Corn's incredibly harsh on the soil. It annually needs a lot of fertilizer (that is, modern corn). Biofuels - pretty much everyone before the corn lobby got into it was talking lots of other, easy, fast-growing *weeds*, like switchgrass comes to mind. No fertilizer, etc... I mean, it's a *weed*.

But agribusiness industry (petrochemicals into fertilzer, for example) aren't interested in *that*....

                mark

All the idiot 20-somethings and 30-somethings who are *SURE* they're going to be millionaires, and so want to make sure millionaires pay lower taxes than they are now. And they'll never need to worry 'bout healthcare, and of *course* they'll retire at 40.....

Allow me to reiterate: there are two kinds of Republicans, Libertarians, and neoConfederate "Tea Partiers": millionaires, and suckers.

                    mark

Depending on your tastes.... Mother Earth News?

                mark

First, as some other folks have said, give them a weekly list, not every day, or every time one's announced.

Actually, that might burn them out... or, they might decide to batch them on their own, and think they'll get to it eventually.

Here's one: give them a weekly list, AND INSIST on a weekly meeting to discuss it. EVERY WEEK, without fail, without cancellations. Tell them that you'll also want a spot meeting, when you get critical updates (like yesterday's Java from Oracle, with it's 4 that had a CVA rating of 10 on a scale of 10). Insist that if you get those, they need to meet that day, or the next, or give you the pre-approval to put those in without consulting them.

The weekly meetings will get to them in relatively short order, they being so busy and all....

Also, here's another pushback: do you have a testing group, that runs regression tests before regular updates, and especially on ermergency ones? If no, question the committee how they expect you to regression test everything. Also, do you have test, as opposed to development systems? If not, that's another budget item the board needs to approve..

Make them do that real job, professionally. See how much they hate doing it, and maybe it'll go away.

                    mark

Used to be social security in the US, you could retire at 65. Now... 62... but you get a third or more less monthly. 67 gets you your "full" amount, but if you wait till 70, you'll get more.

So, enjoy your jobs, and your bosses, and let's not forget that we have to spend for overpriced crap, so that CEOs can get their increasing millions, y'know. It would be *such* a hardship on them to pay what we pay in taxes, and maybe we could go back to retiring at 65 (oh, and opening up jobs for you kids....)

              mark

--
There are two kinds of Republicans and Libertarians: millionaires, and suckers.

Not looking at all the libertarians here, are you? Skimming their posts? It's *much* worse than it was 10 or 12 years ago....

              mark

Amen. The populace was to be armed to ->protect the country (A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State). There's *nothing* in that about self-defense, or collecting nuts. Now, in what way are the gun nuts "defending the US"? If they want to, they're free to join the US Army, or maybe the National Guard.

And how many gun nuts who read and post to slashdot have ever used one in "self-defense"? (And, if so, did the cops agree?)

Note that until around 1980, *ALL* the decisions of the SCOTUS were for what I say above. Since then, it's all part of the real right wing agenda, to make this country what it's become: the home of the cowards and the terrified (they're *so* much easier to control).

                mark, who grew up non-Black in a slum, has lived in rough city neighborhoods, and has *never*
                                          needed a gun... but then, I'm not scared shitless of Those People

I mean, let's be real: the US right wants lower taxes, and to spend it on as little as possible (except for defense).

The NIH, arguably the largest, and possibly best medical research organization in the world, has had their funding either stagnant or cut (remember the Sequester - it's still there). They then allege that corporate and academic research will take its place, and do better.

Riiight.

Where do the academics get theif funding? Surprise, a lot comes from the NIH.

Corporations, doing basic research, that may eventually lead to important discoveries? I mean, *really*, what kind of ROI is there for this quarter or the next quarter in *that*?

              mark

ObUSTaxDeadlineDay: simplify the 1040:... eliminate forms D (capital gains) and B (dividends and interest)... roll them *DIRECTLY* INTO GROSS INCOME, and tax them *ALL* at the full rate, not 15% or less. And shut up, slashdotters, not mnore than 10 of you makes any major percentage of your income via stock trading, nor is ever likely to.

I almost forgot: if the miner's pver 30, and doesn't get a BS degree, what HR moron is even going to consider them? Who's actually going to *hire* them, when so many people with a lot of experience and degrees (and are over 30 or 40) are having trouble finding and keeping work?

Retraining does *NOTHING* if you don't have any reasonable expectation of finding a job.... (Oh, and you should expect to pick up yourself and maybe your family from where your family's lived for maybe generations, and move somewherre else....)

                  mark "come the Revolution, we'll lead HR depts into the parking lot, throw asphault on them, and PAVE THEM
                                            INTO THE ROADWAY, so that they'll provide *some* social utility...."

calls this absurd".

Dear Rupert F.* Murdoch,

      I realize that you're an 0.01% Australian who bought citizenship in the US, so perhaps you might have one of your lawyers explain the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, that mentioned indentured servitude.

      And then you can tell us how all of *your* employees get 10% over base salary while they're on-call, and what your *official* comp time policy is. Oh, and about the annual bonuses *all* of *them* get.

      Alternatively, FOAD. I haven't answered any since I worked for a Baby Bell in the mid-nineties, and have no intention of ever doing so.

                    mark

* fscking

Someone who wants to set up one or more test boxes, and let the END USERS try it out and get used to it? Doesn't that violate what MBAs are taught, that only upper managers know enough to design stuff (even if they've just been hired from another industry)?

Seriously, I'd start out with several boxes, and *ask* if someone(s) would be willing to try it out, noting that XP *must* go away. I'd also recommend *NOT* using a bleeding-edge Linux like, Fedora, or any of them that have tons of updates almost daily. Go for an enterprise distro (ok, I'm biased: we use CentOS (== RHEL), becuase the enterprise distros' big emphasis is on STABILITY, and reliability, not the latestgreatestneetk3wlcrap. Note also that enterprise distros have five or 10 *years* of support, so you'll see the bugfixes and security patches for that length of time.

                    mark

As a personal side note, when did the GOP bring up a bill to force all insurance companies to offer medical coverage to *all*, and not refuse due to "pre-existing conditions"? Did I miss that?

Did they also have, in the same bill that I missed, where > 80% (or is it > 90%) of the insurance money was to be spent on healthcare, and 10% on "administrative costs" (including CEO's bonuses)?

                  mark, in the home of the cowards and suckers

You also can't teach some Kewl White Boys how to code, either - over the decades, I've had to deal with utter *crap*, with inconsistancies, lack or piss-poor error handling, and on and on.

Current pet peeve: a few months ago, I had to build BioPerl as an rpm at work. It took, on and off, about a month - some modules had hard-coded /usr/perl, /usr/bin/perl/ /usr/local/bin/perl into them; then there were the documented circular dependencies....

Oh, and if you want to teach everyone to code, and give them a job (yours?), then who are you going to get to fix your car, or your plumbing?

              mark

Flat files? What was the world's *largest* database, at least as of 6 or 8 years ago, is Daytona, with trillions of records. It's Bellcore, it's flat files, they write quesies in C... and it's the record of every phonecall ever made, back to "Come here, Mr. Watson, I need you".

                  mark

The ones that were fixed by the updates for all RHEL-derived distros, like CentOS, a month ago?

                  mark