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Comment I was just talking about this with my wife... (Score 5, Interesting) 306

She asked me, "how do you know you are a good computer technician"

Me, "because I know how little I really know. When I was a good amateur, I thought I knew a lot, and was confident, but now, I know so much more that I know what I don't know. That makes me a good technician."

She was confused, but I now I know there there is a scientific name for what I was trying to explain.

Comment Re:Hold on a minute (Score 1) 198

Part of what determines pay is
1. how difficult is it to find qualified people
2. does the position help you make more money, or is it an expense

Software developers help companies make more money. It is the Add in Value-Add. They are the equivalent of the machines in a machine shop. Without them, what is the point in being in business. If you are a software company you pay what you need to pay, to recruit and retain the best developers you can.

Teachers work for a government agency. It won't turn a profit. The agency collect tax dollars for existing and teachers are an expense. There really isn't any competition to recruit the best ones. People pay lip service to the idea of recruiting the best ones, but they really don't. Education wise, it compares to nurses and architects. Benefit wise, it is one of the best in the country. Some parts of the country have trouble recruiting new teachers. But others don't . A school district will never pay more than required to have a teacher in the classroom, talent be damned. In fact, I think school districts would rather hire fresh young faces out of college, and pay them starting wages than experienced master teachers who will cost them 2x-3x as much.

Comment Re:Fission = bad, but not super-bad (Score 2) 218

I have always felt the problem of fission waste disposal has been overblown.

If the goal is "walk away safe", then fission fuel is walk away safe in about 300 years too. The high level radiation emitted by the fission products comes from cesium and strontium and in 300 years, it will all be gone. Leaving low level radioactives, Uranium and a tiny amount of plutonium. In 300 years, the used rods will emit the same level of radiation as the unused rods. Since plutonium is an alpha emitter, the used rod will effectively not emit any radiation from plutonium. You could store one under your couch and not suffer any ill effects.

Reason why the US doesn't reprocess nuclear fuel rods anymore is that the Dept of Energy realized that as long as the fuel pellets remain intact, the uranium and plutonium is entrapped in the metallurgical structure of the fuel pellets. For the uranium and plutonium to be released back into the environment they will have to be melted down. If the pellets are unchanged, we could probably recycle them back into a new reactor in 300 years even.

Comment Re:Ugh blowhard city (Score 1) 549

I agree with his contention that we need to start teaching people about password managers.

I have been using one for 2 years, my wife just found out last week. She was furious. She struggles with trying to come up with good passwords all the time. Based on past experience, she does come up with good ones. The last one I know about is 13 characters long.

Password managers make the process of having a different password for every website trivial. Some of them will generate random usernames too.

Mine generates 10 character passwords, by default. Capitalization, Symbols, Numbers and lower case randomly throughout.

Comment Re:Solution (Score 1) 410

In a National Sales Tax plan

It doesn't matter how much Wealth someone has. Who cares how much wealth someone else has? We don't tax Wealth in the US. We tax Income

Wealth doesn't matter with Sales Tax, because we would be taxing spending. That inherited wealth that moves from generation to generation? Who cares how much money someone has in the bank doing nothing. When they spend it and try to improve their quality of life, it gets taxed.

It is a shallow and covetous person who cares about how big someone else's bank account is. What we really care about is how that person spends their money to give themselves a better standard of living than their neighbors.

Comment Re:Solution (Score 1) 410

I've always said the exceptions in a National Sales Tax would be

1. Food - All Food
2. Health Care/Medicine, including OTC
3. Clothing under $100
4. Primary Residence - have to apply for refund, demonstrating it is primary residence, this one will get complicated

Those things take care of the truly poor.

Comment Evergreen Supertanker 747 (Score 1) 112

This is an amazing water bomber. It drops from so high, the water just mists down like light rain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

Because it is a pressurized system, they can control how much they dump where.

For example, maybe they do 4 drops from 1 tank load, 25% on each drop in 4 different locations

Yes, I am a wildland firefighter, I have been on fires where these planes were working
(Engineboss, Strike Team Leader in Training)

Comment hahaha (Score 5, Interesting) 155

I love the courts logic.

Dealer Franchise Laws were prevented to promote the Franchise model.

If a car company sells franchises in the State, it can't then open Company Stores and undercut their Franchises.

But if the Car Company has no franchises, there is no one being hurt.

Car Dealerships can't sue because they don't like a new Car Company's Sales Model.

Reality is the Franchise owners were licking their chops thinking of all the money they would make selling Teslas in their dealerships. They got butt hurt when they found out Tesla wasn't going to sell them Franchises.

Comment Re:Here we go... (Score 3, Insightful) 454

Israel's pre-1960 borders? The ones were the West Bank belonged to Jordan and Gaza belonged to Egypt?

If it brought a real chance at peace, I believe Israel would agree to that. But Jordan doesn't want the West Bank anymore. Egypt doesn't want Gaza. Israel's pre-1960 borders still would not create a country called Palestine.

Jordan and Egypt don't want to deal with the Palestinian problem anymore than Israel does.

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