To wit: Giving someone a 4.0 because they did the work and did 4.0-level work is totally different than giving someone a 4.0 for not showing up to class as you originally claimed.

Okay, I think you seriously need to go back and re-read what you wrote. Because what you're saying now and what you said before are two very different things.

Contrast:

With:

I'm referring specifically to receiving a letter grade in a class for not coming to class (like you originally stated).

Waiving a requirement is one thing. Giving a grade for not showing up, on the other hand, is unethical in the extreme.

I have three degrees. A BSc in Comp Eng, an MSc in ECE, and an MBA.

Never once have I ever seen anything like this. It's incredibly unethical for one thing, and for another, it assumes that the professor can't handle a student challenging him or her.

I don't know what programs in which schools you've seen this occur in, but can you let me know so I know to never hire anyone who's graduated from them?

Read his environmental description.

Maximum historical temperature in Bangladesh is >40C; what kind of place is this server going to be stored? Move to different locations? No climate control? I can easily see requiring >85C handling.

Rainy season means high humidity.

The 5W power requirement is flexible, but remember that adding 1W of power increases your solar power costs -- to the tune of $22 or so in panelling (in Bangladesh), not including any secondary costs.

Dusty? Okay, use fans if you really want to. Be prepared for frequent failures, or a regular routine of cleaning and replacing filters.

Unreliable power and using solar? Yeah, you're going to want to gracefully handle some really nasty transients.

No, my requirements are not exactly the same as his. But the point is that he's running in a really hostile environment, like I am, and it's going to cost him.

The ideal human interface for my needs is console to an RS-232, so annoying rubberized keypads don't matter to me.

Doesn't meet the temperature or power requirements.

Close, but not quite.

If you can show me a laptop that can handle -40C to 85C, high levels of humidity, draws no more than 5W of power, needs no fans for cooling, and reasonably gracefully handles transients associated with lightning strikes for less than $1500, I'll gladly buy it.

To give you some sense of what I'm getting at:

I pay about $1500 for a ruggedized setup like you're talking about -- except it's a pentium class processor with 128MB of RAM and 256MB of flash.

Yeah, not breaking the bank isn't going to be an option here, I'm afraid.

I have found that, generally speaking, the type of person making $1M in the first place is internally motivated more so than externally.

That is to say, in my experience, they bust their asses just as hard whether they're earning $50k or $750k.

The fact that they do this is, in large part, why they progressed to make $750k at all.

Heh, I keep hearing that meme, but when I ask actual bankers about it, their comment is, paraphrased: "Bullshit."

I attended a talk by a rather prominent community banker (who also sat on the Fed Board), who basically said that nobody ever made an unsound loan because of the CRA, and that this is just a bunch of politicians making hay.

Read the CRA some time. Notice that there are ironclad defenses against its provisions, one of which is, paraphrased, "unacceptably risky loans."

Additionally, when I look at the data surrounding sub-prime loans and MBS's, I have to call "Bullshit."

You want to know the biggest contributor? MBS' themselves. MBS' immunize the originator against the riskiness of loans; if you're just going to turn around and sell the loan, it doesn't matter if the debtor can't pay. So, all that matters is (1) finding someone to take out a loan and (2) finding some sucker to take it off your hands.

This is made even easier when the bond ratings agencies work for you -- which they did. The MBS issuers paid the ratings agencies, and guess what? They got good ratings. And if they didn't get good ratings, they paid someone else.

Contrast this with the pre-MBS loan process, in which a bank actually held a mortgage to maturity. It really matters if the debtor can pay in that case.

Now toss in a bunch of banks who are levered up using these MBS pools as security for the leverage. The market goes south a bit, and they have to unwind the leverage. But wait, they can't -- now everyone knows that the MBS ratings are trash, and because nobody can value them, nobody is willing to buy them. Hooray, sell at a deep discount. Wait, your equity in the margin account just went down in value because of that discount? Margin call! Sell more MBS' at a discount. Wait, your equity in the margin account just went down because of that discount? Margin call! ... Repeat until bankruptcy or bailout.

Seriously, quit with the CRA drum-banging. You're wrong.

You're not kidding. I've read Vol I and about half of Vol II. It hurt. A lot.

But it made me smarter.