Oh for Pete's sake.... You Looney audiophiles need you heads examined..

Buy the cheapest digital cable that works reliably and don't spend a dime more. If offered a $45 HDMI cable over a $2 one, save your money and go cheap, heck by 3 of the cheap ones incase it breaks while installing it, you will be money ahead and you won't hear the difference EVER.

Now, on ANALOG cables, they used to have a point (albeit a barely measureable one). Case in point is speaker cables. For audiophile like performance, speaker cables ARE something that you can demonstrate matter. However, MOST people don't have the ears or the listening environment necessary to justify what some vendors confidently say you need. Most people are fine with 18Ga Stranded, especially for short runs and middle grade equipment, and I guarantee that 12Ga stranded will not be noticeably different for ANY home installation I can imagine, at least not different enough you can hear it.

When will this hold over from the "monster cable" audiophile fad be over? There was a time when that gold plate *might* have mattered to your analog cable so paying 20X the price was justifiable from the technical perspective, but now with digital cables all you are getting is fleeced...That and the justified scorn of those who really know what's going on. Well, that and bragging rights about how much you spent, if that matters to you..

You cannot be serious.... Look they vaccinated using TWO techniques and it may be hard to follow, but they where not doing a placebo double blind study, but a comparative study of two populations, which has value.

First group where vaccinated right away after someone nearby had been confirmed to have Ebola.. In the group of people who got the vaccine, NOBODY got Ebola who was subsequently exposed after 10 days. Yes, some people got Ebola who either already had it before the vaccine or who where exposed to it during the 10 days after the vaccine, but after that, things where great.

Just to be sure this wasn't a fluke, they vaccinated other groups 3 weeks after the confirmed case of Ebola was found and noted that there where then 16 cases of Ebola in this test group after the 10 day wait, meaning they where previously exposed and got Ebola via the normal route, before the vaccine built immunity in 3 weeks + 10 days. This indicates that the vaccine DOES affect the Ebola infection rate, seemingly very well in that after 10 days, subsequent exposure didn't not produce Ebola.

The implication is that the immediate vaccination prevented Ebola after the 10 day period...

You can do this using exactly the same technology that cruse missiles use, terrain following.

All you need is precision terrain/elevation data and you can create a vehicle that can navigate safely from Point A to Point B using a terrain mapping RADAR. You just match the RADAR image to your known terrain map and voilà, instant location, elevation and orientation information that you use to correct your inertial navigation system. Preplan your probes route and activities and say go to that waypoint, land, do science, and return to base when done.

"But we don't HAVE the necessary elevation data yet!" you say? I thought we where in the process of collecting detailed elevation data from Mars. Plus, if you have even a small amount of data which is detailed enough to land the craft with, you can make flights and collect additional terrain data using the very same RADAR you use to navigate with and expand your detailed dataset further and further away from your starting point over time. So you'd fly using the inertial navigation system past areas you knew, collect data and return to the area you already know, send the collected data to earth for post processing and receive an expanded detailed terrain map in return then do your detailed science in this new area. Wash, rinse and repeat as many times as possible.

GPS is pretty dependent on ground stations which monitor each satellite in the constellation and provides "corrections" to the whole system for it to work. It also requires a minimum of 3 (usually more like 5) satellites to be in view to come up with a location solution. So, you are talking about a bunch of independent satellites with some remote monitoring capability from the surface to fix positions and keep the system accurate enough. That's a LOT of very expensive infrastructure to get to Mars..

Simpler solution is to just go with a Loran type system. Drop 3 or more fairly simple devices onto the surface that transmit a bit of coordinated RF and you have a solution to easily navigate within the line of site of the transmitters. It's really just the precursor of GPS and gets you pretty good relative location information.

Even better, would be to use a RADAR system and previously obtained map data like many cruse missiles use. It only requires precision terrain elevation data which can be easily obtained from ONE orbiting probe, and allows you to give the "flying" vehicle some autonomy in navigating from point A to point B. As you can obtain more precision terrain information you can further refine your data set and go more places with better and better assurance you know where you are.

I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave.

All this really does is cause these poor guys to face charges that prosecutors now must try to prove. Given that all the other methods of getting an indictment on these guys failed, one can easily infer that the chances they get convicted of anything is next to nil.

This is basically a political witch hunt by some PR hounds who want to make it look like the accused are somehow guilty of gross negligence because it was their plant (which satisfied the government's safety requirements) blew up and made a mess after some natural disaster that nobody foresaw or even considered possible happened. It's like holding the tornado shelter installer criminally liable for not protecting the occupants of the shelter from earthquake damage and chemical attacks.

Understood, but the POINT of this little exercise is to educate the people asking about the true costs and risks they are assuming before you implement anything. Responsible bosses appreciate this kind of iterative process that allows them to choose their level of risk and cost, and if you are dealing with irresponsible bosses who will come back and blame you for failure at a later date, you are going to need the CYA documentation that shows THEY agreed to this and you already told them of the risk.

If they don't accept the CYA documentation, then you work for bad people and should be moving on anyway...

If that's true, and many times it is, you are playing a loosing hand to start with. You work for people who don't care about you or value what you say and do and it's a BAD place for you.

Best thing to do if you work for people like this is start to plan your departure. Update your resume, get your online profiles updated and start looking at the employment ads. It might be a very good idea to start putting money away for the "rainy day" that's surely coming.

Maybe YOU can be that consultant they hire over your replacement's objections. Charge them lots, collect in advance, and laugh all the way to the bank...

That's why you present your "solution" before implementation and that includes documentation of the provisos and risks they are taking.

It may not save your job when the chips are down, but having a bit of hard documentation that you told them what the risks where and they choose not to spend the money to eliminate that risk is always a good thing. Besides, if they assume the risks, then fire the underling when a risk bites them, you really don't want to work for them anyway because it's just a matter of when they will fire you, not if.

Like I said to the other guy who doesn't want to listen...

Your issue is with the law, not the courts, with the people who WROTE the law, not the judge or the process. Stop saying it would be an unfair trial.

I'm not going to engage in the debate over the law being fair or not because it's pointless and largely meaningless to this situation. The law is what it is, I didn't write it nor wish to argue about it. You need to go after the people who wrote it if you don't like it.

Do what the military does... Just convert all this to acronyms, mostly with 3 letters... Trust me, you will feel better in no time, just nobody will know for sure what you are talking about.

I here the SHUH (Sport Hybrid Utility Hospital) can do 12 now using regenerative technology...

I think you are right... Time to start raising leaches again and bleeding for a fever.

Maybe we can apply some leaches to the current owner until they get better?

Follow the money.. Who pays the bills? Do what they say...

Seriously, keeping your factory's networks separate is a pretty simple firewall issue for someone competent to install and configure it. I'm not sure how this cell phone connection is going to work, but there ARE ways to make cell phones connect to you via VPN's that can be made to require usernames/passwords (not to mention specific devices) before you are allowed to connect. There are solutions out there to do what they ask, they just cost a little bit to acquire, install, and manage.

So my "follow the money" joke, really should be this. IF the people in charge are asking for it, find and suggest a solution that can do it safely. If they are not willing to pay for your solution, find another, albeit less safe solution and present it with a list of assumed risks. Rinse and repeat until you have a solution they are willing to pay for with risks they are accepting, then do that.