From Heinlein's The Number of the Beast. Great car - could travel through time as well as space.

by Tracy Kidder. A CS prof in school put it on the syllabus. Great account of a development project.

That's insane. My first computer had 64KB and my current has 4GB, for a ratio of 62,500. I ran your formula on this number and got ~43.5. Since I was born in April, 1970, your formula was pretty damn accurate.

A government without debt is a government that isn't investing in its future. Government debt is money that the public is borrowing from *themselves*. So it's not like an underwater mortgage, or a credit card. As long as a government balances its debt with the rate of inflation (which in the US, despite repeated cries of doom, has been at historic lows for a long time), the debt can serve to help drive the economy. If the inflation rate stays low, that means that creditors believe that the government is being responsible with the money, and will be willing to buy more debt. Debt can be a problem, but it's not one the US has to worry about any time soon. Now, unemployment, a stagnating education system, and a healthcare system that is both more expensive and less effective than other developed nations are issues worth addressing. And, frankly they can be addressed to some extent by borrowing more money. I'll sign off this debate after this comment... I think opinions on government services and debt are more like religious faith than considered opinions for most people, probably myself included.

I keep typing and erasing replies to this, knowing that my points won't hit home. As long as there are a lot of voters that believe that there is no place for government in providing services and investing in the future, things are not going to get better. The other fallacies in the quotation above are equally dismaying; the government doesn't provide services with a profit motive. Government debt is not inherently a bad thing (anyone who compares public debt to a credit card is ill informed). Public education and other services do not threaten private education or private donations, but believing that they are mutually exclusive is a red herring and dangerous. I'm in the USA, but I don't think these ideas are uniquely applicable to my country.

I'll bet the software vendor would accept monthly payments or (these days) probably offer the software for a subscription rather than $10k up front. Better than someone hanging on to old software for years and years.

Getting mentors that have engineering or shop skills (and equipment) is important, but frequently overlooked or undervalued is getting a mentor that knows how to talk to kids and get them organized and working as a team. I'm sure there are plenty of engineers that can do that, though its not the most common set of soft skills in a highly technical person. A teacher or a coach that can help the kids break down the competition, prioritize, divide up tasks, help kids identify their strengths and weaknesses as individuals and as a team, set schedules and priorities, and constantly help the kids remember why they are there can go a long way towards a successful competition and teach really valuable life lessons that they are not as likely to get in the classroom at college.

I've got 1 degree, my sister has 2 and my brother has none. So I really wanted to check the first two options. But I just averaged the numbers out and selected the third choice.

Sounds like an idea that has been had before. SeaCode in 2005.

Many commenters have said this already, I just wanted to add my vote. This applies to life as a whole, not just email - People will always try to pass on their problems to you. Don't accept the burden. Nothing good can come of it. You are not being nice and helpful, you are enabling their bad behavior. If an IRS agent sent me an email saying that I forgot a deduction, and would I mind if they just tacked it on to my return before sending out the refund check, I wouldn't bother spending all those hours checking my math next year.

Not sure if my experience is common or rare, but since moving to California in 1993 and registering as a voter and a driver (the two lists from which they pull prospective jurors, as I understand it), I have been called for jury duty every 3 years like clockwork. You can opt out if you have already served in the last 3 years, but it seems like every time my anniversary passes I get another summons to serve. Furthermore, most of the time I have been called to sit in the jury pool in a courtroom, and on most of those occasions I have been seated as a primary or alternate juror. If I am counting correctly, I have deliberated on 5 cases (one criminal and 4 civil) and was a juror in one criminal mistrial that never made it to the deliberation phase. I recently received my latest summons, and for the first time returned it with an excuse: I am presently the stay-at-home care giver for our two kids and finding child care for 2 weeks would be a serious hardship. I don't feel bad at all about opting out this time. As for those who casually brag about getting out of jury duty by claiming partiality or just by being an engineer (since the conventional wisdom is that neither side in a trial wants someone who can piece the facts together on their own), I call bull. Every judge I have ever sat before has grilled prospective jurors that claim they have some reason to be partial to one side or the other. They always end with the bottom line question: "Do you think you can be impartial in this case?" And answering no doesn't guarantee a dismissal from the jury pool.

Check out "The Guns of the South" by Harry Turtledove. Some hyper-racist South Africans bring AK-47s and mortars to General Lee's army and win the war for the South.

+1 Coastal CA. In San Diego it has been overcast for weeks. It might get up into the high 60's today. Waiting on the Southern Hemisphere to chime in about how this is a US east coast-centric poll. Oh, wait, there it is above.