Yes, the employer should provide training; but they also have to prioritize what training is important to them, and that might not line up with what is important to you. So it's a negotiation. It seems like they've been considerate for local conferences, and that's great. But you can't expect more without negotiating and proving to them the benefit of it.

In the end, I hold one rule: If my employer is paying for, then I'm representing them at the conference. Their name is on the registration, etc. If I am paying for it, then I'm a free agent during the conference and I'm representing myself and myself alone. If it's somewhere in between, well...best to play it safe and act like you're representing your employer because they'll probably think of it that way.

So, if you really want to go, then go on your own dime, as a free-agent. And make it clear to them that that will be the case unless they want to poney up at least some of the money for the conference. Who knows, may be there is some other opportunity they could use a well while you're in the area to make it more than just a conference trip too. But you'll have to negotiate all of that.

Don't tax food or medicine. OK, the discrepancy just halved. Wow. I'm a wizard. Look at how fast I fixed that.

Hibernate? What's that? My computers are either powered on, or powered off entirely. They don't sleep (S3) or hibernate (S4).

On my work laptop, namely b/c I had to take it home for something and it would otherwise overheat in my bag:

up 10 days, 21:38, 6 users, load average: 0.33, 0.29, 0.25

On the system I actually work on:

up 71 days, 25 min, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05

I have several different systems (servers) like the above and I pretty much reboot them all at the same time when upgrades require it and I feel like rebooting the system. I probably have a few that are longer than that even.

Debian, and Slackware - agreed.

Gentoo? Not really unless you setup a build server for yourself separately, namely because Gentoo will bloat a bit due to build dependencies and there's not much in the Gentoo Portage Repositories that are merely binaries since it is a source based distribution.

That said, replace Gentoo with Arch and you're exactly right.

... The rest of the year, "all of the above" and then some. Fahrenheit 451 and similar books that specifically point out attacks on the freedom to read vs. just attacks on freedom in general "rise to the top" during any celebration of the right to read.

Well, yes - it doesn't require existence of ultimate causes, but by nature it is very much about finding "absolute truth".
To deny that, is to misunderstand what Science is and what it seeks.

When Christianity (Followers of the Way) showed up around 50 A.D, Judaism was extremely focused on (i) racism - you had to be a member of Jewish descent - and (ii) works - you had to keep the law, which also reflected in social strata (e.g Pharisees, rich vs. poor, etc) in numerous ways (kinds of sacrifies one could use to fulfill the law, etc). Christianity did away with both of those, pointing only to faith in Christ as a requirement; making all equal.

Christianity also did away with the "mysteries" of religion, which is one of the reasons why it spread through the rest of the Roman Empire as it did. All the religions had things that only the high priests knew; you only got to know them by climbing the "corporate ladder" (for lack of a better term) of the religion; and this is still reflected in many modern religions (Islam, Mormonism, Buddism, etc). Christianity, by contrast, told everything about itself to everyone who wanted to listen; essentially no ability to differentiate between priest and worshipper.

And yes, the Western Orthodoxy did do a lot of things to elevate those in the church hierarchy (e.g bishops, priests, etc) to non-human levels, etc - wrongly so. (I'm not familiar enough with the Eastern Orthodoxy to say anything there; so they may have also, but I can't say one way or another.) In part, that is human nature as people try to control others, etc. But that is not a tenant of Christianity in any way.

This channel stuffing nonsense needs to stop. Nobody is buying phones to throw away. They get sold. After five years of this nonsense it is just tedious.

Obligatory replay of contemporary analysis by noted mobile industry wizard Steve Ballmer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

If it's a small project (not aiming to go big or anything, and I'm specifically thinking about tinkering projects that are looking for under $10k total), then yes the money for the requisite software could be substantial relative to the project costs.

If it's anything bigger, then yes, they should have to do more. Even so, the cost of a CPA to audit and maintain their books could still make up a substantial portion of the costs for projects under $50k.

So as with anything, it needs to be graduated or may be Kickstarter provides some of those services - e.g they provide a Quickbooks account and a team of CPAs to review them and help the projects out unless the project certifies that it can do it on its own with a reference to their hired CPA (which companies would have no problem with) in exchange for a slightly smaller pinch from Kickstarter.

They should have called it Complete Internet Access. They should also clarify that there will be No Surveillance Allowed.

As for the name,

I can understand the "At some point, I'm going to stop trying to stay alive for the sake of staying alive" attitude.

I can't understand projecting a fixed age. He doesn't know what his health will be like at 75. If his health starts to rapidly decline at 70 or 65, he may want to change his health-care attitude earlier. If he's still in great shape at 75 he may try to stay alive as long as he's healthy or only suffering acute ailments.

As for me, I'm going to treat my body like an old car: Barring a sudden fatal or mentally-incapacitating calamity, I'll try to keep it running well enough to be "fully functional" until it gets to the point that "it's just not worth it" then I'll cut back on how much effort I spend staying alive. Whether that's 65, 75, 85, or some other age, $DIETY only knows.

The technology listed is not raid-proof, only raid-resistant.

It is still vulnerable to legal attack IF the governments in the countries where the servers are located are willing to use subpeonas or other means to "quietly" (i.e. without TPB finding out) determine what the next "downstream" server is until they have a full list, then do a coordinated takedown.

All it takes to stop this is to make sure that at least some key servers are in countries in which such court orders could not be legally issued.

The summary didn't say it, but I would think that after all that they have been through, TPB also has recent-enough "disconnected" backups of all of their key servers that they could bring it all back up within a matter of days if their servers were all seized at the same time. I would also think that they have a "shadow staff" who can take over in the event that the people currently running the show are arrested or ordered by a court to not participate in the project.

Now that they have made all their software trustworthy there is no more need for the group, right? Declare victory and go home.