Well to be fair the deep-red state Kentucky had a very successful rollout of Obamacare (rebranded as "Kynect"), including it's own health insurance exchange AND medicaid expansion -- the whole Obamacare enchilada.

Under Obamacare, the federal insurance exchange was never intended to serve the entire country. In fact ideally nobody would have to use it, because states were supposed to set up their own exchanges that would better reflect the needs of their citizens than a federal one would. If you are forced to use the federal exhange, it's because politicians who run your state made that choice for you.

Of course some states have had their own exchange rollout disasters -- including blue states like Maryland and Oregon. If you're experienced with this kind of project you'd expect that. But others have had very successful rollouts, including a handful of red states like Kentucky.

That's what they did when IE6 won the browser war!

... Before that it can't, because Ta^4 - Tb^4 is a positive number so no net radiant energy is absorbed by (a) from (b). That means all the way up to the exact point thermal equilibrium is achieved, all radiant power is a result of electrical power, therefore the power input and power output are constant. It is not a "gradual" process. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-20]

So Jane claims:

electrical power per square meter = (s)*(e)*Ta^4

The actual answer is:

electrical power per square meter = (s)*(e)*(Ta^4 - Tb^4)

Since Jane refuses to include a term accounting for radiation from the chamber walls, Jane's equation is saying that no radiation at all is absorbed by the warmer source. Why?

... Since the chamber walls are COOLER than the heat source, radiative power from the chamber walls is not absorbed by the heat source. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]

Of course it is! Again, this is just Sky Dragon Slayer nonsense. Absorption doesn't work like Slayers imagine. It's controlled by the surface's absorptivity, which doesn't change if the source is slightly warmer or cooler than its surroundings. All that's required for the source to absorb radiation (from warmer or colder objects) is having absorptivity > 0. Since the source has absorptivity = 0.11, some radiative power from the chamber walls is absorbed by the heat source.

Jane's been regurgitating Slayer nonsense for years:

... Warmer objects cannot, and do not absorb lower-energy radiation from cooler objects. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2012-11-20]

Then how do uncooled IR detectors see cooler objects? How did we detect the 2.7K cosmic microwave background radiation with warmer detectors?

... explain how radiation that is of a LOWER "black-body temperature" will be absorbed by a body of a HIGHER black-body temperature. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2013-05-30]

... An object that is radiating at a certain black-body temperature WILL NOT absorb a less-energetic photon from an outside source. This is am extremely well-known corollary of the Second Law. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2013-05-30]

No, that's a Slayer fantasy. On the atomic scale, absorption of radiation doesn't depend on temperature because individual atoms don't have temperatures. Only very large groups of atoms have temperatures. Individual photons also don't have temperatures. Very large groups of photons from a 10C warm object have slightly different average wavelength curves than a -10C cold object, but they're very similar. This means that even if temperature somehow applied at the atomic scale of absorbing individual photons, an atom couldn't tell if a photon came from the 10C warm object or the -10C cold object.

... You took a badly-worded sentence or two and jumped on them as though Latour made a mistake. But his only mistake was wording a couple of sentences badly. He does in fact NOT suggest that warmer objects absorb no radiation, and he has written as much many times. ... You have refuted NOTHING but a couple of unfortunately-worded sentences, which Latour himself publicly corrected shortly after that post appeared. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-07-27]

Ironically, Jane's still insisting that warmer objects absorb no radiation from colder objects. Otherwise Jane wouldn't repeatedly object to including a term for radiation from the chamber walls in his calculation of required electrical power. Since Jane doesn't even include that term, Jane's assuming that warmer objects absorb no radiation from colder objects.

... shortly after Latour published that blog post, it became clear that the language he used implied that no radiation at all was absorbed by the warmer body. So a reader could not reasonably be blamed for inferring that. But Latour quickly apologized for the unfortunate wording and corrected himself to make it very clear he was referring to net, not absolute, heat transfer. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-07-27]

Ironically, Jane's still insisting that no radiation at all is absorbed by the warmer body. Otherwise Jane's calculation of the required electrical power would include a term for radiation from the chamber walls. Since Jane adamantly insists that this term can't be included, Jane's calculation assumes that no radiation at all is absorbed by the source. None. Zero.

It's truly surreal to watch Jane repeatedly double-down on nonsense which Jane claims is too ridiculous even for Sky Dragon Slayers (as if that were possible!).

XP also tweaked the VM subsystem in a way that was quite noticeable if you had more than about 256MB of RAM (better performance), but the main feature it added was remote desktop (although only in the Pro version). I was quite tempted to upgrade from 2K for the remote desktop stuff.

I'm not a huge fan. The goal of D was to produce a better C++, but if you're designing a new language then C++ really isn't where I'd choose to start. It's not as bad as Ruby (I can't imagine the kind of person who would look at Smalltalk and say 'what this language really needs is Perl-like syntax'. Actually, I can't imagine the kind of person who'd say that about any language. Including Perl). Rust is probably the modern language that I like the most.

I almost see your point, but if economic warfare breaks out between China and the US, the whole economy will be wrecked. Stores won't even have shoes to buy.

I'm 55, this is true, but it hasn't diminished my interest in software, it's just something else that fascinates me and just happens to be the root cause as to why "work sucks" sometimes. My Dad is 80, a retired mechanical engineer, last we spoke about programming he had got one of his games he wrote in Delphi running on android and was playing with the python graphics library.

Solving coding problems the fun part. The work part is getting the solution to the customer, ironically few engineers are willing to tackle the work problem, or accept other people's solutions to it. So what you generally end up with is an imposed solution from above that doesn't work because the people who wrote the process haven't got a clue how the engineers are currently keeping it together. Rather than tackling the problem by demonstrating a superior answer, the engineers do their best to pretend the work problem doesn't exist.

BTW: If you're solving the "same [coding?] problem over and over again", you're doing it wrong

I mostly agree but I would say that a good engineer provides (and meets) a deadline of his own making. Good managers have clear business plans but they can't create them if software systems randomly pop out of the basement shouting "surprise". The most overlooked and underrated skill for a "professional" engineer is business administration skills (and vica-versa with PHB's). Someone who speaks both languages is far more useful than someone who speaks only his native tongue.

Yeah it's easy to become disillusioned, if you don't have the political clout to organise your own work and "lead by example" to meet their vague goals, then get it or get out. If you do have some influence then vague, numerous, and ever changing management goals are your best weapon against the idiocracy, simply pick the brain farts that give you license to do TheRightThing(tm) and politely deflect the others.

*you - the royal version.

As a kid, I remember fearing growing up because grownups like to watch the news, which is boring.

A bit older, I feared having to work year round, and not get summer vacation.

Or look at all those commercials (e.g. 1, 2) for middle-age people reassuring themselves they'll never get old, never look old or slow down. (Or, heaven forbid, die.)

Personally, yes, I have become less into my job and more into my family and hobbies over time. I think that is common. But don't worry, nobody will force you to follow that pattern if you don't want to!

It is not people "refusing to act their age" that bothers me, if that's genuinely how they feel and what they want to do. Decide each day what you want to do and do it - and this should include goals and plans for accomplishing things in the future. But I am convinced that idle worry about who you will be, or what you will want in the future is just a waste of the present.

How are your parents enjoying their stay in North Korea? Have they made it to Baekdu Mountain yet?

Thanks for taking the time to explain that!

[SIGH OF RELIEF] For a minute there, I thought you were going to say there is no Santa Claus. But I can live without his grammar Nazi cousin Santa Clause.

... If body (b) is brought up to the same temperature as (a), Ta^4 - Tb^4 = 0, and no net heat transfer takes place. Although radiant power output of (a) at that temperature doesn't change, as a corollary of that same law. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-19]

If Ta = Tb, no electrical heating power is required. But radiant power output of (a) doesn't change. So radiant power output can't be equal to electrical heating power. Using conservation of energy, can you write down an equation which yields the required electrical heating power given Ta and Tb?

I really do want digital albums, complete with very high resolution art, full lyrics, liner notes, and extras.

I'd actually like to have the ability to buy the "full album" that would include video files of each music video from the album, "B" sides from old 45 releases of songs from the album, backstage videos, interviews with the artist, whatever.

The old album covers from the 70's, the ones that were supposed to be on large vinyl record jackets... I want to be able to put those up on a large flatscreen TV while the album is playing. Preferably not just a scan from a CD printing, but the original image scanned in high resolution. I'd like to be able to see all the details in Hipgnosis images like the jacket art to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway or Wish You Were Here. (Hmm, someone made an animated GIF for that last one... heck, I'd like it both ways in the digital album, original and new animated version.)

Of course, I want this all using open file formats (FLAC, JPEG, HTML). But since nobody else got around to doing this, Apple is doing it first, and of course with Apple it will be proprietary, opaque, and likely patented somehow for maximum lockin.

I don't think this will revolutionize music, but it really is something I want.