You seem to overlook the fact that computer programmers usually have tight schedule and budget constraints enforced by their supervisor or other management they report to, instead of by the customer (the scientist in this case). Get a computer programmer a gig as sweet as a scientist who can take his or her sweet time to do their research and give the programmer that same open ended time frame with decent equipment and no schedule constraints and you would have a much happier, involved, and more responsive computer programmer.

If:
Power= Work/time
Knowledge = Power
time=Money
Money= Work/Knowledge

Therefore:
Knowledge = Work / (Work/Knowledge)
Knowledge = (Work/1)*(Knowledge/Work)
Simplifying (work in numerator cancels work in denominator):

Knowledge = Knowledge

Target acquisition for the new micro-UAVs the DOD is developing with armed weaponry. They need test subjects.

Ba Humbug! Verilog is far more intuitive and easy to use than VHDL. Verilog is more akin to the C language; whereas, VHDL is more like (Ugh!) COBOL, or to be slightly more charitable -- ADA, the DOD's failed computer software language.

Many small hand help circular power saws come with a vacuum bag and system that sucks the debris into the bag. That should take care of most particulate matter, but if it's an out-gassing problem of some kind then you probably need better ventilation.

Oh No, are they finally going to crash it into the planet to get atmospheric data? I'm retired now, but I'm one of the thousands at JPL who worked on Cassini (I wrote the firmware for the BAIL subsystem among other things). I was kind of hoping they would just let it orbit Saturn in perpetuity just as the Voyager spacecraft will still exist long after Earth is gone (unless of course one or both crashes into something).

I used to get regular email updates on Cassini, but I've moved around and changed email addresses so many times I somehow stopped receiving them.

I'm actually replying to your "signature" line advertisement for Dreamhost. Their claim of 180GB storage and 1.8TB of monthly traffic is complete and total BS. I opened an account with them once when I actually had over 100GB of video data (legitimately my own files, not copyrighted or pirated stuff) to upload. Within a few hours of my beginning to upload all this data I began to receive "urgent" emails from Dreamhost telling me to cease and desist uploading files because I had exceeded both my allocated storage space and my traffic limit. When I did not comply (because after all, their claim to provide all that storage was the only reason I had opened an account with them in the first place), they deleted my account and refused to refund my first years payment. They're all crooks at Dreamhost.com as far as I am concerned.

Marijuana must truly be a "mind expanding" drug then, because the more stoned I am the more easily distracted and forgetful I am. :-|

That's why I use Citi-bank disposable credit card numbers whenever possible, so that I can cancel the credit card number I used for the purchase anytime I please (I create a unique credit card number for each merchant), and also limit the amount of money that can be charged to each credit card number to whatever I specify (as well as setting its expiration date to whatever I want).

Ever since an automatic update of Ubuntu trashed its own partition to the point where it would not boot at all, I decided to switch to a different distribution but have not yet decided which because they all seem to have a different set of problems. Any suggestions?

According to my Chinese wife, it is the latter.

I have no idea why your post is rated as "Funny", when it is almost certainly the truth and should have been rated as "Insightful". I hope Bruce Schneier has some comments on this.

You are the only person I know of other than myself to call a credit card company and ask them to lower my credit limit. I have to repeat it every few years however, because they insist on raising my credit limits a little each year. Next time I will ask about locking it at the lower limit. Thanks for the tip.

I file important things like financial documents in a filing cabinet (oldest stuff purged after seven years or so) and toss the rest either into the trash, a crosscut shredder, or a cardboard box. I fill one cardboard box each year. At the end of the year I seal it, store it, and burn the oldest cardboard box and its contents which is typically three years old at that point.

I am astounded they would be orienting runways according to the magnetic poles and not the "true" cardinal directions.