Because if you take $200K and pay off your house and then lose your job, you will have no money to live on. On the other hand, if you keep the $200K and lose your job, you will have sufficient money to live on for several years. This presumes, of course, that you have the discipline to not spend the $200K. Besides, mortgage interest is tax deductable, so you deprive yourself of that benefit to boot.

And I thought glitter went out most of a decade ago. Time to dig into the closent!

. . . everything else comes after that. A small illustration:

When I was system admin for a small brokerage, one of my first tasks was to determine the hardware configuration of every server. There was one particular server that I needed to shutdown in the process. I asked every employee (it was that small) if there were any critical services on that machine. All agreed it was ok to take it off line. For the next 15 minutes, while the machine rebooted, no trading happened because the main program was linking to some libraries that were served off of that server.

I immediately put a new task at the top of my to-do list: reconfiguring the network. Thereafter, production was done on one network and development on another. The router between them would not allow nfs mounts. Production users were not given accounts on development machines. Developers were no longer given the root password, but it was kept in a safe for emergencies.

I know that wasn't what you were asking, but that is the first thing I would take care of.

When I first read the headline, I saw "NASA Discovers Life's Building Blocks in Cement". I figured they had found Jimmy Hoffa.

The most common test for the seizure of currency is a dog sniff. It is little know that cocaine is, in fact, odorless. Drug dogs do not detect cocaine. They detect a biproduct of the production of cocaine called methyl benzoate. Methyl benzoate is a volitile organic compound that dissapates quickly. If a dog hits on it, it is a clear sign not only that the money has been in close contact with cocaine, but that it was RECENTLY so.

Take a look at this case United States v. $30,670 in U.S. Funds, 403 F.3d 448 (7th Cir. 2005). There the court does a good analysis of the available facts. You would need at least 50,000 innocently tainted bills (not dollars, but bills!) for the dog to hit on it.

Of course, this is Slashdot, so I don't know why I would expect someone to know what they are talking about . . .

I think what you have in Mexico is a system where there are so many different identifiers that no one of them is worth much by itself. Here in the United States, it used to be that banks, schools, drivers licenses, health insurance, and, most importn, the credit reporting agencies all used your SSN to identify you. Thus, it was easy to commit identity theft with just your SSN. Now most states will issue you a non SSN drivers license upon request, and many companies are getting away from it as well, but there are still enough that insist on it that giving out your SSN is an invitation to identity theft.

Were it up to me, I would prohibit use of SSNs for any purpose other than social security. I would require the IRS to issue its own identifier to be used for all tax (including banking) related purposes. I was also require IRS and Social Security to allow you to change your number once every 5 years or earlier upon a showing of identity theft. Finally, I would require that the numbers be longer and include some hamming code. But that is just me . . .

Isn't there a theory that if we ever get a formally proven OS that all OSs will instantly vanish and be replaced by something more complex? I think there is a corallary that says this has already happened. Obviously, the proof referred to must be mistaken as my OS is still running as I typ

If I may interject, what you say is mostly correct, but it hides some very important underlying issues.

Respect: One key to communication is respect. Communication doesn't mean hearing, but listening. To listen, you MUST both hear the words and consider them. To give them full consideration is to show respect for your partner and it will also cause your respect for them to grow as you begin to see the their point of view.

Determination: In addition to that, you must both have a iron-willed determination to make it work. That is, you don't leave the room because you don't like the argument. That leads to leaving the marriage because you don't like it. Stay in the room and talk it through.

Humility: Be humble. Be willing to make the first move to resolve a conflict. Be willing to admit when you are wrong. Be willing to admit when you don't understand. Love means ALWAYS being willing to say you are sorry.

Religion: Don't ignore it. It is quite useful in both the "eternal life" sense and in the "temporal issues" sense. If you take the Catholic approach, as I do, that marriage is for life, then you will find that it is. You will also be very careful to select someone who feels the same way.

Children: Be open to them; they are a net plus. They are also a heck of a lot of work and your life will never be the same, but they will make you better people.

Other women: My wife and I have an understanding: I don't look and I don't touch. Some time when you are watching a movie with a sexy scene with your wife, turn to her and focus on here for the duration and tell her how beautiful she is. It is good moral discipline and it will strengthen your marriage.

Excsue me? Weren't allowed to pass knowledge on tot he general public? I think, perhaps, you have forgotten that the general public DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO READ! It's not that they weren't allowed to pass it on, it is that they were unable to do so. Yes, perhaps there were some rules about keeping the riff raff out of the libraries, but lets be fair, when they can't read, why would they need to be there?

Actually, you are right, it is not a a coincidence, it was the fault of a "scientist". Mendel took his results to the leading scientist in the area who told him he was an idiot. So, Mendel abandoned his research and went onto become a fine abbot.

As for him being the only "religious" scientist, I guess you have never heard of Copernicus? Look him up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus

If you have small kids, there is no excuse not to have about a dozed books and media out at a time.

Kids soak this stuff up like a sponge. You really need to be reading to them a LOT. Not just to improve their brains, but to let them know you love them.

Also, do you have a clue what kids books and videos cost? You could go broke just buying the complete Thomas the Tank Engine collection. At the library, you can get it all, and as many videos about trucks, trains, and planes as you can possibly carry.

I said I was a lawyer, not an english major! Being a lawyer, I charge extra for spell checking.