Android's Dream, by Scalzi: Lots of sub plots that tie together, but it starts out with a human ambassador giving the ruling alien ambassador a heart attack by letting off chemically-altered farts. (The aliens communicate largely by sense of smell, so he gets pissed when he smells "Your wife is screwing around on you and everyone knows it!") Also, the overarching background is an Illuminati-like religion that has two internal factions. One believes that the religion is absolutely fake, and that making the "prophecies" come true proves there is no God. The other faction believes that, despite its origins, the prophecies are inspired by God, and making the prophecies come true proves there is a God. Both sides are manipulating some alien internal politics to prove their point.
All the Way to the Gallows by David Drake: A collection of stories (some sci-fi, some fantasy, some a mix) that make fun of sci-fi, religion, fantasy plots, cultural relativism, and a host of other set pieces of literature...
Terry Pratchett: Pretty much the entire Discworld universe (politics, religion, magic, fantasy, etc. all taken to an illogical extreme.) The Bromeliad Trilogy, wherein what we would call Gnomes are actually tiny little aliens who've forgotten where they come from. Some believe that the department store they live in is actually the entire world...until they meet others from Outside.
Then there's Good Omens which kind of shames the whole Armageddon/Ragnarok thing.
Bolo!, a collection of Bolo stories by David Weber, does a pretty good job (imho) of working off the idealist morality of the Bolos with their human creators/operators. And Path of the Fury is pretty good at playing out the "what-if" of a Greek Fury in a sci-fi future.
A. Lee Martinez does some good fantasy-meets-reality with his books. The Automatic Detective is about an evil genius's killer robot who just wants to be a regular citizen. Too Many Curses follows the Evil Wizard's housekeeper after the Master is eaten by his latest demon. In the Company of Ogres is, among other things, about a military soldier who never stays dead...not matter how many times people have tried. Gil's All-Fright Diner follows a couple of buddies, one of which is a vampire and the other a werewolf. The vampire falls in love with a ghost...which makes things a little..."interesting."
My apologies for not conducting the flame war in proper fashion, you rat bastard.:-)
I don't know enough about the authors' backgrounds to say that HE influenced them; more along the lines that, to me, they are able to pull off the same style.
I'd say this is turning into the Wesley-Iniago sword fight in Princess Bride than a real GNAA-type flame war...
HE, by contrast, has had no real impact on anything, beyond pissing a lot of people off. I've occasionally enjoyed his writing, but nothing he's written has really pushed his art forward.
Harlan Ellison contribution flame war in 3...2....1...
I'll bite: One of the best parts of Ellison's writing, to me, is how he uses hyperbole, jokes, and extreme situations to get his point across. Repent, Harlequin! is probably one of the best examples. There's also A Boy and His Dog, Jeffty Is Five, a parody I can't recall about the whole "mysterious shop that sells cursed objects", and a host of others.
Terry Pratchett, David Drake, David Weber, A. Lee Martinez, John Scalzi, and a host of other modern writers are in the same vein.
Other old-time Scifi writers did the same thing, but Ellison made it fun...and it stuck with you (or at least, me) a lot longer.
If someone really wanted to mess with them, make an auto click system that pipes through Tor somehow...causing the IP addresses to appear to come from all over the world.
I'm sure there are some technical issues, but it would make more work for Google.
*sigh* I know this is troll/flamebait, but I can't help myself....
The arguments the above post can be made about any military...not matter who in history you pick. Even good ol' King Arthur had his kniggets go out and fight battles to protect "the good and the right."
From the largest perspective, for better or worse, a military is a necessary function for a country to survive. Show me a single country with a history longer than 1 year that survived without any form of military service at all...it just doesn't happen. Humans in large groups are violent, greedy, and persnickety about others taking the things they own...meaning other groups of violent, greedy, and persnickety humans.
At the lowest level, no matter which military you pick, most guys are in for a chance to "do something," either for themselves or for their country...or both. It's only in extreme circumstances (war, basically) where you get tons of guys joining for the express purpose of kicking the crap out of the krauts/japs/commies/charlie/whatever. Even better, most people have to be trained to do the kicking. Individually, most humans just don't have it in them to go around killing people (thank goodness, I guess.)
I suppose there are "good" wars and "bad" wars as the AC's post seems to claim, but it doesn't mean that the guys doing the fighting, killing, and dying are at fault or are evil in some way. We (humans, that is) dehumanize the enemy; everyone does. AC does this, also, by implying that either the GP is either too stupid to understand his role or to evil to care...or maybe evil enough to be complicit.
Reality just isn't that simple. Probably quite a few of the Persian fighters at Thermopylae were sons of farmers who wanted to get out, see the world, and make something of themselves. Next thing you know, their fighting a bunch of mad men on a narrow road above the sea.
The old quote "My country. May she ever be right, but right or wrong, my country!" (Stephen Decatur) doesn't just apply to the US...every citizen of every nation should take up that attitude...and try to fix the things that are wrong.
[end rant...you are free to go about your usual business...]
The link in my OP is to their CAPS site--an investment "game" where you can rate whether a company is going to outperform or underperform the market. It also has space for blogs, comments, opinions, etc...plus the usual articles.
I should have been more specific in my post--you're correct, the Fool has been around for a lot longer than that.
because it is a good way to keep a thin attachment to people who are just contacts, but people I don't want to loose touch with entirely.
That's one of the best reasons to be on it. I started using LinkedIn (free, not paying!) to get in touch with old colleagues; that's it, nothing more. Recommendations and invitations are for only people I absolutely know (I reject any others out of hand.)
For any social networking sites, it's the Thermodynamics of Humanity--crap and chaos will increase. AOL, Yahoo Message boards (social, financial, etc.), the garbage always builds up.
On that note, are only a few places I still follow that have stayed "fairly" clean. Joke as much as you want, but Slashdot has stayed pretty close to mission over the years. Groklaw is still pretty good. Motley Fool is still fairly new, but has hung on to it's central theme for a couple of years now.
Think of social networking sites like sex, or dating: Before you sign up, imagine that some Glenn Close nutjob is going to hunt you down and kill your pets, or some pimply teenager is going to show up on your door step 16 years from now at the family reunion shouting, "Dad! Mama tol' me you owed us for that fling all those years ago!"
If those kinds of problems are foreseeable, don't use the sites.
The GPL license includes some restrictions on use and redistribution (if don't want it to remain free to all, you could use the BSD license..(IANAL, all the rest, so this is only my personal understanding.)
Being a usual/.er, I haven't read the article, but it sounds like you're talking about a protocol layout--a communication schema. In that case, talking to the IP lawyer would be a good way to go. However, in dealing with the lawyer, don't let them decide "the plan"--you should lay out your plan, and say "Can you make this happen?"
My suggestion for "The Plan" is this:
Have the protocol sponsored/supported by your company.
License under the GPL so that it can be used free of cost, with appropriate credit for the original coding.
Have the reference or baseline code hosted online, freely available (your own servers [big company investment] or at Sourceforge.net
that leaves a few questions for the IP attorney:
Do we need a patent?
Patent or not, what steps to enforce the license will be required?
How much will this cost the company--best/worst case?
Details like community involvement; retaining the project as a company project only or not; taking donations or "selling"; etc. will come later. None of these are new questions; you might want to talk to some big OSS project administrators to see how their choices are working.
Good luck! It sounds like a lot of fun to be involved in.
I do IT for a medical practice. What we ended up with was a central server running Fedora and LTS, with thin clients in each of the exam rooms and in the doctor's office.
This had all the benefits of getting the records available in each room without having to go through individual updates. There are still fat clients/full workstations in the office, but those are primarily for the other work--office manager, accounting, etc.
since each grade level is different (different lessons, different requirements), I would suggest having a server either for each classroom, grade level, or department. For example, your math classes would need different software (and access) than your English class. You could even set up your foreign-language classes to have the locale set to the language they teach--the kids would have to learn French, Spanish, Russian, etc to use the computers...and the casual contact with that language would reinforce the lessons.
True, you would lose some of the benefits of "one admin to rule them all," but the software and changes would be compartmentalized--and the Computer instructors could even have more free reign to fix (or damage) their systems as they see fit.
If you really believed that the government should have less power, you would have split your ticket: i.e. vote for Democratic representative and Republican president, or vice versa.
To be honest, I did vote for a Republican representative...mostly because the Democratic incumbent had voted for telecom immunity.
Why would you assume I voted a straight party ticket either way?
No, I didn't. I was in the military during the run-up to Iraq, and had been warning my friends (military and civilian) of the possible extremes that the GOP Congress and administration would go to.
Sadly, imho, most of the bad possibilities came true.
The reason I mentioned my party affiliation (soon to be past; I'm going to register independent) was because party "loyalty" is not high on my list...actually, it's not on the list at all. Lesser of two evils is good enough for me; if one candidate is either more agreeable to my positions or a good antidote to the current doofus, he'll probably get my vote.
Obama was (to me) a good repudiation of the former administration's belief and tactics...it remains to be seen if he's any good at all on his own.
Unless you actually plan on doing something horrific and are dumb enough to talk about it over a phone this shouldn't be a problem.
So, can you tell me exactly how someone gets on the No-Fly lists? Can you tell me these records will never be used in a civil or criminal case?
What about a joke you made about the pretty new secretary at work 2 years ago--and she ends up kidnapped, killed, and/or raped? If "they" start combing through your past phone conversations, do you think the prosecution would ignore the possibility that you were sexually obsessed with her?
"If you haven't done anything wrong..." is not a good argument. It's about all the ways it can go wrong.
By temperament and voter registration, I'm a Republican; however, I voted for (and hope for) an Obama win because the path the government has taken over the last 7-8 years has saddened and disgusted me. I'm glad he won.
But, I am not a "believer." Now that the opposing party is in charge (just like the GOP was for all those years) it's going to be hard for them to put away all those neat new toys that Bush & Co. left behind. This is because it's hard for the party on top to admit that a power or capability is too dangerous to use (dangerous as in potentially or outright abusive of Constitutional rights.)
If there were ever a prime time to hold your government's feet to the fire over policy, now is the time to do it. Otherwise, it will be fait accompli, and we'll start hearing things from this administration (and its supporters) like, "But we're not Bush; we're better than him!"
Personal family experience: What do you do when you are the one escapee from three generations of Manson family? Every time one of your SOB brothers, sisters, cousins, or creepy Uncle Carl gets into trouble, you get rounded up with the usual suspects and grilled like a cheese sandwich from Mel's Diner!
I've got a sister-in-law who's a great, clean, upstanding citizen. Unfortunately...her family has about 3 generations of DWT spread across 4 counties. Why should she have to recite her family tree and testify to Creepy Uncle Carl's whereabouts on the day in question?
Relative is a relative term...and if it could happen to her, it could happen to anybody.
Scenario #1: Mobster husband coming home from a hard day's "work"
Hubby: Boy, Honey! That was a rough day! Do you have any idea how hard it is to chop up a guy with a Ginsu knife? We never thought Tony Da Rat would fit in that suitcase!
The wife can't testify or be made to testify about Tony Da Rat's tragically funny disposal. Her husband related it to her (assuming no one else was around) as part of the marital confidential communication.
Scenario #2: Wife greets Mobster Hubby after hard day's work
Wife: Awww...honey. Looks like you had a rough day. Let me wash that bloody shirt. What do you want me to do with the head in the bowling bag?
The wife canbe made to testify about the bloody shirt, the head in the bag, or anything else she directly sees, hears, touches, etc.
The point is that it's not her privilege or choice...it's her husband's. He can refuse to let her testify about confidential communication--she can't just go forth and start spouting it off...not if it (or any subsequent evidence) is to be used in court.
I was a flight instructor in the Navy during 9/11. Out at the smoke pit, just after, I was talking to some of my JO staff and students, and I told them (basically) the following:
What you guys are going to have to realize is that it's now a different world. For the first 4-5 years of my military career, it was all Cold War mentality. That affected the every decision made.
From about 1990 on, the US had a different mentality: We were the biggest, toughest ones on the block, but there wasn't any real strategic direction. That affected the decisions of our politicians and military, and we've been living with the effects ever since.
You guys, however, are only 1-2 years in your career, and you're going to have an entirely different way of looking at things. It'll be a lot easier to see things in an Us vs. Them mentality, but it'll also be a lot easier to take the shortcuts. You'll find people telling themselves that "it's okay...it's for the good of the country."
Sad to say, this thread justifies some of my concerns. It's not that the Guard or any other force fears (or doesn't) armed civilians...it's that they may think it's easier to just shoot the bastich than worry over constitutionality vs. some platoon leader yelling to fire.
haven't used chironfs (I'll check it out), but rdiff-backup has been working at a medical clinic for off-site backup for 10 months without a glitch.
Basic data from my backup:
2.5 GB of original data (including the application)
mysql-autobackup script to dump daily, weekly, monthly copies of all relevant databases
Average daily diff is about 25-35 MB
Off-site server
cron job to run a custom script
The results are that it's been running without a hitch for 10 months, and I've used the backed-up data to create a mirror of the medical clinic site in less than 3 hours.
For me, that's all I need: The ability to take my backups and go from clean machine to fully functioning system in less than a day.
It's been working so well that I've been quietly offering the service to some of my other IT customers who need to get up and running quickly.
Legal and confidentiality issues are the biggest obstacle. The medical office data is covered because of previous arrangements and agreements. For other customers with these issues, you can set up a similar layout that works within their requirements.
Slashdot Mirror
More of style:
(Wow! I have way too much time on my hands.)
My apologies for not conducting the flame war in proper fashion, you rat bastard. :-)
I don't know enough about the authors' backgrounds to say that HE influenced them; more along the lines that, to me, they are able to pull off the same style.
I'd say this is turning into the Wesley-Iniago sword fight in Princess Bride than a real GNAA-type flame war...
HE, by contrast, has had no real impact on anything, beyond pissing a lot of people off. I've occasionally enjoyed his writing, but nothing he's written has really pushed his art forward.
Harlan Ellison contribution flame war in 3...2....1...
I'll bite: One of the best parts of Ellison's writing, to me, is how he uses hyperbole, jokes, and extreme situations to get his point across. Repent, Harlequin! is probably one of the best examples. There's also A Boy and His Dog, Jeffty Is Five, a parody I can't recall about the whole "mysterious shop that sells cursed objects", and a host of others.
Terry Pratchett, David Drake, David Weber, A. Lee Martinez, John Scalzi, and a host of other modern writers are in the same vein.
Other old-time Scifi writers did the same thing, but Ellison made it fun...and it stuck with you (or at least, me) a lot longer.
If someone really wanted to mess with them, make an auto click system that pipes through Tor somehow...causing the IP addresses to appear to come from all over the world.
I'm sure there are some technical issues, but it would make more work for Google.
*sigh* I know this is troll/flamebait, but I can't help myself....
The arguments the above post can be made about any military...not matter who in history you pick. Even good ol' King Arthur had his kniggets go out and fight battles to protect "the good and the right."
From the largest perspective, for better or worse, a military is a necessary function for a country to survive. Show me a single country with a history longer than 1 year that survived without any form of military service at all...it just doesn't happen. Humans in large groups are violent, greedy, and persnickety about others taking the things they own...meaning other groups of violent, greedy, and persnickety humans.
At the lowest level, no matter which military you pick, most guys are in for a chance to "do something," either for themselves or for their country...or both. It's only in extreme circumstances (war, basically) where you get tons of guys joining for the express purpose of kicking the crap out of the krauts/japs/commies/charlie/whatever. Even better, most people have to be trained to do the kicking. Individually, most humans just don't have it in them to go around killing people (thank goodness, I guess.)
I suppose there are "good" wars and "bad" wars as the AC's post seems to claim, but it doesn't mean that the guys doing the fighting, killing, and dying are at fault or are evil in some way. We (humans, that is) dehumanize the enemy; everyone does. AC does this, also, by implying that either the GP is either too stupid to understand his role or to evil to care...or maybe evil enough to be complicit.
Reality just isn't that simple. Probably quite a few of the Persian fighters at Thermopylae were sons of farmers who wanted to get out, see the world, and make something of themselves. Next thing you know, their fighting a bunch of mad men on a narrow road above the sea.
The old quote "My country. May she ever be right, but right or wrong, my country!" (Stephen Decatur) doesn't just apply to the US...every citizen of every nation should take up that attitude...and try to fix the things that are wrong.
[end rant...you are free to go about your usual business...]
The link in my OP is to their CAPS site--an investment "game" where you can rate whether a company is going to outperform or underperform the market. It also has space for blogs, comments, opinions, etc...plus the usual articles.
I should have been more specific in my post--you're correct, the Fool has been around for a lot longer than that.
because it is a good way to keep a thin attachment to people who are just contacts, but people I don't want to loose touch with entirely.
That's one of the best reasons to be on it. I started using LinkedIn (free, not paying!) to get in touch with old colleagues; that's it, nothing more. Recommendations and invitations are for only people I absolutely know (I reject any others out of hand.)
For any social networking sites, it's the Thermodynamics of Humanity--crap and chaos will increase. AOL, Yahoo Message boards (social, financial, etc.), the garbage always builds up.
On that note, are only a few places I still follow that have stayed "fairly" clean. Joke as much as you want, but Slashdot has stayed pretty close to mission over the years. Groklaw is still pretty good. Motley Fool is still fairly new, but has hung on to it's central theme for a couple of years now.
Think of social networking sites like sex, or dating: Before you sign up, imagine that some Glenn Close nutjob is going to hunt you down and kill your pets, or some pimply teenager is going to show up on your door step 16 years from now at the family reunion shouting, "Dad! Mama tol' me you owed us for that fling all those years ago!"
If those kinds of problems are foreseeable, don't use the sites.
The GPL license includes some restrictions on use and redistribution (if don't want it to remain free to all, you could use the BSD license..(IANAL, all the rest, so this is only my personal understanding.)
Being a usual /.er, I haven't read the article, but it sounds like you're talking about a protocol layout--a communication schema. In that case, talking to the IP lawyer would be a good way to go. However, in dealing with the lawyer, don't let them decide "the plan"--you should lay out your plan, and say "Can you make this happen?"
My suggestion for "The Plan" is this:
that leaves a few questions for the IP attorney:
Details like community involvement; retaining the project as a company project only or not; taking donations or "selling"; etc. will come later. None of these are new questions; you might want to talk to some big OSS project administrators to see how their choices are working.
Good luck! It sounds like a lot of fun to be involved in.
I haven't seen anyone else post about using mythological names/creatures.
since I'm partial to Norse mythology, I tend to use gods and characters from there. When I run out (or there's not a good fit) I use Greek.
I do IT for a medical practice. What we ended up with was a central server running Fedora and LTS, with thin clients in each of the exam rooms and in the doctor's office.
This had all the benefits of getting the records available in each room without having to go through individual updates. There are still fat clients/full workstations in the office, but those are primarily for the other work--office manager, accounting, etc.
since each grade level is different (different lessons, different requirements), I would suggest having a server either for each classroom, grade level, or department. For example, your math classes would need different software (and access) than your English class. You could even set up your foreign-language classes to have the locale set to the language they teach--the kids would have to learn French, Spanish, Russian, etc to use the computers...and the casual contact with that language would reinforce the lessons.
True, you would lose some of the benefits of "one admin to rule them all," but the software and changes would be compartmentalized--and the Computer instructors could even have more free reign to fix (or damage) their systems as they see fit.
If you really believed that the government should have less power, you would have split your ticket: i.e. vote for Democratic representative and Republican president, or vice versa.
To be honest, I did vote for a Republican representative...mostly because the Democratic incumbent had voted for telecom immunity.
Why would you assume I voted a straight party ticket either way?
No, I didn't. I was in the military during the run-up to Iraq, and had been warning my friends (military and civilian) of the possible extremes that the GOP Congress and administration would go to.
Sadly, imho, most of the bad possibilities came true.
The reason I mentioned my party affiliation (soon to be past; I'm going to register independent) was because party "loyalty" is not high on my list...actually, it's not on the list at all. Lesser of two evils is good enough for me; if one candidate is either more agreeable to my positions or a good antidote to the current doofus, he'll probably get my vote.
Obama was (to me) a good repudiation of the former administration's belief and tactics...it remains to be seen if he's any good at all on his own.
Unless you actually plan on doing something horrific and are dumb enough to talk about it over a phone this shouldn't be a problem.
So, can you tell me exactly how someone gets on the No-Fly lists? Can you tell me these records will never be used in a civil or criminal case?
What about a joke you made about the pretty new secretary at work 2 years ago--and she ends up kidnapped, killed, and/or raped? If "they" start combing through your past phone conversations, do you think the prosecution would ignore the possibility that you were sexually obsessed with her?
"If you haven't done anything wrong..." is not a good argument. It's about all the ways it can go wrong.
lol...I posted my comment above, and then this one shows up! Glad to see great minds (or something like that) think alike!
By temperament and voter registration, I'm a Republican; however, I voted for (and hope for) an Obama win because the path the government has taken over the last 7-8 years has saddened and disgusted me. I'm glad he won.
But, I am not a "believer." Now that the opposing party is in charge (just like the GOP was for all those years) it's going to be hard for them to put away all those neat new toys that Bush & Co. left behind. This is because it's hard for the party on top to admit that a power or capability is too dangerous to use (dangerous as in potentially or outright abusive of Constitutional rights.)
If there were ever a prime time to hold your government's feet to the fire over policy, now is the time to do it. Otherwise, it will be fait accompli, and we'll start hearing things from this administration (and its supporters) like, "But we're not Bush; we're better than him!"
Just my inflation-adjusted 2 cents...
Man oh man...if only I had mod points.
LMFAO--the image of a peace-loving bald Indian giving a long, educated dissertation, and finishing with "bitch"
its NOT cute and your employees are not children.
'googlers'. sigh.
That's why I call all my employees minions!
(My wife prefers the title "Mistress of Minions".)
Matewan, or the Battle of Athens?
Pieces of history that don't get taught anywhere because it is...."disturbing". These things do happen, and in the relatively recent past.
Personal family experience: What do you do when you are the one escapee from three generations of Manson family? Every time one of your SOB brothers, sisters, cousins, or creepy Uncle Carl gets into trouble, you get rounded up with the usual suspects and grilled like a cheese sandwich from Mel's Diner!
I've got a sister-in-law who's a great, clean, upstanding citizen. Unfortunately...her family has about 3 generations of DWT spread across 4 counties. Why should she have to recite her family tree and testify to Creepy Uncle Carl's whereabouts on the day in question?
Relative is a relative term...and if it could happen to her, it could happen to anybody.
...the usual disclaimers, IANAL, etc...
Just to be specific, with some examples:
Scenario #1: Mobster husband coming home from a hard day's "work"
Hubby: Boy, Honey! That was a rough day! Do you have any idea how hard it is to chop up a guy with a Ginsu knife? We never thought Tony Da Rat would fit in that suitcase!
The wife can't testify or be made to testify about Tony Da Rat's tragically funny disposal. Her husband related it to her (assuming no one else was around) as part of the marital confidential communication.
Scenario #2: Wife greets Mobster Hubby after hard day's work
Wife: Awww...honey. Looks like you had a rough day. Let me wash that bloody shirt. What do you want me to do with the head in the bowling bag?
The wife canbe made to testify about the bloody shirt, the head in the bag, or anything else she directly sees, hears, touches, etc.
The point is that it's not her privilege or choice...it's her husband's. He can refuse to let her testify about confidential communication--she can't just go forth and start spouting it off...not if it (or any subsequent evidence) is to be used in court.
I was a flight instructor in the Navy during 9/11. Out at the smoke pit, just after, I was talking to some of my JO staff and students, and I told them (basically) the following:
What you guys are going to have to realize is that it's now a different world. For the first 4-5 years of my military career, it was all Cold War mentality. That affected the every decision made.
From about 1990 on, the US had a different mentality: We were the biggest, toughest ones on the block, but there wasn't any real strategic direction. That affected the decisions of our politicians and military, and we've been living with the effects ever since.
You guys, however, are only 1-2 years in your career, and you're going to have an entirely different way of looking at things. It'll be a lot easier to see things in an Us vs. Them mentality, but it'll also be a lot easier to take the shortcuts. You'll find people telling themselves that "it's okay...it's for the good of the country."
Sad to say, this thread justifies some of my concerns. It's not that the Guard or any other force fears (or doesn't) armed civilians...it's that they may think it's easier to just shoot the bastich than worry over constitutionality vs. some platoon leader yelling to fire.
Nice...never would have thought of that. I've been meaning to play with OpenWrt. Sounds like I should get off my butt and do it.
What equipment do you use for the embedded box? I'd love to do the same for my customers.
haven't used chironfs (I'll check it out), but rdiff-backup has been working at a medical clinic for off-site backup for 10 months without a glitch.
Basic data from my backup:
The results are that it's been running without a hitch for 10 months, and I've used the backed-up data to create a mirror of the medical clinic site in less than 3 hours.
For me, that's all I need: The ability to take my backups and go from clean machine to fully functioning system in less than a day.
It's been working so well that I've been quietly offering the service to some of my other IT customers who need to get up and running quickly.
Legal and confidentiality issues are the biggest obstacle. The medical office data is covered because of previous arrangements and agreements. For other customers with these issues, you can set up a similar layout that works within their requirements.
...laughing my a$$ off! I wish I had mod points!
Or would I just waste them on some other comment?