90 days is really long when you don't have a massive base to run testing and regression against. Let's just say that the fix is adding a bounds check to the input for a single function. The engineer assigned to the bug adds the bounds check and unit tests to make sure it behaves now. The fix is submitted to the build queue for the (let's say nightly) run to generate the next patch set, and the next production build for Windows. Now QA gets it, and being that this particular item failed for an input, they write a bunch of tests that kick in various input items - numbers, letters, binary data, larger than expected, smaller than expected, etc. This is then run in the "Test this subsystem" run and if it passes, yay, else back to step one. Then they run that test as part of their automated "Test Windows" run (which probably takes hours to do). If everything passes, great. If not, back to step one. Then after it passes QA for "Test Windows", it needs to go through QA for "Test Windows with {list of major software that if we break something it is bad}". If that all passes, then it can go to the patch queue for the next scheduled release. I'd be surprised if an automated "Test Windows" run can be completed in less than a day or two. Probably 3-5 days for the "Test Windows with Other Software Running". So the minimum time to get a tested patch is about a week assuming the problem is super simple. Once it starts involving multiple subsystems, you can start running into weeks to get a good tested patch, assuming that it doesn't take a few weeks for engineering to get a fix ready for testing in the first place.

I see you've never done regression runs with a large software base. 2 days can make a lot of difference in completing the regression run to make sure that the patch won't break anything else (remember - MS just had to pull a patch that broke stuff, which means they released it without doing a full regression run - willing to bet some of the guys who do this were on vacation over the holidays). While there may have been a "testing the waters" bit there, it was also a "hey we, really do need time to make sure everything is hunky dory".

Considering the original story was written long before Looper (and Heinlein did a lot of time travel stories) - and the story line itself looks at things in a different way/different point of the timeline.. I'd disagree.

This is still a good thing - it eliminates the false reports and shows that the officers are doing their job correctly as well as making the criminals (or suspects) less likely to do something that is harmful to the officers because they know there is footage of the event.

Chevron's SmartBadge system was kind of nice - it was just a pain when you needed to log into more than one machine at a time...

OneRing - to rule them all, and set up the next round of fights. (damn I've gone cynical this week)

So you are saying Machiavelli got it backwards? :)

Christian Bible (2 Chronicles 15:12-13) - "They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek
the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman."

Christian Bible (Deuteronomy 13:7-12) - "If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or you intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you. You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. And all Israel, hearing of this, shall fear and never do such evil as this in your midst."

Christian Bible (Deuteronomy 17:2-5) - "Suppose a man or woman among you, in one of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, has done evil in the sight of the LORD your God and has violated the covenant by serving other gods or by worshiping the sun, the moon, or any of the forces of heaven, which I have strictly forbidden. When you hear about it, investigate the matter thoroughly. If it is true that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, then that man or woman must be taken to the gates of the town and stoned to death."

The difference between the Christian sects are trivial.... etc. Although I am in agreement with you about bringing peace to the Middle East being more or less futile, at least until the day some faction detonates a nuclear weapon at Mecca and/or Jerusalem.

That actually wouldn't be that bad an app to build - hmmm.

Yes, but it would cost NASA a fortune to clean up the site before it could be auctioned off. El Toro Marine Base was just taken off the Superfund list after 24 years and $165 million dollars to clean up the land after the base closed. Considering Moffet Field has been an experimental site as well as a military base, you can use the El Toro cleanup as a baseline - so instead of leasing the land to Google, making NASA money on the deal and also getting maintenance paid for, the suggestion is to spend $200 million and leave the land useless for the next 20 years or so while the cleanup takes place.

Interesting - according to this here, employers have to give you time off to vote. Check your state to see which law applies to you.

Not really - every green card issued during the 2005 fiscal year will be expiring and a replacement card (assuming renewal) issued. In addition, new cards will need to be issued for people who qualify for one through the regular channels (marriage, business sponsorship, lottery) and there will need to be replacement cards for those that are lost, stolen or damaged/destroyed. 4 million/year is what they expect and there is an option to buy an additional 20 million, just in case there is a need for it. (That way, they can have them on hand instead of scrambling.)

And as a somewhat full-time server admin (who made his money on the Windows side of the house and is only a somewhat okay Linux guy in his less than humble opinion) - your comment makes me cringe and reach for the Tums. The phrase you are looking for is "single point of failure". Faster boot times for servers that you don't have to reboot (we're talking Linux, remember - the Windows systems are the ones you have to reboot with security updates, although they've gotten better) - it is a non issue. When you spend more time waiting for the raid controller to spin up the hard drives and the memory count to finish than the server to get to a point where you can log in, boot speed is not that much of an issue.

Unfortunately, I don't qualify for the Long family - only one side is long lived, and only had one grandparent alive when I was married. If I had married at the age Maureen did, however I would have just made it. :)