CYA Don't let your name be attached to anything risky, but be ready to take credit when the risky behavior leads to success.

> Whether the Emory staffer responsible for this mistake is teachable or not, I hope his boss can tell the difference.

Going up the chain of command someone has to know the full ramifications of an action and make sure that the full consequences are not achievable without due difficulty. There's a reason nuclear launches are done with two independent minds.

It's a recurring problem. Workers are highly pressured to make quick decisions and produce results expeditiously. It's more than the rat race, it's about being able to ask for a raise. Checks and balances are unjustifiable expenses particularly when the results of a person's work are to be compared with the practically inevitable new tools or software that will whittle away at that person's set of duties. Sounds like better idiot proofing features should be developed...

Currently, SD cards or memory stick can be obtained slightly less than $1 per GB. Suitable for storing the most precious data... A few years later, this technology hopefully will be more economical than tape.

Seeing as how it's NASA (not NSA though why should it be them? but they just want to do the unexpected anyways), the focus should be extraterrestrial rather than local. Local or human shouldn't even be considered.

In the world of money identity and ownership come down to record keeping and trust. From the very beginning if someone with money or transferable wealth wanted to keep it safe, they hid it when they didn't need to spend it, and it was always vulnerable.

How well does anyone know their banker or financial advisor?

A crypto currency makes a lot of sense in theory. It has mathematical structure that allows it to be usable for financial transactions and savings. The vulnerability of the implementations is that someone wanted the power to control it. A fully open system that reveals the mathematical strengths and weaknesses could lead to a more trusted institution.

I am suggest, merely hinting, that if someone has earned a reputation for significantly earning vastly better returns compared to the average, and if you have millions to invest, pay him to tell you how he is doing what he is doing.

Even real currency seems to be as ephemereal as digital currency. If bank software tragically moved the decimal place or truncated my savings account balance I could lose practically everything. If someone nefarious creates a substantiating transaction or stole/destroyed the computer, it would be even harder to counter.

Wealth has become a measure of the amount of trust and confidence that people have in each other, beyond the measure of economic accumulation. Wealth indicates how much potential there is. It is losing more and more exactness or precision as more and more people are focused on the pace that they can aggregate their own riches.

Theoretically if this trend is to continue, there would be more instances of disputes and less certainty of what the truth is. There have already been a phenomenal amount of scams. It's a little like Russian roulette with a really large number of empty chambers.

To counterbalance this fuzziness, people will have to build their ability to convince other people to transact goods and services despite the degraded certainty of the value of a dollar. This goes beyond a credit rating. Perhaps people will have to build greater defensive positions, of course, at significant personal cost.

Bitcoin is/was to some degree a "test" of how well the world would operate with a novel monetary system disconnected from authority. The idea seems practical enough, though the implementation was flawed. Even though many computers around the world validated transactions, the need for a central server as well as higher performance computing makes Bitcoin useless to the masses and ultimately limits the potential for owners of Bitcoins.

You don't want to be paid in stock options anyways. The stock isn't something you can liquidate until it appreciates. If you get paid in stock, the company will see all this stock being sold at high volumes in the market so you can pay for your living expenses. The high volumes of stock will probably make people nervous about paying you high amounts per share, and your bosses wouldn't like the share price to be stuck at a low.

So if you actually believe in your employer, buy the stock with your pay. That's not always a good idea either. People should diversify their acquisitions instead of keeping all their wealth in one area. If you are just one minion in a huge company, and you're already leery because you think your CEO is overpaid, why would you trust him enough to boost his stock value by buying more of the company? Most people would invest their hard earned money in a different sector.

So true. The janitorial and maintenance positions are fully staffed and it was 1% for the whole lot rather than individually.

OTOH, if those 700 workers are making no profit for the company at all, they should be transferred to profitable positions or laid off regardless of CEO pay.

OTOH you need a real sumbitch in order to chop hundreds or thousands of employees and perhaps still keep the company alive, and these guys don't come cheap.

You forgot to mention that is based on the burger flippers staying with the job until the age of 65.

Even if the NSA and CIA were eliminated, government needs information. They'll just turn to the private sector. Better the devil you know?

That's how competitive it is at the top. Winning is about using any advantage you can get away with, whether it's doping, corrupt judges, or a load of light.

You know, there's a different angle to think of here. Drunken boxing would probably be a fun Olympic sport to watch.

The null hypothesis is that the world would not be a better place if researchers had such advanced training in statistics.

For example, there was no physical evidence favoring relativity for years after the theory was created. Qualification for research work should be intelligence not ability to do statistics.

The corollary is that if no value was obtained after paying $15,000 the most expeditious allegation is rape.