Alas, I have no mod points for you, but think highly of your post.

The Superbowl?! that's that thing I can't stream over the internet where all of the cool commercials are? Whatever the hell a commercial is anyway... I keep looking for that series on Netflix and the torrents to no avail.

In my new home, the Metal siding does just as good a job at keeping out the signals... Cell included

I think Redhat has been a very good influence on and partner in the OSS movement for a long time. If I trust any company to get involved with CentOS and not dick around, but try to actually make it better, it's RedHat. Generally nice folks trying to make money and the world a better place. And not necessarily in that order.

I too have done it and it really is that simple. We tend to do that when we're moving servers out of 'critical' production, and can no longer justify paying for support.

My reseller cost on that is $3250. They aren't cheap even for us.

I concur. I took my 12 year olds test. Just to see what it was like. It covered his school year quite well and was focused on the things the kids that age should be learning. It did lack some art and music sections, but was very strong in reasoning and analytical skills. And teaching to the test as far as I can tell, means making sure that you cover a number of basic subjects thoroughly. Esp. math and reading. Also kids with special needs have the scores factored out. Schools are required to provide IEPs for those kids. Also our public schools in Southern IL and elsewhere have AT programs where above average kids can be challenged and what not. At least around here the schools don't mind the tests too much and try and deal with all of the kids above and below average as well as they can. The tests and "teaching to them" seems to have a nice added effect, that when the child goes on to the next grade, the teacher knows what basic skills they'll have from the previous year.

You do realize that the site you're recommending is financed by the koch brothers right? Not trying to stir things up, just an FYI. I can't support any movement that's back by large corporations asking for more deregulation. I think People need less regulation, not the corporations. I'm tired of living in a country that's on the brink of fascism.

"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power."
-Benito Mussolini -

As someone who's built and runs a fairly large government website, I agree with you. Every year 3 months there are more legislative requirements and fields to deal with etc, permissions, changing points of interest, reporting etc. It's a complex moving target, with no one to have a dialog with. The governor will mandate one thing, while the house will do another, the feds another, and the supreme court another. 1/3 of the time all conflicting with each other. Then you layer that on top of 102 local government rules, and political agendas, and things start to get complicated, then make it real time. There of course is the lack of budget, due to cutbacks, but that just makes it fun.

Most of the data exchanges between agencies are XML based. Check out IEPD's and NIEM for a sense of what folks are dealing with. You have to have a large amount of flexibility to collect and store the ever changing data that gets submitted to you. In a way that can be gone through later when someone out there decides that some piece of data is important, or indexable/searchable, yet you may end up in a situation where a large majority of your data providers won't/ can't even provide that data for months or years. They are all different/independent vendors with their own priorities and budgets. It's a glorious mess out there. We use a combination NoSQL and RDBMS to get it done.

I've been surprised that healthcare.gov made it as far as they did. I don't think the marklogic call was a bad one though. I think what looks to be the hiring of a company without a lot of experience in the XML/NoSQL/NIEM arena was.

Now you're talking! I miss all of the creativity that came out of "The Well" back then. Back when you had a "zine" that helped you choose what to wear, what brain enhancing drugs to take, where to stand on social issues, and how subvert the phone company. All in one randomly produced at various times throughout the year publication.

Unions: The largest obstacle to autonomous trains. Esp in Spain. It the reason that will have autonomous cars before we have autonomous trucks. Imagine a world where the Teamsters no longer exist. Do you really think they're going to let that happen without hard a fight? Lord only knows what we're going to do with 3.5 million laid off workers, when there are already 11.5 million unemployed. It also looks like there are so few train operators in the us, that it may not be worth the money to do it automatically. In 2010 there were only 67,100 with little or no expected change in their numbers, so unless the safety issue comes to a head it probably won't change.

you can 3d print metal FYI..

http://www.3dsystems.com/3d-printers/production/spro-125-direct-metal#.UgKVbkBDtIM

http://gpiprototype.com/services/metal-3d-printing.html

Just some quick google search results on on the topic of "3d printer metal"

The proper term here is "Opertunivore" w/ vegetarian leanings...

is my screen protector, so it's whichever one I happen to be using while he's around, and not doing my dishes, feeding my like a roman senator, or being my preferred Cloud solution.