... just open up the drives and work on the plates with a combination of tools such as a sledgehammer, bolt cutters, router, drill, and/or hacksaw. Even if you don't separate the pieces, there's a pretty good chance that nothing you have on those drives would ever be worth the cost and hassle to attempt to recover. If it actually IS that important, than hooking them up long enough to run dd on it a few times would not be out of the question.

-Restil

If I told you I ate eggs for breakfast, you'll probably believe me. First off, there's no compelling reason for me to lie about it, and secondly, there's no reasonable way for you to prove me wrong, and even if I WAS lying about it, it certainly wouldn't be worth the effort to expose my perjury on that issue. As for the wet paint, if I believe you're right, I won't attempt to prove you wrong. However, if personal observation or specific knowledge of the painting event leads me to believe that the paint is in fact dry, there's a very easy way to test it.

-Restil

Wil Wheaton has done well enough for himself, but I really think he screwed the pooch when it came to Star Trek. Sure, he faced the risk of being typecast, and the character he played tended to draw derision from the audience, but he WAS a kid... and lets face it, he had about the most awesome job a teenage geek could ever hope to have. I figure he missed an opportunity with the character. Since the character he played was an awkward teenager, he could have embraced that role and had that character grow up as he did, mature, become less whiny, less naive, more confident, etc. While I realize you usually have to play the lines you're given, improv from good actors is always considered and sometimes makes it into the final cut. He could have helped guide the character into something more positively memorable instead of trying to distance himself from it. And if you ultimately do decide to cut your losses and run, it's better not to publicly complain about it after the fact. Even years later, opportunities can present themselves, but burned bridges tend to remain burned. Star Trek didn't end with TNG, and both Michael Dorn and Colm Meany were able to stay in the game longer than the duration of a single series. Wesley, recently graduated from the academy, could have easily found himself replacing ensign Kim on Voyager, which could have been REALLY awesome if they had Robert McNeill reprise the role of Nicholas Locarno instead of Tom Paris (who had very similar backgrounds).

Not to say that his career hasn't turned out well enough. I just think he really dropped the ball there.

-Restil

There are always bridges to be burned.

-Restil

Wait about 3 days and you can probably watch the entire game on youtube, with "commentary". You might not be able to easily tell how great the graphics are, but you can probably tell if the game is fun. So watch a few minutes of it to see if it's worth any further investigation.

-Restil

First of all, he's asking for advice. There's no reason to assume he hasn't already done some of his own research, but if someone out there has already accomplished the same goal and could provide a simple, clear, precise answer, then it certainly doesn't hurt to ask.

Secondly, his question, and any reasonable responses that result from it could lead to inform and inspire others who have considered something similar, but never followed through on it, not to mention those who never even pondered the idea before, but are now thinking about it. Even if the submitter ultimately leaves unsatisfied, others may indirectly benefit from the discussion, and ANY responses which provide ANY solution are still potentially meaningful to someone.

-Restil

I actually liked the in-box junk that came with the old Ultima games. The cloth map, and the trinkets, and the faux-leather bound user manual/"Book of Lore". Something real-world and tangible to bring just that little bit of extra life to the game.

-Restil

I don't know where exactly we all went wrong. I know WHY such a law was enacted, but how did we get this far? Student and teacher have an inappropriate relationship. Ok, fine. It happens. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen, and it has likely happened since there were teachers and students. Somewhere along the line, the issue of what is appropriate (and legal) eventually made its way into policy and legislation, and we were all content to understand that everyone knew the rules and occasionally we would have to slap down someone who violated it. For those of you who are 30 or older, think back to your school years. You've probably heard a rumor or two, or if it got really bad, maybe read about it in the newspaper, where some local teacher and a student had an inappropriate relationship. It was scandalous to be sure, but it was rare enough to be considered an oddity. Something that doesn't happen often enough to get really excited about. Just take care of it when it DOES happen and let everyone's lives continue as normal. It's likely that the percentages haven't really changed. What HAS changed though is the fact that with the internet making sure that every local story is potentially nationwide news, we now get to hear about EVERY SINGLE CASE. And if by some chance the national media overlooks one, someone on digg or fark will be sure to publicize it, with a snarky, memorable headline, so we don't miss out on any. This makes what is actually a very rare event seem like it's happening every day, all around us. It makes it seem so rampant that surely EVERY teacher is pondering the possibilities. So enough concerned parents get just loud enough for the politicians to pay attention, and the message is that we want to preemptively prevent this from happening.

The problem with politicians is they tend to be reactionary. When some kid shows up to school armed to the teeth and kills 15 classmates, those politicians BETTER DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Some new law better be passed that will prevent this thing from ever happening again. The problem is, the easiest, cleanest, and least debatable solution would usually revolve around some controversial issue, like outlawing all guns. Fortunately, there is enough resistance to make sure THAT doesn't quite happen. But consider teachers and social media, and how it relates with the bottomless pit of scandal that revolves around protecting our children at all costs. I'm sure, especially in the last few years, that a lot of the inappropriate teacher/student relationships had some element of social media involvement. That's a simple but potent fact that people and politicians can latch onto. Cut THAT particular cord, and maybe the relationships will
never materialize in the first place. The problem is, it seems too weak to just make it a general policy to avoid unnecessary off-campus communication with current students. That's not really a law... people can't really BREAK that law, and therefore we can't punish anyone who does. So they come up with something that's absolute, thorough (so nobody finds a loophole), and concise, so people can actually read all of it in one sitting. By the time you're done drafting such a
law, you end up with a much larger problem than the one you were trying to solve in the first place.

Chris Hansen must be proud of what he has achieved.

-Restil

Insurance is a protection against statistics, same as warranties are. If you purchase 1000 laptops, a certain percentage of those ARE going to break. However, Unless you purchase a particularly crappy brand, the cost to replace the percentage that breaks will not exceed (or probably even get close to) the cost of having an extended warranty on all of them. Although you probably don't want to purchase laptops in bulk, you can consider the same costs over the purchase of all of your
electronic devices, and consider that at least one of them will probably break, but not most of them. If the 52" TV breaks, that will hit you harder than if your ipod breaks, but ultimately it's still a wash in the long run.

Even house insurance is unnecessary (and not worth it), if you own a sufficiently large number of houses. Say you're a landlord and you own 100 houses, each worth $100k. Chances are good that at least one or two of them are going to be catastrophically damaged over the course of a 30 year period, but if you add up how much you're going to pay in insurance over that timeframe, it's a lot cheaper to just replace the house and pay for the damages yourself. Car insurance is a bit of a middle ground. If the car is old, you don't likely purchase comprehensive coverage on it, since you're never going to get its true value back. But you still have to purchase liability insurance. HOWEVER... if you know you're a safe driver and the chances of you being at fault in an accident are slim to none, there
are options available to post your own insurance bond for the amount of the required liability coverage, and therefore not be required to purchase auto insurance.

-Restil

That reminds me of when I first purchased this house. I was going to be doing work here for a while before I moved in, so I didn't want to move all of my expensive computers over here, but I still needed simple internet access. I ended up bringing over an old linux box so I could hook it up to the newly installed cable modem and I could at least use ssh.

Only problem is, the cable company requires you to first go through a series of webpages to agree to the terms of service and set up email addresses and such before they actually grant you an ip address, and I didn't have a functional browser on the box I brought with me... and lynx wouldn't work. Ended up having to call them and have them manually do it over the phone. The techie I talked to seemed to think it was very odd that I needed internet access but didn't have a web browser.

-Restil

No, they said they wanted to avoid extra wiring, not equipment purchases. Also, you don't need the dsl runs to each room, just to each access point, of which there will be at most a dozen or so covering the entire hotel (or maybe far less.. not sure how large it is).

-Restil

I don't think the issue is about security, just about keeping freeloaders off of the network, so the speed is available for the people who are actual customers. If you're THAT concerned about security, stay off of the unencrypted access points or route everything through a vpn.

-Restil

I "dispose" of my old PCs like I "dispose" of all of my old electronics and appliances. On trash day, I set them out, lined up, by the trash can, and one of several different guys with a flatbed truck will roll by and take all of it before the garbage men get here. I would assume they're either fixing them and putting them back into service (good), or recycling them and getting a profit out of that (even better). I doubt they're just throwing them away, since it costs a lot around here to get rid of that much trash. In any event, it's no longer my problem.

What I DO find highly ironic though... they won't take TV sets. In fact, we had a neighbor evicted and he apparently, unable to pay his rent, had I counted FIVE television sets that were placed out on the curb along with several pieces of furniture and other junk. Those TVs sat there, untouched, for a couple weeks before a bulk trash truck came by and took all of it.

-Restil

Although we like to think all accidents are preventable (and in theory, they are), that theory changes a bit when you claim that all accidents are preventable when only one driver is attempting to prevent them. Now, I'm sure this happened under a typical, well controlled situation (stopped cars in the middle of the street, for instance), something that happens quite regularly on any drive, and therefore a very typical obstacle. However, consider that there has to be SOME condition for which lesser of evil choices might have to be made. If I, as a regular human driver, are driving down a residential street and a child jumps out in front of me at the last second, and I don't have time to stop, but I DO have time to swerve, but swerving means I will hit another car/tree/mailbox/etc, the non-living, inanimate object is going to have a really bad day.

As I said, I'm sure the google car crashed for much less sensational reasons. Either it was a bug in the software, or a human really had full control of the vehicle and it's not a software/hardware issue at all. Still, I can foresee a decision tree that allows for the decision to hit another vehicle to avoid hitting a person. I've brought up this issue before in fact, in the case that AI, as good as it might be, will have difficulty determining the difference between a small child, a dog, and a fire hydrant standing at the edge of the street. A human, when approaching either the child or dog will pay attention and adjust speed and passing distance to ensure that should a last second "dart out into traffic" moment occur, appropriate action can be taken to avoid a tragic accident. Google's car won't have an easy way to know for sure if that fire hydrant is going to dart out into traffic or not, and without being absolutely sure will HAVE to slow down for each and every one of them, JUST IN CASE. That alone will do more to kill the program than any number of fender benders ever will.

-Restil

The "slave labor" wages we've been paying are plenty good enough for us. But WE are the ones complaining about the working conditions there, not considering the fact that in 3rd world or developing countries, the citizens would damn near kill to have a job with such horrible working conditions because it's a huge step up from the alternative. Now we've complained, and those very people who were perfectly happy with the jobs that no Americans wanted to do at a pay rate that none of us want to work at, are going to lose those jobs, just to make us happy. And don't delude yourself into thinking that unemployment in China is as great as it is here. I'm guessing people who have been out of work for 2+ years don't have half of a congress going to bat trying to get them yet another extension to their unemployment benefits.

The sad thing is, we could have had this here. Robotic assembly lines DO replace the low skill jobs, and they DO cost a lot of R&D and capital investment up front to get operational, but in the long run they are a lot less expensive and create a lot of newer high-tech jobs. But those new jobs require people to have skills and education, and they replace the low skill jobs by basically eliminating them. Unions have a tendency to resist such things, because yes.. they are NOT worker friendly for the guy who's job is about to get replaced by a machine. No doubt about that. So if a company is going to face a 10 year cycle of slowly upgrading their operation to eliminate their workforce, facing union resistance the whole way, or suddenly offshore the whole operation, and receive the same financial benefit, which would YOU choose? Now it's come full circle, but instead of having those robotic manufacturing operations here in the United States, where all of the jobs related to designing, building, deploying, and maintaining the robotic workforce would be US based, we get none of it. But we still pay for all of it, since we still buy all of those products. And just think, we got this way because too many people wanted to meddle in someone else's working conditions.

-Restil