This is usually referred to as closing the barn door after the horse gets out.

Maybe some other country will post the reports so we can have access to them.

Also try Dark as Day by Charles Sheffield. He has a somewhat different take on personality simulations. Excellent book.

Wait--if they pay off a loan, it increases their debt?
At worst the debt transfers from one place to the other.

What does enjoying life and family have to do with reading email and watching cat videos? Life is that stuff outside the computer.

It's still a crap interface. Saying it's free doesn't make it better.

Clap, clap, clap, clap.
I have struggled with Gimp for several years (only intermittent use). I tried to avoid it, because it always took a bunch of work just to figure out how to do something that should be simple.

Just recently I switched to Photoshop. What a breath of fresh air. I'm having very few problems.
Stuff that I commonly did in Gimp through several menus and drill down choices; in PS there are three control key presses that do the same thing. I'm sure you could force Gimp to do something similar, but what's the point? PS is by far easier to work with.

I think this is incorrect. I use OO at work remote at my home office. Work is in another state, they all use MS.

I started with LO but ran into a couple of significant issues. This was in the October-December 2012 timeframe, with the then current release.
1. My tech sent me an Excel file of data and plots. The plots were on the same sheet as the data, four columns of data, four plots. In LO one of the plots has the wrong data--it is plotting a different column than specified in the Excel file. I consider this a major error/problem. This alone would keep me from using LO.
2. If I put pictures into a text document and send it to the folks using Word, there are lots of format problems. Pictures are off center, so much as being half off the page. They are the wrong size, which screws up formatting from then until the next manual page break.

OO has neither of these problems. For that reason, I think it is far more compatible/reliable with MS Word and Excel.

Haven't these people heard of inter library loan?

i kan reed is correct. The issue is not some theoretical one involving the frequency of light. The question is "how fast can you modulate an LED"?

How reassuring that they have such accurate estimates of things like orbit and mass.

You are supporting your argument with an exception, namely yourself? Pretty weak.

One more--if you're doing the work yourself, it will take anywhere from 2 to 10 times as long as a real contractor would take. This is why their pay grade is higher than yours (in contracting...). The quick estimate is to take the contractor's wage (say $60/hour) versus your "skilled" labor at $10: it will take you six times as long.

Next, add in the effects of only working on weekends (if so), and not being in shape for a full day of serious hustle contractor labor...it takes even longer.

I am a dedicated do-it-myselfer. I don't mean to discourage, but go into this with eyes open.

Steve

I worked with Phil for awhile at StorageTek--6 months or a year I think. He's a very smart guy. He was also one of the most evangelistic people I have ever met. I do NOT mean this in a religious sense, any way shape or form. At the time (this was the 1980's) he spoke a lot (incessantly?) about the danger of nuclear war and all these bombs we've got. I expect that this same incredible focus and sense of purpose has now been applied to security, which could be a really good thing. I also expect that he has mellowed a bit, but that's just a guess.

Steve

Don't those folks have anything better to do?

My first thought, not having RFA: Does IARPA start with a capital i or a lower case L?

LARPA might make more sense.

Steve