Not only is there preventative maintenance, which is proceduralized, there is constant performance monitoring software in most plants which is capable of seeing any change in performance, such as power vs load, vibration, temperature, and compute a performance index and report to the people in charge of that pump the moment something is out of tolerance. its part of the reason why nuke plants are online over 90% of the time on average in the last 10 years, compared to the 90s where nuke plants were up 60% of the time at best.

That depends on whether he's even aware of what's happening. He's one guy, and bureaucracy can't keep you up to date on everything.

That "limited subset" of microbes is quite unlimited. Virtually any microbe that gets into your body proper is dangerous even the normally nice ones in your digestive system. The body is designed to keep that stuff out for a good reason. Even with a healthy immune system you can die from microbes that get in. That's why nurses are hard core about cleanliness in the hospital. And I really don't why you brought up home cleanliness. It's not my experience that nurses are more obsessive about this than anyone else.

I buy books from Barnes and Nobles, not Amazon, because I like to support brick and mortar book stores. I buy both online and in the store.

Why aren't you buying from locally owned small bookstores instead of B&N? Amazon and Barnes and Noble are both big box stores that caused some small businesses to close.

Falcon

Taken the Voight-Kampff lately? Maybe it's just your ugly language. "Defective". "Deformed". "Faulty". What a way to describe human beings!

And what's the point of your quest? You say: it "does nothing but weaken us, as a race". Is our race weak? We certainly don't seem to be circling the drain as a species at the moment - in fact we're thriving in plague numbers. Numbers enough to share our resources with people who can't help themselves.

Stop trying to perfect the human race. All we need is for most of us to be OK enough. And we are, more or less.

> I don't think time, as in "time lines" or some kind of unidirectional
> movement through a medium exists.

Neither does anyone who actually knows anything about physics.

I'd say yep. I'd probably suggest he change his name and move though. I'd imagine he'd need a lot of counseling afterward.
I suppose I should have said the only good reason for prison is to stop people from doing bad things. Reducing re-offending is most of it. Making an example is a tiny bit. Min I think the latter half should be done through education.

People going around not-murdering because they could get caught and get prison time are scary either way. That type of person is a short burt of adrenaline away from murdering someone.

Stop spending ~$43,000 per prisoner to house them in Club Fed and revert prison to what it should be: Three square meals and the chance to break big rocks into little rocks.

Lesson Number 1:

In the American federal system almost all violent offenders are prosecuted at the state and local level.

Lesson Number 2:

The constitutional roots of federal criminal jurisdiction are in interstate and economic crimes. The Secret Service, for example, was originally organized to fight counterfeiting.

The white collar criminal can do enormous harm but it is often only the Feds who can put him behind bars - and keep him there.

That thought can be - disquieting - for the geek.

Because Club Fed was built for him. It's the prison farm for the financial and technocratic elite.

Lesson Number 3:

Prisoners do not remain prisoners forever. Breaking big ones into little ones does nothing to prepare them - or us - for their eventual release.
       

You say "revenge" - I would have said "justice". But perhaps they should be two separate points on the list.

We all do everything we do because of our brains, and none of our brains are perfect. The real question is whether the person is responsible for their crime. With some types of brain damage or mental illnesses then, no, of course they aren't. But you wouldn't say "This person has naturally high testosterone levels and he can't help being agressive so his sentence should be lighter". It helps us to know why some people are more agressive - but we need to accept that humans vary in what they are. Otherwise we will be on our way to diagnosing anyone who isn't a happy, uncritical extrovert as having "a brain abnormality"

Frankly I'm glad someone is doing their job. DOJ certainly hasn't been. MySQL has been a thorn in Oracles a** for quite some time and that's exactly where it needs to stay. It was bad enough that they were allowed to acquire Innobase back in 2005.

The economic crisis was a completely separate issue, caused by funny business in the housing markets - particularly the insurance markets.

The increases in oil prices could have the long term potential of damaging the economy, but I think your conclusion on the impact of oil prices is correct. The oil prices surged and quickly subsided before they could have any significant effect beyond stirring up anger.

However, I would say the funny business in the housing market was only part of the cause for the current economic debacle. Aside from the games finance, investment and insurance companies were playing with large blocks of risky mortgages was the borrowing of funds from the Fed at very low interest rates and then lending that money to every warm body on the street combined with out of control spending practices of the masses and inflation offset by incomes that had turned stagnant around 2000 and unless you were in the top 10% income brackets was flat until the meltdown where the income quickly dropped to near nil for those who ended up without a job.

Increases in consumer spending and inflation combined with stagnant wages by itself would have eventually been enough to kill the economy. The banking greed only added fuel to the fire. In fact, if wages for the other 90% of the wage earners had continued their rate increase seen in the 1990s then credit would not be as much of an issue as it is today. Banks have money they've borrowed from the Fed that they could lend to individuals, but they wont as most individuals wages are already strapped with debt.

Oh, I agree. Not only that, but you don't end up spending an arm and a leg on software.

For actual online games, if you start late, you may miss a community. Otherwise, buying games late really doesn't signify anything really, except that maybe the bugs are fixed by the time you buy it for $10.

In the past 4 years I've maybe bought 8 games or so total, so I wouldn't consider myself a power buyer either.