I do design of some telco electronics, and we only use tantalums. After we figured out you have to double the voltage rating, we have not had a single tantalum failure in 6 years. Before then we had a few flashy failures.

Think you're mixing up your percentages. E85 = 85% Ethanol (15% gasoline). There is no such thing as E90. You are probably thinking of 90% Gasoline and 10%Ethanol (also known as E10).

This particular school district has 300 students. So $50.000 divided over 300 students is $167 per student, not exactly pocket change (or if it is, I'd like to be where that is pocket change).

As a H1B, no, you are not eligible for social security.
(Taxation without representation?)

I have a unicomp model M (typing this). It is exactly like a IBM Model M. I believe Unicom bought the molds from IBM once upon a time.

in 0x00000003, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0x00000000, 0x80000000, 0x80000001, 0x80000002..... Huh.... the other one makes more sense (3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2...) as it would be what you got if you decrement a 32bit int: 0x00000003, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0x00000000, 0xffffffff, 0xfffffffe, 0xfffffffd

Which is why, when you do use tantalums, you use ones that are specced at twice the voltage you expect over them.

We've used tantalums in some telecom equipment we make, and except for about 5 spectacular failures (explosions, fireballs) on some early prototypes (because of wrong part numbers and such), we've never seen a failure in almost 7 years.

We could not have used electrolytic caps as they would not have survived as long.

BTW: reverse voltage an electrolyte, and witness the explosion (and foul smell) also.... Used to do that to scare people in electronics class.....
Of course, if we redesigned now, I'd probably change out some of the tantalums with ceramic caps.

My family has diesels in Norway (German Fords, 1.8L TDI). Latitude approximately Anchorage AK.
The cars have a secondary heat turbine that is used as a engine heater to get the engine to starting temperature in the morning, and to INCREASE the coolant temperature if it is too low.

The cool thing is that this turbine has its own timer so you basically have a mobile block heater with you at all times...

Joke #404 - Not Found...

UserFriendly reference:
Text editors

SlickEdit is probably the best GUI text editor I've used.
And it runs on Linux....

If not accessible (cause it is not free nor cheap), I use vim.

We have a product with about 15 fairly expensive BGA's on it.
Before RoHS, we had little to no problems with the board. After we switched, we have a lot of problems with cracked solder joints/BGA balls under the BGA's, and they usually doesn't show up right away, but waits for a few thermal cycles.

The ironic thing is htat since we're making telecom equipment, we're excempt from using unleaded solder, but we cannot get the BGA's with anything except unleaded balls.