I'm assuming this is a part-time position and she's the only one in her team...

Yes, it was entirely voluntary or SWIFT would be barred from operating within the US or with any US banks outside the US.

It was just me and about 200 million other EU citizens. The US decided it was going to revoke the permission of SWIFT, the largest interbank exchange company in Europe, to operate in the US unless they voluntarily handed over all financial data for data mining.

The US has also been caught demanding lots of information from individual banks and online retailers.

The US government is not a nice bunch of people.

You don't have traffic cameras in the US? Are you sure about that?

And you do know the whole "Van that can detect your TV" is a myth, don't you? I think you've just discredited yourself...

If regulation is based out if the USA that will make it a no-go for me. The US already illegally snoops my EU-based bank account, illegally gets my UK-based purchase data and has illegally obtained SWIFT data in the past. A US-based regulator is not to be trusted.

You sound like you've never had to mediate a 3-way vendor argument between the hardware vendor, the linux support vendor and the HBA vendor, all claiming that it's someone else's fault that the hardware/OS/HBA combo doesn't work, even though they assured you that it did before you bought it. Oh, and you're a top customer, so they want to keep you really really happy. But not "it actually works" kind of happy.

Spoken like someone who has never run them side by side in a large estate. Even 10+ years after Linux's enterprise debut, they're not even close. I've just had to reboot 3 RHEL 6 boxes twice each because for some reason they no longer scan the bus correctly. You have to add new disk, reboot, partition, and reboot again. Last time I had to reboot a Sun box because we added new disk was 2004, and that was because the site standards were rubbish and they were configuring their HBAs incorrectly. There's almost no comparison between Linux and Solaris, still, years after all kernel developers started concentrating on making Linux better for the datacentre. The last time I suggested sending a Linux kernel dump to RedHat or SUSE we all laughed. They don't even look at them, they just blame the hardware and suggest we update firmware. Then they cross their fingers and hope. And where's the fabled DTrace equivalent for Linux? I'm sure I missed that announcement, as when Solaris 10 was announced every Linux fanboy said it would be shipped and stable in Linux before Solaris 10 DVDs hit my desk. Fail.

Or who want to run large databases with more than a few GB of RAM. Small databases seem fine on Linux, but Oracle or DB2 or Sybase don't seem as stable on Linux as on Solaris when you get up to 32+GB RAM.

Yes, and it's a crying shame. Oracle are terrible. I know of whole enterprises who jumped ship when Oracle took over. But Linux still isn't there, even though most places I'm working at these days have more Linux than Solaris, HP-UX or AIX, and usually more than all other Unix combined. But there's still too much of the amateur around Linux.

I just had a great idea for a kickstarter campaign - adjustable pressure keyboards. You tell the company what pressure you want, and you get a clickety keyboard carefully adjusted for the pressure you want, from those who like keyboards which are clunky but not too hard to press past the model M 'ideal' 80g through to, oh, say, 5-6 Kg of force to press each key. Keyboards at the upper end of the scale have slightly larger keys and ship with a free mallet. Really good for typing out emails like "No, you may not change the scope of the project because you feel like it, and no I don't feel like holding yet another meeting about it."

Too small. It seems some time ago car manufacturers decided on a standard radio size. At least here in Australia they did. It's at least twice the front surface area of my car radio.

Actually, all of what you wrote is nonsense. Eight villages are to be destroyed next year alone: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/24/palestinian-villages-demolition-idf-hebron. There's no doubt in anyone's mind, including the Israeli military's, that the Palestinians own the land, and have done since the late 1800s, well before Israel existed, let alone started expanding. That doesn't matter to Israelis, demolishing Palestinians' homes does.

It's also the case that, where Palestinians have land, they are never allowed permits to build, but that's just a by-product of a racist society that doesn't believe in equal rights or the rule of law. Institutional racism is common and encouraged by successive Israeli governments, who then brag about it to get re-election. The Arab 20% of Israel don't get 5% of the education budget, for example.

Where there is illegal construction by Jews and non-Jews side by side, the non-Jewish buildings are demolished at a rate of 5 times more often than Jewish buildings, for example in East and West Jerusalem, even though there are more illegal Jewish-built buildings in West Jerusalem than there are in East Jerusalem.

I could go on, but as you're either woefully mis-informed or lying your teeth off in an effort to hide the truth about Israel, you'll never admit that what you posted was utterly and completely wrong, so I'll just sign off and hope you don't demolish too many more Palestinian houses in 2013...

Actually, the current Israeli PM is expected to explicitly rule out a two-state solution as his running platform as there are elections looming. He ran and won the last election there under the platform of single-handedly destroying the Oslo Accords and preventing a Palestinian state from being formed. I doubt the Israeli electorate are suddenly going to change and decide that, actually, they do believe in democracy or human rights for non-Jews.

No, actually this was, again, explicitly ruled out by the last Israeli government during negotiations, where all Jewish settlement blocks had to be a contiguous part of Israel. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Papers#Borders Apart from the obvious Israeli political abandonment of the two-state solution, the issue of water and resources means that it's just not practical for Israel to abandon the very lucrative occupation just for peace. Right now the occupation is funded by the UN and the EU, with the US flinging billions of dollars at Israel to keep it going. Why abandon such a lucrative source of income?

It's an awesome excuse to steal more land and demolish more Palestinian villages in the West Bank - "We need it for a fibre optic connection to the settlements." (Never mind that it's likely to be run along existing telephone or power lines.)

Don't get the one with the red setting - there's not much use for it in a server room and it's way more expensive than the base version...

I didn't mention it as I thought it was really obvious. I'll be travelling with a full backup in my carry on luggage, and another in my suitcase...