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Government contractor here, and I can concur. A colleague of mine often points out that the the documentation we produce must produce stacks of paper that are tall enough that we can use them to build a fortress to protect ourselves when the auditors attack the castle.  I produced a 1000-page ATR just last month (I didn't actually print it out, though).
Having said that though, I should also mention that I am on a team that is introducing Agile methodology to this heavily waterfall-dominated workplace, and we are making some real headway. One of the keys that has helped us a lot is the use of quality tools: Jama for requirements development, JIRA for issue tracking, etc. Introducing these tools has really helped us to start enjoying the best of both worlds. (That 1000-pg ATR, for example, was automatically generated from our Jama repository.)
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ALL MEN MUST DIE?
The warden of an overloaded prison decided to ease the situation in a somehow brutal way...
He told to the inmates, that from the next day he will line up the inmates from each section (between 20 to 30) in a way that they can see the inmates before them, but not those behind. The guards will but a black or white party-hat on the head of each inmate in a random way...
From back to front, each prisoner have to say what color the hat is on his own head. Those are guess wrong will be executed...
What the inmates can do?
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Since you didn't add any other rules, why not take off their hat, look at it, and then give the answer?
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I asked the warden - touching the hat punishable by death...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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But the hat is on his head, so it is touching him. Therefore he is already touching the hat and all prisoners die immediately.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: and all prisoners die immediately.
That does fix the overcrowding issue.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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I told - the warden is a brutal creature...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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The way I heard it, one guess is allowed to be wrong, if more than one then all prisoners die. You can't turn around, only see the prisoners in front, can only provide one answer.
Very difficult for many, quite simple for those of us who lived in the early days of serial communications and error-prone memory.
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Assuming there is an equal number of black and white hats, the guy at the tail end of the queue can see every hat except his own. He can correctly guess the colour of his own. The guy in front of him uses that and the hats he can see to say what colour his hat is, and so on.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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The number of black and white hats is unknown...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Martyr's solution:
Tell the person in front of you their hat color. Take your guess and hope they can all thank you later.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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That will break on the first color change...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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No - each prisoner looks at the prisoner in front of them and reports his hat color to him - they can then do the same for the next prisoner and announce (correctly) their own hat color since it was told to them by the prisoner behind them. They can all be the same color or any number of identifiable colors.
Only fails if there are liars or blind prisoners - but picks up again.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: Those are guess wrong will be executed...
Then they should all refuse to guess! 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Alas - just after you left I asked the warden about that. He said it's guess or die.
(my answer to the unsaid is better, so there!)
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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The guy at the back can save the others but not himself. They agree a code - let's say if there's an even number of black hats in front of him he calls black, otherwise he calls white. That gives everyone in front of him enough information to work out what colour hat they're wearing e.g. second guy knows that there are an even number of black hats but knows that there are an odd number so can conclude that his own hat is black.
The guy at the back's chances are 50-50 (probably less if a sadistic guard heard the prisoners devising the code) but at least he's taking one for the team.
Solution 2 is build a time-machine; go back and vote for someone else. This is a very unhealthy country that they're living in.
Slogans aren't solutions.
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Ask the guy behind you what color your hat is
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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Paint their, *ahem* "appendages" with silver paint, drop their trousers, and look at the hat in the reflection.
To every problem, there's always an easy solution.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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The Prisoners, realizing that the warden will be fired if they all die, all answer RED!
He kills them all, is fired for there are no prisoners, and they get their revenge!
Oh, and the guards end up working for walmart.
Or they all sneeze at the same time and all the hats FALL OFF Magically.
Or they tell the guy in front of them, and the last guy changes places with the second from last guy when the guards are not looking.
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Aaaaaaaaah! And aaaaaaaaah again!
When you use an environment that breaks the rules to fit its workflow that means you can't do something simple to suit yours!
That.
veni bibi saltavi
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Let me guess, LABVIEW. My brief play with it has led me believe it wasn't so much designed as happened...
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Close but no feral pigeon. It is my dear friend MATLAB and it's fracking JVM fracking about with fracking class fracking loaders. 
veni bibi saltavi
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MATLAB? Oh the nightmare! I used it at Uni, I was doing some Nueral Net stuff and Simulink had some useful bits but the language, it has a JVM now? That has me worried, like Labview it happened more than designed... 
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Nagy Vilmos wrote: When you use an environment that breaks the rules to fit its workflow that means you can't do something simple to suit yours!
Isn't that called marriage? 
Marc
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