Dear Bored: Dottie Downturn doesn't know where to begin. Should she respond with pursed lips and furrowed brow to the very concept of "targeted advertising software?" Surely there is no greater distillation of online boorishness to be found than in the muddle-headed notion that advertising can ever be made acceptable to the Web public. As a general principle, Dottie Downturn considers ads to be rude, period. But targeted advertising is devil-spawn, pure and simple.

Dottie Downturn is further alarmed by the attitude so commonly found among programmers that assumes that turning a profit is somehow a less worthy goal than creating "decent code." Despite the frothings of the so-called "free software" crowd (whom Dottie Downturn has always found to be a collection of the most egotistical, unkempt and bratty individuals ever before gathered together under one banner), it seems self-evident to Dottie Downturn that unless a start-up makes money, it will not be able to continue to pay programmers to write code. Microsoft, Dottie Downturn notes, has always understood that shipping mediocre code at high prices is the key to long-term success.

Finally, Dottie Downturn is revolted by your desire to achieve severance pay by volunteering to be fired -- possibly at the expense of one of your colleagues who may not be able to find a job elsewhere as easily as you. Your strategy sounds far more appropriate to the "clueless middle-managers in suits" than to a programmer. Perhaps you should recompile your own moral source code.

Dear Dottie Downturn: As a lowly paid client/server programmer I was humiliated by all the stories of amazing wealth being showered upon the heads of Web programmers in the old "New Economy" of the dot-coms. Now that the bottom has dropped out on them and these newly poor Web monkeys are back to hustling tables, would it be terribly gauche of me to laugh in their faces? -- Chortling in Chattanooga

Dear Chortling: Although Dottie Downturn knows all too well how hard it is to resist the temptation to be mean-spirited, sadistic and unfair, she also feels compelled to note that face-to-face mistreatment of wait-staff is a dangerous game to play. Sure, that pasty-faced 25-year-old filling up your water glass might have been pulling down 100 grand six months ago as a Perl hacker for an online pet food retailer, but right now she has personal control over the food that you are eating ...

A more appropriate response might be to send the down-and-out programmer a witty greeting card expressing your condolences: "Welcome to the old economy," you might write, "where your experience and ability will no doubt receive the compensation they so richly deserve."

The Free Software Project
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