The trick is in closing the feedback loop. Not all projects are software projects, where quality is highly subjective and unmeasurable. At InvGate we introduced earlier this year a set of tools to bring gamification to the helpdesk.

If your system can measure the actual quality of the work (which is possible in IT/customer support environments by gathering feedback from requesters) then you can actually have an incentive system that works.

Bad system:
* 10 points for solving a ticket
* 1 point por replying to a ticket
* 4 points for chipping into another tech's tickets (allegedly to help out)
* -20 points for reopened ticket
* -100 points for SLA missed

If you ever worked in this type of environment, you can already see the incentives pushing for quick, bad replies to customers in your tickets and everyone else's, and new requests filed instead of reopening old ones.

But what about this?

* 1 point for solving a ticket
* 15, 10, 0, -10, -20 points for 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1-star customer ratings on those tickets
* -100 points for SLA missed
* 200 points bonus for doing 10 5-star tickets in a row
* 1000 points bonus for doing those 10 5-star tickets in a row in less than one hour

It even starts to become fun! And if you plug gamification throughout the whole system, even this (taken from a "Knowledge Week" quest that lasted through a specific week in an InvGate Service Desk instance):
* 10 points for creating a Knowledge Base article
* 15, 10, 0, -10, -20 points for 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1-star customer ratings on those articles
* 20 points for having the article you created used by other techs to solve a ticket
* 50 points for having the article you created used by customers to figure out the ticket themselves

There other significant side effects to a gamification setup in this situation:

* You get a performance metric in the amount of points an agent gathered during a period of X
* Non-geek helpdesk or customer support admins can tune incentives themselves (an earlier approach with a "black box" combined metric resulted in questions about how it's calculated, and why it's doing things that you don't expect)
* Unlike the case mentioned above, gamification-based metrics are transparent. Everyone can understand what's going on with a score counter that pops up when you perform actions.
* It even has a "ka-ching" sound effect when you get points!

Chrome for mostly everything, and Firefox to access intranet sites with self-signed SSL certificates because to this day and age I can't tell Chromium on Linux to accept a friggin' self-signed certificate and stop prompting me every single time I access the site. No, adding the certificate to my trusted list at the OS level doesn't work.

And what if I happen to be a visiting contractor, and I have an emergency while on the grounds, without a guard in line of sight? What if I'm driving by and break down right in front, and the prison microcell is more powerful than ATT's nearest tower?

Then the guards would be alerted to your activities and that "no guard in sight" situation would change. Problem solved.

Anyway, why would they let you into a prison as a contractor with restricted items, unguarded?

Option C is included in B. Furthermore, you failed to state which are the genes that do not have to be hashed.

Logic dictates that either option A or B must be true, with bizarre examples using genetics in strange ways, such as yours included in option B.

I guess so.

There probably is some advantage of using an amplifier in that role, but I'm just to green to know.

That's what I meant.

If you used a solar cell as a light sensor, it'll deliver just a few milliwatts that you'd have to amplify anyway.
With this technology, you could place one of these cells on top of an amplifier, and apply power to the whole thing. It would then give you a reading of ambient light in a more reasonable range (say from 0V to V+), straight from the chip.

This could be useful as a one chip light sensor, say for a digital camera.

It would simplify light sensing equipment a lot, leading to very low prices.

Light sensor with built in amplifier.

Because there are dishes on the ground perfectly capable of doing that job that don't cost nearly as much.

Actually, there are not many antennas bigger than that one. It is roughly the size of one of these puppies. The only bigger antenna I know of would be the one at the Arecibo observatory.

On the other hand, you're probably right, as the space agencies would now use arrays of little antennas to look out into space.

(That monster must be sensitive as hell, those 70 metre antennas have been used to communicate with far away probes that had problems with their high gain antennas, imagine the sensitivity of one of those just 20000 KM away)

Japanese is typed using a more-or-less standard QWERTY keyboard.

...then requiring the input to pass through what amounts to a tokenizer to get the phonetic spelling, and into another program, which needs a database of words and has to prompt you for each one in order to select the proper one from a list.

Not something as simple as writing ASCII by a long shot.

Looks like everyone is thinking they're immune because they run linux, or whatever non windows OS they have.
Maybe I'm a little bit sadistic, but has nobody considered that someone might build the USB equivalent of the etherkiller and deploy it mimicking one of those dead drops?

That, I would call a "drop dead" point....

The problem therefore becomes finding beautiful women willing to volunteer for a one way mission to Mars with a slashdotter.

The article mentions that a classroom has not changed for the last century, and Laura Ingalls would instantly recognize one. The article writer seems to consider this some sort of disadvantage, without considering that form should follow function. In other words, a classroom is virtually identical as a 19th century classroom because teaching methods have not changed that much since that time (meaning a teacher telling and showing things to a bunch of students).

Classrooms are clearly adequate for their current purpose, and they will be unless some other way of teaching is found. Instead of changing the classroom, making it inadequate for the current teaching methods, the article writers should concentrate on more efficient teaching methods, and the changes in classroom design will come as soon as the need arises.

And if they comply, you would be proving you are indeed the squatter.

In other words, don't do it and contact a lawyer first. Once you're cleared, you could do it as a token gesture for your company.

The only thing the squatters can do to prevent you from doing the transfer at a later time would be to change the registration. Considering the situation, that would add evidence pointing to the real culprits.

or get a lawyer.

More like "AND get a lawyer".

Your company has harmed you, and you'll need a lawyer for counteract that. They crossed a fine line when they suspended you. Of course, they might want to settle and that would be just fine, but it's not a matter of proving your innocence, your company has made a legally dubious move against you. The details, I wouldn't know, as I don't live in Indiana and I'm not a lawyer.

Seriously, you wouldn't hire a lawyer to administer your systems, so why would you get a system administrator for legal work?

In case I'm not clear enough: GET A LAWYER.

Everything less is utter shit on night scenes unless you're up close and using flash on something.

Or using a tripod.

Seriously, I own a panasonic FZ-28 and I have taken lots of night pictures like the ones you were talking about, with little problems. You can compensate for low sensitivity with exposure time. You won't be able to take photos of moving things or people, but usually that's not the point of a night shot.

My next camera is probably going to be a DSLR, but in the meantime, I'm taking this one to the limit.

When I travelled to Europe a few weeks ago I carried a 150cm tall aluminum tripod all the way, and I don't regret it a bit.