Stay inside the IT framework, no matter how dysfunctional it is.

I did this in 1999, told my new boss to just get me a spare PC and I could handle the morning report printout ourselves. Want a change? Done in minutes, not months. Those web postings? Simple, couple lines of VBA to FTP. Another report? Sure. The Access database can manage all those mapping locally outside of Oracle. Corporate goal calculations? Err, why not. Daily compliance reports? Ok... Just give me admin on a SQL Server and I'll manage the tables...

Then it broke on vacation, so I had to modem in from FL. I became tied to this beast as the sole programmer supporting a dept of 8 people. I never got a budget for hardware upgrades, never got awards or credit for project management, since this thing was off the books. It took 7 FTEs to rewrite the mess after personal life & management changes in 2009.

In retrospect, I should have let IT do it and played the beurocracy. It would have made me happier in the long run.

HVDC tie lines and rotary frequency converters can do this. There are many instances of this in the US interconnection, just look where the Amtrak network (25 Hz) connects to the transmission grid (60 Hz).

It's all a matter of how much money are you willing to spend for the additional reliability. Until the nukes went offline, Japan's two grids were self-sufficient enough that transferring energy between the two wasn't cost effective to justify a highly connected interface. By the time you needed it, it was too late to build.

Heck, there are only 24 transmission lines above 200 kV that connect New York to the rest of the eastern interconnection.

I'm having a hard time seeing their point, when all I can think of is counterpoint. Prior to the Information Age, we lived in a world where our media was spoon fed to us, editing everything to make us believe a narrative. Kennedy was King of Camelot, not a womanizer. Hollywood was sparkles and success, not addictions and failures.

This tool the Internet lets us bypass all the BS and see these people for who they are, just people with problems and opinions, no one worth elevating to a point of authority. Lohan isn't a Mouseketeer anymore, she's an addict. Clinton isn't President anymore, he's tripping off to overseas underage sex parties. In the past, we'd never know the facts, just someone else's "Truth". The IRS had all of the missing backup tapes of Lerner's emails all along, perjuring themselves for the last two years. It isn't revisionism when the truth was hidden in the first place.

My guess is that Microsoft will rewrite the multiplayer server modules first, replacing Java with C#. They will introduce standardized APIs (that the game sorely needs). Expect to see micropayment systems introduced. Then I would expect a move to Azure cloud services, replacing the dozens of multiplayer server farms that are out there. Games will finally support more simultaneous characters per world, larger worlds, etc. and actually scale.

By this point you will see a schism in the developer community, those that hang on to the old server code and those that begin migrating to the new cloud-based (supported) code. XBox will enable access to Azure-code servers (today you can only access a world hosted by another XBox player), and that mode of play will quickly become dominant. Mods will be developed in Visual Studio 15, with a new project type.

As Microsoft continues to extend .Net to Apple and Linux environments, they will release new clients for those environments in .Net only. Expect some tie-ins with Microsoft Phones to check in on your Azure-hosted worlds, etc like Microsoft SmartGlass does for Xbox.

The Minecraft Client will be updated slowly, in a way that most people won't realize that Microsoft is tweaking it. When they finally release a v 2.0 client, I imagine that all existing accounts will be converted to Live accounts, whether you like it or not. One day out of the blue, it will block access to Java-based servers citing a "security risk to your Live account". You can keep playing with your old client on old servers, but you wont get the new widgets, textures, etc. The server hosting community will continue to dry up, until you convert to the new client through inertia.

The bigger question is . . .

How long is it going to be until there is a mandatory "nut allergy vaccine" in the form of a required patch / injection of peanut dust in order to allow nut-allergic children to go to school?

If nut-allergies are shown to be preventable in the same way as measles, etc., why should a school have to be completely on edge about a child going into shock because some other child brought a sandwich to lunch? The economic benefits alone of doing away with the nonsense of nut separation in snacks, parties, cafeteria choices, medical equipment on-hand, etc. would pay for making this part of the immunization package for kindergarten entry.

Isn't it a form of child abuse to allow your child to live with a curable allergy that could kill them in a moment's notice?

A wise politician one said, "Never let a crisis go to waste". If the public isn't agitated, they won't give up their liberties and control to the government.

Crime rates are down, yet cops are more militarized than ever. Police shootings are rare. Gun violence is down. College campus sexual assault rates are actually 0.61%. The earth is not warming in 20 years. There is no missing heat in the oceans. Hurricanes and tornado count are at a historical low. Unemployment counting those not looking for work is at a 40 year high. Inflation in food (not counted) is huge, yet commodities (gold / oil) are deflating. College debt is crippling high, but so is general credit card debt.

If you dig into the numbers behind the "official" numbers, everything is topsy turvy. That's why the public sees doom and gloom - everything they experience is counter to what we are being told, including articles saying "Don't panic".

TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc( local ) and ConvertTimeFromUtc( utcDate, TimeZoneInfo.Local ) seem to do the trick, introduced in the framework in .Net 3.5. And you can use a stock name from GetSystemTimeZones to convert to any standard time zone, or roll your own with CreateCustomTimeZone

And more importantly they are all backward compatible for dates before 2007 when the US congress mucked with the daylight saving rules.

After the results if this midterm election, it's not surprising Facebook is ending their get out the vote program?

Why? Because Millenials are increasingly voting Republican and Libertarian after decades of lip service from the Democrats. Jobs, college debt, and personal liberty are extremely important issues to this generation.

Facebook, with its left leaning executives, would see no reason to mobilize their opposition's base.

Umm, it's literally right there, first country name in the 3rd sentence.

You're showing your age. KERMIT is the way to go!

No, Congress is currently split with the Senate controlled by Democrats, and the House controlled by Republicans. Laws cannot pass unless both chambers sign off on the law.

Actually, no, they are not. Hispanic Christians are dominantly liberal, so a conversion of illegal immigrants to citizen status would increase the Democrat ranks, not the Republican ranks.

Immigration Reform is like asking Republicans to vote to lose every election forever. What is weird is that about 20% are saying yes to that.

No, that's forced equality.

Fairness is that all the illegal aliens get arrested, then deported back to their countries of origin. Then the law-abiding immigrants and the natural citizens of the United States would be able to go the same schools and have the same healthcare.

Amazon is not going after Apple, they are going after IBM. Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure are the leaders in this space, and are hitting reliability and scalability metrics that are pushing the old models out of business.

Bloomberg had a great article this month on how IBM is losing *government* contracts (its bread and butter) to AWS.

  http://mobile.businessweek.com...

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/...

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