Yeah, it's easier to use all that crap in Windows because you're comfortable with it and it happens to work better in most ways but it's certainly not as difficult as you make it out to be to do it in Linux.
I can't imagine it takes longer to make a "usable" desktop in Linux than it does in Windows. Everytime I need to reformat and reinstall Windows I end up spending AT LEAST an hour changing all the "stupid" settings that it defaults to (changing the task bar to "Classic Mode" aka non-Fischer Price style, turn off the stupid "personalized menus" option, removing annoying system sounds, etc etc) and un-installing all the crap I don't need/want (Outlook, Messenger, etc).
Setting up a nice desktop in the Linux distros I've tried was far easier and quicker.
I have a 3rd generation 15gb iPod that was in my front pocket while I was skiing. I took a rough tumble down a slope and all that happened was the metal casing had popped loose a bit on one side. I snapped it back into place and it worked just fine!
This isn't really new in any way. MIT has been doing this every January for the past few years.
They've also been doing a lego robotics competition every January as well. This involves electronics (for sensors), programming (robots need to be autonomous), and "mechanical" design (building the actual bot out of legos!).
Does your dentist use a camera to look inside your mouth? I don't mean taking xrays.
Actually, he does. My dentist has this small camera probe he uses to display magnified images of the hard to see places on teeth on a television monitor so the patient can see up close what kind of nastiness they've got on their molars and stuff. It's pretty crazy, but it does a good job scaring people into flossing regularly.
Because they are experimenting with a new tool for learning.
I bought an iPod right before my senior year in college and let me tell you, that thing was great for my film music class! We had to listen to songs from somewhere from 50-100 CDs during the term and had to know them pretty well for the mid-term and final. We weren't expected to own the CDs, but rather to go to the Music Library and listen to them there (the library lets you check them out one at a time for up to 2 hours each to listen to in the library CD players, or your own, if you have one, but the disc can't leave the library).
I was able to put all the music for my class onto one (very long) playlist at the beginning of each half of the term and would just listen to it in my free time and while doing other homework. I honestly think my iPod made a big difference in my studying for that particular class.
"AT&T's network is CDMA. Current AT&T phones won't work on Cingular networks, and vica versa. They wouldn't improve their coverage at all, instead they'll wind up slowly migrating all of their phones to one network, selling off the other set in the process."
I'm no wireless expert, but I am an AT&T wireless customer and I my phone is GSM. Last I checked my parents' phone (they're cingular customers)is also GSM.
You might want to check your sources, I think you might be mistaken.
I can't watch the trailer at work, and I think it's because of the stupid firewall! *cries* Now I'll have to wait 8 hours before I can go home and see it! Not fair!
Official goods normally have good quality packaging that is well designed.
That just isn't true. Ditto for pirated Anime but all of the Anime I own has average to crappy packaging.
Yes, but for CDs this is usually very obvious. Anyone who's ever bought a legitimate Japanese album knows that the packaging on Japanese CDs is really, really, nice (One of the reasons I've never felt too bad about forking over the $35+ for a legitimate Japanese CD). They're usually much higher quality and give an overall impression that the artist and/or record label cares a lot more about the product than most American artists/labels do. Many of them even come with neat little toys/goodies/collectibles. Bootlegs from Taiwan and HK never have the same quality in pacakging.
I know the original post was about DVDs, so I should ask, have you ever bought/seen a bootleg DVD from Taiwan or Hong Kong? It makes even the crappiest American release look like gold.
Actually this should be a much bigger deal now when it comes to Anime soundtrack CDs. Companies like Pioneer have recently begun to cater to American fans by releasing their soundtracks domestically.
What does this mean? Well, it means that a CD that is identical to the original Japanese album and totally legal costs the same as most American CDs (Normally most imported and legal Japanese CDs cost upwards of $35). Previously, that was probably the biggest motivator for people to buy the Taiwanese bootlegs which sold for around $15-17 (which is about what Pioneer sells its domestic releases for now).
It's because of this that I am particularly disgusted by stores like Boston's Tokyo Kid, that still do not sell any legitimate Japanese albums despite their domestic availability and equivalent pricing.
American fans really need to wake up and support companies that are going out of their way to bring legitimate import albums at reasonable prices by buying those instead of bootlegs.
As an aerospace engineer I'd personally perfer to work on military stuff. It's just more fun because of the fact that they want "more bang" and that's it. That's what makes commercial engines tough (and a bit boring sometimes) because all anyone's trying to do most of the time is scrape that one last drop of fuel efficiency out of an engine model with some derivative engine that's exactly the same except in a small handful of parts.
Jet engines are by no means the greatest contributor to those environmental problems.
It's not a tradeoff between fuel efficiency vs. pilot safety. Military aircaft all have far lower fuel efficiency, AND are also designed at a lower margin of safety than commercial aircraft (IIRC commerical craft usually have a 1.5 (or was it 2.0?) MoS while military craft go as low as 0.5). Why? Because you get better performance with more risk, probably.
"Somebody with bad intentions hacks into the server and destroys your virtual items. Later, the hack is revealed. The sysadmin either goes to the backup or resets a few counters. Virtual items are returned to you. Problem is solved."
I don't play EverQuest, but I have been playing Ragnarok Online for the past 4-5 months and they've had at least one (maybe 2) major incident of account hacking since I started. The one I remember, the GMs, after some delay, rolled back all of our items and money by a week. The only problem is, this affected EVERYONE and a lot of people weren't even affected by the hack (or even knew about it) in the first place and lost a lot of money and rare items gained in that time, myself included. I think during a later rollback (for reasons I can't remember) they tried to make it up to us by giving us a special double experience/double drop "event". It's debatable whether or not that tactic actually keeps players from being angry about rollbacks.
"Mainland China is now separated into its own region (region 6, region 3 is used in Hong Kong, South Korea, and some other Southeast Asian countries). Anyone who is making bootleg video isn't going to play by the rules; they want to maximize the number of people they can sell to.
Isn't this the reason why many bootleg DVDs from Hong Kong and China are "region-less" and why "region-free" DVD players also come from the same place? (By the way, do these actually work or is that just a myth/scam of some sort?)
"Think about it. We rent video all of the time. But no one rent audio CD's. What is that?"
Actually, I've seen a few Japanese video stores in the Los Angeles area rent CDs. Unfortunately for most people (but great for me) they're all Japanese CDs. These aren't old albums either. The store I went to kept up with the recent Japanese releases.
It is too bad that this isn't done with domestic CDs. Although the public library back home used to rent out CDs too. They mostly had music you'd expect to find in a library (classical, jazz, soundtracks, broadway, historical/cultural, etc.) as opposed to the latest pop hits. I think they used to charge 50 cents for a 2 week loan. (To compare, they charged $1 for their VHS loans which were only 3 nights. They started renting out DVDs recently too, but I haven't been home in a while.) It should also be noted though, that they tended to lose a lot of CDs.
Actually, I think a check-in/check-out system for having members listen to music would work. MIT already has a beta version of this called LAMP (Library Access to Music Project) that's been pretty good. If only they'd get more CDs.
I think the thing that would make something like this less legally sketchy is if the number of people playing a particulary song/album is equal to the number of copies owned by the organization. I.e. the "company" would have to buy more copies of the popular stuff, but only 1-2 of the obscure stuff. If they only have 10 copies of your favorie album and 10 people are currently listening to it, you're out of luck.
You just can't quickly record mathematical symbols or graphical diagrams with a computer. Classroom use may become more justified when handwriting recognition software matures, but currently there is no good reason to bring a laptop to class.
This isn't necessarily true anymore with the introduction of Tablet PCs. One of MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences classes, 9.01, is issuing "e-tablets" to its students for the purposes of notetaking. From what I've seen of tablet PCs (played with a few in stores), they seem pretty effective for taking notes.
For one thing, it's nice to have an assortment of colors all in one normal sized pen. In one engineering class I took sophomore year (Unified, for those at MIT who'd understand), I carried around a set of 6 color pencils without which it would've been impossible to copy the complex diagrams presented in lecture in a way I could be able to decipher later. (The profs tended to draw these on the spot using a set of color chalk.) I'm certain a tablet PC would've made that process worlds easier.
"...or HARDEN THE FREAKING PLANE LIKE YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE ANYWAYS. If you're worried about RF leakage out the windows, put a metal screen over them. Come on folks. We KNOW how to shield things properly, and we know how to test if we did it properly..."
You've obviously never tried to design something that goes on an airplane, have you? You want to add MORE metal (i.e. weight) to it?
I know this probably isn't obvious to some people but, when it comes to aircraft, WEIGHT=MONEY!! Why do you think the fuselage is a THIN-walled pressure vessel?
If you add too much weight, it will cost much more to generate sufficient thrust (e.g. you'll either guzzle more jet fuel or have to use a more powerful (and thus more expensive) engine) and the operating costs of the aircraft go up. And what does that translate to? Yup, that's right, plane tickets will cost even more!
The article states that RF devices may induce currents in airplane wiring. I'm not sure how much commercial airliners cost, but I know it's probably well over 50 million. How much would it cost to use fiber optics instead of twisted-pair wiring? I'm sure relative to the cost of the airplane, it wouldn't be much, and that would eliminate having interference with the wires that must be run throughout the aircraft.
You're forgetting that it's not just the cost of the material. It's also the cost of redesigning, retooling, retraining the workers who manufacture the parts, and most of all RECERTIFYING the aircraft.
I'm working in the aircraft industry now, and one of the first things I learned was that the main barrier to making something TOTALLY new is the cost of re-certification. Most of the money (and time) goes into testing.
If you want to sample an artist's music before buying a disc, why not listen to the radio, MTV, or the short samples available on Amazon.com (or wherever) to get an idea of what the artist is like?
Personally, when it comes to the mainstream English music I only buy the CD under 2 conditions: 1) I actually like 80% of the songs on it and 2) after listening to those songs for about 2 weeks (not constantly, but often) I still like them. That's why I prefer to download an album (when I can't borrow it from a friend) before I buy it. Most music retail sites rarely have all the songs in an album up, and even when they do hearing only 30 seconds of a song is decieving because if there's an annoying interlude 2 minutes into it that makes me detest it then I'll hate the song (maybe I'm too picky). Also, from past experience, mainstream English music when I like it tends to wear itself out really fast about half the time. I'm hesitant to buy CDs I might be absolutely sick of even the sight of in a couple of weeks. With the price of American mainstream CDs these days, I don't want just "an idea" of what an artist is like, I want to be SURE I like the album I'm paying for. Every artist has good and bad albums.
I blame American mainstream music industry for the high occurrence of crap among their products. I've noticed I'm drastically less cautious when shelling out the cash for foreign albums, part of that is because their albums even look a lot spiffier. I appreciate a product that looks, as well as sounds, thoughtfully produced.
That's because you only have to stop the vehicle's mass at the end, whereas you had to accelerate both the vehicle and the deceleration propellant at the beginning of the trip.
What? Last I checked the change in velocity required to decelerate to a planet's capture velocity wasn't necessarily less than any other delta v you might make during flight.
As an example, I once calculated the delta v's for a Hohmann transfer to and from Mars. The greatest delta v coming back from Mars by far was getting to the capture velocity once you'd reached Earth. And that's only decelerating from the relatively low velocity of a Hohmann transfer orbit. Now, I could be wrong, but if you've been accelerating for several days continously wouldn't it take a lot more energy to decelerate into a capture velocity? Changes in velocity are what translates into fuel and mass (or energy, if you prefer) costs. Acceleration costs just as much as deceleration, I don't think it's just a matter of making the vehicle mass "stop".
On the other hand, depending on the means of propulsion the vehicle is very likely to be lighter as the trip goes on, so the amount of thrust you'd need to apply a change in velocity
might be smaller.
[Disclaimer: I'm a bit sleep-deprived today so it's possible I've made a silly error somewhere. If I have, I apologize.]
I did some testing, and found that if we are successful in building a ship that can sustain 1 g of acceleration over six days (Prometheus calls for constant thrust to keep astronauts under 1 g of gravity to maintain bone and muscle mass, so it could go a hell of a lot faster), I can send a manned mission to Neptune that will take 40 days to get there. This trip would take 14 years on a Hohmann transfer.
Constant thrust would use a lot of fuel wouldn't it? While this sounds fun, I think cost would be too much of an issue. The Hohmann transfer takes a long time only because it's the most efficient method of interplanetary flight. It requires the least total delta v's, thus requires least fuel (and therefore weight) which makes it ideal for unmanned spaceflight. [Just regurgitating what (I think) I learned in Propusion Systems lectures]
A girl on my floor spilled a glass of some sort of instant coffee-like drink (with a japanese glutinous rice thing in it)on her Dell Inspirion 8000 laptop a few weeks ago. 2 guys on our floor spent a few fun-filled hours taking the thing apart and drying all the parts (which were not only wet, but sticky and sugary) and putting it back together, but couldn't get it to turn on again. The attempts to power it up produced a "burning sugar" smell which was scary.
Several hours later the girl got bored and tried to turn it on for the heck of it and it booted just fine!
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If you think that's crazy, you obviously haven't seen this: http://kotaku.com/gaming/wow/2-people-47-pcs-46-wow-accounts-no-life-275830.php
Yeah, it's easier to use all that crap in Windows because you're comfortable with it and it happens to work better in most ways but it's certainly not as difficult as you make it out to be to do it in Linux.
I can't imagine it takes longer to make a "usable" desktop in Linux than it does in Windows. Everytime I need to reformat and reinstall Windows I end up spending AT LEAST an hour changing all the "stupid" settings that it defaults to (changing the task bar to "Classic Mode" aka non-Fischer Price style, turn off the stupid "personalized menus" option, removing annoying system sounds, etc etc) and un-installing all the crap I don't need/want (Outlook, Messenger, etc).
Setting up a nice desktop in the Linux distros I've tried was far easier and quicker.
I have a 3rd generation 15gb iPod that was in my front pocket while I was skiing. I took a rough tumble down a slope and all that happened was the metal casing had popped loose a bit on one side. I snapped it back into place and it worked just fine!
This isn't really new in any way. MIT has been doing this every January for the past few years.
They've also been doing a lego robotics competition every January as well. This involves electronics (for sensors), programming (robots need to be autonomous), and "mechanical" design (building the actual bot out of legos!).
The problem with a SW MMORPG is that everyone wants to be a Jedi.
Nuh-uh! I wanna be a woooooooookie!!!!1111ONE!!ELEVEN
Does your dentist use a camera to look inside your mouth? I don't mean taking xrays.
Actually, he does. My dentist has this small camera probe he uses to display magnified images of the hard to see places on teeth on a television monitor so the patient can see up close what kind of nastiness they've got on their molars and stuff. It's pretty crazy, but it does a good job scaring people into flossing regularly.
Because they are experimenting with a new tool for learning.
I bought an iPod right before my senior year in college and let me tell you, that thing was great for my film music class! We had to listen to songs from somewhere from 50-100 CDs during the term and had to know them pretty well for the mid-term and final. We weren't expected to own the CDs, but rather to go to the Music Library and listen to them there (the library lets you check them out one at a time for up to 2 hours each to listen to in the library CD players, or your own, if you have one, but the disc can't leave the library).
I was able to put all the music for my class onto one (very long) playlist at the beginning of each half of the term and would just listen to it in my free time and while doing other homework. I honestly think my iPod made a big difference in my studying for that particular class.
I'm no wireless expert, but I am an AT&T wireless customer and I my phone is GSM. Last I checked my parents' phone (they're cingular customers)is also GSM.
You might want to check your sources, I think you might be mistaken.
I can't watch the trailer at work, and I think it's because of the stupid firewall! *cries* Now I'll have to wait 8 hours before I can go home and see it! Not fair!
I know the original post was about DVDs, so I should ask, have you ever bought/seen a bootleg DVD from Taiwan or Hong Kong? It makes even the crappiest American release look like gold.
Actually this should be a much bigger deal now when it comes to Anime soundtrack CDs. Companies like Pioneer have recently begun to cater to American fans by releasing their soundtracks domestically.
What does this mean? Well, it means that a CD that is identical to the original Japanese album and totally legal costs the same as most American CDs (Normally most imported and legal Japanese CDs cost upwards of $35). Previously, that was probably the biggest motivator for people to buy the Taiwanese bootlegs which sold for around $15-17 (which is about what Pioneer sells its domestic releases for now).
It's because of this that I am particularly disgusted by stores like Boston's Tokyo Kid, that still do not sell any legitimate Japanese albums despite their domestic availability and equivalent pricing.
American fans really need to wake up and support companies that are going out of their way to bring legitimate import albums at reasonable prices by buying those instead of bootlegs.
Dude, chill. I wasn't saying it was a bad thing.
As an aerospace engineer I'd personally perfer to work on military stuff. It's just more fun because of the fact that they want "more bang" and that's it. That's what makes commercial engines tough (and a bit boring sometimes) because all anyone's trying to do most of the time is scrape that one last drop of fuel efficiency out of an engine model with some derivative engine that's exactly the same except in a small handful of parts.
Jet engines are by no means the greatest contributor to those environmental problems.
It's not a tradeoff between fuel efficiency vs. pilot safety. Military aircaft all have far lower fuel efficiency, AND are also designed at a lower margin of safety than commercial aircraft (IIRC commerical craft usually have a 1.5 (or was it 2.0?) MoS while military craft go as low as 0.5). Why? Because you get better performance with more risk, probably.
"FYI, U.S. military jets tend to be much louder than commercial jets. Military jets are designed for performance, not environmental-friendliness."
You're right. The military doesn't even give much of a damn about fuel efficiency either, much less noise.
Commerical jet engines are all about "more bang for your buck", but military engines are just "more bang, now, period."
"Somebody with bad intentions hacks into the server and destroys your virtual items. Later, the hack is revealed. The sysadmin either goes to the backup or resets a few counters. Virtual items are returned to you. Problem is solved."
I don't play EverQuest, but I have been playing Ragnarok Online for the past 4-5 months and they've had at least one (maybe 2) major incident of account hacking since I started. The one I remember, the GMs, after some delay, rolled back all of our items and money by a week. The only problem is, this affected EVERYONE and a lot of people weren't even affected by the hack (or even knew about it) in the first place and lost a lot of money and rare items gained in that time, myself included. I think during a later rollback (for reasons I can't remember) they tried to make it up to us by giving us a special double experience/double drop "event". It's debatable whether or not that tactic actually keeps players from being angry about rollbacks.
"Mainland China is now separated into its own region (region 6, region 3 is used in Hong Kong, South Korea, and some other Southeast Asian countries). Anyone who is making bootleg video isn't going to play by the rules; they want to maximize the number of people they can sell to.
Isn't this the reason why many bootleg DVDs from Hong Kong and China are "region-less" and why "region-free" DVD players also come from the same place? (By the way, do these actually work or is that just a myth/scam of some sort?)
"Think about it. We rent video all of the time. But no one rent audio CD's. What is that?"
Actually, I've seen a few Japanese video stores in the Los Angeles area rent CDs. Unfortunately for most people (but great for me) they're all Japanese CDs. These aren't old albums either. The store I went to kept up with the recent Japanese releases.
It is too bad that this isn't done with domestic CDs. Although the public library back home used to rent out CDs too. They mostly had music you'd expect to find in a library (classical, jazz, soundtracks, broadway, historical/cultural, etc.) as opposed to the latest pop hits. I think they used to charge 50 cents for a 2 week loan. (To compare, they charged $1 for their VHS loans which were only 3 nights. They started renting out DVDs recently too, but I haven't been home in a while.) It should also be noted though, that they tended to lose a lot of CDs.
Actually, I think a check-in/check-out system for having members listen to music would work. MIT already has a beta version of this called LAMP (Library Access to Music Project) that's been pretty good. If only they'd get more CDs.
I think the thing that would make something like this less legally sketchy is if the number of people playing a particulary song/album is equal to the number of copies owned by the organization. I.e. the "company" would have to buy more copies of the popular stuff, but only 1-2 of the obscure stuff. If they only have 10 copies of your favorie album and 10 people are currently listening to it, you're out of luck.
You just can't quickly record mathematical symbols or graphical diagrams with a computer. Classroom use may become more justified when handwriting recognition software matures, but currently there is no good reason to bring a laptop to class.
This isn't necessarily true anymore with the introduction of Tablet PCs. One of MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences classes, 9.01, is issuing "e-tablets" to its students for the purposes of notetaking. From what I've seen of tablet PCs (played with a few in stores), they seem pretty effective for taking notes.
For one thing, it's nice to have an assortment of colors all in one normal sized pen. In one engineering class I took sophomore year (Unified, for those at MIT who'd understand), I carried around a set of 6 color pencils without which it would've been impossible to copy the complex diagrams presented in lecture in a way I could be able to decipher later. (The profs tended to draw these on the spot using a set of color chalk.) I'm certain a tablet PC would've made that process worlds easier.
"...or HARDEN THE FREAKING PLANE LIKE YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE ANYWAYS. If you're worried about RF leakage out the windows, put a metal screen over them. Come on folks. We KNOW how to shield things properly, and we know how to test if we did it properly..."
You've obviously never tried to design something that goes on an airplane, have you? You want to add MORE metal (i.e. weight) to it?
I know this probably isn't obvious to some people but, when it comes to aircraft, WEIGHT=MONEY!! Why do you think the fuselage is a THIN-walled pressure vessel?
If you add too much weight, it will cost much more to generate sufficient thrust (e.g. you'll either guzzle more jet fuel or have to use a more powerful (and thus more expensive) engine) and the operating costs of the aircraft go up. And what does that translate to? Yup, that's right, plane tickets will cost even more!
I'm working in the aircraft industry now, and one of the first things I learned was that the main barrier to making something TOTALLY new is the cost of re-certification. Most of the money (and time) goes into testing.
If you want to sample an artist's music before buying a disc, why not listen to the radio, MTV, or the short samples available on Amazon.com (or wherever) to get an idea of what the artist is like?
Personally, when it comes to the mainstream English music I only buy the CD under 2 conditions: 1) I actually like 80% of the songs on it and 2) after listening to those songs for about 2 weeks (not constantly, but often) I still like them. That's why I prefer to download an album (when I can't borrow it from a friend) before I buy it. Most music retail sites rarely have all the songs in an album up, and even when they do hearing only 30 seconds of a song is decieving because if there's an annoying interlude 2 minutes into it that makes me detest it then I'll hate the song (maybe I'm too picky). Also, from past experience, mainstream English music when I like it tends to wear itself out really fast about half the time. I'm hesitant to buy CDs I might be absolutely sick of even the sight of in a couple of weeks. With the price of American mainstream CDs these days, I don't want just "an idea" of what an artist is like, I want to be SURE I like the album I'm paying for. Every artist has good and bad albums.
I blame American mainstream music industry for the high occurrence of crap among their products. I've noticed I'm drastically less cautious when shelling out the cash for foreign albums, part of that is because their albums even look a lot spiffier. I appreciate a product that looks, as well as sounds, thoughtfully produced.
That's because you only have to stop the vehicle's mass at the end, whereas you had to accelerate both the vehicle and the deceleration propellant at the beginning of the trip.
What? Last I checked the change in velocity required to decelerate to a planet's capture velocity wasn't necessarily less than any other delta v you might make during flight.
As an example, I once calculated the delta v's for a Hohmann transfer to and from Mars. The greatest delta v coming back from Mars by far was getting to the capture velocity once you'd reached Earth. And that's only decelerating from the relatively low velocity of a Hohmann transfer orbit. Now, I could be wrong, but if you've been accelerating for several days continously wouldn't it take a lot more energy to decelerate into a capture velocity? Changes in velocity are what translates into fuel and mass (or energy, if you prefer) costs. Acceleration costs just as much as deceleration, I don't think it's just a matter of making the vehicle mass "stop".
On the other hand, depending on the means of propulsion the vehicle is very likely to be lighter as the trip goes on, so the amount of thrust you'd need to apply a change in velocity might be smaller.
[Disclaimer: I'm a bit sleep-deprived today so it's possible I've made a silly error somewhere. If I have, I apologize.]
I did some testing, and found that if we are successful in building a ship that can sustain 1 g of acceleration over six days (Prometheus calls for constant thrust to keep astronauts under 1 g of gravity to maintain bone and muscle mass, so it could go a hell of a lot faster), I can send a manned mission to Neptune that will take 40 days to get there. This trip would take 14 years on a Hohmann transfer.
Constant thrust would use a lot of fuel wouldn't it? While this sounds fun, I think cost would be too much of an issue.
The Hohmann transfer takes a long time only because it's the most efficient method of interplanetary flight. It requires the least total delta v's, thus requires least fuel (and therefore weight) which makes it ideal for unmanned spaceflight. [Just regurgitating what (I think) I learned in Propusion Systems lectures]
A girl on my floor spilled a glass of some sort of instant coffee-like drink (with a japanese glutinous rice thing in it)on her Dell Inspirion 8000 laptop a few weeks ago. 2 guys on our floor spent a few fun-filled hours taking the thing apart and drying all the parts (which were not only wet, but sticky and sugary) and putting it back together, but couldn't get it to turn on again. The attempts to power it up produced a "burning sugar" smell which was scary.
Several hours later the girl got bored and tried to turn it on for the heck of it and it booted just fine!