That the word "Inaugural" caused me to think the telescope took pictures of the Presidential Inauguration.

I eventually read enough to realize this is a newer telescope, which would have made photos of any presidential inauguration unlikely. But since we're talking about powerful telescopes, I guess even the time travel element wouldn't be out of the question.

So how much should they have given, to make it enough to satisfy you and all the others who think that as long as they're paying less than they would have paid for the commercial alternative, they're getting off cheap?

I read the headline as "8 Grams of Thermite..." :) Quite a visual.

It is not wise to create, for something that is desirable, a dependency which is undesirable.

One example is using tobacco taxes to pay for children's healthcare. It sounds good politically, but then you're dependent on smoking and it's a conflict of interest to get people to stop smoking.

Another example is when law enforcement agencies find they are dependent on fines from speeding, or assets confiscated from drug dealers. If people stop speeding, or drugs stop coming through the area, which is what they say they want, they'll have a budget crisis. So there's a conflict of interest.

The example at hand -- heating living space with excess heat from data centers -- is not as controversial. You could argue that there's no particular need to make computers run cooler. But there certainly has been, and continues to be, a lot of research in that area. The potential conflict is enough to fall back on what we have learned -- or in some cases, not yet learned -- from other conflicted dependencies.

This reminds me of an idea that I had the last time I was installing OS X, though it would have appeal for all operating systems. Wouldn't it be cool if the OS installer also fired up the network and gave you a web browser, so you could surf while waiting for all the files to copy and so forth? Maybe Lion will also provide this feature.

I think I heard this analogy as "a station wagon full of backup tapes" :)

I agree that all-nighters are almost never productive, but this question was about staying late, not about working all-nighters.

I'd like to believe that all work could get done within business hours and on my team it usually does. But there will always be times that the team needs to stay late, because things always come up.

I manage developers and they can count on me to be here if they're here (and when they're not). But I'm also *not* a useless lackey. I'm a developer myself and I'm here because I add something to the process. In addition to going to get the food (which I always do), I can actually participate in the process of making decisions and solving problems.

In my opinion, if you can't do that, you shouldn't be in the position. And you certainly shouldn't be looking over anybody's shoulder if you're not needed. Give them the space. Surely you have some of your own work you can do while you wait.

But yes, be there -- unless you can't be there without getting in the way, in which case you should leave.

I would certainly hope they have good WiFi

Gotta get people using it somehow :)