Nope, not a concocted story. A long career in IT; the last 19 years with a major international bank that took great pains to secure sensitive data both within the data center and in transit between data centers. The problem I am trying to solve is different. With the bank, we were sending sensitive data from one secured facility to another; what I need to do is send sensitive data from my (reasonably secure) home system to a location where I can not be sure of the security. How do I keep sensitive data secure in a remote location that is not necessarily well protected? At first I thought it would be easy; just use a password protected zip file and put it on DVD or USB. Send the media and password through different channels. But then I thought, what if someone gets curious and unzips onto their hard disk and leaves the files unprotected? The more I thought about all the possible scenarios for compromise, I realized plain old paper was the best solution. I was hoping there was some way of doing it electronically since there will be updates in the future but I could not think of any safe way of doing it via computer. The best solution suggested so far is to print everything out on paper and keep in a safe deposit box in the local bank. I can send the branch location and deposit box number to the siblings and since the paper is kept locally, updates should require nothing more than a trip to the bank. Kind of ironic that after all those years in IT and worrying about securing systems and data; I am reduced to using paper. Maybe I will seal the documents with wax and a ring :-)

I don't think AARP, the NRA, the League of Conservation Voters, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund should be taxed. I also don't believe they are primarily political organizations. For example, the NRA gets involved in elections and supports candidates. But they will happily support anyone from any party if they have a NRA good rating. The NRA advocates for an issue, not a political party. I also think that the Tea Party (and the Koch brothers) are primarily political organizations. Do you know of any instance of the Tea Party supporting a democrat? It was not unreasonable for the IRS to give them some extra scrutiny given they were claiming not to be a political organization. I think it would serve the country best if the IRS went back to the law as written by congress; 501(c)(4) organizations must stay out of politics. They can advocate for issues but not individual politicians or political parties.

The Revenue Act of 1913 which set up these categories specifically states that 501(c) organizations be "Civil leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare or local associations of employees, the membership of which is limited to the employees of a designated person or persons in a particular municipality, and the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes." In 1959, the IRS (without congressional approval) redfined things a bit: "[a]n organization is operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare if it is primarily engaged in promoting in some way the common good and general welfare of the people of the community. An organization embraced within this section is one which is operated primarily for the purpose of bringing about civic betterments and social improvements." Why they did this I do not know and how they expected to draw the line between an organization that primarily supports social welfare and one that secondarily supports social welfare is beyond me. To answer your question about which category under 501(c) the Tea Party should have applied for; the answer is none of them. By the wording of the original law, political organizations should not be getting any 501(c) designations. Obama's campaign organization did in fact convert to 501(c)(4) status (I assume you are talking about Organizing for Action). It converted after Obama won the 2008 election. Since Obama cannot run again, it is misleading to still refer to it as his "campaign organization". Both Republicans and Democrats are abusing the 501(c)(4) designation and deserve to be called out on it. It's a race to the bottom. It is however convenient for large donors; they can now safely give to both parties equally (in secrecy) and claim special access regardless of who wins.

The sad thing about this political firestorm is that not one person in a hundred can actually explain what it is about. It's amazing how many people think that the IRS was seeking to prevent the Tea Party from getting tax exempt status; that was never the issue, their tax exempt status was never in doubt. The issue was they were applying for 501(c)(4) status which is reserved for social welfare groups like civic leagues and volunteer fire departments. Social welfare groups are allowed to engage in political activity but it cannot be their primary activity. Wondering why the Tea Party wanted that 501(c)(4) designation? Such groups do not have to reveal who is donating money to them. There has been a large run up in the number of groups applying for the 501(c)(4) designation.

Actually, you can get the car to roll to the inside of a corner without active suspension. Just design the suspension so the the roll axis is above the center of mass for the car. You can also design the suspension so that the car does not dive down in front on braking or squat on acceleration. This was tried with the Lotus F1 cars in the seventies and abandoned because the drivers disliked it. The diving and squating was providing them with valuable feedback on how much braking/accelerating they were doing. Lotus also had an experimental road car with active suspension that "leaned to the inside" that was never produced. I wonder if the Mercedes active suspension is going to hide from the driver just how fast they are taking the corner.

I assume that the coding will be done to a higher standard like other life critical systems (avionics, medical devices, etc.). The thing is the software driving a car has to be more complex than typical avionics systems since it has to understand what it is driving into in addition to controlling the car and dealing with various hardware failures. How are they going to insure adequate testing? Is there even a standard for testing? Maybe more complex than the space shuttle software, which as I recall was pretty expensive.

Use of the term "denier" with it's association to "holocaust denier" tells you just how political this debate has become. Politicized science is very, very dangerous. Here is a link to a short excerpt from a book by the philosopher Karl Popper, a man all too aware of how dangerous science in the service of governments can be. He set for himself the question of "What is a scientific theory?" I wish everyone would read the first four pages of this excerpt. It would tone down the rhetoric of the global warming debate and send the creationists back to their pews. http://keck.ucsf.edu/~craig/Ka...

US companies have been engaged in a race to the bottom for some time now. Laying people off and borrowing money to buy back stock and keep the price up (and fatten that bonus). The constant layoffs and off-shoring have really eaten into the company's abilities to support or even produce quality goods. I used to work with an "enterprise" product for which we paid millions in licensing fees (yes, millions). The support was awful and the product quality seems to be constantly eroding. I don't know what replaces the old model. Perhaps a community based tool set. Whatever the solution, those companies that provided "enterprise" products at huge prices will not be a part of it.

I think we are basically in agreement; there really are no free markets in any meaningful sense. Simple bartering (which doesn't even require money) is about it. My main point is that when people are pushing for free markets; take a careful look. Don't be surprised if you find a frustrated would-be monopolist. Free markets are one of the great myths of our current political environment and the people pushing free (i.e. unregulated) markets have been largely destructive to society as a whole. Not completely destructive; you can definitely overdue regulation but some of the deregulation has been terribly destructive. I am thinking here of the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

Can you name me a market that has no controlling authority? Unless you are restricting your definition of controlling authority to government agencies only, I can't think of any markets without controlling authorities. Illegal drug markets are a good example. Controlling authorities all over the place; from the cartels that produce and import to the drug gangs that murder the people who attempt to steal market share (i.e. encroach on turf).

Really? There is an open air drug market in DC. Try selling illegal drugs on that piece of real estate. There are bunch of highly armed guys who will show you what real market regulation looks like.

A simple four minute conversation should take about say four minutes assuming the AI is keeping up with the person.

I spent a lot of years working for a company with a very structured tech environment. In all fairness to the company, they work in an industry that is heavily regulated. That said, it was a highly competent development team of SAs that decided what should be on the servers. A bunch of managers on a CAB will not be able to replicate that. With a single SA and only 50 servers, you have a pretty small shop. Sounds like maybe they have plans to grow the business? It sounds like there is no process in place right now except what is inside your head. Hope you never get hit by a bus! Servers are too important to the functioning of a modern business to leave things to that kind of chance. I think the company is doing the right thing but they are attempting too much too soon. Try to help them but start small; maybe define a standard build of each type of server and then use one of the automation tools to keep each server in conformance with the defined standard build. You might even then use one of the tools like to Tripwire to notify you when someone or something makes an unauthorized change in your servers. Basically, work with your management to improve the situation. The upside of all this for you is that the management in your company will realize that your job is a lot more complicated then they ever imagined..

So he wants to determine whether or not the temperature increases since 1880 are part of the normal fluctuations in climate and he only goes back to 1500 for data to analyze? As part of normal fluctuation in earths' climate, Manhattan Island and New England were underneath a glacier (the Wisconsin Ice Sheet). At another point in earths history, tropical plants grew inside the arctic circle. Again, all part of the normal fluctuation of earths' climate. I was very disappointed in this study because this is question I would like to have answered. We have seen periods in earths' past where the concentration of carbon dioxide increased rapidly and then reversed itself. I mean really reversed itself; all the way to an ice age. What is the mechanism for the reversal? Some have suggested the increase in CO2 caused more plant growth which soaked up the extra CO2. OK, but why didn't the CO2 level stabilize? Why was the decrease so dramatic? Is it possible earths' climate is fundamentally a chaotic system?