Join the club, I have a wooden Panasonic that my mother bought in 1982 that is still going strong...after the 10 minutes or so it takes for the screen to "warm up". My 11 and 7 yo stepkids were amazed and horrified that it was my only TV when they first met me. The 11 yo sent pictures of it to his friends, calling it a "relic". It was heartwarming. His Samsung cellphone lasted exactly a year before dying. The TV still works. I just replaced my 25 yo Whirlpool fridge this year, but only because someone gave me a newer one for free. I gave the old one to my partner's employee and it's still working fine. I had to replace my 15 yo stove a couple years ago due to flood damage. The new GE stove I bought is a piece of junk, and was one of the nicer ones I picked from. It's depressing. I was raised to buy quality, and that you buy things to last. I don't understand our "disposable" culture, and I'm not sure I want to. My computer I built 7 years ago is still working just fine. My car is 7 years old and I'll drive it forever. The car I had before that, that I sold with 120k miles on it, is still being driven to the person I sold it to 7 years ago, and has close to 300k miles on it. Then you have people like my partner, who gets a new truck every two years just because he feels like it. It makes no sense to me. I blame Wal-Mart.

Because it is an excellent killer of things, and we're still afraid that Russia will weaponize it, or worse, sell it to China to be weaponized. That really scares me, because Putin, for all his megalomania, at least has a presence of mind that you can't play fast and loose with a risk like that. Hu, on the other hand, might as well pat Amnesty International on the head. They have plenty of cannon fodder to test on, and aren't bothered by pesky things like "ethics" and "human rights".

Of all the accumulated slashdot knowledge herein, but of the ones I did read, why has no one pointed out that most countries, especially us fun-loving, bomb-slinging Americans, tend to view the selling of nuclear trade secrets as treason? Even in the private sector, the contracts for weaponry are given by the government, and you are bound by the same secrecy as if you were working in Los Alamos. It's that small thing called spying.

I think you mean Benzedrine... benzenes are just your typical run-of-the mill "just look at them funny and develop several new and exotic cancers" petrochemicals.

When China freely admits that it was them who took out the NE US power grid in 2003 just to see if they could (race condition, indeed), you have to wonder what they're doing that they don't tell us about. Several experts debunked that theory, but they're openly publishing papers like this: http://standeyo.com/NEWS/10_Sci_Tech/100323.CH.US.Power.Grid.pdf. I dunno. The Chinese think we're pretty laughable. I wouldn't put anything past them.

You've had groups of people specifically targeting and outing members of NAMBLA for years. I'd link but I'm at work and they frown on visiting those kinds of sites while you're on the clock. Frankly, more power to them.

It always worked better when we used Gelflings.

I think Jerry and Jim Balsillie go bowling.

For years, I was a total RIM fangirl. Loved them, raved about them, encouraged my employers to bring BES into their lives. Sadly, the past two years, with BES 5.0 and every device except the Torch, have completely killed whatever love I had remaining for them. I have never, ever, maybe with the exception of Digital, seen a company try harder to tank themselves than RIM has done over the last 4 or 5 years. Everything they've done smacks of laziness and contempt for their customers. When your customers know more about your enterprise server product than your own techs and engineers, and YOUR CUSTOMER has to tell YOUR ENGINEERS how to fix a severe regression in your controller, you are not winning. When your answer to multiple faults on a server is to REINSTALL BES, rather than addressing the root cause and fixing your dismal code, you are not winning. When you can't even code for time zones, you are not winning. When a random Java update causes BES servers to crash at random, you are not winning. When you can't even keep your data centers running with hardcore redundancy, you are not winning. Don't even get me started on their devices. The bugs, my lord, the bugs. After carrying a Blackberry of one model or another for 10 years, I just went and bought an 4s.

The drivers for the transmitters aren't compatible with 64-bit.

His blog is Bad Astronomy. He doesn't call himself the Bad Astronomer. Hate to be a humorless correctofreak but I'm sick of sloppy postings.

Only if you're Lars von Triers.

Dude, your volcano came in second, didn't it?

I still have a full administrative access to an IBM passport account at a company I left 3 years ago. After the third time I mentioned they should remove me, I gave up and figured, if I ever decide there's anything I need, they can pay for it.

That has to be the dumbest thing I've read on here all morning. Seriously. Well, after the judge getting pissed that a juror wanted to be better informed and *gasp* used the interwebs to do so.