I don't think they were arguing that NASA is whats driving the USA to bankruptcy.

It seems to me that the only large scale, extravagance that the USA funds these days is war.

And that is whats driving the USA to bankruptcy (in more ways than one) and what will ultimately prevent the USA from having a viable space program.

I've done volunteer work through the RedCross. http://www.redcross.org/ Like others have mentioned if you are just wanting to help a week at best you'll be digging ditches or sorting donations. Small things like sponsoring a blood drive or working the refreshment stands at a blood drive is very helpful and can be done short term.

They've got chapters all over the world so they may be able to hook you up with a foreign "office" for something short term. They are a great group to volunteer with year round and they give you a ton of options so you can find something that fits in your life.

You may also want to try http://www.volunteermatch.org/ I've never used them, but RedCross uses them as the backend for their volunteer search pages.

If it's set up as a business, then people are less likely to ask for little things because they cost money. This can be bad, because it may make people limit their requests. However, it can also be good, because it means there are fewer bogus requests.

If IT is not set up as a business then it's very tricky to determine where time/money/effort should be spent because it's hard to know what requests are important and which ones are just would-be-nice.

There needs to be some sort of accountability between the other areas of the business and IT. One way of doing that is to force the other areas to pay for the work that they want to get done.

If the company is small enough, this can all be done informally. When you've got tens of thousands of people, it becomes a much different ballgame.

Our administrative staff actually love Firefox once we setup Forecastbar for them. Something about having the weather constantly displayed brings them inner joy and peace. Plus then they don't ask for Weatherbug which we have had problems with in the past.

Unfortunately noscript was too difficult for the majority of them to grasp. Once they realized how to allow everything that is what they did. Go to a page, it doesn't work, & click allow. So we compromised and use Adblock & Flashblock. Doesn't protect from nearly as much as noscript, but less confusing.

Funnily enough, the topic of video game music came up in conversation the other day. The right music can put a great finishing touch to round of a game. I'm sure everyone is familiar with Braid, but Hardw[a]r had some pretty decent music to go with the setting of the future on Titan.

Additionally, if a game is good it creates a pleasurable association with the music present. Sounds obvious, but I still listen to the music from the original GTA because it reminds me of the fun I had. That and some of the songs were hilarious - listen to The Ballad Of Chapped Lips Calquhoun*, or 4 Letter Love by 'Stikki Fingers'). I loved playing Total Annihilation too, and thought the orchestral compositions by Jeremy Soule were great. For 10 years I had no idea they were synthesized! Doesn't detract from them, of course, I just assumed that because they sounded so *good* they must be recorded from real instruments.

Lastly, to this day I have a certain fondness for ragtime music (of all things!) that stems from days spent playing Virtual Pool.

/nostalgia

* If you remember the lyric "the menfolk found their women scary, 'cause they were so big and hairy", this is the song. If you don't, well, that lyric sets the tone.

Well, at least for HTTP certs, the price is coming down considerably. The Planet has $15 certs: https://ssl.theplanet.com/ With 99% browser acceptance rate. I used to avoid SSL for my customers b/c of the cost. Now, I don't have any aversion to using them. The low cost certs are just as secure, but they lack some of the "frills" like badges for your site. For most of my customers and their user base, all that matters is the lock icon in the browser and no security warnings when the page loads.

That's a really good list.

I tend to think that Leviticus shouldn't be included in Christian canon as it's largely concerned with the Jewish concept of ritual purity which is discarded in Christianity. I went to a good church as a child (although I didn't really believe back then) where the focus was on love and forgiveness and I don't think anyone ever read from Leviticus. In general, I think the idea of pinning down religion to a matter of ritual and binary compliance with a set of procedures is a bad idea and I see Jesus's teachings as railing against that view within the community of his time.

It's nice to see people around here talking about this civilly.

You know, I really love Iron Maiden... but I guess the WHO gets my vote now... I didnt know they were that active in saving the world!!!

;-)

And you clearly cannot spell. Perhaps we should drink until we are brain damaged :)

Give hime a little credit, anyway. He used the apostrophe correctly, whan so many slashdotters can't. And at least he didn't misspell a four letter word like "lose".

As to the drinking, well, I'll drink to that!

(Now watch, I'm sure there's a typo in there for someone to rag me about)

Do you drive a car? They're mostly put together with robots today. That vision might not be as far away as you think.

The robots that have replaced workers in some jobs did not result in an idle life for those workers. They had to go find new jobs.

So no, it's not a vision that's close. We'd have to make some pretty big changes to our society to replace jobs with robot-slave-created wealth for all.

"Animals are NOT allowed on planes with the people"

At least in the US small animals are allowed on planes as long as they fit in an approved carry-on carrier, and service animals are allowed to sit with their owner even if they are a large dog or small pony.

So any flight you get on there may be pets like cats, dogs, or anything else small enough to fit in a carrier. I've taken pet rats on several occasions. Or there may be service animals like ponies, dogs, cats, monkeys, pigs and birds. http://www.guidehorse.org/news_minis_fly.htm

This is a good point. I had a college internship at a small zoo. There were several things we did to help reduce the chance of kids getting sick from E. coli at the petting zoo. We kept the grounds cleaned, kept the dust down, provided hand sanitizer at the exits, we wouldn't allow kids/adults to enter with food or gum, and a few other standard practices.

The most interesting thing we did was feed the animals a supplement that contained bacteria like Lactobacillus. They said it contained other natural rumen bacteria, but didn't specify what those were. I'm guessing one of those unnamed bacteria was a benign form of E. coli. Good E. coli can provide vitamin K2 to its host and prevent the dangerous varieties from growing.

Like how people are allergic to different types of nuts, not just nuts...