Well, I am an English major who learned programming and started a technology shop I have been running for the last 10 years.

During that time, I have had programmers working for me with CS degrees, but also with degrees in law, economics, theater, criminal justice, business, political science, and other pursuits.

We build websites and CRM systems using open source content management systems. To be honest, the people who have worked out best over the years came to programming from another background. The people that have really thrived have tended to be lawyers, they are able to apply logic on the fly.

Why the boolean logic?

In case you hadn't noticed, pure electric cars are stomping the ever loving crap out of the luxury/performance car market. So long as the cars are selling at a growing pace, they are here to stay and are ready for the people who continue to buy them.

And as long as this happens, manufacturers will make continuing improvements to the cars they make.

A) The power grid is constantly being worked on. As people buy more cars, the grid will be upgraded to match demand.

B) Swappable batteries might be one of those improvements. But they don't seem to be required, at least not yet.

C) 1000 miles on a charge? Show me any common car that gets anything like that range.

Lots of people expect the world to change all of a sudden. But it doesn't really. Instead, continuing incremental changes gradually make the world into a different place. Those incremental changes have rather drastically changed how people interact in just the 30 or so years that I can personally remember.

By reading this comment, you waive all rights to the ownership of your car...

OP starts with: "I am the sole sysadmin for nearly 50 servers (win/linux) across several contracts. ..."

This implies that he's paid hourly. Contracts implies that he's a consultant. If there's anything that a consultant craves, it's billable hours...

I've talked to an accountant about this and we're both convinced this was an RCMP sting. They announced there was a vulnerability on their website about six hours before they patched it. That's either totally stupid and insane, or it was a police sting and they were just waiting to see who would be stupid enough to try and break in through the open door. Please have a seat.

Your points are valid, in a sense. But do you really think that people are going to stop trusting Open Source technologies? What isn't part of the conversation is just how terribly horrible OpenSSL actually is. It's a readability nightmare. The patch makes my eyes bleed, makes me weep gently to myself as I rock myself in an attempt to succor the horrific nightmare that code of this quality is what drives most Internet "security".

I so sorely wish more consideration was given towards NACL as a replacement for OpenSSL. It's clean, elegant, readable. Bugs will be shallower because readers might have *some idea* what is going on. And with an LGPL license, it should be quite embeddable.

IMHO, OpenSSL should be toss summarily as soon as possible. Beneath its horrific API and code lurk untold numbers of nascent, undiscovered holes no doubt already being exploited by our good friends at the NSA.

Writing security code is *hard*, folks. Making it hard to read only makes it impossible to debug...

My feeling is that a lot of older computer users suffer from ergonomic injuries as a result of repetitive stress. Eventually this won't be a problem for us as we move computers into the mind-space but for now when we have to physically interact with computers it's one of those injuries that can really lower the quality of life, let alone the scoreboard.

It's BECAUSE of open source we even learned about Heartbleed. If it was closed source the hole would still exist hidden in the shadows.

If there were another smart animal on this planet, as smart as we are and more cooperative and less likely to lie to each other AND being speciist, ie not trusting human beings, then they would have an evolutionary advantage as a species over us. There isn't.

This is totally mind-blowing to consider. Perhaps that's exactly the kind of species we could encounter that was space-faring, and from another planet, solar system or galaxy. When you consider the Borg in Star Trek terms fits this concept perfectly, it's a little chilling. I wonder if it's simply free will and a short lifespan that causes a species to be so completely dishonest as human beings.

You're falling prey to the foolish notion that someone couldn't devise a strategy around this deficiency. One exists to effectively remove dishonesty from the equation.

We're in the age of dating profiles. A successful nerdy high functioning autistic can mate and bear children easily enough. The fact the autistic doesn't have to contend with hundreds of women eagerly waiting for his sexual attention merely offers up more time to do whatever great things the universe has in store.

So you're suggesting that evolution relies upon dishonesty? You're not wrong... but at some point we hit a wall where continued dishonesty creates a threat that puts our species at risk (which is where we are today). To survive as a species we have to uphold honesty as a defacto requirement or we'll simply be culled from history like the dinosaurs.

Autism is a giant leap forward evolutionary. These low-functioning autistic kids simply haven't had the necessary stimulus, training and radical therapy to become higher functioning. Autism is not a disorder, it is the application of pure order in a world of chaos and ill-intention.

^^^ This. I bought an officially branded Comcast MODEM on ebay for $21 after shipping. It paid for itself in just 3 months, and hasn't given me a lick of trouble in YEARS.

Well, it says 5 years ago, they would not be a team you would expect. I still say it's the Cubs, and yeah, this is just a guess. But I really can't think who else would have a reason to do it.

When I go down the list, here's the teams that have a front office with a strong, expressed interest in Big Data.

- Athletics
- Red Sox
- Cubs
- Padres (Jed Hoyer legacy)

Here are the clubs that are known to have been investing in advanced metrics previously, in some cases at a limited scale.

- Nationals
- Dodgers
- Rays
- Phillies
- Yankees
- Mets

Out of the teams listed above, the Cubs stand out as the one with the strongest support for big data from the front office, and the biggest gap in terms of what they have now. There was an article about Theo recently that talked about the fact they had someone on payroll who would print emails and web pages out for scouts to read, since they were not reading them online. Five years ago, they are one of the last teams I would expect to use metrics in a meaningful way.

I discount the other teams based on the following factors:

- If it was the Yankees, the price tag would be more like $13 million. They don't spend cheap period.

- If it was the Nationals, Davey Johnson would not be in the front office. He has been vocal about not using advanced stats in game-time decisions.

- If it was the Phillies, the system would be less about game time decisions and more about scouting. Their issues with their scouting system are well-known.

- The Rays are all about efficiency and doing the most with what they have. They don't like to acquire free agents, they are about building from within. They are not going to have a lot of historical data about their players for a system like this to chew on. It would not make sense for them to invest in one.

- I could almost see it being the Dodgers, but the Dodgers have a lot on their hands with new television contracts. I doubt they have the bandwidth for an organizational overhaul on top of that. They are focused on marketing, and this plays a role in how they make decisions.

- The Mets continue to struggle financially, and I am not sure they are entirely solvent. I am sure a capital expenditure like this would be something people would have already heard about through the media. It's possible it's something that would need to be approved by a bankruptcy judge.

The teams I simply discount are as follows. I don't see where big data fits into what they are doing. A $500,000 investment in winning requires some kind of organizational commitment to transforming the club overall, which just doesn't jive with the way these teams spend money. They either have systems that already work, or the markets they operate in allow them to make money without winning. I don't see where the impetus for a big, organizational change comes from with these ones.

- Orioles
- Indians
- Twins
- Mariners
- Angels
- Rangers
- Astros
- Marlins
- Pittsburgh
- Braves

That leaves about 11 teams to think about. If there was a wildcard, I would say it's the Twins, simply because Selig owns them and is aware of what Big Data can do.

Yeah, and the Red Sox has Tessie. I don't think they are in the market for a replacement.