I really enjoyed my job - I learned a *LOT* about network architecture, building and maintaining scalable systems, and we brought mobile donations, passing 100% of the money through, in the US. When I walked into a Tokyo Joe's and saw the call to action for Haiti, I just about cried. I, *I* helped, directly, to make that happen. Without me, it may not have happened. Or been as successful. That kept me there a long time, probably longer than I should have been.

Take a vacation. Seriously. I was at a job for almost 6 years, and about 4 years in we finally started hiring an assistant. Went through 2 idiots before finally getting someone competent. Got him trained up for about 6 weeks, then they laid him off because the C-levels couldn't go basic math. That whole time I couldn't take a vacation because things would go bump and they'd need help. Sometimes even impacting 24x7 4 9s uptime connections (we wanted 5 9s). Now that I'm gone, so much less stress, and they learned their lesson.

Wha? Yagi wifi antennas are certainly NOT 10 feet tall. 18" long - http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Product.php?productid=MFJ-1800. 15 dbi (so if your current antenna is 3 dbi this is a 12 dbi increase, or say 100x+ish). Very directional, though.

And no one sane running a drone "program" would use normal wifi - they'd get a control frequency from the FCC and go that route.

Soldered in RAM is so NOT STANDARD. Before my current job, I worked for almost 6 years at a place where, if we could afford it, we got Lenovo Thinkpads. I could upgrade every single one's memory. Shoot, even my MBP (pre-Retina) can be upgraded. My old Acer laptop, Gateway, shoot even the old Toshiba one (1998?) could all have memory upgraded. Soldered in RAM may be standard in smart phones and tablets, but not laptops.

They're no better - snobish, poor customer service, and the local CUs in this area have savings accounts whose rates are no better than a bank's. I ended up switching to an employee-owned bank. I get pretty good service, and my only complaint is they don't run their own data system, so when I make a deposit it's not instantly credited to my account, I have to wait anywhere from 1-8 hours before any of it shows up on the account, as they batch everything from each branch only twice a day.

Probably because it's HARD WORK to get a company up and running, and no, the government doesn't help us small business owners. We constantly face defeat every week. More laws, more taxes, more "benefits" we have to give employees, that takes money away from the business. Ask almost any small business owner how much TAKE HOME PAY they get - very often it's only enough to pay their bills. Any extra money needs to stay in the business to fund whatever crazy law comes down the pipe next. Yes, society may make it easier here than elsewhere (like Soviet Russia or Iran), but that doesn't mean it's not hard work. Society is so not organized to help startups at all, in fact it favors large businesses that can afford economies of scale as well as lobbyists.

We are already there. Case in point - my wife and I. My family is poor, my mom's already had one bankruptcy, and I now make more than the rest of my family DOUBLED. My wife comes from a solid middle class family, both her mom and her dad have 50K credit cards (real Platinum-class cards back then). She and I married, moved in together, and after a few years started to get credit cards. I got a $300 credit line, she got 5K. My second card eventually got approved, $500. Her second? Over $4000. At this point she has $12k in credit and I have around $4. The only one with a job is me - when she got her cards she was working part-time in a book store making 8.50/hour, prior to that she was in college. I was making 50k a year as a computer programmer.

I got saddled with my family's credit "worthiness" and she benefited from her family's. I *still* cannot get as much credit as she can, even though we've been married for 13 years, my name is on the mortgage, the car loans (one already paid off), and I'm still the only one with a job (she's a stay at home mom), but she keeps getting the card offers in the mail and I don't. So, yes, we are ALREADY in a class-style system for credit.

No one's stupid enough to only run IPv6, but you will find plenty of dual stack servers - like Comcast's email servers (run dig comcast.net MX to see what I mean).

And when the government decides not to pay for it? Ever heard of Medicare? Plenty of things it won't pay for, or won't pay market value for.

Yeah, if you fire a gun at a government building, or landmark, and hit it, yeah, you're in trouble. Also, remember one of the cardinal rules of using guns - where will the bullet go AFTER it hits (or misses) the target? You shoot up, the bullet will eventually come down, possibly in a residential area (ok, it's Deer Trail, but still).

While I like the sentiment, I think it sets a dangerous mindset in play.

EAS is a one-way technology sent to everyone on the same tower, in a broadcast-type system. Get with the times. You didn't verify anything.

Indeed, and part of it is the enlisted troops swear an oath to obey their officers. Officers are assumed to have brains, but not enlistees or non-coms (except Warrant Officers). If enlisted guys thought they could be punished for breaking the law but following orders, they'd be thinking more about their orders and less about just getting them done. Let the officers do the thinking, that's the military way.

Yeah but HIPAA doesn't have a "emergency safety of life" exemption. Sure, the FCC will give us a pass in an emergency, but Susie M. Bovine's lawyer won't and neither will the courts due to HIPAA. So hospitals are increasingly less and less interested in working with ARES groups, and during an emergency we won't be able to include them in coordination of events.

Same was said about SSB ("I need a carrier to tune my AM Receiver!") and Morse Code ("But if you don't know morse code, how can you be a ham?"). You say the ham bands are not for private communication - I agree. But they are, per the FCC, for the public good, and if we can't legally transmit in the clear patient information (e.g. "Found another dead body, ID is Susan Mary Bovine", or "Another plague victim at our evac center, name is Susan Bovine - do not permit entry") then we are useless to hospitals. Already there are some that no longer participate with ARES because we cannot be HIPAA compliant and they don't want the headache or liability.

Even if it's interfering with hams - Part 15 guys are the bottom of the rung. It really depends on what the nature of the interference is. A Florida man was fined because his well pump was interfering with local hams.