Because I don't blow my money on stupidly expensive vehicles, I am far from broke.

And somehow in my simple life, I find I still smile. A lot. Particularly at morons like you who end up going broke attempting to present and preserve their image in the form of superficial toys that are almost as expensive to maintain as the brainless plastic barbie girl who values them over a personality.

And you, want to attempt to call me soulless. Right.

So you drove around the world. Good for you.

Ms. Clarenore Stinnes did that 85 years ago.

(Good thing there was no Saudi Arabia at the time).

"Terror Train has Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as archeologists bringing back a mummy from China via train through Siberia. Then, it wakes up."

What wakes up? Siberia? China? Or the train...

I was an after-the-fact consultant to fix a botched IBM project, and I guess the penalties were so high that IBM bankrolled the re-implementation with on-shore workers to get the project finished. Whenever you go into bed with an SI, make sure you have an iron clad contract and many penalty clauses.

PS: WiPro is almost entirely indian, so I don't know what H1B has to do with anything unless there's some contract requirement to have staff on-shore, which makes little sense when the purpose is to cut dev. costs

Using the back of a different envelope, let's hypothesise some mutation to ebola that gives it a 70% mortality rate (the mean of the mortality rates you cite), and a flu-like transmission profile. Then in around 5 years of cycling through the population, we'll be down to about 2.1 billion people left on the planet. That's around the population in the late 1920s to late 1930s.

Add on your 69 years for 3 generations and we'll be back to a population situation of 1933 + 69 = 2002. In short, we'd be back to the approximate population position of today.

I see that you cite American flu rates, suggesting that you may be American. Given that, likely you live there and rarely leave (average American)? Of the last 3 years I've spent about 8-9 months (I'd have to check my pay slips) living in various countries of Africa and on my last rotation out of there an aircraft fault put us down into Abidjan airport, which borders the most recent ebola outbreak. My next rotation into Africa will see me in Gabon, in the thick of the "ebola belt". Ebola isn't a theoretical issue for me, and I'm paying close attention to the vaccine work, and would consider participating in clinical trials of one.

Oregon's health website is a monstrosity. They budgeted way too much money, were way over ambitious, and involved way too many people. The opposite end of the spectrum is Kentucky, which budgeted the least amount of money, and was thus forced to implement a streamlined site with a small lean team. Kentucky's website was ready on Oct 1st, and has run since without a hitch.

I think go for easy solution. introduce the patches in batches for the board. ("monday updates for week 32")

I won't comment on MS Windows, although I don't think what you have said will work very well, since I have never seen Production MS centric machines updated on a weekly basis.

Providing information for Linux (Redhat example) is very easy if you have the rpm's. All you need to do is run "rpm -qp --changelog " on every package associated with a particular kernel release/update and provide that information to the Change Advisory Board (CAB) which may result in 100's of package information. This is extremely easy to automate and should only take you a few minutes.

If you provide the above type of info to the CAB then I am quite sure they will do one of two things. 1) Throw a "hissy-fit" (grin) and never want to speak to you again, or 2) Thank you for the information and get back to you in a few months. Of course to keep on their good side you could just give them the changelog of the kernel you are going to install then explain that this is your reference and in the case of a Redhat distribution, which the company has to pay for, this should be enough although you may want to list all the packages that will be updated and let CAB decide if they need their changelogs as well.

I do have to state that in a production, QA, development and to a lesser extent a test and/or "crash and burn" environment you should have appropriate software contracts in place whether it be for a Linux, Microsoft or Unix solution or even some other OS. Having an appropriate software contract in place should save yourself allot of problems and you actually look good with management especially if you can give CAB the info they require (not necessarily want) that will get the job done quickly and efficiently.

In the case of Linux it is fairly easy to setup (approx a days works) an "in-house" repo "jump" server keeping in mind your network people need to get involved here since all target machines will need network access to this machine (or multiple machines if you have separate networked environments. On your "repo" server (appox 100GB+ needed) make sure the appropriate distribution are kept current (within a week) then create links to a staging area that the software updater programs (ie. yum or apt-get) on the target machines can see which contains the packages that will be updated against a kernel (changelog provided to CAB) that they will be reference against. It must be noted that emergency (ie. security) patches should always (you need to check) have the kernel that the patch came out with which means you should update all packages associated with that kernel. Google and your software provider is your best friend here.

Obviously in the case of a company you must follow "Change Management" procedures and if they don't have one (yes some companies don't have this) make sure there is one in place since this covers you if things don't actually go as planned, then you would need to fall back to the appropriate part of the companies "Disaster Recovery Plan" (your company does have one that is tested, I hope).

Sounds complicated, well it is and it isn't. Basically no company that is serious should be without "Change Management" procedures and an appropriate tested "Disaster Recovery Plan" should contain a section for backups and recovery processes and the policies covering them. I am aware that some people will disagree with me but put yourself in the the shoes of the System Admin who has to explain to Management why the Production machine crashed and/or data was corrupted or lost because procedures were not followed.

Yeah, I met the statement bitch once, and she was very clear on what she meant.

The vague "respond to detection" in the patent application is intended to cover all possible responses, including a remote kick to the dick. So, you'd have to license Mr. Bill's patent.

No, because I grew up reading my dad's American Rifleman's. Still remember the WWII surplus rifles advertised for 25$ or some such. Yeah when I signed up last August I had a choice of three different mags.

That's how my Momma sees it..... wait a minute.... Ma? That you?

Gee, that's funny. And here I thought I was in the majority in thinking that it is in fact Oracle who lacks the skills, knowledge, or ability to fix that piece-of-shit Frankenstein they want to label a working product.

I suppose if you thought you were buying a perpetual bug and patch service, sure. They're fucking awesome at that. I might even be so bold as to say #1 in the industry.

I'll take nasty coal ash over old fuel rods, ton for ton, in my backyard ANY day.

Till someone shows me a significant percentage of the 29 kilotons of spent crap done away with in some reasonable fashion, I just don't see more nuclear reactors being the answer.

You can point at the crazy US all you want, but I have not heard of ANY country who has gotten it figured out beyond the current "store and pray" approach.

Hmmm single and 20-40 would qualify for healthcare card, new start allowance, and food coupons even if I didn't have public housing. Of interest is that we have a rental property we are currently tenanting with jobless person who is in the exact predicament you're describing. Male, 35, no job, no savings, yet never behind on his rent and as far as I know they are still alive. Now things may be different in America where people are genuinely in a bad place, but there's no excuse for it in many countries.

It's a free world. If you want to drink yourself to death on the street go for it. You have every opportunity including free counselling sessions to break out of your cycle. Just don't expect me to drop another dollar in your empty grande starbucks cup.

I'd assume that their legal team would be running around the company quietly busting skulls if they didn't.

"Incur significant legal exposure during the course of fucking up a high-profile project for a government client" isn't one of those good strategies.

Doing one or the other can actually be surprisingly lucrative; but both, less so.

Oh you mean like a pair of turbo chargers do? That increases the intake pressure to improve the power efficiency of the ICE when it is running at high output? The turbo charger is a much more effective use of 'waste heat' than what Honda and BMW are doing. Oh and the 'waste heat' is also used to keep the catalytic converter active to break down all the partially burned hydrocarbons in the gas. Ask yourself why the turbine portion of the turbo-pump is as close to the exhaust-ports as practical? I'll give you a hint: for thermodynamic efficiency the input side of the turbine housing needs to be as hot as possible. Putting after the catalyst would reduce efficiency because the cat is consuming heat energy to oxidize the combustion products.

Heck, using the 'waste heat' from the coolant to warm/dehumidify the cabin, is a more efficient use than these tin selenide whiskers would ever be. So why do we use a rather bulky gas compressor for air-conditioning rather than a heat pump driven off 'waste heat'... After all PLG refrigerators (commonly found in RVs and RTs) have been using this technique for at least 40 years. Hint: it is more efficient to steal a few HP off the engine than to try and generate that energy off the coolant or the exhaust stream.

Bobbied is right, most of you here have no clue about thermodynamics... I know just enough to know most of you just don't get it.

What it really comes down to is there is simply not as much energy in the 'waste heat' from an ICE as most of you here seem to think.
That 15% to 25% efficiency in ICEs hides the source of the losses. Most of the inefficiency comes from reciprocating mass, friction and pumping losses. What little energy is available in the exhaust systems (exhaust and cooling) is already being used and after that there is just not much left.

I agree with bobbied all the way around. The only big win here is going to be increased efficiency of RTGs, and those are only used in power systems where there really is no other option.
 

"Starlost", a badly-done early-1970s TV show that wasted a promising premise (by Harlan Ellison): The multiple bio-domes of a generation ship have been sealed off from each other for hundreds of years after an accident damaged the ship's bridge. The people in each have long forgotten that they are on a ship at all; they only know their little world, like medieval peasants. A handful of people try to escape their own little community and discover that there are other humans - and, after contacting the ship's half-disintegrating AI, that the ship is in danger and *someone* must figure out how to get to the reserve bridge.

You realize the median income in America is only about $25k/yr right? That means half of the country makes that or less. Which even with the best money management skills isn't going to leave with with much for retirement, unless you live like a college student alone by yourself in a tiny rented bedroom for your entire life AND have no irregular expenses like car repairs or medical care.

$25000 times about 0.7 for after-tax take-home pay minus about $1100/mo for ALL expenses total -- housing, utilities, food, transportation including purchasing a means of transportation, education which you will need to get to even that median income level, necessary items to work in today's world like a computer and phone, and so on -- times about 45 years of working and saving the leftovers, divided by 15 years of life expectancy after that, leaves you about $1075/mo to live off of for those 15 years.

Given housing expenses of 50% of that monthly stipend, or about $550/mo (which this tells me is the bottom of the range nationally, for a one-bedroom apartment, with the average being about $750 instead), that leaves less than $20/day to cover every other expense you will ever have in your entire life.

That is the best case scenario that over half of Americans are facing. But they're all a bunch of unskilled losers so they deserve that fate amirite?

I'm still waiting for my 5 year old Linksys WRT320N to be supported by OpenWRT. Still in progress.

However, it's been supported by DD-WRT for a number of years.

From where I sit the only movement from OpenWRT is of the bowel variety and apparently pretty constipated from what I can see.

No, they are on their third "drive unit", which sounds like the speed control in the car. The drive train (or power train) of a car is something completely different.

Signed? Actually no. It's only signed if if I tick a box saying I've read it before I hit like. Simply hitting "like" can not imply that I've done anything. Even a casual litigant wouldn't be deterred by this. Sounds more like a bored legal team had nothing to do on a Friday afternoon.