our judicial system. Yet, apart from emotional outcries in the days and weeks immediately following the atrocities, changing the system has not been on anyone's agenda.
That said - if the authorities consider the rehabilitation to have failed, and the criminal is still dangerous after his sentence is served, they can keep him locked up for another ten years. And another ten years. And another ten years. But that is not punishment.
If he after 21 years is considered harmless he will be let out. And we must, reluctantly, accept that this is the price we pay for our low crime rates and low number of repeat offenders.
Michael Moore visited one of our minimum security prisons, where criminals may serve the last parts of their sentence. They are being slowly re-integrated into society through useful work and humane living conditions:
Be careful not to apply this to generally. American society is not like Norweigan society - we have a higher division between rich / poor, fewer social safety nets, and higher crime rates. Not only that, our prisons (because of how we run them) are basically places for criminals to mingle with other criminals and become better criminals. Not to mention we have a societal bias against anybody who came out of prison - for the aforementioned reason. We know our prisons don't rehabilitate.
I'm not sure simply applying the Norweigan solution would actually work here - there needs to be a more systemic societal change in order for that to work.
Having said that, consider me impressed with your society's level head.
Of course. The American system is in dire need of reform in the direction of actual rehabilitation, but adopting a carbon copy of the Norwegian system overnight would be a terrible idea. The current economic system of the United States pushes millions of people into a level of poverty completely unheard of in my own country. To this class, pursuing a lifelong criminal career may seem to be a reasonable option.
You face the same issues in the gun control controversy. I'm very much in favour of liberal gun laws in Europe. But there is a huge difference between giving guns to hunters and recreational marksmen - and giving guns to inner-city youth participating in organized crime, impoverished lumpenproles or xenophobic, rural jingos.
For what it's worth, the 'xenophobic rural jingos' in and of themselves don't cause a lot of gun crime. The drug trade is the primary source of gun violence in the US.
>>>> That said - if the authorities consider the rehabilitation to have failed, and the criminal is still dangerous after his sentence is served, they can keep him locked up for another ten years.
Hmm... how that works I wonder? I.e. somebody can be kept in the prison forever even if original sentence was, say, 10 years? How do you know if one is rehabilitated or not? It's not like criminal psychopath would have any problem telling whoever is in charge any words they want to hear and present as "sincere" picture of rehabilitation as he'd be required to get out.
And how keeping somebody in prison for 10 years is not punishment?
The punishment can only last 21 years. If someone is kept in preventive detention the only puropose is to protect other citizens. The best comparision would be forced treatment of the criminally insane. Once they're deemed fit to return to society, they are free to go.
So it is basically the same as a life sentence, but with possibility of parole after 10 years with yearly parole hearings. I wonder what is the actual terms served (including those dying in prison) for crimes like aggravated murder, terrorism, etc.
> Get the specification of work nailed down as thoroughly as you can, it’s mutually beneficial to you and your customers.
I hate specs.
You won't know how to solve a problem before you've already solved it, so your spec will be wrong.
My customers pay for my time. Together, through an iterative process involving myself, the designers and the customer, we find good technical solutions to the problems they need solved.
I can tell them “this solution is difficult” or “this solution is trivial”, and they can judge the cost-benefit ratios along the way.
You've paid for 300 hours of my time. Let's make the most of that.
Staying in someone's home, which they care about, can be nice. The guy with 12 apartments and untrained cleaning staff doesn't care about worn-out linens, dodgy guests, missing locks, dirty surfaces or leaking faucets.
Opportunists like these are the raison d'être for hospitality industry regulation.