Greetings and Salutations;
          About the probabilities of failure of the Shuttle...If you read Feynman's book (I think it was in "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman", he talks about the Challenger disaster. He was on the committee investigating the incident, and, made a couple of very telling observations. First off, he noted that in the process of communicating the shuttle's viability for safe launch under the conditions at the Cape that day, it seems that every level of management deleted a zero from the probability of failure. So, for example, if the engineers on the ground said to their manager, "there is a 100,000 to 1 chance that this launch will fail", he would tell HIS supervisor "There is a 10,000 to 1 chance of failure", and, so on up the line. By the time it got to the top, it was down to a 10 to 1 or, at most, a 100 to 1 chance of failure. In addition to that, in order to keep on the schedule dictated by political pressure, some vital components were not properly or completely tested. I point you at this youtube video where Feynman demonstrates the failure of the "O" rings that sealed the solid booster rockets when subjected to cold weather: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qAi_9quzUY The fact that the "O" rings became brittle at the freezing temperatures present that day ensured that the booster seal (and the launch) would fail.
          Here, http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/challenger-appendix.html Feynman discusses the general reliability of the machinery. It is an interesting and informative analysis, and, well worth reading.
          So...the bottom line is that, at least in the case of Challenger, it was political pressure and the unwillingness of anyone to pull the plug at a dangerous moment that caused the launch to fail and the astronauts to be killed, not crappy construction or bad design of the Shuttle.
          Pleasant dreams
          beemandave

There is NO time when it is good to have a hard-coded admin password on a networked device. that is just bad programming.

          pleasant dreams.

Greetings and Salutations;
            Right on the money here! You deserve that +5 mod because you have pretty much defined reality as it relates to programmers (aka Software Engineers) around the world. It is a fact that 20 year olds are naive, and happy to work huge hours for slave wages because they love the programming. I know, because I used to be that way myself. They also have little or no business experience, so, they are often unaware of how they are being exploited. As one reaches one's 30s, though, the education comes and the eyes open. Also, there is a good chance that the more mature person realizes there is more to life than programming. This leads to attempts to negotiate with management to get more money and time off. Management refuses, because they are, basically dumber than rotting stumps, so the older programmer bails and goes to another company, for more money and free time. However, this hopscotch career path only lasts so long, so, if the programmer is smart, they will start moving out of programming into system admin work. That has no age limit and less age bias, so, one can hang in there longer and make better money.
          The really annoying thing, though, is that assumption on the part of management that a given IT worker is unable to learn new skills. I have lost some work in the past because management assumed that, because I worked on a Wang system, that I could not work on any other type of system.

And the problem I have with PETA is that they are perfectly happy to euthanize thousands of cats and dogs every year, instead of working to find good homes, or, at least, safe places for them to live. It seems kind of hypocritical of them to only deal with creatures that they find convenient.

Hum...according to a quick search, the CEO make $2.5 million/year, and, most of the rest of the upper level management folks are making between $700,000 and $900,00. While that might not keep the company doors open, it would certainly help give the many, near-minimum wage employees a larger separation bonus.
          The fact that management was asking for an 8% pay cut, and a 17% increase in employee contributions to the health plan costs had to hurt most of the workers. Unless they make a pretty good chunk of change, that can be a significant bite out of one's income. The fact that upper level management gave itself huge salary increases while freezing the pay of the employees is not a good thing either. Now, a quick Net search seems to indicate that the average "inside worker" at Hostess was making about $25K/year. That is not a terrible salary, by any means, if one is single. However, if one has a wife and a couple of kids, it looks like that is barely above the poverty level in America.
          I do not think that anyone has all the facts, but, it looks to me that there were two major factors that brought the Hostess brand to this end. 1) bad management, that included allowing the infrastructure to wear out so the factories were less productive; a lack of oversight that allowed general, unnamed overhead expenses to grow to very high levels; and, an increasingly adversarial relationship between management and employees. 2) A lack of understanding about the changing desires of Americans. Take wonder Bread for example - it is, in my opinion, pretty awful. It is fragile, tasteless, mostly air, and, has the reputation for having more components from a chemical plant than a green plant. While that was the goal for Americans at one time, there is a little more interest in good, healthy food these days. Same thing for the cupcakes and Twinkies. I know a lot of people that talk about them, and, used to eat them, but, would not do so on a bet these days. However, if the product was that loved, it seems to me that they could have gotten away with raising the price a bit, and more than easily made up the deficit.

Greetings and Salutations;
          I have not looked at ALL of them, but, I have looked at several, as this came up on a FB posting a bit ago. One very interesting thing I noted was that at the time, a vast majority of the signers of the petition were NOT from the state supposedly wanting to leave. Another point is that I do not think that any such actions should be viable, unless a super-majority - say, 85% - of the population votes for it.
            To me, this is is the action of a small minority of cry-baby deniers who cannot accept the fact that a majority of the voters in the US felt that, even with his flaws and failures, President Obama is putting America onto a positive path that will lead to an improved life for all of us.
          Regards
          Dave Mundt

Just to continue the recursion - I hate people who hate other people for whatever damn-fool thing those people believe!

Greetings and Salutations;
          America, alas, has WAY too many laws. I think this is a side effect of the recent foolishness that has defined a corporation as a "person", and, the unregulated ability of lobbyists for the industry to flood the government with cash to get laws which hurt the consumer and help business passed. I certainly agree that artists should be compensated for their output - after all, their creativity is exactly what we are paying them FOR. However, the only profitable part of the recording industry is to produce content.
          Perhaps the best course of action would be for a groundswell of support by consumers to get the law repealed is the correct answer here.
          pleasant dreams
          dave mundt

Greetings and Salutations;
          I have to say that I am glad that the case failed, and, with luck many more will too. The only people that will get nailed by these enforcement measures are, I fear, the naive and (mostly) innocent youth who are not the soulless thieves engaging in the wholesale business of selling copies of the music without passing royalties along to the artists (and, yes, I do include the recording industry in general in that latter category). IN America, the RIAA did, at one time, provide a useful service at a reasonable price to an artist. However, like many organizations, it has evolved to being in the business of getting as much money as possible from the consumer, and, giving as little of it as possible to the artists that provide its life-blood. Speaking of which...thanks to the creative accounting practices of the RIAA, a given artist might expect a royalty rate of 10% to 20% on an album, but, the actual rate never climbs over 2.75%. A quick search turns up a number of detailed articles about how this works....
          But, I digress - so back to copyright infringement... If the recording industry had not spent the past several decades inhaling stupid gas by keeping its head firmly planted in its ass, it would realize that there are some simple steps that it could take to make everyone in the process richer and happier. I would propose these changes:
          1) drop all chasing after individuals, and, go after the companies that do wholesale duplication and flood the market. Frankly, the recording industry's record of suing college students, grandmothers, and, 6 year old girls for mountains of money is not doing anything positive for them. It is not making the purchasing public think "wow...they are really standing up for the artists! I WILL buy that new album for full retail!", nor, is it actually causing a drop in copyright violations or filesharing.
          2) Seriously reconsider the cost of a CD. One of the major reasons that filesharing happens is that few people are interested in paying $25+ for a recording that might have one or two good tracks on it.
          3) Continuing that thought...stop producing mindless, shallow and mind-numbingly boring albums. I, over the years, have bought quite a few albums. One of the criteria I use to decide if I am going to spend my hard-earned money on the recording is the question - can I tell what track is being played? If I have an album where there are a dozen tracks, all of which sound identical to each other...I probably will pass on that recording. Now, here, part of the problem does lay at the feet of the artists. I think that they have realized that it is all about money, and that the music means nothing. This has depressed their creativity so much that they are phoning in the performances. However, I also believe that if given positive feedback, in the form of fan appreciation, and cash, they might well get that spark back.
          4) realize and accept the fact that file sharing, rather than depriving the company of profit, is the best and cheapest advertising that they could get. The best salesman in the world is the person who has personal experience with the music, and, is pushing it to their friends. When Napster was new, and still legal, the recording industry pushed to kill it by claiming it was the reason that CD sales were down by 15-20%. Well, independent polls showed that people were using it to sample a new artist's music, and, more often than not would go out and purchase that artist's CDs if they liked it. At the time, I was in a fair number of chat rooms, and, I always made it a point to ask how folks were using Napster. About 1 person out of 100 said they were using it to get as much music for free and they had no intention of buying any more CDs. The remaining 99% were using it as a sample source, as I recounted above.
          5) as I touched on in item #3...stop with the accounting tricks, and pay the artists that create the music a fair royalty. I would argue that an appropriate rate these days would be closer to 40% of the gross, because some of the fairly huge costs of creating an album have vanished. The cover art is much simpler, and, there are orders of magnitude difference between the effort it takes to press a vinyl disk, and a CD. Beyond that, labor costs have to have dropped, again, because of technology being able to simplify the manufacturing process and cut down on the number of workers that are needed. No matter though...the biggest part of it is the accounting tricks that can end up with a band selling a million CDs and still end up owing the producer $500,000.00.
          Pleasant dreams
          dave mundt

greetings and salutations;
          Dealing with the Middle East, and the attack rabbit were certainly interesting moments in Carter's tenure. I have to say that the the Iranian Students refusing to release the hostages they held until Reagan was sworn in was a childish and pitiful action that brought contempt down on a society that had some significant high points in its history.
          However, perhaps what is more important is the fact that Pres. Carter has been one of the few presidents who has truly continued to serve the country after leaving office. He has done this in two ways. Firstly, his long-time association with Habitat for Humanity has meant that there are a lot of people out there with homes that Pres. Carter had a real hand in building. He is a fine woodworker, and I would be proud to say that he applied that craftsmanship to MY house! Secondly, his travels around the world to monitor elections and involve himself in diplomatic talks where rational discussion over rides emotion have helped mend America's image in the eyes of the world, and, have helped nurture the spread of democracy - and freedom - which is also a good thing
          Pleasant dreams
          dave mundt

Greetings and salutation;
          So...you, the AC, are willing to trust your government to a man who has made his millions by making sure that the businesses he has had a hand in have made a huge profit, no matter WHAT the human cost, as opposed to a community organizer who has worked to help the disadvantaged in America? You do realize, do you not, that Mr. Romney will throw you under the bus with no more thought or concern than he would with an empty milk carton, if it suited his goals? If you believe anything else, then you have honed the talent of self-delusion to a fine edge.
            As for your comments about the changes that another Obama administration might bring...it is not hard to find a number of discussions on the Internet about how the current administration's spending is MUCH less than previous administrations. This trend is unlikely to change. As for the liberty issue - I agree that we have seen some serious erosion of the rights of Americans, but, almost all those restrictions were imposed by the previous administration. Obama has not added MORE walls, and, again, shows no signs of doing so. Finally....I do not think that word - statism - means what you think it means.
          I believe that it is not the flavor of the administration that manages to buy its way into leading the Federal government that is the major issue in today's world, nor do I believe that either of the flavors have the lock on how to bring perfection to America's society. Rather, what is required for Society to improve and for America to regain some of the luster it used to have is the Citizens working their way back to a more moderate point of view, and, for those citizens to start taking more responsibility for their own lives and working to improve the living conditions in America as a whole. We, as a society, also need to start requiring that our government behave in a more honorable fashion, and enforce that by replacing politicians with others.

Greetings and Salutations;
          I have to point out that "freedom of speech" is not absolute. It does not absolve the speaker from having to take responsibility for their words, nor, is it license to lie without consequences. This has been ruled upon a number of times by the Supreme Court here in the US. I have to say that this is one area where I agree with the Justices (although there are plenty of other areas where we disagree). The way that truth in advertising has become as rare as an Emu these days is a terrible thing and should not be tolerated. If your marketing people are so incompetent that lying about one's competition is the only way they can find a way to show that your company is a better choice, either you need to hire better people, or, admit that they have a point, and, shut down your company, since it obviously is worthless.
          Pleasant dreams.
        Dave Mundt

This is a good point. A bit ago, I noticed that at certain times of the day my aircard would seem to be running slow. Well, being kind of compulsive, I gathered about a month's worth of data by doing speed tests every half hour. I discovered a very interesting pattern in doing this. It seems that every day, between 8:00 and 9:00 in the morning, my speed would drop from megabit rates to 128K (at best- and 64K typical). It would stay slow like that until sometime between 22:00 and 23:00 at night, then, would pop back up to "broadband" rates again.
          Verizon was claiming, at the time, that any speed drops would be the result of traffic congestion at the local tower. If this was the case, I would not have seen such an obvious and consistent curve. After all...The area I live in is lightly populated, and, a vast majority of the people go elsewhere for work. There are not that many companies in the area either that would be depending on cell towers for their communications. This, and the obvious shape of the speed curves, make me think that it was nothing more than deliberate throttling to discourage the use of the cell system for data access.
          I do keep statistics about my bandwidth usage, and, on the average, I pull about 12 gig a month. While more than some, it is considerably less than I used to use. A year or so ago, I was watching more online entertainment content (hulu and youtube have some amazing content), and, was listening to radio stations from around the world that stream their content. I was pulling the high-quality streams for this data too, which adds to the usage. I was also pulling down Linux ISOs and other large data files, so, that added up quickly to the 65 gig or so per month I was using. Now, I almost never watch streaming video, because of the buffering issues (and because of that I am NOT seeing some of the Olympic events I would have liked to watch), and, I choose the lowest quality of streamed sound from the radio stations. I also am simply not listening to as much online content like that as I used to.
          So...the bottom line for me is that I am annoyed by Verizon's business decisions, and, they are pushing me closer and closer to leaving their company, and, moving on to alternative providers. Because of changes in my reality, the need for the remote access offered by the aircard has pretty much gone away, so, I would be quite comfortable with dumping that and going with cable or dsl. We shall see.

Greetings and Salutations;
          Well, I have been editing and contributing to OpenStreetMap for several years now, and, I have to say that while there is a point to the criticism, in general, I would disagree with their analysis. It is a bit too self-serving for my taste. I do not own a TomTom, but, have had a couple of Garmins, and, have used a TomTom unit before. The commercial maps have been no better than the Open Source maps, and in several cases have been far less accurate. There are a number of places here in East Tennessee where the commercial maps have the GPS insisting that I am driving through the fields on the side of the road.
          One point where Open Street Map shines is that it has actual roads and trails in such places as National Parks and forests...where the commercial maps have nothing but blank green areas.

Greetings and Salutations;
          Hum...I have, for years, wanted to see some of the outtakes from "Ice Pirates". It is a truly awful film, but, right after that line, there is a cut and from the expressions that remain on the actor's faces I suspect there was something terribly amusing and probably pretty crude that got said.

          Now, I am going to have to get a copy of it and inflict it on some folks....Sigh.

        Pleasant dreams
        dave mundt