links for 2009-05-18

This paragraph reminds me of of my work as a sysadmin, and the general lack of credit sysadmins get when things just work: "This is sort of like fixing a car that has been sitting in a field for 8 years. NASA has this problem — the things that they do are really really hard. And yet often to outsiders it looks relatively easy. But it looks easy because a) they train like crazy, and b) they throw a lot of top resources at it. So they solve these problems fixing the Hubble, but that's because they've been practicing for _years_ and they have 200 people on the ground looking over every procedure. They make it look easy like an Olympic athlete makes it look easy."