*holds up mirror for Florian to gaze into*

You were a valuable unbiased source of information on software patents and patent litigation. Particularly the German court's struggle with them. However it came to light -- in a rather surprising way -- that you were paid or possibly employed by Microsoft and Oracle. I have heard much about this and it often casts a negative light on your blogging but I would like to hear your side of these relationships. I can conceivably understand how you could accept money that furthers your ideals but it is difficult to comprehend how I can be assured this does not influence your writing, position, selected details and bias. Are you able to lay my concerns to rest?

1:10 bleach solution is one of my favorites, but what it lacks is the guarentee, in this case manufacturer's product liability insurance. It doesn't disolve plastic, but repeated and prolonged contact does oxidative damage and embrittlement. It also does a number on latex paint but not immeadiatly and it will corrode metal even stainlees steel and colbalt-chrome alloy.

<BlackHumor> Just tell the Mexicans we're putting illegals into the secret FEMA Ebola Quarentine Camps, problem solved. </BlackHumor>

One problem is to most healthcare workers, all of their training on blood-borne pathogens is geared primarily toward AIDS, unfortunately HIV is a very labile with a fairly high infectious dose, so basically if you do just about anything you kill it and it remains infectious in the environment for minutes to an hour if you do nothing. Ebola on the other hand is a robust virus with a very low infectious dose (1 -10 virus), anything strong enough to guarantee a 99.999% kill rate is going to also dissolve plastic, peel the paint off the walls and corrode any metals to uselessness.

IBM RPG II and of course RPG I. It reminded me a lot of PERL format programing for some reason. I don't think you can get any deader than RPG II.

Just remember that the Healthcare consumer isn't the consumer they are the product; the insurers compete against each others for the companies the "consumers" work for. The employers, and the unions will always over-state their contribution to the workers.

I'm not saying that the heavy hand of Government should bitch slap us into subsidizing every loser's bad life choices, I am saying that hiring a third party assisting you in paying your healthcare providers is not going to insulate you from possible catastrophic costs pushing you into bankruptcy. Additionally as someone who actually works in the healthcare field I can assure you that have private insurance in no way means you are avoiding subsidizing others, and very probably the biggest difference between Government Health care and Private Health care is in the title of the clueless Bureaucrat deciding what care you do or don't get based on actuarial tables and this months numbers.

Bite the bullet and run CAT 6 Ethernet all over the place. You will get 1 GBs without any drops, and it's also future-proof. You may not max out your Internet anytime soon but having this in place will let you naturally upgrade your use as technology advances without requiring any changes.

If you have a NAS or a server, put it next to your fiber in jack along with a suitably powerful UPS. All your major network devices should run from that UPS so you'll be able to have Internet access or a while even when there's a power outage. Run wires from the jack, to your living room, office, and all the other places you will require Internet access. While you're at it, you probably should consider running two strands of wire all over the place. You can either run it in the walls if you feel like it, or use cable covers. Get the wire from Monoprice along with the necessary equipment to install them.

For Internet that goes up to 1GBs, you should get a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite. It supports wire-speed forwarding and costs only $100. However, the setup might be a pain in the ass. However, once it is set up, it will never go down. And it's really goddamned fast. You might also want to invest in a commercial-grade switch such as the Ubiquiti ToughRouter or a Netgear GS116. You don't want to rely on consumer grade stuff that will blow up (like my RT-N16, which suddenly died one day and left my small office without any Internet for an entire day). The price differential really isn't that big. I can transfer files between my NAS and my desktop at 50-60 MB/s without stalling out other people's transfers.

As far as access points, you might want to get one or two that are POE from Ubiquiti. You can get their POE switch for the access points so you can run only one wire and be done with it. If you're going to be in the house for a long time, and your usage will only increase as you have kids, etc., then you should spend the time to set up a very robust network early on.

Actually you can go bankrupt even with Health Insurance in the US, any idea what a 20% co-pay on a bone marrow stem cell transplant runs?

Hard to believe, a modern 1260 MWe coal-fired plant can be run by 3 people, and 2 of those 3 can spend half their night shift fishing. Put he word "Nucular" in front of anything power related and cost go up by orders of magnitude and sooner or later, Fusion isn't going to need to be plated with Unobtainium and all of the Watermelons will realize that neutron activation makes fission and fusion enviromentally equivelent. When that happens everytime someone want to build a Fusion plant the TV will be peppered with images of the Bikini Atoll Operation Castle and endlees law suits.

My favorite keyboard has those tactile switches, it came with my first store-bought computer, a 8MHz AT clone, pre-Windows 3.1, i think it had DOS 5.? on it. It's just starting to glitch after 22 years.

No he/she doesn't have to have any reason to fire you, it's actually better to fire people without a reason than with reason, just like I can quit anytime or for any or no reason. We don't let People go for frivolous reasons, letting someone go costs about $50,000.00 in our industry and of course entails a lot of emotional turmiol, but we could. Even in states like ours where you can fire anyone for any legal or no reason, we tend to keep people who should be terminated far longer than is good for either party.

What's strange about this is Comcast is usually like "sorry about your problem Sir, here's HBO free for 6 months no go away and pretend I helped you", but this guy got then to turn vicious; maybe it was the threat to turn it over to PCAOB!

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is a private-sector, nonprofit corporation created by the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 to oversee the audits of public companies and other issuers in order to protect the interests of investors and further the public interest in the preparation of informative, accurate and independent audit reports. Since 2010, the PCAOB also oversees the audits of broker-dealers, including compliance reports filed pursuant to federal securities laws, to promote investor protection. All PCAOB rules and standards must be approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Public Company Accounting Oversight Board

Makes you wonder if the people running Comcast get nervous about being personally responsible for their corporate activities.

As a result of SOX, top management must individually certify the accuracy of financial information. In addition, penalties for fraudulent financial activity are much more severe. Also, SOX increased the oversight role of boards of directors and the independence of the outside auditors who review the accuracy of corporate financial Sarbanes–Oxley Act

My magic eight ball says the Sarbanes–Oxley Act scares the shit out of the people running Comcast. With Comcast's "stellar" billing and customer service processes, have to sign a statement that the accounting reports are true and accurate to the best of your knowlege under penalty of law has to be pretty un-nerving.

Plague is amatuer stuff, short incubation periods, only 25% fatal but easily treated, and there is even a vacine, unlike other things currently in the news.