Their web app probably dumps your password into an ascii file that's uploaded to a mainframe which cannot handle anything else because of incompatible character sets..

We were around 15000kwh when had an electrical heater for warm water, that used a lot of electricity at night.

Last year this was replaced and usage dropped to about 10000. Natural gas useage increased :)
but the price of what we paid combined in the end didn't increase, even though we now heat the whole house (and before only had gas heaters in 3 rooms).

And it's a certainly not a mcmansion - just a small house in a row, built in 1930..

Electricity useage also depends a lot how much I play my pinball machines, I've got 15, and when friends come and all of them are on, the meter is running fast....

Very true..
and if the HFO fuel can't be used at all anymore, what are refineries going to do ?
Dump the stuff in sea ? :-) and increase prices of their other fuel products..

Yes you can and it's being done. No matter what flag a vessel has, if it wants to enter a port in usa/europe it has to abide safety standards and will be inspected (and can be grounded until it's fixed). Inspections come from local port authorities, Lloyds register ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_Register ), ..

If you want to operate a shipping line between South America and Africa you can get away with using an old vessel that barely doesn't sink. Want to enter other ports ? Be prepared for high investments and maintenance..

Since a few years ships are already required to switch to low-sulfor fuel when they come near the coast or enter ports..

Several types of marine fuel exist: MGO, MDO, HFO,..
HFO (heavy fuel oil) is getting banned in some parts of the world.
And yes this means vessels actually have 2 or 3 different types of fuel on board and switch over from one type to another.

The economic crash of 2 years ago was beneficiary for the environment btw.
The years before it, prices for renting a ship (baltic dry index) was so high that only the rent made up the largest part of the cost, fuel costs were low in comparison. So cargo vessels were instructed to go full speed (and consume/pollute more).
Now the BDI dropped, the rent is lower and it's again a matter of optimising days at sea / consumption (slower speed = less consumption, so renting a vessel 1 or 2 days longer can be better because fuel savings are more than the extra rent you pay for these days).

A lot of old (and more polluting) vessels also were laid in docks or are scrapped the past 2 years as there suddenly wasn't enough cargo to transport..

disclaimer: I work at the it department of a group of companies that operates cargo vessels.. have worked on a program to register their trips and optimize fuel costs/speed/...

I'm no statistics genius but is his logic correct ? Scan of 1 person increases his risk with 16 ten mill%, so given a billion scans, 16 people WILL die ?

As far as I know my statistiscs, in this type every scan of a person is a singular event that doesn't have a relation with the next one (ie throw a coin for heads or tails, and the chance is still 50% no matter how many billion times you've thrown before) ?

Only if the same person is scanned a few million times he will die from cancer as a result ?
But scan a billion different persons and the chance for each of them to die of cancer has increased an (insignificant ?) amount ?

Possesions are last on my list.. that's why there's insurance. Replacing loved ones or data is more difficult to impossible.
A 40 inch tv ? Just go to a shop and buy a new one..

Military.

You've got a soldier with a bullet somewhere in the middle of a desert.. it's easier and faster to put him somewhere in a closed container somewhere at the military base, where he can be operated fast.. no need to fly a medical team to a dangerous area, and no need to fly a wounded soldier who might not survive the flight without being operated first.

The doctor himself can be in the usa, and opeate dozens of patients a day located over the whole world..

You just need the 'remote box' at a military base to which you bring a patient in .. you could have dozens of these boxes set up over the world, without the need to have a team of surgeons at each and every base on the battlefield..

Check the pinball 101 pages on http://www.flippers.be/ that should teach you most you have to know when buying your first pinball machine..

A lot of people are working on their own custom machines - some just change the artwork and layout of a playfield, some make everything including the whole hardware and software from scratch.
On my site http://www.flippers.be/ I have an overview of custom pinball machines.

also my opinion.; the very wealthy will take a trip to the moon, wait for the asteroid to hit earth, and come back after a while when things have settled..

The black egg part is also mentioned in one of Ira's security books. Seems to me this happened already a few years ago. So while you can find them now everywhere, 5 years ago maybe it wasn't.

More important detail of this (not mentioned in the article but only in the book): not only did they have these eggs in the middle of nowhere, but they were even cheaper than you would buy them in China.
So there was no way this was a restaurant trying to run a legimite business (and trying to make profit selling food). The book also mentions that when he asked about the eggs, they noticed he could read chines and they refused to sell food to him and they had to leave the restaurant..
Combine all these elements, and it's more obvious the restaurant he talks about was just a front end for spying or other activities.

it's about being able to have a rather healthy lifestile and combining a job with personal life without burning out or having a heart attack by the time you're 40.. drink coffee black if you need your caffeine shot and don't add suger or any other stuff into it, as that'll only make you fat and slow in the long run..
that coffee part is only a very small chapter in this book, I said it as it's something you don't expect in a book about being a dba or it professional.. most things you should already know (I hope you do if you have some work experience) but it was a good read and good to be reminded of everything again..

Just read this book and it's excellent for what you need:
http://www.amazon.com/DBA-Survivor-Become-Rock-Star/dp/1430227877

and no you don't have to be a DBA to read it or have any use of it.
Everyone who is/wants to become a professional attitude in IT has to read it IMO !
Only 1/3rd is about databases (and high level, describing things you can apply in other IT jobs too),
the rest is more about how to be at work, working with coworkers, it even says you to drink less coffee with sugar
and start jogging :)

As far as I know it'll check the different faces and decide where it has to put focus and a small enough aperture so
they all are sharp.
So if the faces are close enough to each other it can focus on one and go for a small dof that'll have them all sharp, if they're further away then it'll increase dof (and thus exposure time) and possible put actual focus somewhere in between the faces (again, if I'm not mistaken it's around 1/3 before your focal point and 2/3 after it that's sharp).