Your just don't shop where some of the rest of us shop ;-D

Part of the problem with trees, is we need to grow them, and once they are grown, we need to cut them down and plant new ones. To keep the wood from rotting, we need to sequester it, like bury it in old salt mines, or at least re-fill old coal pits that we want to 'reclaim'. They also need to be sealed from the general atmosphere so they don't rot or decay and turn back into free carbon available for being used even for nature made carbon based substances. ... Making useful stuff we keep around (longer than houses in the USA - 20 to 50 years) makes sense too. Burning the wood or wood products just returns the carbon to the atmosphere.

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This is true for ANY organic organism, not just trees.

I think this flick will become a cult classic, more for the side story than for the quality of the movie itself. It won't be a "Rocky Horror Pictureshow" but it will probably be another "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

Yes, it is a bad thing, but depending on the context of the decisions, using it might have been throwing another many millions down a 'now known to be unproductive' drain.

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Possibly finding out WHY it was funded initially, and WHY it was 'mothballed' (I am guessing reduced funding) should combine to give you an answer.

You may need to take lower paying positions, or better, start a company to use both the 'liberal' and 'STEM' skills. Is it easy? No. But if it is your passion, easy doesn't need to be part of the equation. You have the thinking skills, now it the time to use them to take your life in the direction you desire.

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You might not get to work at NASA, but you can work toward your passion.

You may need some additional education, and you are taking good steps in that direction. Not gathering a lot of additional debt is also a good financial decision for now and your future.

That is what lots of 'offshoring' of US work has done here too.

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Ireland and Iceland have been some of the English speaking beneficiary countries. But there are more (not necessarily English speaking as a primary language).

This is why the US is about to do something to 'repatriate capital' in giving some tax breaks to bring some $$/capital back to the US. I think I heard there is about $20T and they hope to repatriate at least $2.5T of it. - but I could have the numbers off by a large factor too

Equipment has a development life cycle. Even things developed with 'new' hardware, takes 3 to 6 months to be available for 'product engineers' who put in 3 to 6 months before a product is available for 'public consumption'.

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More complex/sophisticated/environmentally robust equipment take much longer. Getting new avionics is a 3 to 5 years cycle. It even takes the military 3 to 10 years to get development done for earth bound hardware.

The Nuke industry/govt agencies require 'hardened' hardware, that takes about as long as getting military OK for use.

Space craft life cycle, to keep from continuously re-engineering the same system many times before the first flight is 'frozen' at a stage that seems way to early in most venues. But that is what has been found as needed to be safe and reliable. It also becomes a 'religious issue' about not touching systems once they are 'flight ready'. Many of the designs, since they are 'one off' are not designed to be upgraded, at least not hardware wise. Even software upgrades are hard due to the 'flight ready' validation process. So unless a 'mission critical' need for 'uber new' hardware/software is found, it isn't going to happen (at least not in any 'market speed' speeds). So yes, we fly 'ancient' but reliable hardware.

How to get around this? Go work for NASA, get more funding, make it a priority to fly 'less outdated' equipment. I watched John Glenn go into space on TV. I watched the first foot steps onto the moon, live. I am proud of every step we have taken.

We have had very few pay the price over the years, and part of that price of keeping the payment in lives low is flying over-tested, over-worked, over-priced, outdated hardware.

I do want to fly newer equipment, but I don't want less safety. Flying fewer manned missions, and more 'robot' missions with newer hardware is one choice, but I don't want to give up on manned exploration. (Before the haters chime in, man in this case is mankind, being inclusive, not exclusive, in gender, race, etc. I do dislike feeling like I need to include explanations whenever I use words correctly, or having to be PC otherwise.)

One day I was sitting by a guy on an airplane and as typical, struck up a conversation.

He worked on home fuel cells that need hydrogen to work. His unit took in natural gas, release CO2, and kept the hydrogen for use in the fuel cell.

This is how most current commercial hydrogen is generated today, making it not very efficient way to get power (and NOT 'green' because of the mass CO2 release).

With this generator you could be off grid in town if you had a natural gas (methane) supply. Still the cost of electricity is way above the cost of commercial power, or even current solar costs.

Painting everyone that uses computers as computer professionals, is like saying that everyone that can provide healthcare is a doctor, from mom's with sick kids, secretaries that keep asprin in their desk, MRI operators, etc, including the 'health care professionals' from pharmacists, researchers, doctors, janitors in healthcare facilities, nurses, 'real' doctors, etc.

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Time to go back to the drawing board to define what the term means, not just what is convenient.

Otherwise a 'computer professional' is asking you if you want fries and a malt with that burger just because they press a key on a 'data entry device'.

Things change. In the early 1900's when the DJIA was a dream, there was a buggy whip manufacturer in the mix. They are long gone. -- Polaroid was a 'super company' in the '60s, now the name barely lives on. Even Kodak is not the company it once was because it didn't change with the times... and they even came up with digital photography first! ... I still like mainframes, but that isn't the way of the world anymore. ... Times change. Business models must too.

Yes, The Commish was a TV cop drama, but one of their strengths was to do policing based on numbers and statistics. OK, they took the normal 'over the top' abilities of TV, but the basics were good. TV today is getting basically 'instant DNA scans', to the extent that McCoy wished was in this tricorder! The same with stats on TV shows.

Just doing high-frequency-trading with human FRU's (Field Replaceable Units).

Yep.

That is why when I told my boss I am an independent consultant. I hired him.

Working for him I don't need to do marketing, unless I want to leave. I don't deal with accounts receivable, because they pay me on salary. I still have customers, and vendors, but they may (or may not) work for the same company. My primary clients keep me around because I resolve their issues, and when the world goes right, I resolve their 'pain points' before they know they are painful.

For that, I reduced my overhead to the point where I can still live on what compensation I get. It still MUST be more than my cost of living or I will fire them as a customer and go and get another customer or more.

He didn't like my 'attitude'. That is OK, I didn't like his.

Eventually I left for non-job reasons. But it was a relief. I always hated working with/for difficult customers. A boss with a bad attitude is a bad customer.

Vague, IMHO, includes being overly inclusive. Sarbox-Oxly's reason for being is to reduce the amount of obfuscation of 'bad' business activities, and to allow forensic auditing of the processes. -- After having to help implement SARBOX (short hand for the act) processes, it does allow easy over reaching by investigators at the cost of business being able to profit from their efforts. After being in business for years, I see the need for some, but at one time at lest the SARBOX fear to keep business from working was worse than the activities it was trying to prevent. ... Just my opinion.

Because if they had Marty McFly change it, there would be a quantum shift in the space time continum. Now if the darn thing didn't take 1.21gigawatts to run...