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Except that it's wrong.

Notice all the factual errors in all the accounts.

In the book, How to Win at Video Games, the author says something to the effect of

He's called "the Jumpman" but my friends and I think he looks Italian, so we call him Mario.

Imagine my shock when he was named "Mario" in Donkey Kong Jr. and even more surprise when they trademarked the name for Mario Bros.

Eric S. Nylund explored it in the 90's in his awesome sci-fi novel Signal to Noise.

In a nutshell, humanity makes contact with an alien race that are like a galactic version of capitalist exploiters -- they just want to discover other less-evolved societies (and the location of their planets) so they can consume them for resources. The races that survive are the ones that successfully conceal themselves and keep anyone from finding out where they are hidden.

Its a very entertaining book, with an awesome and hilarious ending which I won't spoil for you here.

For my two cents i can never understand why normal people do not want to be able to carry a spare battery. This will always be the deal braker for me with an iPhone. Why do I have to send the whole unit back to apple for this?

Here you go, problem solved.

Big private offices: see Peopleware, which is still the only text that actually uses studies and stats rather than Feng Shui wizard-gabble.

Of course, nobody (short of Google) can afford that any more, so we make up bullshit reasons to justify cramming devs into cramped noisy battery farms, while neatly ignoring that the job of a developer is to develop, not to network.

To answer the question: read peopleware!! http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-Second/dp/0932633439

It deals with this specifically. The conclusion that the author came to is basically that people should have offices. Cubes and "open workspaces" are too noisy and distracting. This whole thing with open workspaces came out of the 70s -- I think you had to be on drugs to think it was a good idea tbh. Education/academia found out the hard way that it didn't work, but businesses haven't figured it out yet -- all businesses look at is "if I cram this many more people into a tight workspace, I save so much more money vs renting more space" without a care to productivity. Productivity is a hard thing to measure after all, but a good effort is made in peopleware and IBM did a study as well. IBM and Microsoft give their workers offices, the reasons are inside the book.

If you want to be productive, buy and read the book. Better buy two copies and give one to your manager to read.

The corporate IT departments that are using McAfee should just take this as a lesson and pull McAfee off of their computers. It's not as if McAfee AV is held-up by users as this amazing piece of software. See. See.

Corporate IT departments need to get the message that McAfee is a piece of junk -- in that sense, McAfee kind of did them a favor...

John McPhee's book, Rising From The Plains, documents his time spent with John Love in Montana. Love was one of the pre-eminent geologists of the 20th century and the primary author of two state geologic maps of Montana. During the Uranium Boom of the 50's, Love was offered a job paying a million dollars/year because he was so good at finding uranium. He repeatedly found deposits where other geologists had said there wouldn't be any.

During their travels around Montana, Love described how uranium easily dissolves in rain water, is carried by same until the water encounters coal where the carbon filters the uranium out of solution. Love then pointed to a nearby coal burning power plant and said the uranium goes up the smokestack and was dispersed to the east.

Neither McPhee nor Love had any reason to spread bullshit about uranium contaminating coal.

So perhaps the samples you inspected didn't come from coal fields that are near uranium deposits like the coal in Montana is.

As for the Scientific American, it's been spewing crap at least since Omni went tits up.

http://www.amazon.com/Fatal-System-Error-Bringing-Internet/product-reviews/1586487485/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&coliid=&showViewpoints=1&colid=&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

Baking bread is not easy; baking store-bought bread is even less easy. The problem is that when you stop making failbread, the barely-tolerable product coming out of your oven is a thousand times better than the garbage you get from the store.

Baking truly great bread requires some real skill. Baking surprisingly decent bread can actually be very simple and require no skill at all. I realize we're seriously off-topic, but posted for other DIYers here on Slashdot who (like me) don't necessarily live within convenient traveling distance of a great bakery. Go to your library, check it out, give it a try..

Drat! From the headline, I thought this mission was kicking off a new wave of music in the spirit of the Flaming Lips.

It's important to pull Islam's chain. Frequently. Some branches of Islam has a tendency to go off in total nutcase directions, especially in countries where Islam has a big role in government. Even some Moslems think so. Most of the Islamic countries are dysfunctional. Islamic educational systems are a joke; they provide brainwashing, not an education. It's not a money issue; most doctorates issued in Saudi Arabia are in "Islamic Studies".

Religions with no sense of humor are vulnerable to ridicule. South Park is fighting the good fight, and, even though I'm not a Fox News fan, I applaud Fox News for backing them up. We give too much respect to religion. Sometimes, religious practices need a good belly-laugh.

The Catholic Church used to have that kind of power. That was a long time ago. Centuries ago they lost their temporal power, and recently, they've lost their moral authority. There are calls for the Pope to resign over child abuse coverups, people calling for his arrest if he visits Britain, and a group working to deny the Vatican diplomatic recognition. (The US didn't recognize the Vatican until the Reagan administration - Reagan needed Catholic votes.) At this point, nobody is afraid of the Catholic church, except maybe little boys being molested. Islam needs to be taken down a few notches like that.

There's surprising similarity between the nuttier branches of the major Western religions. Extreme-right Christian groups, ultra-orthodox Jews, and militant Islamic mullahs have more in common than any of them do with the rest of the world. They're all into oppressing women, ODing on prayer, dumbing down education, and whining for Government subsidies. (Their leaders also seem to be old guys with beards wearing black, looking like ZZ Top). Laughing at them can only help.

You're going to need to buy a tablet PC, because a laptop doesn't mount to the dash or headrest. Warning: affiliate link: Asus Eee PC T91MT-PU17-BK 8.9-Inch Intel Atom Netbook Computer (Black) (you know what to do if you don't want to clicky... but if you wanted to just click, I wouldn't complain)

Amazon has posted a security bulleting on their website addressing this issue: https://aws.amazon.com/security/ Frank

For your next comment, consult this valuable resource. What site am I on again?

"while you and a few others will decide the pen is too small someone else will come along and call you barbaric for what you accept"

Wow, you are so right. We should abandon any efforts to treat animals more humanely because there will always be someone who wants them to be treated better. We should cut off their legs and reduce the pen size even further cause, hell, you can't please everyone.

"No farmer wants animals harmed or raised in unsafe manners, it is not cost effective."

Bullshit. There are farmers that have their hearts and production methods in the right place and there are farmers that abuse animals to maximize profits. You are either being naive or dishonest.

"We seem to put more care into the well being of animals than ourselves."

This is a false dichotomy. We need to treat all living creatures with respect. It is a closed system. I'm not saying to not eat them, I am saying we need to make sure they live healthy lives - for their sakes and ours. The current state of meat production is abysmal. The only reason cows eat corn is because it's an artificially cheap commodity because of government subsidies. This is also the reason most of our processed food is made out of corn. Cows aren't meant to eat corn - they have spent millions of years evolving a stomach to eat grass. You can feed them corn, but then you have to take all kinds of measures to keep them healthy. The only sustainable and sane way to raise cattle is to let them walk under the sky and eat grass. I urge everyone to read Michael Pollen's book, "the Omnivore's dilemma". It will really open your eyes to the consequences of a food economy based on cheap corn. I try to eat grass-fed beef whenever I can afford it.

http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/1606861670/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271700304&sr=8-1

Mount Vernon, September 25, 1798. From: George Washington To: George Snyder

I have heard much of the nefarious, and dangerous plan, and doctrines of the Illuminati, but never saw the Book until you were pleased to send it to me.9 The same causes which have prevented my acknowledging the receipt of your letter have prevented my reading the Book, hitherto; namely, the multiplicity of matters which pressed upon me before, and the debilitated state in which I was left after, a severe fever had been removed. And which allows me to add little more now, than thanks for your kind wishes and favourable sentiments, except to correct an error you have run into, of my Presiding over the English lodges in this Country. The fact is, I preside over none, nor have I been in one more than once or twice, within the last thirty years. I believe notwithstanding, that none of the Lodges in this Country are contaminated with the principles ascribed to the Society of the Illuminati.

The book he is referring to is Proofs of a Conspiracy by John Robison

Mount Vernon, October 24, 1798. From: George Washington To: George Snyder

It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am.

The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of seperation). That Individuals of them may have done it, or that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects; and actually had a seperation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned.

My occupations are such, that but little leisure is allowed me to read News Papers, or Books of any kind; the reading of letters, and preparing answers, absorb much of my time. With respect,

Note: Although in the 2nd letter he says he is "satisfied," meaning he agrees that the Illuminati and their doctrines have made their way to the United States.

Source: Search for illuminati

Sounds like the Alibi Archives from Hominids.

I've personally "cured" over 1000 cases of "colic" which is a vague symptom as opposed to "disease" with chiropractic methods. I wrote a paper giving a neurological basis for it in college. This was by treating the related spinal segments involved as well as using digestive aids, and reflex techniques developed by chiropractors. I wrote a book about my methods which is simple and easy to understand. http://www.amazon.com/Digestive-Awareness-Diet-You-Are/dp/0942055268?&camp=212361&creative=383841&linkCode=wss&tag=selfparenting-20 You try to tell my 1000+ patients your line of political whitewash and they will laugh in your face. Most of these case were last resort drug/medical/surgical failures, who had tried every other system of healing. It's not that complicated of a concept. Any open minded person could understand the principles of Chiropractic if they weren't predisposed to be a hater. Treating colic is easy. This was before gluten free brought new understanding to a host of digestive symptomology, so there is even more chance of success with natural treatments. I'm not sure where you got your chiropractic degree and thus know so much about this topic, maybe you could inform me.

Keeping this more relevant to the topic, there's also the issue that smart young coders who previously might have gone into kernel development, well, look what they're seeing in the market right now.

UI is the exciting part, it's driving Google's growth, it's driving Apple's growth, the most interesting work Microsoft is doing (Project Natal on the Xbox, the Surface table, the Office 2007 UI research) is all based around improving the user interfaces of established devices.

Working on the kernel is about as far away as you can get from the really interesting work going on right now. Project Natal developers don't give a flying whit whether the Xbox 360 runs Linux or BSD or Windows kernels, that's completely irrelevant to their work.

Note also: this is a really, really, really good thing! Computer UI is finally getting some much-needed attention! Programmers are finally learning that if their features are hard-to-use, they might as well not even exist to the average user! Dancing Bear-ware is finally and at long last going away! Exciting times.

"Astrophysicists have found that when a supermassive black hole quickly devours gas and dust, it can generate enough radiation to abort all the embryonic stars in the surrounding galaxy.

This reminds me of Larry Niven's short story "At the Core" (collected in Crashlander ) where an expedition to the galactic core finds that the density of stars in the area causes a chain of supernovas, whose radiation will eventually sweep over the outskirts of the galaxy and destroy life on Earth. Now that galactic cores are somewhat better understood, what's the current idea of how our neighbourhood could be affected by events in the center?

Nick Lane's book Power, Sex, Suicide and Mitchondria was a fascinating read. Nick proposes several reasons why mitochondria would keep a few of their genes around, when the other 90% have been subsumed into the nucleus. These tend to be for the most crucial proteins in repairing the oxidation damage caused by this powerhouses.

Just for anyone interested (I was), the law cited is:

The owner cited European law Directive 1999/44/EC — which states that goods must (1) comply with the description given by the seller and possess the same qualities and characteristics as other similar goods, and (2) be fit for the purpose which the consumer requires them and which was made known to the seller at the time of purchase. How many other European PS3 owners will follow suit?

I'll be asking for a refund from GameStop as I also were required to remove the portion to be able to buy new games.

I assume you told the GameStop clerk that you were purchasing the PS3 specifically for the particular purpose of installing another OS?

In the US, it's even more explicit:

Uniform Commercial Code 2-315. Implied Warranty: Fitness for Particular Purpose. Where the seller at the time of contracting has reason to know any particular purpose for which the goods are required and that the buyer is relying on the seller's skill or judgment to select or furnish suitable goods, there is unless excluded or modified under the next section an implied warranty that the goods shall be fit for such purpose.

Nonetheless, I doubt Gamestop would give you a refund, and I'm really surprised Amazon gave this guy a warranty:
Gamestop (from http://www.gamestop.com/gs/help/disclaimer.aspx:

TO THE FULL EXTENT PERMISSIBLE BY APPLICABLE LAW, GAMESTOP DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

And Amazon (from http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=footer_cou?ie=UTF8&nodeId=508088:

TO THE FULL EXTENT PERMISSIBLE BY APPLICABLE LAW, AMAZON DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

And of course, if you go back to the source, here's the one that came in the box with your PS3 (from Sony, here http://us.playstation.com/support/warranties/ps3/index.htm):

THIS WARRANTY IS PROVIDED TO YOU IN LIEU OF ALL OTHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE FOR THE PS3 HARDWARE, WHICH ARE DISCLAIMED HEREUNDER. HOWEVER, IF SUCH WARRANTIES ARE REQUIRED AS A MATTER OF LAW, THEN THEY ARE LIMITED IN DURATION TO THE WARRANTY PERIOD.

A little thing called "truth" gets in the way of a lot of this.

For instance, if you examine the truthful historical record, Mohammed was a rapist, murderer, pedophile, and habitual liar. In other words, one hell of a politician. He also REDUCED, rather than enhanced, womens' rights in the region (they never fess up to the fact that his first wife was a "MILF" widow who owned and ran her own business, was more than a decade his senior, and basically married him because she was tired of not gettin' any and wanted a boytoy... when he was done it's lucky if a woman gets $10 and isn't beaten to a bloody pulp when she gets "divorced" by her Muslim Hubby).

LDS/Mormon "prophet" Joseph Smith? Yeah. Saw himself as a "prophet" similar to Jesus, but when the angry villagers were at his door, he whipped out a "pepperbox" gun and started blasting. How jesuslike.

L. Ron Hubbard? The term "delusional psychopath" seems to apply quite well. The lies told about him by his follower can easily fill at least one book if not many, many more.

7th day Adventists? How many times have you freaks predicted the end of the world only to realize your "prophets" are a load of hooey, anyways? Great scam to get donations, though, get people to sell everything off and donate you the money figuring they won't need it after the Rapture anyways...

If you haven't heard of him before then you've been missing out. He's the author of the excellent "The Code Book" and "Fermat's Last Theorem", both cracking examples of popular science writing.

Everyone really should check them out:
http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
http://www.amazon.com/Fermats-Last-Theorem-Simon-Singh/dp/1841157910

If you haven't heard of him before then you've been missing out. He's the author of the excellent "The Code Book" and "Fermat's Last Theorem", both cracking examples of popular science writing.

Everyone really should check them out:
http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323
http://www.amazon.com/Fermats-Last-Theorem-Simon-Singh/dp/1841157910

So, the people who chose to keep the Other OS functionality, can no longer buy any new games - so if people needed that functionality, but also play games, then Sony will make them choose:

a) buy another new console so you have one for your other OS; and one for games.

The OtherOS will run - and run very, very well - on dirt-cheap commodity PC hardware. You will have full access to the video sub-system and at least four times the RAM even on the netbook, and, at rock-bottom, a 160-250 GB hard drive.

The FAT PS3 remains a solid platform for home entertainment - PS2 and PS3 gaming. DVD. Blu-Ray, Netflix and PSN.

b) stay with one console with Other OS, but stop playing games on the PS3

Like hell you will.

Bestsellers in PS3 Games

God of War 3. Batman: Arkham Asylum. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Red Dead Redemption. Heavy Rain....

c) remove the Other OS, update and only use it for playing. Revenue stream continues for Sony (on new games) - but at the cost of goodwill to the company.

The PS3's installed base is around 24-25 million units. Slashdot front-paged a story about a partial refund to a lone disgruntled geek in the U.K. - and sixteen days out from the firmware upgrade, there is not much else to talk about.

Of course, I think the future lies in the private industry.

A lot of people do, myself included. I have to say, though, I am much more pessimistic about the rate of progress that private industry will make than I was a decade ago. Growing up reading Michael Flynn's trilogy beginning with Firestar , which presents a vision of the rise of private spaceflight in the near future, I was thinking, "Well, they just need to find a cheap way to orbit and then there will be all kinds of clients knocking on the door." But now I'm afraid that Scaled Composites and similar ventures will indeed slowly find a cheap way to orbit, but no one will want to sign on to actually do anything up there. Flynn's suppositions of who the first users of private spaceflight would be -- FedEx and UPS, among others -- now just seem ridiculous in retrospect.

"And then you get several people in the same room, and the system doesn't know who it's supposed to display the contents for."

Did you stop reading after you got to that sentence? Because the very next sentence says: " If there's multiple people it should be able to change according to whoever's closest and looking at the windows."

I also wrote that Logitech has been making facial recognition software that follows your face since 2005 so go ask them how the 5 yr old software with the lowly Pentium 4 1.4ghz system requirements managed to determine who to follow without the assistance of quad cores.

Ah, i fed the troll, how stupid of me!

Read iCon the bio of Jobs that Jobs hated so much that he banned all Wiley books from Apple stores.

iCon is available for the Kindle. Some Kindle books are available for the iPad. "iCon" does not appear to be one of them.

It was more than just an innocuous remark. He co-authored a book explaining why it was bogus. They did this to discredit him.

Now, I'm going to buy the book.

"While it sucks that working conditions like these exist, how else can we buy mice for $20?"

Many mice are much more then $20 so these companies are making extreme margins.

MX518

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Performance-Optical-Gaming-Mouse/dp/B0007Z1M50/

Razor deathadder

http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Deathadder-Precision-Infrared-Gaming/dp/B002Q4U5DK/

"While it sucks that working conditions like these exist, how else can we buy mice for $20?"

Many mice are much more then $20 so these companies are making extreme margins.

MX518

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Performance-Optical-Gaming-Mouse/dp/B0007Z1M50/

Razor deathadder

http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Deathadder-Precision-Infrared-Gaming/dp/B002Q4U5DK/

My favourite line from an excellent old physics book called "From the Black Hole to the Infinite Universe".

"Yes, there are aliens but they don't want to talk to us. Have you tried communicating with ants lately?"

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Hole-Infinite-Universe/dp/0816233233

> They don't need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today.

Damned brilliant article. Scary when you laugh at the funny man in the picture and then you realize it's you.

(LOL. I can't wait to update my Facebook about this!)

I've always found it interesting how we assume that aliens will follow time at the same rate we do.

One might imagine that things like reaction time have to be relatively close to things like gravity, because otherwise species could be wiped out by falling rocks and such.

In any event, I've always imagined that SETI might just be a waste of time, because civilizations might only use radio waves for a comparatively miniscule amount of time before they hit some technological singularity and find some other means of communication. Maybe I've been reading too much Vernor Vinge, who emphasises the swift and sudden disruption a singularity might bring in books like Marooned in Realtime , but there's got to be a pretty decent probability that any civilizations technologically advanced enough to talk to us have already surpassed us.

• 2 x 5 - 6 gallon containers & little airlocks (either plastic buckets with lids and/or glass carboys with stoppers; stoppers/lids need to be drilled for airlocks)
• rigid tube and flexible tubing for siphoning from one container to another, and into bottles.
• a hydrometer is helpful, but not strictly necessary

You will also need:

• about 50 clean & sanitized 12 oz beer bottles (pop-off, not twist-off, brown glass is best since light harms beer)
• ~2 gallon cooking pot (preferably stainless steel, aluminum is okay, enamel over steel is okay as long as there are no chips in the enamel - you do not want to expose your beer to regular steel; it will cause flavor problems)
• bottle capper (you'll probably need to buy this, a wine bottle corker generally won't do the job)

You can get prepackaged ingredient kits or order a la carte. For $30 - $45US, you should be able to get a kit that contains the following, which should be all you need to brew 5 gallons of beer:

• malt extract syrup and/or dried malt extract
• hops
• dried yeast
• muslin bag
• priming sugar
• bottle caps
• perhaps additional misc stuff
• instructions

There are homebrew books that are helpful in figuring out what to do and how to do it. In my experience, This is one of the best out there, and I highly recommend it for brewers of all levels. Fortunately, there is a huge amount of excellent info freely available on the internet. (Google, as always, is your friend)

The outdated look of hbd.org is misleading - you'd never know that it holds an excellent beer recipe development tool (click on "Spreadsheet") and recipe database.

Forums worth checking out:
http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/

Good luck to you, and enjoy!

See, modern White Privilege theory defines racism as gaining unearned benefit from belonging to the privileged race. Because whites cannot divorce themselves from this privilege, all whites are racist. Conversely, because Blacks cannot claim white privilege - upon which racism is predicated - Blacks cannot be racist.

Whether these children exhibit racist tendencies is irrelevant. The real question is, "What color is the child's skin?" If it's white, they are racist. ...

Wow. Did I just type all that without laughing? Yes, it was tongue-in-cheek, but if you read Kendall's book, that is her model of racism and white privilege.

The columnist from TFA is not just a columnist but has actual experience. He has been involved in tech for quite some time. Besides writing an early book on JSP in the Enterprise, he was CTO of the street and a tech lead of Time-Warner's Pathfinder site in the 90s.

http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Woods/e/B001IODE6O/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1271274109&sr=1-1

The only rational solution is not to "vote for the lesser evil," but change voting systems so more information is extracted by letting voters give a score to all candidates. This way, if a voter prefers Nader > Gore > Bush, it's reflected in the vote. The dilemma of "choosing the lesser evil over the sure-loser" is eliminated and society is better informed on how all the candidates are ranked by the populace.

An interesting history of voting systems and arguments for why scoring systems are best can be found in Gaming The Vote by William Poundstone.

It seems that even physics was heading the same way. After WWII they were about to have a conference similar to the ones they had in biology. A few days before the conference was about to start, Beria reminded Stalin that the physicists were the ones who could could Soviet Union an Atomic Bomb.

Read more about it in the book Misguided Weapons: http://www.amazon.com/Misguided-Weapons-Technological-Surprise-Battlefield/dp/1574885286

If you haven't already, Try reading "why people believe weird things" by michael shermer. Since reading this i'm convinced that there are no such things as ghosts, and that aliens aren't visiting the earth, whereas before i think i just adopted the attitude that the huge body of anecdotal evidence for both of them must indicate something, no smoke without fire, etc.

If you are interested in skepticism in general I can recommend the podcasts skeptoid, skepticality and the skeptics guide to the universe

The betty and barney hill episode of skeptoid is quite enlightening. There are quite a few UFO episodes.

The shermer book is essential reading.

This may help:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_9?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=region-free+dvd+player&x=0&y=0&sprefix=Region-fr

When I read the article, I mused that the damage done by a mere misfired power beam might be nothing compared to the damage that the space elevator the beam powers might do if it falls. One of the most interesting scenes for me in Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Red Mars was the vision of the descent of a Mars space elevator after it is severed from the asteroid it is tethered to: a white hot ribbon of carbon lacerating the entire circumference of the planet, even wrapping around twice for added damage if it is long enough.

It's a bit sobering to think that even if mankind solved the plague of nuclear weapons, there's new ways to rain down mass destruction from orbit.

Actually, a skeptical class that did an honest, thorough investigation would be good.

Something like this, but for UFOs.

Temperature-controlled soldering irons with stands are so cheap nowadays that there is little to no excuse to buy a non-temp-controlled unit.

Aoyue 937+ is only $50 - http://www.amazon.com/Aoyue-937-Digital-Soldering-Station/dp/B000I30QBW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=industrial&qid=1271188419&sr=8-1

I have one of these and it is great. It includes a pretty nice stand/solder spool holder.

Thanks for sneaking in your Amazon referer ID in the URL, asshole!

1. Go to the Star Trek 2009 page on Amazon.
2. Hover over "Video On Demand" option.
3. Note internal site auditing URL.
4. Apologize.
5. Look up how to spell referrer.
6. Have a nice day.

The 500GB hard drive will sell for a special promotional price of $100.

Oh yeah that is, of course, if you don't want to watch the titles. If you want to watch the movies:

The other movies distributed by Paramount, including "GI Joe," ''Nacho Libre" and "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" come pre-loaded with a digital lock that requires a code that can be purchased online for $10 to $15 each. Even watching "Star Trek" requires registration.

So yeah it's $100 or over triple that if you actually want to watch the "promotional" material. Otherwise you're buying a hard drive with a (presumably Windows) partition that has Windows DRM and twenty movies taking up 50 gigabytes of space. Sounds to me like a lame AOL CD that gets you working with the shit and then hopes that you just keep using their platform for buying and downloading movies.

I guess a brave soul could buy the drive and leave the 50 gigs intact and then download the 20 movies and feign ignorance if the MPAA comes knocking at the door. I wonder if there's some consumer protection laws that states if you buy something legally you have a right to enjoy it. Because right now you're buying a digital copy of something that is encrypted but you're not receiving the license that is required to watch it. They better carefully label that the PROMOTION part of the sale lest a consumer figures that they're paying 10% for the movies and 90% for the drive and then becomes upset when they get home and can't watch the movies without ponying up an additional 200%-300%.

Both companies declined to say if they were taking a loss on the promotional price.

Really? Oh yeah, sounds like Sony is bending over backwards to trap you into paying the retail price of owning the digital movie that sells for $15 right now on Amazon. They're using Seagate and Seagate customers are rubes to get around paying for streaming bandwidth of these 50 gigs to potential customers.

I choose to rate this tactic as USDA certified lame. Shame on Seagate. Shame on Sony. I feel sorry for those that might buy this without realizing what they're getting themselves into.

How about an adult version of this --
http://www.amazon.com/Nutcracker-Classic-Collectible-Pop-Up/dp/0689832850/ref=cm_lmf_tit_7

The Art of Electronics is the best book ever for learning all these basics.
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521370957/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271114053&sr=8-1
(not an affiliate link)
Yeah, it's $90, but its worth it. Broke? I'm sure the library has it, and that's free!

After that I'd really recommend learning microcontrollers, and for that, Sparkfun Electronics is great.
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorials.php

My only other advice is to learn stuff the same way I've been learning stuff the last few years - just look on google. You'll find what you're looking for.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=learning+electronics&aq=f&aqi=g-sx10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
-Taylor

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521370957/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271114151&sr=1-1