My Comment to Them:

"I travel about twice a month and have been a regular traveler most of my life, and because of this, the deployment of this technology has had a major impact on my life.

This technology is not wanted by air travelers, and was put in place with less testing than the shampoo I am no longer allowed to carry through security. Experts have found that shadowing can cause items to slip through this screening, and these devices cannot detect anything inside the body. They have also created long, bunched up lines of people at airports, outside of the "secure" cordon, which would allow a terrorist to kill many more people than would be on a single airplane... and these deaths could ironically be attributed directly to the delays caused by these devices, which regularly slow the lines and require pat-downs when they don't read properly (my experience when waiting).

Security at airports has become a reactive reflex which always fights the last threat. I am confident I am not the only tax payer who feels their money was completely wasted on these devices, whose only value, I feel, was to make some contractor rich, and get some person re-elected by convincing the under-informed that they were "safe."

Over nachos?

Giving to EFF is a good step.

I have experience in another industry with the same scenario; I provide the operational expertise and oversight, and have marketing side opposite me. This was a very tough issue for me, as I know marketing is crucial for me from an operational standpoint, but I don't have the time or the drive to smile all day and shake hands.

I initially partnered with some marketing folks, where we were going to go halves on the costs, they were the marketing side, and I was the operational side. Their funding backed out after I had a lot of sunk costs (naturally), so I used whatever support they could still give me based on the good-will of our intended relationship, while I worked with people familiar to the market.

The most important advice I can give you is to work with people that already know the customers in your strongest base. As you appear to have experience in the area you're working in, the people who market for you should optimally know many of the same customers you do, know more about them, and know many more people you don't.

The second most important advice I can give you, is incentives for your salespeople. My initial partners had a strong incentive (if we did poorly, they lost money too). My new folks are rewarded for the increased business, and I feel that marketing folks you employ should make very low salaries in set income, with the ability to make more than you make in bonuses if they are wildly successful. Structures on this vary, but always do a reality check when you negotiate them; a smart salesperson is one that makes a small fortune making you a bigger one. A smart con artist makes themselves a small fortunes while you make about the same you would have without them.

How about this... we democrats will say Obama is as bad as Bush on civil liberties, if you republicans say Bush is as bad as Obama.

I think we can all meet in that middle ground.

Deal?

We are all part of the same compost heap. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. Like the first monkey shot into space... without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.

Spacemonkey!

International Shell Station?

Imagine Beowulf armed with a cluster of these!

When you lose one laptop worth of patient data, don't tell anybody.

Good point on geology; most of the controversy is in the US Midwest, the South (Oklahoma and N Texas), and parts of the Northeast. I have no experience in the US NE, but we're looking at pretty tame stratification in these other regions (this isn't the Gulf of Mexico with those amazing domes of salt squeezing through and fracturing everything to hell). There will be some reasonable seismic data available in most of these areas, but (is this typical in Canada too?) you'll see a few horizontal/vertical lines of seismic, and the rest is artistic interpretation and Monte Carlo statistical simulation. Well configurations are also rather dynamic, where some holes will be full-cased and others only partial casing, and the cement jobs "always hold," etc, etc. A lot of guessing occurs, more than cheerful to admit. (You've probably seen a seismic picture tuned just a little off, with a distinctly different picture?)

As for being against fracking... I guess I'd say I'm for it if the risks are on the table. But as I explained in my initial post, I see a number of reasons why there's a muddled understanding.

I've been out of the industry for many (many) years, but here's a bit on how problems can creep in with well fracing. Background: I was in well testing, and have been to many a fracked well during/before/after the frac was performed.

We'll start with a well that is drilled, cased (casing is a solid-steel pipe all or some of the depth of the well, used to keep "stuff from coming in, or stuff from coming out"), and perforated (holes shot through the casing with explosives). Typically all of this work is done by contractors. The oil company leases the ground being drilled on. Everything else... the oil rig, the drill pipe, the workers... all of it belongs to other subcontractors. One "company man" from the actual oil company sits in a trailer on site to monitor the work. This involves a lot of waiting for someone to ask a question, and playing solitaire.

The oil company now has an outside contractor come in to frac the well. Literally, this is the next morning after the perf job if possible, because a rig costs tens of thousands of dollars a day to sit there and wait. Over a dozen big trucks come in at the crack of dawn, and link up so that over over the day, viscous, proprietary-formula fluids can be pumpted into the well to induce cracks in the formation from the overpressure of the pumping. Then a proprietary "breaker" fluid is injected to make the original goop less viscous, and to make it drop the sand embedded in it to hold these cracks open. The former goop, now runny (fingers crossed), will flow out as the well produces. The trucks are out of there the second they're done; *they* cost money sitting around too, and they're probably off to another job the next day.

-inc soapbox
My personal, biased opinion of the disconnect with fracking, the industry, and its effects, is that there is a science problem, and an accountability problem.

Scientifically, there are a number of wonderful calculations that tell us how we're effecting events inside the well. These models tend to assume an understanding of the various strata and depositions drilled through, and can easily confuse the ability to make a model match an event, with the ability to understand the mechanics of an event. This leads to an environment where current perceptions of the industry and the confidence/ego of the simulation's creator are the deciding factors. Since much of this science has migrated out of the oil companies and into the contractors over the years (or to contractor-supported academics), the operators now base their knowledge on what the contractors say is correct (this is an oversimplification, but overall I feel it is correct).

On accountability: trade secret formulas mean we have no idea what is pumped in the well. The "in and out" nature of the fracking process means that crews who perform the work have little exposure to the site, and no connection to followup on the effects of their work. Oil companies serve as the face of the project to the land owner, but have outsourced all the science to the contractors, and are defending work they understand based on the explanation of a salesperson to a client.

-rem soapbox

The above problems do not at all prove that fracking is bad, or good. They do, however, create a disconnect, making it hard to develop a cohesive picture of what is going on, good or bad.

To put it into (hopefully?) a useful tech metaphor, the contractors make the computers, and the oil company sells them to people. People complain to the oil companies that some of these computers are terrible. The oil company naturally says "oh no, we only sell good computers," and runs to the contractor. The contractor tells the oil company, "No, they're great, look at these schematics. Those people are outliers due to blah blah blah." So the oil company gives those people their money back, and makes them promise not to bad mouth the computers they're selling. Repeat as needed, until the evidence of problems with the computers is so great that the oil company cannot ignore the truth any longer, and starts selling someone else's computers at great cost and effort. Because... those computers will have *great* schematics.

Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these complaints...

Interacting with rats... hugging chickens... I think scientists are misunderstanding the needs of our society.

I'd print courage.

(1 of 5 stars from hookahlover69) I purchased the "8 ounces of pure uncut" special and was very disappointed by what was delivered. Shipment arrived on time, but smells of gasoline and there were worms growing in the product. After removing worms product has a very wormy taste to it, and based on the effect of other products this is cut with something to make it less pure. I really feel that... hold on, someone's at the d

good produt quik shipping woudl buy again.