I predict that beer will be hard to collect from Anonymous Coward. On the other hand I predict that Anonymous Coward will still be around on slashdot and posting comments every day.

Young dads know that bad shit starts the very first day you have to change your infant's diapers instead of...um...delegating it.

I can 1-up you and your 9 characters. My nixie tube can display 10 characters...one at a time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... In my book, it also counts as digital animation.

I've known many to retire in their early 40's from the military, but don't know if its mandatory. Air traffic control, federal law enforcement or some military specialties have mandatory upper-limits on age, coded into law. I think that, after 39 yrs old, you can no longer join the military via a recruiter, but must be "pulled in" by justified exception, such as critical expertise. Even that is hard to justify, if the same skill can be had through a civilian contractors, who face no maximum age limits.

Some private companies can also set mandatory age limits, if they are in an industry exempted from age-discrimination laws or the specific job is age-critical. For example, my friend flies Boeing 747 on international routes for a private USA airline. Even if under the mandatory retirement age, you must pass physical-fitness tests.

I think it's okay, as long as those naval nomenclature steering invitations are, um...shipped electronically.

I feel for you on the job-shadowing and wondering if the talent will be alive or in a hospital bed next month. It's not limited to IT. If I look at my critical vendors, my brilliant tax CPA is another one I wonder about from month to month. He is a lone practitioner with no clerical assistants. I also look at the current batch of kids (future talent) graduating from high school and notice that, while technically literate and imaginative, 1/3 of the graduating kids are obese, as the new normal.
I'm not sure how to build a resurgent culture of self-responsibility and sporting physical play in western civilization, except to encourage a few fellow geek friends here and there and maybe a thoughtful slashdotter or two.

Putting on my IT geek hat, I'd say the term "system" or "same system" is rapidly losing its meaning in the age of "server fabric" and virtualized computing resources. You have systems of systems. Accessing everything from video editing apps to timecard and budgeting submission apps or web-pages from the same workstation, possibly at your home, on the day you telecommuted, using your "federated security credential" on your key-logging terminal. The key-logging pretty much by-passes all security from full-disk encryption, VPNs and secure sockets to compartmentalization and containment schemes, all of which become irrelevent. You don't even need to infect or access the target workstation to key-log it to gain access to bigger systems. Many of the attack techniques have been published or hinted at by security firms, ars technica and commented on by slashdotters over the years. In some of the more interesting techniques, attackers use your smartphone's microphone or your Xbox's Kinnect features.

I don't actually know, but I would speculate that a state-sponsored actor, such as North Korea, can point a low-power laser at your window as you type on your keyboard and a small, crude app can statistically deduce which keys are being struck by both the rhythm, frequency and a differential analysis of the resonant frequency signatures inherent in each keystroke. Don't believe it's possible? Try this simple test. Listen carefully to the tap of your ~tilde key in the upper left corner. Now tap a "home" key such as D, F, J or K. They don't sound EVEN CLOSE in tone of click...do they? Precise tonal frequency differentiation is trivial for a low-end 80's era microphone and 80's era processor. While North Korea likely didn't create the acoustic key-logging technology, they likely can get their hands on it as long as the share the "intelligence take" with their Chinese or middle-eastern eavesdropping equipment suppliers, who most likely also hate Sony even more than some of Sony's consumers.

North Korea has it in for anything Japanese. Strict middle-eastern religions include some great electrical engineering types and are likely outraged by the hot women in Sony's movies. who typically don't cover up in Burkas and have the audacity to drive themselves in cars and argue with men. China wants control of the Asian-Pacific region and wants all the intel, server access and compromised foreigners it can manage to obtain without upsetting its western-civilization consumers of Chinese-made goodies like Lenovo Thinkpads and Apple iPhones.

I employ people in the USA in small IT and EE/IC specialty design shops. Most expert-level employees seem to come with white or grey hair. One of my IT geeks is a "MT Dew Diabetic." Avoiding the maintenance of medical records is simply not an option in the USA, given our laws and court rulings. We have to comply with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), keep records of workman's comp medical restrictions, including very specific information, on what an employee may and may not do as well as provide emergency information to first responders. While often inconvenient, these are requirements I cannot avoid. Some of my employees have medical conditions (heart conditions, organ replacement, severe allergies, diabetes, unusual prescriptions of controlled sumstances, etc.) that they want known and available to first responders showing up at the office if they collapse clutching their heart or go into a sugar coma. Complicating this, if one of your customers is a Federal agency or Defense, you must, by law, have a "zero tolerance policy" for controlled substances. All this requires records to prove or excuse. For government accusations, corporations are "effectively guilty" until they prove themselves innocent with appropriate record keeping. Making this even more difficult, USA court rulings say we're also not allowed to store this information in their personal files, but must keep it in a separate, access controlled file, otherwise we could get sued if that person missed a pay raise or promotion because it was available to anyone reviewing their service and discipline records. The separate files seem silly when the teams are small enough that everyone knows each other very well anyway. Also, what if the employee who first greets the medics from the ambulance don't have easy access the secured medical files? Isn't that an even worse problem? Sued if you do. Sued if you don't. Sued if you didn't do it the nuanced way a team of $300/hr attorneys thinks you should have half-way done it. Nuisance suits are common in the USA.

As a practical matter, a lot of valuable talent is not healthy. Many experts are experts because they have been at a speciality for 30-60yrs. If you have an employee that has an epileptic seizure, you don't want the rest of the team to stand there confused and gawking. You want them to recognize it and intervening to protect that individual's head and spine from injury. I had an employee with mental health issues under the care of a psychiatrist. While she was physically 100% capable (she was young and athletic) yet she was restricted from certain emotionally triggering situations. You want their supervisor trained know what those are and how to avoid it. You want a written record, periodically refreshed, that her supervisor knows and understands. You could say "I don't want to deal with that" but then you lose out on some great talent. Imagine a physics institute that didn't want to deal with maintaining medical records for Stephan Hawking.

Cash brings me enjoyable transactions and frees me from POS terminals, paperwork hassles. I increasingly find that people are patient and courteous while systems are impatient and rude. I paid a neighbor kid $20 cash to shovel a small driveway. I try to purchase my non-tech items used, typically from real people that genuinely appreciate the cash. I paid $150 cash for a 49cc scooter that runs but needs a new battery, $0.25 for a paperback to go in my airline carry-on, $2 for a 16-drawer organizer box nearly full of screws, washers, wire nuts and crimp-on connectors for twisted pair. I doubt the neighbor kids or garage sale lady would have taken anything other than cash.

I try to avoid big-box stores but needed to go to big hardware store get some specific-sized screws to fit the holes in my 19-inch rack to finish a project before the end of the day. It didn't want to swipe my corporate credit card and trigger a bunch of process for a few lousy screws. By spending about $2 cash, I saved me the hassle of filing out an expense report and saved my employer ~$25/hr for each person that would have had to touch the report and approve re-imbursing me with a corporate check for less than $2.

What, exactly is he saying? That the constitutional right to privacy is illegal? Quote: FBI Director James Comey told reporters. "What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law." Don't get me wrong, I'm all for granting emergency access when lives are on the line, but I'd think people would be willing to decrypt devices in specific instances where they knew that someone's life was in danger not for some sort of blanket invasion of privacy to hunt for crime.

Please mod parent up as interesting.

I went through a similar exercise for my house, but my goals were different. I want some things to keep chugging during a power outage or brownout. I wanted some lights (not all of them) to keep working during a power outage. I didn't seek to totally power the house, but to independently power (and self-contain) a few subsystems to eliminate wires and some panel circuits. (low-power IT gear, outdoor LED floodlights, air-exchange vents, attic vents) I also didn't seek to sell power back or store much of a reserve. Apparently, this is an unusual approach.

Recalling that rescue workers dealing with Prius might not know if a vehicle is de-energized, one of the thoughts that went through my mind is that an electrician or fireman might think that by cutting off power at the breaker, they can assume the entire house and all subsystems are de-energized. I wonder if their procedures involve checking for alternate sources of power such as checking for solar panels and uninterruptible power supplies. A Prius or Tesla is a distinct shape that can serve as a warning. My house isn't distinctive. Fortunately, a power outage happened and I had to run around the house silencing UPS alarms. Problem solved.

Yep. Re-purposing is potentially way more efficient than recycling. There's no AC power running to my tool shed. Yet, flick a standard light switch just inside the door and LED lights come on. I recycle less-efficient "worn" solar panels and "worn" laptop batteries by re-purposing them to less demanding tasks.

I'm far from a hippie or greenie. I just love to tear things apart, tinker, learn and redesign with items that would likely have been trashed.

No elevators at most retail stores. A few stores and at corporate offices.

Please mod parent up.

Mod parent up...please. This is the most relevant post I've read today! It's not so much insightful as it is at reversing the lack of insight.