...is the lack of long haul transmission waste. My understanding is that up to half the energy available at a large plant can be lost through the resistance (heat conversion) and other factors (induction?) in the lines before it gets to it's point of use. Small, neighborhood generation stations would be excellent if they were available, clean, safe, and reasonably inexpensive to maintain.

...Play a game?

You needed one other than the hostile upsell pressure virtually every where they touch?

...is that it's an anti-corruption mechanism. It's really hard to bribe the computer.

The person who came up with the way xml signatures work clearly already had some kind of disease. I'm thinking late stage syphilis.

I know, right?

That's a relief. For a minute there I thought he said "Millions".

My understanding is that SCADA -- which allows the remote management of a great many infrastructure technologies like power substations and such -- is extremely vulnerable, to the extent that I read there is a manufacturer's back door in many (most?) that is easily determined if you know the mac address of the device, and that the mac addresses are fairly easy to come by.

Thank you. That sounds like many of the guys I know on the department. Something like 86% of all firefighters in the US -- protecting about 42% of homes and businesses -- are call responders (volunteers, if you ignore the fact that they do get paid a small amount and are usually covered by some insurance). Only about 8% of all the departments in the country have no volunteer call companies.

Part of this is a cultural problem. Firefighters have this tendency to not want to take the needed break. They don't want to seam weak, and they don't want to miss out on the work the train so hard to do but get to actually do so infrequently. We've worked hard in our department to break the habits of many that try to skip rehab and just go grab another air bottle.

Not comparing a 20 minute house fire. We have many hours (and days -- though not where I live) forest fires in the states as well. They wear different gear, and yes, it's much lighter (as I said in my post, if you read it) but they're doing a lot more work over longer periods. They also have regulations as to how long and how close they are to the fire, and emergency procedures if they're overrun.

Chill, dude. I'm sure CFA knows how to fight brush fires. What I'm saying is, you usually have different teams of people with different gear who usually fight the different kinds of fire. Given that they were using water in that photo and based on my experience, I can assume they are near a source of water. That, plus the gear they're wearing, implies they're more of a town crew than a wild land crew IN THAT PHOTO. You can relax now.

Also, the pill would add very little -- the transmitter worn on the chest that relays the data -- that's another matter.

We have that kind of firefighting here as well, though different gear is worn. Typically thin gnomex overalls covering regular clothing is sufficient (helmet and gloves of course). That photo looks like structural firefighters attacking a brush fire -- probably a relatively small one or in a particularly dense area of population. You don't fight big forestry fires with water. You fight them with shovels (and where possible bulldozers) and back-fires. You use the shovel (or pulaski tool) to create a fire break around the fire. When a wild fire is said to be "50% contained" it means that they've been able to get a fire break around 50% of the fire. Usually, the fire itself will create its own break on the upwind side as it buns away from the wind, while the firefighters have to carve one out ahead of the fire and to the sides.

As a structural firefighter in the US, I fail to see the need for this other than in some specialized testing to help make better procedures.

Our work is not like the movies. Yes, we wear heavy gear. Yes, it's quite hot in that gear even if there is no fire on a warm day. Inside a several hundred degress (F) building, it does it's job quite well. (Wool may be used as an insulator -- though I don't think so -- but only inside the carbon fiber and gnomex coverings which are far more important).

We go into a building wearing an air bottle good for about 30 minutes for most people in good shape. A bit less if you're working hard, a bit more if you stretch it. After about 2/3 of that time (20min) a low air alert vibrates the mask letting you know it's time to leave. You have ten minutes before it becomes a problem.

When we exit the building we go immediately to a "rehab" area manned by EMT's. We take off our coats (on a winter day you can see the steam coming off us) and are required to drink a 20oz bottle of water. The EMTs take heart rate and blood pressure readings as we enter rehab, and before we have to pass their requirements for health and safety -- basically that both heart rate and bp are dropping back toward normal readings.

Nothing in this pill is going to change the requirements of the job. Carrying more stuff just makes the job harder. We're already laden with 80 pounds of stuff entering the building.

Well, at least it isn't in the hands of the NRA.