I forgot electrician's gloves (in case you have to screw around with the HV lines to the rack PDUs)

USB to serial adapter
console cable for each switch vendor you have
cable crimper
punchdown tool
Screwdriver sets: machinist, standard, phillips, torx, (dont get the one that just accepts multiple bits, they tend to fall under floor tiles and are never seen again)
socket set
pliers set
wire strippers
cheap netbook if you don't keep a laptop in the office (you'd be surprised what you forget when you're woken up at 2am and are still zombified when you hit the road)
Tile puller (if you have floor tiles)
spool of ethernet cable and/or several extremely long patch cables marked 'for emergency use only' (unless you're not worried a rat deciding you don't need those 200ft runs to your web cluster anymore)
cheap cable tester (keep the good Fluke tester locked up in your desk or something)
To prevent theft, paint it all with some fruity color or glitter paint or something and etch the company/department name with a boxcutter or exacto knife into everything you can. You can pick up some decent Craftsman hand tools at K-mart for decent prices. Crap tools only make the job harder and can potentially make the situation worse. It's bad enough you're already going to be in ohshit panic mode when something blows up in the middle of the night. If a tool you have to have breaks at midnight, you're just plain SOL until you can get a new one at 10am (or whenever the hardware stores open in your area)

What is your opinion on the 'walled garden' that Microsoft, Apple, and the collective of OEMs (software and hardware) that go along with MS, have force fed to businesses and mainstream users over the past 20 years and is there any real longevity/long term viability in the walled garden business model? I ask because of the lack of resistance from SW/HW vendors to MS's 'Surface' UI being instated across both the mobile devices and desktop/server (Windows Server 2012 also forces this UI).

Actually, you can. The real question is who's morality and ethics will be programmed into the machine, and who will set these standards of morality?

This is an extreme example, but what was considered moral to Adolf Hitler is not necessarily what is considered moral by myself, and what I consider moral may not necessarily be what is considered moral by anyone else. If you program the robot to avoid a collision at all times, being flung off a bridge or sent headlong into a tree is exactly the outcome you have programmed into the car. It's called unintended consequences, not to mention that a sensor may go bad or misread something and you suddenly get thrown into oncoming traffic at 70mph for no good reason. There's just too many things that can go wrong with machines to completely take the humanity out of operating dangerous and powerful machines.

Personally, automation to this extreme is a very bad idea. I would rather smash into the bus and take my chances then be forced to commit suicide by being thrown off a bridge by a robot, and I'm pretty sure most would agree with me.

There are, of course, those that would rather see someone thrown off a bridge than risk a few bumps and bruises themselves.

Wrong, RFID chips CAN be and ARE used that way. As long as it is within range of a scanner operating at the same frequency of the RFID chip, they can be used as tracking devices. How do I know this? We use them where I work for that very purpose.

First: I'm guessing that this is part of the 'Google Analytics" package already.
Second: at face value, this appears to be an attack on Facebook, whether direct or indirect (i.e. the 'like' and/or 'share' functions, and the analysis thereof)
Third: I'm not even sure that this is a proper patent (citing the aforementioned 'rounded edges' issue, which I also believe is an invalid patent) as it appears to be a reworded version of a relatively commonly used calculation, used to predict future. as well as analyze previous 'word of mouth' advertising effectiveness, applicable to both digital and real world environments.

I agree with you, but in my experience (sysadmin/net engineer) I have seen that micro-management and obscene abuse of the IT department personnel has become the norm. It seems like upper management tries to make 'sport' out of it because they have nothing better to do outside of meetings other than make the few IT people who were dumb enough to stick around miserable.


source: My 2 person IT operation supporting 10k +/- users with a budget lower than that of a homeless person, where neither of us are truly qualified to do half of what we do (our net engi/sysadmin/sw dev degrees are from the University of Google, and my cohort and I are supposed to be [and were hired as] Test/QA engineers)

[function="slickwillyjoke.js"]
Ladies! Ladies!....There's plenty of balls to go around here.....
[end]

Nature indeed will find a way.... All you will wind up with is a decade or so with no flu... then suddenly a superbug FAR more lethal and dangerous than the one you eradicated.

Pickard: "I don't always drink tea....
But when I do, it's always after I stomped a mud hole in someone's ass"

Not so much programming as it is design, but It allows you to play with motion, physics, skeletal structures, geometry, environments, etc. It's cheap, and a helluva lot more fun than MSPaint. It could turn out to be a good stepping stone into game design. If you want to go strictly programming, I'd seriously consider introducing the kid to the LAMP stack. Linux and Apache are easy enough for a young kid to learn the fundamentals of, as he/she gets older, bring on the SQL and Python/PHP/PERL. Web applications are going to be the future for the foreseeable future, and Python isn't quite as daunting as C, C++ or C#.....

What it comes down to, (I could have probably said it better, but didn't particularly want to say this and more than likely get flamed into oblivion) is that if this is upheld, you're looking at a radical change in the consumer/producer relationship, and potentially the near total (if not completely total) collapse of the US economy assuming it is strictly enforced, or enforced at all. Given the precedents set by the RIAA/MPAA and Apple Computer, I do not think that the lower court's ruling can be struck down without also striking down the aforementioned rulings, but I'm also not a lawyer so I may be missing something there.

In a world where patent trolling is rampant... you'll see it happen, and unfortunately, if the ruling is upheld, you'll very likely if not definitely see the following:

- Pawn shops out of business
- 'legit' used car market evaporates or used car prices skyrocket to nearly the price of new (with all of the extra money going to the IP trolls)
- Trade stores (Gamestop, Trade It, etc) out of business
- Thousands upon thousands of jobs lost
- Billions of dollars in revenues (both tax and trade) disappear
- If they make it retroactive, lawsuits and repossession of property en masse
- If the law is applied evenly, the real estate market gets even more thoroughly screwed up than it already is (you sure that lumber and drywall is US produced? what about the wiring? light switches? ceiling fans? refrigerator? glass? vinyl/aluminum siding sheets? PVC pipe? faucets? the list goes on.....)

Bullshit. Your emissions are in the form of nuclear waste, which has to be stored for HUNDREDS of years in nuclear containment.

With every form of energy production that requires a fuel to produce that energy, there are emissions. Coal: carbon; Nuclear: nuclear waste, irradiated water; Diesel/gasoline: carbon.

Wind energy requires no fuel as it harnesses already existing energy and converts it to another form. The same goes for hydroelectric and solar. You also need to consider the reliability of wind, solar and hydroelectric. While abundant, they are not constant or reliable.

The real solution is hydrogen, but big oil, the government and auto manufacturer execs won't let that happen because there are too many profits to be made by kicking the can down the road. Hydrogen is so abundant and obscenely cheap that they'll never turn a multi-billion dollar annual profit on it, and if business incomes are low, along with a low fuel price, the government cant raise any revenue to line the pockets of the bureaucrats or feed the kickbacks to the auto execs who don't give a damn what's powering it as long as they're selling cars and getting their kickbacks.

Again, you don't understand the law as it was written. To properly understand it, you must read it NOT in modern English, but the language of the time.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..."
In the time period, the Militia was pretty much anyone that could hold a weapon and was willing to fight. 'well regulated' refers to equipment, training and organization. The reasoning behind this is because of what the militias had by comparison to the British regulars. The British were well trained, extremely well organized, and for the time, had the best damn equipment available. The only thing we had was a stronger will. If you look at the revolution, we were getting f**ked up by the Brits and they knew it. A little help from the French in the forms of better hardware, some legitimate training, and a few more people who knew what they were doing running the show, and we sent the Brits packing. Essentially: our militia would be well off enough to take on any standing army, whether it be foreign or domestic.
By this, we can translate this to:
A well trained, well equipped militia, being necessary to maintain security of a free state... the right of the people to keep and bear
Translated to modern English: the right of the people to possess and carry
Arms...
Modernized: weapons (this means ANY weapon. no distinction of the type of weapon is made here, and this is done so intentionally)
shall not be infringed.
Modernized: will not be infringed (hence, it is illegal to take this right away) So in modern English, the law reads: "A well trained, well equipped militia, being necessary maintain security of a free state, the right to possess and carry weapons will not be infringed." There was nothing to account regulations for felons, because they did not try to 'rehabilitate' murderers, rapists and crooks in the joke we call a prison system... They hung the f**ks from a a good, strong oak tree.