I think this is the thing. I've worked at so many places that tried to outsource, and failed miserably. Then for a short time (I couldn't handle the stress tbh) I worked with a set of serial startup ninjas, like the guys that take your two person company to a series a and leave. Fucking amazing people, but the "outsourcing" guy was a genius. In that he could take 30-50 really shit developers and their 5 barely less than shit managers and get them to produce, like new features in a day produce. But I remember the way he'd talk to them (these guys were all on the other side of the planet so they could work features at night that the product people came up with during the day)... THAT GUY will vibe his way to great success. Like 1 guy in a 25 year career who pulled off outsourcing. Really sucks for the 30-50 shit dudes, because you know some of them didn't stay that way. How will they learn now? Also, he (and the rest of those startup ninjas) were really smart cause they always left at series A wayyy before maintainability of "two features a day" caused heartache, lol.

That's what I was thinking too. When the money gets crazy it's not just getting a couple of rock stars, if you get a couple of rock star teams that are already running well together and can infuse a bunch of culture into the bigger org, it can make a huge difference to a company... but why can't their robots do it, lol

Thanks for the detail on what it was possibly used for, even if the element wasn't exact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... is the final answer that can let me rest my brain tonight after reading that article in the morning and wondering all day why a mine has a little piece of radioactive material.

95% of my spam is because I was foolish enough to leave my mobile number in a political donation in 2012. I'm sure congress will GLADLY remove all those political exemptions, right? RIGHT?

The article didn't make it clear... The largest loan was to the spanish company to build a solar plant in AZ, that is in fact thermal solar and it will be the largest trial of hot sodium storage so it can produce after dark until the end of the normal daily peak around here. Obviously the local press has a bit better coverage of the details: http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2010/07/03/20100703biz-abengoa0704-ONL.html As to your main contention, each style of solar has it's place, reducing demand from the grid will be less efficient but won't require expansion of transmission infrastructure, especially if it can be done during the peak demand times.

Knoppix seems to have decided to drop the rescue side of their mission for the demo/toy side. Fair enough. Seems like that's where they get the press/money.

I've switched to Kanotix, one of the live cd's that still seems to be interested in the rescue side.

The other option is to use the bootcd packages in debian/ubuntu and make custom rescue cds that directly match the machine that will be rescued. Bit more of a pain but much more handy when the people nearest that machine don't know enough to set up even the networking on their own.