It's called an airport. Scaled Composites has successfully launched suborbital spacecraft from one.

I think you just answered your own question there. Because not everyone can do it.

Of course, the fact that you did something that anybody can do but almost nobody does can be cool too.

I make stuff all the time. Just the other day I made a belt sheath that holds a pair of kitchen shears and a pair of forceps for when I'm fishing from my canoe. I made the sheath out of duct tape, which took me about five minutes. Anybody could have done it, which I think makes it a cool project. But suppose I'd sewed the sheath out of fish leather that I'd tanned myself. Not anyone could do that, and that would be cool too, but in a different way.

Fred Pohl. I didn't drop him, I just thought his last book was boring.

I made it about halfway through Tale of Two Cities, it started becoming a tedious read, but I don't think language had much to do with it, and neither would it be presented as a serial. His A Christmas Carol is still a favorite, though.

Indeed they are.

Well maybe Putin's going around cutting everyone's hawsers. That would leave them towing the line.

Well, this is what you signed up for.

Google's ToS explicitly states you can't use it for anything illegal, and their privacy policy states they can poke around in anything you send through them to make sure you're complying with the ToS. Furthermore their privacy policy allows them to disclose your data to third parties in order to "protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users or the public as required or permitted by law."

So Google in this case was doing nothing that the user in question didn't grant permission for. Like most Google service users he didn't bother to read and think about all the documents he was supposedly agreeing to when he signed up. But it's not that hard to do. I did it, and I periodically check for changes.

How hard can it be to replace Ballmer? Very, very hard. But I think that's not he question you meant to ask. That question, I believe is this: How hard can it be to do *better* than Ballmer?

Well, anyone can make those errors when very sleepy or drunk, but some folks always do. The last data I saw said that only 3% of Americans read books regularly. So 97% of Americans are either illiterate (1% of the population) or aliterate. I'm pretty sure that's where the problem stems from.

No need to do so in every damned post, but yeah.

Long, long ago, early in my career, I spent about fifteen years in the non-profit sector.

You don't ignore office politics, but you don't take sides either unless there is a crisis brewing -- something illegal, highly unethical, or financially dangerous. When you work in IT, you're in a "support" position, rather than a "line" position. Your job is to support. So when there's a big pissing match between two line functions, your job is to support *both* sides.

Often this means documenting business processes that sort of evolved via the lava flow antipattern; 50ish is the size where things start to get out of hand, because it's the size where the amateurishly hacked-together processes that keep the organization running start to break down because everyone can't be aware of everything that's going on in detail, in real-time. Make it your business to understand what business systems (not necessarily computer systems) *accomplish*. That puts you in a position to offer a third way, the one that emerges as obvious to everyone once somebody has figured out what's actually going on.

It's supposedly hard to implement changes in non-profits because of the consensus-driven decision making processes, but I found that I could make that process work for me. Lack of understanding is a vacuum; presented with a clear picture people usually line up behind the obvious solution quickly. But you do have to do your homework. Never surprise anyone with anything in a meeting. Bring people up to speed with things you're going to say about their work *before* the meeting so they don't feel blind-sided.

In a crisis be prepared to do the right thing. If you're in a non-profit they're paying you below market rates, so you can do better elsewhere. There is no call for getting yourself sucked into something that offends your self-respect. I resigned one job because my superior (the COO) was doing things that were financially reckless and improper (spending without proper authorization). I informed the CEO in my exit interview. That was my solution to the problem of not getting drawn into a persistent pattern of dysfunction.

When you handle sensitive information, just ask yourself what is the professional thing to do? Be discreet. Resist the temptation to peek at data, and when you *do* accidentally learn something you're not supposed to know, disclose that to the responsible parties. Be trustworthy, and present a trustworthy face.

Finally, don't let them pay you far below the market rate for your services, and expect a really good benefits package, including 1.5x to 2x the vacation you'd get in a for-profit. Insist on the respect due a professional. Non-profits are full of young people who haven't learned that the IT guy isn't there to be kicked around when they're frustrated, and the fact that you're in a support position rather than a more glamorous line position doesn't make your work any less important.

I still have paperbacks with prices printed on the covers of a dollar or less... but I'm getting pretty old. Books back then were more the size of Nobots than today's books. Of course, back then a gallon of gasoline was under fifty cents and a six pack of beer was about a dollar.

These days, judging by what I've seen, new paperbacks range from $6 to $10, so $7 doesn't seem too out of line.

The library here has a book sale every year, and I picked up a huge writer's guide for two bucks. Its copyright date was 1978 and it was completely obsolete. Along with talking about typewriters and carbon paper and estimating the number of words, it stated that publishers would rather publish two 40,000 word books than one 80,000 word book. When Twain was asked how many words should be in a book he said "as many as it takes to tell the story, and no more."

How times have changed!