I always figured the learning 'curve' was a function of ability over time. It always ends on the top of the 'hill' in the sames spot. The curve, however, was generated in how much time was allowed. Therefore, lot's of things to learn in a short period of time would be steep (and likely difficult), however, the same amount of learning over, say, four times as much time would be a more gentle slope (however, this could still be difficult).

If you can learn something "at your leisure" I'd say that the curve becomes trivial because you're not required to "climb" and faster or slower than you wish.

The Bible says to test a prophecy by seeing if it comes true. It makes sense seeing as most prophecies seem to be making absurd claims. But, then again, some of them come true in one fashion or another.

However, if I've learned anything from Star Trek and other sci fi, you cannot escape a timeline. No matter what... Except, perhaps, in Minority Report.

Does this mean that any time someone says "Mother Fucker" they have to pay royalties to every rapper ever? That's going to be a pain in the ass!

The nice thing is that [hob]bits are about half the size of regular bits, thus the normal interweb tubes can pass twice as much data.

NICs will be replaced with [hob]bit holes.

I don't think this is much of a troll. The legal system can, and periodically is, turned into a popularity contest. There is a very real likelihood that the jurors will act on personal feelings about the company, and/or be swayed because of lawyer speak.

However, it is also possible that the jurors will be fair and impartial. But from what we now know about that district, there really isn't any hope.

I walked in looking for broadband deals. Comcast usually has a free money deal going on or something. I walked past the mobile phones and some teen asks me what I need. Why not? "I'm looking for in-home broadband."
She replies, "Oh, right this way!" and shows me to the mobile broadband cards.
"Oh, no. I don't want mobile broadband. I want wired broadband into my house. Comcast, you know?"
The reply, "Oh, this is broadband. It's super fast."
"No, I've got mobile broadband and I'm disconnecting it becuase I have no use for it. I want in home, wired, not mobile broadband."
After a very confused look she said, "I'm sorry, I don't think we have that."
Then I walked into the computer section. I expected nothing less than gross incompetence from Best Buy. It's what I got.

Hard to smell something in which you have been steeping for 25 years. It's like visiting old people. Their houses have that odd smell, but they'd never know about it.

Oh, and kudos for getting the car analogy in the discussion ;)

No kidding, if it wasn't such a significant initial investment we'd be using LED bulbs in my house 4 months out of the year or more (I like it nice and cool). During the winter we can switch them back. I don't see what's so bad about switching out bulbs two (or more depending on weather) times a year to save some money and some environment.
For the same reason I don't mind letting my computers idle (as much) during the winter since the wasted energy is quite efficiently transformed into heat and pushed out into the surrounding environment. In the summer I unplug the power strips on everything if I'm going to be gone for more than 12 hours. The Xbox get unplugged if I'll be gone for more than an hour. It's older and that power brick stays pretty warm.

had I mod points, I'd label this funny. I do not. You have instead my laughter and odd looks in my office.

I remember those days... back in high school (circa 95-99) when 700 kids shared one ISDN with the staff.... You had to select directories all the way down until you found something you might want. The search only found a directory's name, not contents.

At that time searching was a joke. Nobody really used the internet for anything at school because it was too slow and there was nothing of use on it. Except, perhaps if you could quickly log onto a boobie site when the teacher or librarians hawk-like eyes looked away. Those URLs we memorized...

Oh, and GET OFF MY LAWN!

goats.ex?

Easy. If he's running Vista/Win7 (and he's not) he can schedule the task to bring up a box that says "Wipe HDD?". If he clicks any buttons a passkey is requested (otherwise, 15 seconds later it goes away). If the wrong passkey is entered the drive is wiped.

Though I 100% agree. Truecrypt is the answer.

I think this nullifies the original intent of the query. The MSI Wind U100 doesn't have a DVD drive and carrying an external would pretty well destroy the point of being as portable as possible. On-disk encryption is probably the best bet considering whatever this guy is carrying is probably not worth keyloggers or other problems. If the netbook is infiltrated by virus or malware then so be it. However, he'll probably notice any hardware interface that would install a keylogger as he's looking right at the netbook.

If he wants to obliterate the data then whatever he does has to specifically target the areas he wants to delete (a partition of the drive) and be triggered by X amount of failed logins or some similar tactic.

Release Vista, a relatively broken operating system, and try to ram it down peoples' throats. When the people gag enough pop out a 'new' OS that fixes the unpalatableness of the old OS and sell millions!

Not that I don't mind using a descent OS, which Windows 7 seems to be at this time. However, I'd be just as likely to use Windows 7 as XP.

My fiance was driving to her brother's house for the millionth time. I was on the phone with her and the GPS told her to go north when we both knew damn well she needed to go south. But, since it had messed up she figured it was right and went North..... Not five seconds later, "This doesn't seem right." I have repeatedly heard her say that it was one of the best gifts ever, however she can't find my apartment about 50% of the time.

Tech is great when properly used. However, when it takes away from our ability to do things that we should be able to do on our own I will have to second guess it.