US' persons views on their soldiers is always "interesting".

In my country, a soldier would be expected to go beyond his command structure if he has information of the type that Manning had. In fact, theoretically he should be persecuted if he doesn't do so -- but sadly, that persecution doesn't succeed. (Witness Oberst Klein at the Kunduz bombing.)

90 minutes ago, my mod points expired.

I applaud your comment, and would have liked to still have them.

I know that there are a few questions that no one on my team or my boss could definitively answer.

Then your boss doesn't know how to do his work. If you get run over by a bus and lie for a few month in coma in a hospital, what would he do then? Fire you?

If what you're writing is right, you're a SPOF in your company, and that must not happen. At least, in the company where I'm CEO of, I wouldn't let it happen...

(1) Maybe he's not able to select his working times himselves? (I don't.)

(2) Allocating time slots for various activities (movies, cinema, concerts, usual eating times) is not done by oneself, but by our social environment. As, in Real Life (tm). And they care for these old-fashioned digits on the clock.

(3) 8am? What's this? I've heard of it, but I doubt it exists. :-) :-)

I myself like widescreen, after all our EYES are oriented on a "wide" manner.

This statement is against every research report that I ever read on that topic.

All typography research shows that readibility slows down after more than 70 columns. Your statement is false, IMNSHO. Human perception is not best supported by "wide" manner. Except if you think that looking at Hollywood movies is the equivalent to human perception. Me, I decline to go as low.

Well, at many customers I have a 2nd monitor. At my company, where I do real work, I have only one.

And I'm the CEO, so it's not about money. (A lot of my staff have two monitors, or more -- and they get all they want; it's ridiculous to discuss about the low prices that are involved here in our line of business.)

The real difference: At my work place, I have a *real* big one of the old 24" 4:3 monitors. When this one dies, with this crap of 16:9 monitors en vogue now, I'll have to get two. I don't look video at work; I don't need widescreen. Give me lots of vertical space, and I'm much more happy. But the hardware industry is driven by consumer market today, no hope to get better. (Don't make me start about that insane disk companies... ;-)

In what country do you live?

I'm a CEO, in Germany, of a small/mid-sized company (10 persons + freelancers). If one of my tech staff needs an item below 1.000 EUR to work better, I tell them to buy it and please don't bother me with it. Just make sure that there's a proper invoice for the books.

If my company doesn't make enough money to support this mode of operations; I'd close it down -- it'll be dead in a few months/years anyhow. In the European countries and in the US, where I know the economic situation, this kind of costs are swamped away by cost of operations, and cost of staff. Especially, since it's a one-term cost, and not an ongoing cost on the budget. Any tech staff person costs me at least 100.000 EUR per year, to veto any monitor that makes him more productive doesn't come into consideration at all, that would be foolish.

I wouldn't call myself an audiophile, but in a home-situation, of course one listens to a room. At typical homes, one has neither the nearfield nor the full-range option -- or in only very special cases: I know a person who designed his house around his music equipment, both private and pro; but he's a musician and an audiophile.

That's why IMHO any decent speakers must be taken back home and tested there, in one own's room and with one own's amp, before they're bought. (Last time, I ended up buying B&W Nautilus, because they were the best compromise that I could find at this time. In any other room and with any other equipment, the choice could have been different.)

Wow. In the early 90s, I was responsible to connect the first Rumanian universities (Bucharest, in particular) to the Internet. Since we couldn't get IP going for various technical reasons, we decided to get them email in the mean time, at least.

The first try was with uucp, but they couldn't handle its operations on the Bucharest side. Phone lines weren't stable enough, then. So, for the 1st 6 months, email was sent to Bucharest by Kermit file transfer, triggered by a hodge-podge of MDA scripts, invoked by sendmail. Kermit was way more robust than any other file transfer protocol at this time, we believed eventually it could handle bit transfers over wet clothes lines.

After 6 months, we got uucp going, after getting more help with the network connection from government and EU. Some more months later, we got IP going. Those of you who take always-online for granted don't know at all what effort it takes to make that work.

Ah, I think I'm getting old. Get off my lawn... :-) :-) :-)

You mean, the great American ingenuity shown during Katarina aftermath and New Orleans rebuild? Or the other one, shown while building atom reactors directly in high-risk Californian earthquake areas?