Overbid to an extent, with good justification, because you may not get all you want.

Make a list yourself with fields 'urgent' 'important' 'cost'. Not everything important will be high cost, and not everything high cost will be important. Stay credible, but overbid a little. Really break things down in your Work Breakdown Schedule so everything's within +/- 5% in estimated cost, so you informally have a good idea of your budget provided, and you overbid by about 10% or more depending on your experience on how bidding works in your school.

I totally agree with the above suggestions on creating an environment. Make a vibe, a buzz. Have small low cost events too. A secret santa programming contest making a Christmas or Easter website. A legacy PC with Lynx. Whatever.

And make sure everything of value locked down if you think that's a risk. Not imposingly, but I remember in the 90s my class would strip down a PC when the teacher's not looking, from taking a strip of RAM to switching a DX100 for a DX33 [or something like that, it's a while back].

A simple example from my field: Letter of Credit Fraud

A letter of credit is advised, issued and liquidated based on documentation. A supplier is paid when an LC is liquidated. These documents and specifications within are listed on an LC and trade contract. Independent 3rd parties are involved in verifying cargo amount, quality, timeliness, etc specified on the LC. When all pieces of documentation checkmarks are ticked off, the LC is paid, liquidated.

Now what if I could get into the systems, or disrupt the information flow and security, and provide false documentation from port authorities or other maritime agents? The LC will be paid, because required documentation is ticked off. I may be a crocked supplier; I may be a man-in-the-middle that changes payee bank account number, though this shouldn't happen, because a bank should check against original hard copy when liquidating; I may be a man-in-the-middle that changes title deed of goods during transit or sell the goods to a false 3rd party during transit. There are countermeasures to all of the above implemented in banks, but who wants increased threat because of institutional carelessness?

Terrorists disrupting chemical shipments and other low likelihood high risk events are a threat too, but the above example is a simple demonstration of high likelihood threats caused by the findings of the linked report.

The parent could be referring to Montagu Norman. Not sure. Keynes had a great dislike for him, sort of, some admiration also. Read 'Lords of Finance' by Liaquat Ahamed, probably the finest text on the financial world that existed in the lead-up to Keynes ever written or to be written.

I was recently involved in putting together a small team to provide MIS reporting in an area where there's never been an MIS team, or any decent kind of metric other than volume, and identified mistake, before. Important how to define mistake, as they are often lagged, by days, months, or years, yet somewhere down the line a financial impact is identified. How is your team structured, how did you tailor the structure to the task?

The team consists:

• A recent graduate that's got about 6 months 'pit face' experience in the business area, likes to learn and background not technical but picks it up like a sponge;
• Someone really driven academically that decided to come into the workforce. Finance background, numbers are relevant. Wants to be a high fligher, will learn anything if required;
• Someone that's got an impressive retail management background over short period of time, good service attitude and serious people manager ambition. Didn't like as she described the tedium of regional store management, complete career shift, and pay cut but she's still nicely comfortable. A good financial toolbox no longer getting wasted;
• Serious C#, VBA and R skill person. Only a couple of years experience, good people person being coached by someone in another department to open them up to career ambition - quite happy doing what is currently doing but want to make sure they feel there are options if they want them;
• Leading the team, an AVP from sales side taken the leap from Manager to AVP. Technically sound in C#, VBA, not R, managing small sales teams. Getting coaching on how technology and operations teams function, different scopes of influence, resource and motivation, etc. Subtly goal focused to make a team doing perform an MIS role for the first time. He has full liberty on metrics he wants to produce, as long as there's something and as long as his team can scale requests which will surely increase when others in the business realize metrics can be done - then we'll pass it to a BA and PM and the team will be rewarded with promotions all round.

In the above we tried to keep redundancy in key skill set for the task, mainly utilising our required Office packages plus SQL which I didn't mention but some have, while mixing it up with some strong skill flashes in all that can let them have an individual impact. Hopefully we'll tread new water and everyone will do well. Key is, did you and/or OP think how to structure your team, or were you just 'selected' as an existing team to fulfill a new task?

I remember that game! I played it for hours too, on a 386DX 20MHz with 4MB of RAM and a 512k ISA video card. I don't know if it would have played on a lower spec'd PC, that's just what I had. As I had no sound card, there was no sound.

Surely an algorithm can't be patented. :/

Sometimes I visit Slashdot and see a bloody good comment. This is one of those times.

I'm guessing the 'take the batteries out' or 'throw it out of the window' sections of the brains could be an effective measure against that.

I'd be curious on the use of a ~100mph airship for international cargo usage - much faster than boat, potentially much cheaper than plane. (Does it even have to be manned?) Also interesting that weight rather than bulk is the main issue. The ship in the article mentioned a ton of cargo - that is not very much.

If this weren't a free service I'd definitely raise hell..

Are these students not paying fees, and (were it to occur in most other countries) taxpayers paying also?

It is not verbatum copying, it is taking key points, re-wording them, and passing them off as originally sourced. That happens all the time, especially to decent blogging and discussion forums. And it happens on the low level. For example if a lazy journalist wants to make a Japan related story, they need only visit Japundit, pick something interesting, and re-word it. And in the majority of cases no attribution is given. That's what I mean by bad form.

Also as a publisher of a small Online Community Newspaper, I hope that Gannett and the other big news publishing companies follow suit. It's win win for me.

I often see how independent small publishers break stories, only for larger organisations to source from, but not attribute their source, several days later. This is especially true of quality blogs and online communities in niche interest or geographical areas - I run one of these. Not attributing and mandatory charging for a derivative work is not good form.

I would like to know the IP range that Murdoch companies use, in order to block them from my content.