A blank slate is always scary. Whatever happens to it, for good or for bad, is all you. When you're making decisions because fo external factors, it is easier to explain away failure. You didn't have all the options open to you. A clean, blank slate staring at you is nothing but options.

The good news is, you're a good guy. You're smart, compassionate, and a hard worker. I have a feeling you will do good, if not great things with your slate.

All he was really after was a little place by himself to enjoy a wee dram of the good stuff...

I keep forgetting to add this to my list of reads. You should post a tweet for each, perhaps? Nudge the ADD'rs of the crowd :-)

The Fark headline was along the lines of, "Old DHS system replaced by new PANIC/Don't PANIC System"

Although it saddens me how long this is taking, I do think that as a whole we are finally getting tired of constantly being afraid. Especially since we live in a culture in which Kindergartners bring guns to school and random whack jobs shoot up public gatherings.

Maybe its just me, but I could never get worked up over the terrorist threats. Yes there are people who want to kill us. They are, however, 10,000 miles away and still live in an agrarian society. We live in a society in which mentally deranged people, a couple to several times a year, get a hold of guns and shoot up random people. How does this protect us from a random, mentally unstable gunman?

I would wager that more Americans will die at the hands of our own culture, its HFCS laden food, tabacco, drugs, alcohol, car accidents, and guns; than the terrorists could ever hope to kill.

Thus endeth the rant. Off for coffee. Maybe a Venti from Starbucks with an extra shot of irony.

I think it really depends on where you are now. If you have people you work with who are already part of the team, and it feels like you should be leading them anyways, stay inhouse. However, if you are in a situation in which there's a good deal of animosity between staff and management, than jumping sides is going to make neither side trust you. Then a fresh start elsewhere is probably the best.

I know from my own humbling expereinces how difficult leading and managing people can be. It is its own unique skills et, and one which not everyone has nor can acheive.

In old times the King decided how long an inch is (usually the width of his thump, he decided what what the length of a foot is, usually the length of his foot) and so on. if a king died the next king got "measured" and the units got changed in size. So roughly every 20 - 30 years you had a new inch, a new foot, a new ell a new yard (roughly one step length) a new mile etc. Two steps a re a "double step" and 1000 double steps are a mile. Wow, why that sudden 1000 ...

I've seen this in Math book whent hey try and sell you on the Metric system, but I've yet to actually encounter this in a History book. Do you have actual examples, or are you simply repaeting the propoganda without thinking about it?

Later the length of a mile (especially a nautical mile) got defined by the length of an arc minute of the equator... Your calculating examples make not much sense either.

How does basing a unit of navigation directly on one fo the variables of navigation not make sense? 1" = 1 Mile seems like a much smarter method of navigation than 1" = 1.852 Kilometers.

Of course the entire point to the discussion is that US system make better sense in the actual world in which we live. If you really want to convert the US metric, call the meter a yard, the kilogram a pound, a liter a quart and be done with it.

So hosts files can't keep up with the dynamically changes then?

Humor in a leadership position can be very powerful, but inappropriately applied it can be devastating. Like you said, its knowing when to apply it and when not to that makes all the difference.

"by giving the people enough education to see through demagoguery."

We haven't even achieved that here in the U.S.

Some would even argue we're running the other direction, too.

I have to be honest, it is very hard to follow you. Tom's issue seems to be that malicious IPs change daily, if not hourly, and that a hosts file cannot keep up with that. If I understand it correctly. So how does a hosts file remain effective and updated with that amount of dynamic change? I'm not looking for testimonials, just wondering how a host file accounts for that.

I think I missed a lot of the background on this. Would you mind enlightening me as to what this all is? Remember, I'm more of a casual geek... :-)

I would think giving people the help to be self-sustaining would be the first step in stabalizing the government. It certainly seems like the more corrupt regimes are allowed to flourish because they control what few resources the country has. Take away that control with self-sufficiency and you have a better chance to get rid of the corrupt regimes. It's still going to be hard, but I think the bottom-up changes fare better than the top-down. Especially if the only effective way for a top-down change comes from outside a country's borders.

So is undo all ::head deask::?

Yeah, I've had that, too. I just gave up. The craigslist protocol seems to revolve around passive-aggressive behavior. Whenever I've sold stuff i'd call people back and they were shocked. I don't know what it is about craigslist, but calling someone and saying "Its sold," seems to be a huge psychological hurdle.

I've always thought it rather obvious that Science is a Faith. If a word cannot be used to define itself, than how can Science ever be used to prove itself?

Even if both Science and Religion have their roots in Faith, however, their differences are staggering. Religion is only about Faith. There is nothing more to it than belief, and not only is there no way to systematically test what is taught, but it is discouraged as indicative of too little Faith.

Science is all about that very exploration. Challenging what is taught and verifying for yourself that it is true. It may, fundamentally, be a Faith, but then again, isn't our acceptance of our sensory inputs a Faith as well?

That's not easy to do. Very impressive timing sir!