We've been building a suite of tools using Django that combine near-real-time event processing and offline analytics. It's been very useful and flexible; the data model abstraction is clean, and we can target different databases with a couple of lines of config file change. We're integrating some Javascript and other visualization tools in our UIs, and finding it pretty easy to support in the Django framework. Performance scales with resources fairly linearly, the overhead has been very manageable, and it integrates into almost any security framework. I've seen nothing to convince me we need to look at a different framework.

It's not the usability and ease of use - it's stupid crap like removing the ability to right-click and get a menu of things to do with that menu item, instead of just having it kicked off... it's burying the UI customization where it can't be found easily, and removing the easy tailoring options in favor of the "Unity" standard.

We just rolled back...

One of my first jobs would have been way easier if someone had invented the magsafe connector. The company I worked for had laptops on carts for the nurses to be able to chart meds and other things automagically next to the patient bed. (Scan patient, scan drugs, give patient drugs, record updated with what, how much, and when.) We had ~10-12 instances of electricians being called to remove one prong of the plug from the wall socket because the nurses just walked off with the cart without unplugging the laptop first. This was in the mid-to-late 90s, and replacement plugs from toshiba were expensive. Like $75/ea.

Correct. Falcon 9 was designed to be man-rated, but SpaceX isn't spending the money to jump through NASA's hoops until they have more of a hope of a contract for human launch services. Man rating is a high enough hurdle that LM and Boeing have refrained from man rating the Delta IV or Atlas V on their own nickels.

My boss has recommended such things. And one of the directors in the company blocks out noon-1pm every day so no one schedules him a day full of meetings with no lunch.

Most of my meetings are recurring meetings. I have 2/week with our vendor, 1/week with my boss and the rest of his team, one maintenance review a week, and generally that's it -- unless there's preplanning meetings for maintenances that I have to be part of, or we start on a new project (in which case, there's usually a 1 hour/week call)

I had to write my own job description for the job I do, in part because no one else knows what the hell it is I do. My boss included. But we had to sit down and write a job description because HR required one for performance evals, etc. It's as full of crap as anything, but it does actually encompass what it is I do here, Bob.

0 degrees, 0 certifications. 15 years in the industry.

I've known paper cert people, and people who know their crap who were required to get certs. I've known paper degree people, and people who know their crap who also happen to have degrees. Competence trumps letters after your name.

911 is a tricksy beast, and when you combine RF issues, like rain fade (snow fade - which is less, but still noticeable) and location services (which tell the carrier WHICH 911 center to route the call to) ... 10k dropped 911 calls out of ... how many total placed calls? How was this data collected? Was there a record of 10,000 dropped calls that actually connected to 911? Is this from a log from their switches covering that area? How did their competitors fare? So much is so vague about this article, that it makes my head spin.

I use FOSS software when it is a complete, finished and usable tool, but the gimp is none of those for me.

I don't need all of them, but I need enough of them that aren't in the gimp that I own not only photoshop but also adobe lightroom.

12 months? 24 months is the "industry standard" to reduce churn. And many times a very large termination fee, especially if you got a really nice phone package free.

Yes.

I can't believe this would work for your car engine while you park it, nor would I think that most people want to add several pounds of galvanized wire to the underside of their cars.

My last employer "outsourced" to rural SC and CO for its call center. I've known people who work from home for a large company doing phone support. This isn't news. This is /.

Considering right now I'm looking forward to getting to the "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" lesson... yeah, it seems a bit daunting, but we got a new mac mini, and I found out a couple days before that that garageband had guitar lessons. I figured anything that helps me keep thinking about the guitar can't be bad.