So, what part of saving kids from disease causes population control? Gates specifically says that "Population Control" is a primary goal - does that mean that birth control will be a component of vaccinations? I am still quite skeptical that there is not a vaccine or pesticide link to ADHD and other issues. Case in point, there are NO occurrences of ADHD among strict Mennonite and Amish populations. Aside from eating primarily organics foods, they do not vaccinate. There should be some studies into this very localized aberration as it should help find the real cause. For most of the populations suffering from disease and famine, the real problem is government corruption and war. Example, Somalia used to be one of the leading civilizations in the Egyptian era (2500 years ago). The weather hasn't changed, nor the soil - only the government and war lords. Afghanistan had virtually eradicated poppy production until the Afghan war. Now, after only 8 years they produce 95% of the world's opium. Score one for the US. I am reminded of the scene in Fifth Element where Zorg explains how the world works. All of the possessions do nothing. Chaos and destruction create jobs and a means for all of the workers to make more little workers to keep the process going. Very insightful.

Dude ! - grease the back side and hit the slopes.... this is a five man (or 10 kid) snow disc! Or, you could tie a rope on it and drag it behind a 4x4 truck in a field (aka...Kansas Ski Slope) - works with or without snow !

Black Box sells a video multiplexor. In our building we have four cable (satellite) boxes tuned to different stations. The mux takes an input from each of the cable boxes and puts it on a different analog TV channel. The TV's can then change between the four available channels to pick the programming. In our case, we have CNN, Fox, Weather Channel, and MSNBC.

Schrodinger was completely wrong. I tried it with a cat and a microwave and the cat is always dead ! In the case of this discussion, Tuesday nulls out as there is no other requirement for a date. There is nothing that says the other child was not also born on Tuesday and therefore, the date makes no difference. In this case, you have a binary pair in which there are four possibilities b/b, b/g, g/b, and g/g. Since you already have one boy, and there is no assumption to the order of the children, then there are three possibilities, only one of which yields b/b. But, really, it boils down to the fact that you have one chance for the next child to be a boy or one chance to be a girl. So, in the end, it is exactly 50% unless you look at human birth rates and then you get a slightly higher (51-52%, I think) chance of a boy. But, as stated by someone else, there is a chance of having Schrodinger's cat - so the two probabilities will add up to marginally less than 100%. Anything more complicated is simply reading too much into the equation.

I know an ISP that has run DD-wrt on its entire wireless infrastructure (500+ users up to 7 miles from 20 different towers spread all over four counties) with very good results. Heck, my router has been running DD for five years and I reboot it maybe five times. Twice, we moved to a new house, and twice were firmware upgrades. Linux in general has VERY nice routing features, you just have to hunt for Interface cards that will keep up. The old problem was simply inter-card throughput of the PCI bus, but with PCI express, you can handle ridiculous traffic loads. If you need more than a linux PC router can handle, then you probably has a router budget to match.

I was once told that every advanced math course or science course you take will add at least $1000 per year to your base pay. After 30 years, I think that number needs to be inflation adjusted... so, multiply by 3. If you can make $35K as an entry level code pounder - take a few advanced classes and you are at $50K. Get an Engineering degree (another half dozen courses) and you are at $65. A master's degree in Engineering will easily push $100K. Once you start working, you can earn about triple the base pay over time. My personal favorites are Discrete Math, Data Structures, Diff Eq., and Partial Diff. Eq., plus some thermodynamics. Interestingly, math and physics classes all look the same after a certain point. Programmers are easy to come by.... Math and Science geeks that can write decent code are much, much more difficult to find. - And are paid accordingly!

As a former Regional ISP with full email, webhosting and News services, we started at 1 tech for 150 users in 1995 when we had to talk each user through the install of trumpet winsock and ftp download of Netscape (or physically go to their house and do it). Later this moved to 250:1 and this included supporting Windows 3.11/winsock and Win95 on 4MB of RAM plus issues such as how to click a mouse, what is a modem, my printer won't print, and Packard-Bell (need I say more). With WinXP and DSL, this moved to about 500:1 and still includes support on reloading Windows, printers, virus detection and removal. Not to mention, much more involved mail and web hosting issues. As for admins - Telecom needed 1 per 2000 dialup lines or DSL users or 300 hi-cap circuits, Network 1 per 100 dedicated customers and SysAdmins at 1 per 60 servers if they run a broad range of services or 150 servers if they run similar services or 500+ servers if they are identical services. Windows versus Linux doesn't make as much difference as it used to because Windows has fairly robust scripting available if you learn it.... but in general, Windows will up your admin needs 30% because few people know how to use extensive scripting on a win server. Current ISP's generally limit support to services sold and need half of less of the resources. The bottom line, resources depend heavily on exactly what you support, the tech level of the user, and how diverse their hardware is.

I have worked for a few companies that had limited labs, but none that had a comprehensive lab. They would operate in staged upgrades and used emulators as a sanity check, plus a peer review by at least two other engineers. Make sure that there is a management VLan in operation and just shift vc's as needed. A wholesale re-engineering is just asking for it. The key to the whole thing is, ensure you have remote (dialup) access to the routers in question, never save the changes until you are happy, and make sure you keep a good copy on flash in the router. It comes down to your awesome Ninja router skills. This is where a $100K network guy makes his money versus a $35K graduate. EXPERIENCE.

I seriously doubt this has anything to do with Google wanting to save the Internet. It is about them seeing what web sites users are going to by mining dns queries. There is a huge amount of marketing data to be had. If they wanted to save the Internet, they would put up some sort of DNS filtering that would knock out all of the Nigerian Princes and Fake-Alert Antivirus programs.

+1 for dd-wrt. I've been running on Linksys wrtg5 (ver 2) for at least five years and LOVE IT. It never locks up or has any problem what so ever plus tons of features.

The last time I had electricity going through my hair, I grounded an electrical box with a screw driver and the hair let out this really bad smelling smoke and took two months to grow back on my arm !

Counterpoint - I also rented a Diesel Volkwagon Vanagan in Germany. I don't know who decided to put a non-turbo 2.0L diesel in a van, but they should be shot. The top speed was about the same as a full size Ford conversion van with a 5.0L gas engine (60-65mph assuming no resistance), but with a FRACTION of the acceleration. I felt CHEATED on my Autobahn experience!

My dad had an '83' Bonneville Diesel with a 5.7L. I can say that it was not spirited, but drove nicely. The power curve was different and imparted a much different feeling. The car was great and never had any type of problem until about 100K miles. We were on a trip at Christmas and we hit an Ice storm in Oklahoma City. It took 16 hours to get from OKC to Amarillo (normally about 5 hours). We drove on bumpy ice similar to continuous speed bumps the entire way. After the trip, the car went to hell fast! Body trim falling off, nearly every light bulb burned out, diesel injector pump bad, transmission failed - you name it. Up side - very smooth power, extra sound insulation so it was VERY quiet on highway, heavier engine meant upgraded front suspension and a very sporty feeling rack and pinion steering. 34 MPG Hwy and 26 City in a 1980's full size car (much bigger than a "full-size" Camry). Nearly 600 Miles on a tank of fuel.

>>> "Or maybe Pocket antimatter".... Hmmm - My wife says I create this with beer, hot wings and pickled eggs. I think the kids agree !