have a great deal of respect for you

Sorry, I should have made it more obvious that I was writing tongue in cheek about the monarchy. Not about SpaceX though. I'm pretty impressed.

It doesn't work to do this with a democratic government. We need a monarchy :-(

It seems to me that SpaceX is on the path to a solution that might be affordable by a single administration, though.

Any advise on using monitors for PCB layout under Eagle?

Over half my computer hours are Eagle hours.

Thank you for the link, CSI! I did not know about that one. It looks like a very handy little board that can retrofit into other ISA systems. ( Yes, I can get desperate enough to fire up Eagle and layout a custom ISA motherboard for something like this if the dying dinosaur is important enough ).

Thanks!

I was wondering why my ThinkPads would not see these.

I was looking into that when I was checking out alternatives to sub-gigabyte hard drives to keep legacy systems ( DOS and the like ) alive.

Sandisk's CompactFlash memory cards ( intended for professional video cameras ) seemed to make great SSD's for older DOS systems when fitted with a CF to IDE adapter. I can format smaller CF cards to FAT16 ( using the DOS FDISK and FORMAT commands very similar to installing a raw magnetic drive ). With the adapter, the CF card looks and acts like a magnetic rotating hard drive. I had a volley of emails between SanDisk and myself, and the gist of it was they did not advertise using their product in this manner, and they did not want to get involved in support issues, but it should work. They told me they had wear leveling algorithms in place, which was the driving force behind my volley of emails with them. I was very concerned the File Allocation Table area would be very short lived because of the extreme frequency of it being overwritten. I would not like to give my client something that only works for a couple of months - that goes against everything I stand for.

So, I have a couple of SanDisk memories out there in the field on old DOS systems still running legacy industrial robotics... and no problems yet.

Apparently the SanDisk wear-leveling algorithms are working.

I can tell you this works on some systems, but not on others, and I have yet to figure out why. I can even format and have a perfectly operational CF in the adapter plate so it looks ( both physically and supposedly electronically ) like a magnetic IDE drive in one system ... but another system ( say an old IBM ThinkPad ) won't recognize it. However a true magnetic drive swaps out nicely - albeit the startup files may need to be changed from one system to another.

First, I will say I have worked for a major oil company.

Second, I will say I have read "Twilight in the Desert" by Matthew Simmons, was an ardent follower of The Oil Drum petroleum web site - was more active there than I am here.. That site was full of petroleum engineers and field guys - and I trusted their insight far more than I trust words from any investment advisor sitting behind desk whose job it is to influence my decisions of how to allocate my retirement savings.

And Third, I will say I swallowed the "Peak Oil" paradigm hook line and sinker. Apparently messed up my retirement savings big time by investing in the energy sector as I believed with all my heart that we were in serious decline.

Suddenly fracking made the scene and all the investment buyers saw energy as plentiful again. And the price dropped, And many of the smaller guys sold out.

I cannot help but wonder if all this panic talk is them yet rounding up another round of panicky people and investors to make a poor investment.

I can't help but remember all this talk about how dire our energy situation was coming from our leaders. Then there is no energy crisis, Then there is.

Almost sounds like Donovan singing about petroleum. First there is a crisis, then there is no crisis, then there is.

We pay countless taxes into our government, and countless well-paid bureaucrats are supposed to be leading us, but does anyone up there really know what's going on?

So far, they seem to rank about as reliable as an ouija board.

How in the hell can anyone make rational decisions when no-one seems to take this stuff seriously? It seems lately all our government has wanted to so is snoop. 96% is a helluva big number.

I believe special interest tie guys have the government release all these "facts" in order to manipulate the market.

When I saw fracking, I was and still am concerned that was equivalent to "blowing the gas cap" on a dying oil well as once we relieved the subterranean pressure that was helping to push what was left of the liquid oil to the surface, we were draining the last "fart" from the earth before there was no longer enough energy recoverable from the lift effort than we were able to recover from the oil lifted. It meant the show was over.

I remain very concerned this whole fracking "happy days are here again" thing has been nothing more than a ploy to get control of the remaining oil reserves at a bargain basement price.

Do I understand correctly that you have worked on that project? If so, could you comment on what the people on LPP Fusion are doing? Is is feasible / safe / sustainable?

I would not be surprised in the least to find voice over internet protocol (VOIP) completely taking over once everyone has access to this technology.

Who needs a cellphone carrier if they have access to the internet?

The providers as we know them now may go back to selling buggy-whips for all I know...

If Boeing was interested in getting people into space, more than a handful of them would be there. The fact is that it has taken a company that was outside of the system, with a tiny fraction of Boeing's funding, to make more progress than Boeing has.

And of course it's in the U.S. interest to make sure the Russians have an active and completely up-to-date source of rocket engines for their nuclear missles.

In this vein, I wonder what it is we are paying the Chinese to do?

I thought AT&T's whole marketing plan was based on the magic words "up-to [dream] for only $[price]* ".

Those magic words "up-to" make great talking points for the advertising people's sales pitches without committing the company to a thing, while at the same time obligating anyone who drinks their kool-aid to pay at least [price] and *likely more.

It seems every time I see those words "up-to" I think its "AT&T calling"

I wonder how simethicone would work on something like this? ( its the stuff used in those digestive-gas pills ).

( Assumption... if it works, it could be made much cheaper on an industrial scale ).

Its on YouTube as well.