I'm a leftie and wear my watch on my left hand. I do everything else with my left hand, why not wear a watch there. People always told me the reason I should switch was so I could check the time while I was writing.

Maybe right-handed people are magical and they can continue to write while they are looking at their watch, but for me I always had to stop writing if I wanted to look somewhere else so it's never been a big deal.

I have a friend that wrote off Joss Whedon and all his 'stuff' because of what happened in Serenity. (Even Dr. Horrible.) While he understands the dramatic tension aspect of it, and agree's that it worked completely, he said, "NOTHING was worth that."

Pretty funny.

The article doesn't say how fees are handle at German Universities. Do you 'subscribe' and pay by the month or something?

At American Universities, you have two sets of fees, (both paid in advance):
        Tuition is by the class or 'credit hours.' If you want the class, you have to pay the fee. If you want to 'test out' of the class, you still pay just as much, but you only have to take one test to prove you know the material.
        Fees are there just for being a student during that time (per semester). These go to various perks and stuff you get for being a student. I've been trying to think of examples, but I can't come up with any. I know that a lot of people are always complaining about the 'athletics fee' since they don't derive any benefit out of that.

In this example, he would have had to pay for all of his tuition for the classes he took, but he would have only had to pay the 'Fees' for the 3 months he was actually a student. I can't imagine the University saying, "pay for 2 more semesters because you're too smart." They might claim the right to use your name and story as advertising.

I'm not sure he was saying that we shouldn't be fair, I think what he was saying is that it's NOT fair for someone who obviously sucks at his job to still get paid for it.

If they are unable to make money writing new music, maybe they should get a different job? I'm a programmer. If I wrote one program for my company and then never could get anything else to compile, they wouldn't think it was "fair" to keep paying me anyway.

So, I think he agrees. Let's be fair. Let's let EVERYONE be paid for what they do, and not allow some people be paid for what they've done.

I started an iPhone app project so I acquired a MacBook to do it on. I have to admit I'm not liking the MAC UI at all. I totally dislike the way my programs don't close when I tell them to, they just hide. I don't like the shared menu-bar thing. (Never have.) And moving windows around, seeing multiple apps at once, switching back and forth between two applications, none of that was any good at all.

(I also didn't like option/apple clicking, the 'missing mouse button', the keyboard layout and the central settings area. Basically, while I was expecting to fall in love with it because I finally got to use the 'Legendary MAC OS' there was very little about it that clicked. It's possible part of the reason I didn't like it was because I'm not typically a laptop user and that might have contributed to the annoyance factor.

Let me admit upfront, I've never explored the world of password cracking. However part of the article doesn't make sense to me. He mentions password based on rules. However he listed the rules and it seemed really strange.

pwdlink from pwlink with the rule "insert d in 3rd position"
pwd4link from pwdlink with the rule "insert 4 in 4th position"
pwd4linked from pwd4link with the rule "append ed"
pw4linked from pwd4linked with the rule "remove 3rd char"
pw4linkedin from pw4linked with the rule "append in"
mpw4linkedin from pw4linkedin with the rule "prepend m"
mw4linkedin from mpw4linkedin with the rule "remove second character"
smw4linkedin from mw4linkedin with the rule "prepend s"
sw4linkedin from smw4linkedin with the rule "remove second character"
lsw4linkedin from sw4linkedin with the rule "prepend l".

Does that mean he made a rule that added a 'd' to EVERY word in his dictionary to try that as a password? Or was his rule "any time you see a 'pw' it might stand for 'password' and therefore adding a 'd' makes sense."?

My point is, these 'rules' don't seem like generic rules at all, rather they sound like an 'after the fact' description of how to change 'pwlink' into 'lws4linkedin'.

Can anyone explain what I'm missing, or did he just add that for 'article filler?'

Yeah, same here. I've told the teachers that my kids don't participate in fund-raisers that are simply turning them into door to door salesmen. I return the packet and offer a direct donation instead.

There are fund-raisers that I'd probably let my kid participate in (bake sales?, car wash, (where the kids actually wash the car), etc) but they've never tried those, so I really don't know.

I have a Pixel Qi screen in my Adam tablet, (Notion Ink). If I wanted to leave the screen off most the time, I'd have to pick a high-contrast theme for ICS, which I haven't really run into 'themes' at all. It works well for e-Reader apps if there is a lot of light, (outdoors on a sunny day) but everything else requires that I have the backlight on. The viewing angles are also not up to par.

However, this screen is a couple years old now, so maybe Pixel Qi have come up with some new magic.

(You do notice the battery savings with the screen turned off though.)

How similar were those pictures? I would have never thought to use a 'bear with a fish' to do thermal dynamics. That seems to be a 'non-obvious' solution. Someone else using that example would definitely be copying, even if they didn't use the exact same bear picture.

But how is the rest of the alignment done? Is is a manual process where and editor goes through and maps ever textbook they get a hold of? It is an automatic process based on the Table of Contents? (or index?)

It seems to me there are two important parts of making a text-book that would deserve copyright protection:

1. The narrative text/examples.
2. The 'flow'. The order by which the author chose to present the facts and lead you through the understanding.

Those are the two creative parts of the textbook. Those are what differentiate it from another 'book of facts.'

As much as I hate textbook cartels, I'd have to say that this 'alignment' process definitely has the potential to encroach on the actually creative side of textbook design, so I'd say the lawsuit has some merit. Of course, I haven't studied an 'aligned' book or the book from which it was derived. Heck, I didn't even RTFA.

This is absolutely the truth. I've never been able to afford to own a 'real' console. The initial investment is more like a 'trap.' After you buy the console itself, it's a never-ending chain of more purchases. You need to buy more controllers and memory cards. You have to purchase each and every game you ever want to play. And in the past there was nothing else to do with the console if you weren't playing the games.

With a PC, the initial investment is larger, but then it's done and I never have to drop another cent on it if I don't want to. I have a large back-library of games that still work. I have free-games on the internet. I have game demo's galore. I can also use it for about a bazillion 'value-added' things that have nothing to do with gaming.

Having it be twice the initial investment is overcome in a matter of months, and I'll actively use my PC much longer than I'll actively use the console. (keyword 'actively').

Now, with the newer generations and the online capabilities, they are introducing things like Virtual Console, Indie games, game demos, other uses (ie Netflix), so they are getting to have at least a 'little' more value than they had before, but it still doesn't hold a candle to a simple PC.

T-Mobile "pay as you go" I pay $30 a YEAR. No data option though without paying monthly.

I've heard that certain types of biofuel vehicles smell like French Fries when they drive past. What does this smell like?

Should it be called a 'Fart-Mobile?'

Punish them by forcing discounts on customers. Instead of paying the money directly, they pay it in reduced revenues.

Of course then there's no fees for the lawyers or fines for the government, so that'll never fly.

Nope, Speaker for the Dead...in fact it was the titular speaking in which he did it.

You're not like that already? I always need headlights for the drive home during the winter. I actually take it as a sign of approaching spring that I start to squint into the sunset on the drive home.