So, electricity is reserved for the rich, then?

Nice to know this isn't a step backward, no, not in any way...

Unless you're planning on running them on LNG (with the associated trucking / transportation costs), you will also have to plan on installing several thousand km's of pipeline* to supply these theoretical natural gas power stations. Not to mention compressor stations to make sure your turbines aren't getting starved out when everyone in the area turns on their barbeques or natural gas ovens for dinner...

I like how non-technical people thing that 'they' just have to ramp up a few other plants to solve the problem. Um, no. The plants were built to serve a specific maximum capacity, and that includes all of the support infrastructure behind the plants in the first place. Generally, unless the plant was designed for it from the start, you can't just throw in another turbine or two at each site and not expect things to come crashing to a halt. More often, new generation means you need bigger pipes, higher pressures and more site infrastructure (electrical, controls, instrumentation, backup generation, meter stations, even manpower) to support the new turbines. That's likely a multi-year project, and the cost of the turbines alone is a mere fraction of the total.

* I thought after that whole Keystone debacle that Americans aren't that keen on running pipeline? >:)

Because it's efficient. Because it doesn't require a lot of high-tech manufactured goods and has lower maintenance and repair costs compared to other alternatives (natural gas and hydro being the exception...which would be why they're numbers 2 and 4 on the 'percent of US power is supplied by...' list. Nuclear's only number 3 because of the massive amount of production available per plant).

That's why it's so popular. Well, that and the fact that you can put one pretty much anywhere you have space, so it's good for those places with no sunshine, variable wind and no local hydro sources available...

I would definitely say external drives for the irreplaceable data (photos, home video, scanned images, voice clips, documents, etc.). The rest is already *cough torrents cough* backed up for you. Yes, it would take a while to rebuild, but ultimately it's available.

I would also perhaps back up any older or hard-to-find collections to the hard drive, or any particularly cherished movies (kids movie collection, perhaps). Personally, I back up everything to three 4TB external drives because I have the ports available on my server, but if you don't then back up what's important and don't worry about the rest...

Your only other option, really, is to get a 6-bay NAS and some hard drives to fill it. This setup would run you around $2,000, but then you'd be able to back up all of teh things...until your data grows beyond 20 TB (assuming you'd put the NAS into Raid 5 at least :)

Baby...bathwater. Darwin was trying to posit a mechanisim to describe his observations on hereditable traits. Remember, Mendel was a contemporary, and his work developing genetic theory wasn't to gain general acceptance until after his death...which was two years after Darwin died. Once genetic theory was developed and refined, it was simply applied to Darwin's Theory of Evolution and found to be a better description of how observed heredity actually works than his original hypothesis.

Claiming that "Pangenesis was wrong, therefore evolution is wrong" is akin to claiming that Copernican theory is incorrect because Galileo thought tides were caused by variations in the motion of the earth as it revolved around the sun.

THIS is why I hate going to bars. I like drinking. I like talking to my friends and (sometimes) making new ones. However, I hate having to shout at each other to pass the damn chicken wings...

I don't think I've ever seen a better example of this than this trailer of Mrs. Doubtfire recut as a horror film.

I am firmly in the 1-3%, yet I find you are correct, there are times and places where music enhances other experiences. So long as it doesn't distract from the movie or game.

Might I suggest you try listening to audiobooks on your long car trips? Douwnpour.com has a great selection of DRM-free MP3 audiobooks for reasonable prices.

I also can't stand listening to music while driving: it doesn't engage my mind enough to counteract the tedium, while being just repetitive enough to engender frustration and annoyance. But put in a good book by one of my favourite authors, and I'm happy as a clam: those four-hour drives just fly by! :)

To me, it sounds like they're planning on emulating Tassimo and their bar-coded brewing system, so the user can use 'milk' pods, tea pods, etc. and the system will brew them differently depending on the scanned and recognized contents (temperature for sure, pressure maybe? size? IDK)

What they seem to be 'forgetting' is that it was the flexibility and simplicity of the K-Cup system that actually gained them the dominant market share in the first place. Sure you can brew cappucinos and lattes with the Tassimo...but you can use your own favorite coffee brand with the Keurig My K-Cup reusable filter, freshly ground if that's your thing, or spooned out of a Maxwell House container to save money / env. wastage on each cup. Heck, I use my My K-Cup to hold loose tea leaves when I feel like a specialty cuppa...and they're good for two to three cups, too.

Nope, if they disable their whole BYO ability, I predict that they will wind up in a small corner of a niche market. If they relent and provide a My K-Cup equivalent for the 2.0...well, it's just barely possible that they could survive this bone-headed move, although people will grumble about not having cheap generics available. Either way, watch for stock prices to plunge.

It's not the length that counts, but how you use it...

Excellent list!

FYI, most of these programs (i.e., 10 out of the 12, if you count the alternate text editor Notepad++) are available as Portable Apps that you can keep on (and even run from) a USB thumb drive.

Might save you some installation and configuring time :) I'd bet plenty of programs on your full list are available too...

Frankly, the first thing I 'install' on a Windows box is a USB drive containing my Portable Apps, including Firefox, Libre Office, pdftk, FreeCommander, Lupas Rename (portable version), 7-Zip, FileZilla, Gimp, Dia, Irfanview, Notepad++, VLC, Audacity, WinDirStat, AutoHotKey and of course PStart to help manage them all :)

Irfanview is nice, I used to default to that, but I switched over to XNView a while back and like it much more. Just a more polished interface than IView, simple but very powerful batch tools, quick, responsive and customizable.

Unfortunately, the main desktop version is buggy under Windows 8 (was wonderful under Windows 7 and XP), and the cross-platform java version isn't nearly as powerful as the main one, although at least it works with Windows 8...

I used to install Calibre on everything, too, then I started using their server option and just leave a master copy running on my home server. Much better, and I don't have to worry about my various libraries getting out of sync.

Skype and Thunderbird...not so much.

Haha, the one I remember best is:

"You've got questions?
We've got blank stares..."

Which pretty much applies to any 'tech' chain store these days...*sigh*