Translation: Ballmer wants to take advantage of his employees being able to get to work, and being educated through at least high school, but doesn't want to pay his share for that convenience. Hey, Ballmer: If you don't want to contribute to society, perhaps you should move to someplace that doesn't expect you to, like Somolia.

Safety circuit in the battery prevents full drain, though you *can* fully discharge the battery by draining it until critically low, and storing it that way for a month or two (since the same safety circuit, ironically does draw a microcharge). When you try to recharge it, the circuit will detect the battery charge is too low and won't allow a charge: This is not a reversible condition.

If weight were no object, I'd go with a lead acid battery. Yeah, it's got the memory effect, but on the other hand, you do get to have a fun Seinfeld drive to the end of the battery every six months or so to rejuvenate the batteries. These have proven themselves in kei-cars, golf cars and industrial carts for decades now. As far as battery drawbacks go, the memory effect is pretty fun for that application: I got tasked with draining 30 industrial cars of their charge on a week when the site was closed due to it being too icy to safely work on heavy machinery. Which meant I'd drive each one carefully out of the warehouse, out into the icy industrial ways in the site, and put my foot to the floor and not let up for anything, just sliding around, drifting around corners, pulling cookies, and all around driving 'em harder than they've ever been driven before until they run out of charge, then leave the lights on until they drained completely before shutting it down and recharging 'em...

I can understand why this isn't necessarily a maintenance routine the layman wants to perform, but it sure beats being able to do nothing at all about it other than recycle the batteries and get new ones...

I have one in a ThinkPad A32 that perhaps only has 30 minutes of life left and going on three years now. I have it set up so it maintains a 50% charge until the UPS that machine is connected to loses power, in which it starts charging the on-board battery and unmounting the backup drives in preperation to lose power completely, and once it's down to only a few minutes on internal power, it begins to shut down. Kind of a neat way to extend offline shutdown time on a home server.

There are many, but I've probably seen them all at this point.

I was pissed because I had to do that at a county courthouse to report for jury duty. WTF? What did I do to warrant getting searched just for reporting for a civic duty?

Except for the fact that if you attempt to counteract it by draining the battery completely, you'll reduce it's capacity permanently and run the risk of bricking it entirely. Which is why I wonder why in the world these things are in all-electric cars: At least if the Li-Ion batteries die in a Prius, you just get crappy city mileage.

Yes, this is exactly why this happens. With proper care, you can easily get 24-36 months out of a Lithium-Ion. Beyond that is really iffy, even if you've never used the battery at all. In theory, the lifespan is five years, but ha, good luck ever getting that outside a lab!

But you do arrive with your fourth amendment rights to be free of unreasonable search in tact, which you can't say about the airlines. Can you really put a price on civil rights?

Lithium Ion batteries don't suffer from the memory effect, that's true. Unfortunately, they age like an old plastic shopping bag. The moment the battery is manufactured, it begins to permanently lose capacity, never to be recovered. You can increase lifespan of Lithium Ion batteries by discharging to 50% and storing them in the fridge or freezer when you're going to be on AC power at home for a while. Things that age your battery faster are heat and too much or too little charge, so keeping your battery in bay and at full charge is a great way to shorten it's lifespan dramatically. That being said, unless you want to fly toilet class and stay plugged into the razor outlet with the toilet draft blowing up your backside for an extensive portion of the flight, consider taking Amtrak instead. Most trains have outlets every other seat, and all trains have outlets at least every third seat, so if all else fails you can team up with another passenger and trade seats for one near an outlet.

Crazy thing is the windows drivers can do it. On the other paw, this machine totally hates vista.

Debian. And same here... but mostly because I've never had a laptop that had a trackpad before. I don't use it much, as someone who uses the keyboard a lot, I really prefer the trackpoint stick in the middle of the keyboard. It's someplace I can use the mouse without actually leaving the keyboard. Granted, there's some things you just can't do with a trackpoint stick, like scroll up and down easily... I wonder if there's a way to tune my touchpad so it's only good for scrolling, and move the sensitive area for scrolling to the center of the pad where I'm least likely to hit it by accident. The touch pad on my T400 is enormous, so I end up resting my palms on it way too much (which is why I tend to leave it disabled).

I know what you mean. I haven't been terribly active in the furry community outside of Second Life in quite some time: All the idiots safely quarantine themselves in Luskwood the hell away from me.

That's what I was getting at. People are acting like it's the end of the fandom as we know it, but frankly I had barely known the name before he died. But what's LOLFurs?

Oh, I totally get both sides of the argument. I already explained where I take a departure on that, though. I'm very much of the Boy Scout mindset of "Expect The Best, Be Prepared For The Worst." A lot of conversations regarding loss or missing out for a forseeable circumstance with me end along those same lines: "Did you think it might happen? What did you do to prepare for it?"

Roosevelt famously saved the banking system in his first 7 days in office. On the 8th day, when asked what he was going to do next, he said "I think it's time for a beer," and got the ball rolling to repeal the alcohol prohibition. The newly refreshed alcohol industry was like a stick of dynamite to the economic log jam. How do you put people back to work? Legalize and tax America's number 1 cash crop and start teaching people how to grow.