After a horrible delivery fiasco, I was forced recently to buy a textbook via an adobe DRM type encryption method. I will never do it again. What I expected was something closer to a PDF file. What I actually got was a broken PDF-like document, only viewable in a horrible viewer with the lack of a decent zoom feature, the inability to *print* pages that I need (it will let you print some of them, but not others, and it doesn't tell you before you try it), an incomplete product (compared to the physical book) filled with broken links to the publishers website, and a 2 hour headache finding the links to the prior version of the book to make it work in a cumbersome wrapper. I'm annoyed enough that I'm trying to get a refund on it, and may push it as far as going for a charge back from my credit card company under the defective goods clause. If anyone from Bedford/St Martins is reading this: You need to step up, and deliver what you promise.

If people are having DRM experiences with games anything close to what I just had with a DRM protected textbook -- they indeed have every right to complaint, and need to do it loudly.

I try to set aside an hour a day just for conversation with my wife. Sometimes it has to be on the phone, but usually we can work it in for face to face time. Its a very good thing for us. The conversation lets her decompress, gives me a chance to reconnect with her, share a bit of my day (even if I do a lot more listening than talking), and because that time is almost always there she doesn't feel the need to interrupt every few seconds when I'm trying to say watch a hockey game, or get some bit of work done. She knows she is a priority, because its usually the second thing we do when we get home; the first thing is collie attack, and the dogs have less patience than even children (I rarely make it through the front hallway without at least one of them biting on my hand to demand attention). It makes for a much happier home if you can keep that face-to-face talk time going, and its usually scheduled around the same time of day!

Unfortunately, a lot of it now begins with the parents that buy their kids handhelds as a way to babysit them in the car because it makes their life easier. They also use them to babysit them in Church, because it makes the parents hour there a lot easier to not have squirrel-like children fighting, disrupting the service, drawing a scene, talking, and whatever else during. The same parents usually have a DVD player in the mini-van, a WII/XBox at home, a pair of DS's/DSi's for their kids, and tend to doll out the ipod/ipad's for Christmas. After the kids become hopelessly addicted to the little blue screen they also become somewhat easier to control by threatening to take their electronics away. It can make family trips a little less aggravating, and even I'll give in on a road trip to make the experience better. (I also wear ear plugs for those, and not just for the road noise!)

The downside of the electronics is that you can end up with tweens that have poor social skills, will bury their heads in the devices when company is over, and can't sit still without a handheld device to play on.

I'm not above this problem myself. Although I can take credit for not contributing to the problem; I didn't buy any of the handhelds for them. However, I did them let them in the house for two kids age 11, and 7 against my better judgment. Its a bit of torture, but all of the electronics (including the TV) will go bye bye for the duration of Lent. When we did this last year, the first week of it was pure torture, but by about the 2nd week the kids had adapted to doing other things. The effect does wear off quickly when the electronics are returned, but some of the benefits socially linger on for awhile.

Eharmony is pretty much a waste of time, even for the devout Christian looking for a partner.

I met my beloved through an ad I placed on Craigslist. Of course, she will never admit to using Craigslist for how we met. ha People DO actually use the site for something other than hookups; its just not known as well for that side of it.

PoF was a complete waste of my time. I talked to a couple people, but I never wanted to meet any of them. With Craigslist I got so many responses, so quickly that it became a process of weeding out the psychos, and other problems from the ones I wanted to meet. Despite having in bold letters that I did not want to hear from anyone that was married, or going through a divorce; I still got 4 responses from married women looking to hookup, and 3 more from those whom claimed to be "separated" or some other version of the same.

The ironic bit is that I almost didn't meet my beloved at all. Her email to me got sent to the spam folder. Roughly 99% of what I get from Yahoo is spam, so the filter flagged it. If I hadn't taken a second to look, I wouldn't have responded to her at all, and would have missed on the pass four years of a truly fantastic woman. Her email sat in my spam folder for over a week, and she thought I wasn't truly interested by the time I contacted her.

YMMV, but Craigslist has proven itself a lot more effective than the big dating sites for me.

Maybe I just got incredibly lucky, but I tend to think it was more divine design.

Apparently you haven't been in a family court lately. In Missouri as a case in point, you have *no right to appeal any contempt ruling*. Meaning, not only will you sit in jail indefinitely in a nasty county lockup facility, you will have no means to free yourself from a wrongful contempt charge. In addition to which, our wonderful Missouri law adds the extra kicker of "No other judge may remove, nor revoke the contempt order of another".

I used to really miss my 21" Iiyama displays. I had a heavily reinforced, and extremely large desk to accommodate 4 of them. Ever try to wall mount 4 100lb CRT's in a small area? It can be done, but you generally have to do some structural work, or at least install steel plates on both sides of the studs to handle it. I knew a few people that had 10-12 mounted that way. They didn't just have to work on the mounting issue, they had to improve the airflow to the room to make the room less of a sauna in the summer.

Wall mounting 4-6 LCD's (or 12 if you are a stock broker, and have taken your Ritalin), and still having room for 2 more on the desktop is trivial now. You also don't have to call in the HVAC guy to add more ducting to increase the airflow to deal with the heat.

VGA I can probably live without, although some of my displays have shown some surprising longevity, but DVI will be a bit painful not to have on the board.

My biggest gripe with things like Steam is that if I buy a game, and it sucks or doesn't work well on my hardware -- I can't sell the game. This doesn't bother me too much if its $2-12 for a game, but it is a major bite when the games are $40+.

For the most part things like Steam work okay, and they do provide some value to the end user in the form of getting updates, and patches. However, not everything will let you do things like play a game in offline mode. I often don't know what will, and will not work until I download it. Nor can I guarantee those functions will remain tomorrow.

In the case of my boys I don't think its aesthetics. I think the real reason is marketing. Their favorite wii game right now has absolutely horrible graphics. Its a DragonballZ game where, much like the cartoon, the fight scenes are pretty much just three images repeated over, and over again. They aren't even very good images at that, but the kids like that game so much they fight over who gets to play all of the time.

I've had some luck getting them to play with older consoles, and the games are a lot cheaper. One of the best ones though was a cheapie "21 games in one" system. The graphics were poor, but it had great games like Galaga on it that are very enjoyable to play.

Our Wii system is in use for netflix about 1/3 of the time. It would be used more than that, but we have Uverse, and a DVR.

Most of the pharmacy internships wont let you do much more than file paperwork, stock shelves, and handle minor bookkeeping tasks. A lowly pharmacy technician gets more out of their regular employment in terms of training than the average pharmacy internship. (Yes, there are exceptions, but they are few.) However, those internship, and practicum hours are required to get the doctorate degree.

The only useful internships I saw where with places that did review for patients in long term care facilities, with insurance companies (ironic beyond belief that insurance companies are often doing a better job training future pharmacists than are hospitals, and community pharmacies), and a handful of very small pharmacies where the individual PIC made a decision to do something educational with it. The hospitals don't want the liability issues, but they do want the free "stock boy" help...

Okay, I'm somewhere in the middle of calc II ...so I can't comment fully on calculus, but all of trigonometry can be written into 2 pages (1 if you write small). Most of algebra can be written into a couple pages. If you can truly grasp the meaning of those couple pages of concepts, you could get indeed know enough to reason out trig, and algebra problems from maybe 5 pages maximum of cheat sheets. I don't doubt he took a lot longer than week though. The true test of these things is being able to reason out the correct application. That takes some serious time working on actual problems.

Can a pebble bed reactor survive: The complete & total loss of any supporting structures which keep the fuel pebbles at a distance, the simultaneous loss of its cooling system, and the complete loss of *every single control system in place*? Plus the complete failure of humans not to do *exactly the wrong thing in every single instance in a crisis*? Or to not be able to do anything at all? (Say chemical weapon attack?) Not hours, not days, not weeks, indefinitely -- without being a risk to those living in the surrounding community?

That is the real test. These aren't toys, and its no small danger we live with. I live next to something with the potential to destroy the 1/3 of the agricultural capacity of the United States, and make areas of 3 states unlivable for generations to come.

I'm a big believer in multiple event scenarios, and in the tremendous overconfidence in tables for how strong something really is & narcissistic egos of engineers that have killed numerous people with their pronouncements of "that is simply an impossible scenario" ..only to watch it happen.

  I'm a big believer in incredible amounts of human error, and a tremendous decline in the quality of the education system; to the point that a fair number of those with even advanced degrees aren't worth their salt. If it can't be run, and maintained by people with a 70 IQ, it just might be a problem. Never underestimate the effect of those 50 bonus points on the hiring test for minorities, social promotion in schools, and future government mandated quotas for degrees, and management promotion.

  If your reactor can be screwed up because the maintenance person Tyrone puts in the wrong size bolt after a hard night of celebrating his/her recent casino win with an all nighter of amphetamine, cocaine, alcohol, and sex with random strangers (possibly for money) ... You know what? It will probably happen. If your reactor can be screwed up because Susie decided she needed to have an excuse not to come home so she is able to cheat on her husband by smashing the levee that feeds the water to your plant ...you know what? It will probably happen. (The few of you who live in or near Machens, Missouri, and West Alton, Missouri know why I reference such an event.)

We are reasonably near the New Madrid fault line. I really do not believe a pressurized water reactor like they have at Callaway would survive a seismic event even remotely close to what Japan experienced. The propaganda minister at Ameren tells us:

Emergency Safety Systems include six emergency power sources:
â 2 Ameren power lines to the site
â 2 Emergency Diesel Generators (onsite)
â 1 power line from local Rural Co-op
â 4 Standby Diesel Generators (offsite)
Additional Emergency Safety Features:
âSteam powered cooling water pump with DC battery powered controls system
âA 30-day cooling water supply stored on-site in a seismically designed retention pond.

All well, and good. Except in my scenario, the upwind rail line has a pair of trains passing at the exact same time of the seismic event. Each of the trains has tanker cars filled with a total of half a million gallons of things that react to cause long lasting fire, and/or creating a poison gas cloud that kills everyone downwind (meaning every single nuclear plant employee, including recent big winner at the casino Tyrone) for miles around. The twin events or the earthquake, and train accident make the area inaccessible due to chemical contamination, numerous bridge collapses, and the rerouting of surrounding rivers (not unprecedented). The water feeds for the plant are now broken, as are any power lines from anywhere else underground or otherwise. Due to problems with the communications system, and widespread power outages -- outside authorities remain unaware of the situation, and are mobilized to other areas before the extent of the crisis is realized.
            The capacitors that Ameren saved $1.20 a piece on fail in the control panel, the beer Tyrone was drinking on the job completes the circuit for the two battery terminals in an impressive explosion of sulfuric acid, and molten lead. The bolt that was holding the flywheels in both of the generators was replaced by drunken Tyrone celebrating his recent casino win, as was the welding job on the pipes for the steam generator that cracked during the earthquake ... The person who calculated both the strength of the levees containing the water supply, and the amount of water needed for the holding ponds (which I'll grant, amazingly don't fail) was admitted to the university due to his potential to increase the offense of the university football team. His 2.0 GPA is a reflection of help along the way, but he does have a piece of paper. He is also the right color to get those bonus 50 points on the application with a wink, and nod from the: diversity hire herself, bottom of her class, human resources manager who thinks he is kind of cute, and wonders if she can get him to come to the casino with her, and Tyrone.

Almost everything in my above scenario happened at the nuclear power plants in Japan. (Minus the chemical trains, and the lawsuit enforced diversity policy many US utilities live with). Almost every item of human stupidity, and failure in that scenario has happened at US nuclear power facilities (minus the chemical trains, and chemical weapons attack of course). The average IQ in Japan is quite a bit higher than here. They are also the best in the world at building bridges, and facilities to survive earthquakes; the bright Japanese, all of their precision craftsmanship, and all of their l33t engineering sk!11s couldn't contain a multiple event scenario with (not exact) the 2nd most popular reactor design in the US, and one not completely dissimilar from the one at Callaway. Do you really think we wont be get burned here eventually? I just don't have the kind of faith that some of you have in several things not going wrong at once.

How much tolerance do pebble bed reactors really have in a worst case scenario to all of the above? Even to human sabotage? Never forget that there are people who would willfully cause such an event, and they may not have to strike from outside of the facility! He may well be the one depressed out of his gord, who really needs those antidepressants that they wont allow him to take, and keep his job. Or the one who does it anyway, and has a psychotic break where he feels you are all better off not here, and shoots everyone in the control room ...

  Sometimes an engineer can't fix a problem that someone else fixes or builds: 12 city blocks burned down due to having the wrong thread screw, and wrong washer installed on an antistatic device in a grain elevator.

Engineers have tunnel vision when they design things, e.g., the shutdown of an entire billion dollar auto manufacturing plant due to a defect in a single bearing in Normal, Illinois (thank you quality engineer who didn't think of something so simple, or a way to figure out where the stoppage is quickly, or the ability to shut one part down, without fully stopping everything). The launching of hundreds of tanks of gasses due to a combination of heat, and the failure of a single common safety device that the engineer thought would be safer at a gas supplier in St Louis. O-Ring, one word: Challenger (which makes me really leery that they want to launch nuclear reactors to power devices in space)... Or the hard drinking Russian employee manning the control room in a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl during multiple systems failures, who ignored dozens of warnings...

For those who think the train scenario unlikely, some recent history examples of similar enough incidents:

1992 - June 30 - Superior, Wisconsin - Burlington Northern freight train derails. Three tank cars plunge into Nemadji River. An environmental disaster occurs when one of the cars ruptures spilling chemicals into the river. The river spills into Lake Superior. Over 40,000 people evacuated when a chemical cloud envelopes the cities of Superior and Duluth, Minnesota.

1986 - July 8, fifteen cars of a forty-four-car CSX train derailed near Miamisburg, Ohio. Some of the cars that derailed contained phosphorus. When ignited, phosphorus releases poisonous gas. Shortly after the derailment, city officials ordered thousands of Miamisburg residents to evacuate their homes. The next day, officials allowed these people to return, only to have the phosphorus ignite. One Miamisburg resident described the resulting vapor cloud as "real heavy stuff, hugging right on the ground, like fog. People had their lights on, it was so dark." A second evacuation occurred, with approximately twenty thousand people seeking shelter at Dayton, Ohio, at the University of Dayton and the Dayton Convention Center. This was the largest evacuation to occur in Ohio's history. By July 10, all but two hundred families had returned home, as most of the phosphorous had burned. Over three hundred people sought treatment at area hospitals due to respiratory problems.

Norfolk Southern had more than 100 train accidents caused by switches in the wrong place in the last three years, including head on collisions of trains. In their own words: We have a 99.997% safety record ... (Statement made after trains collided carrying 120,000lbs of chlorine that killed a whole lot of people in the ensuing toxic cloud. Roughly 2004 in Texas.)

I don't want to hear "we run our reactor with a 99.997% safety record".

...and for profit companies really don't care how you do there, or if you complete the program. They still have your money. That is the real rub with some of these schools. The completion rates for the programs are often very low. If all you get out of it is a massive pile of debt, you haven't improved your situation one iota.

I have to wonder if somebody is trying to actively keep diesel cars out of the USA.

There may be some conspiracy here, but there is another reason diesel cars are not that popular in the USA. Because of the way diesel engines ignite the fuel, they have to run at much higher compression. This necessitates stronger engine components, or you end up with a diesel engine that breaks down frequently. In the 80's, and even into the early 90's GM tried converting a lot of their gasoline engines to diesel, but they used the same quality of parts in them that they did in their gasoline engines. These cars were terrible, and they left a horrible taste in the mouth of American car buyers for diesel engines. Diesel sales have never recovered in the US.

Well, they certainly wont be having a 'revolution' over registering their cell phone. At worst the drug dealers, and those who truly need/want to keep that ability will import activated phones from somewhere else, or pay the homeless guy $10 or a vial of rock to register the phone for them. Speaking of which, it could end up being a nice niche market for awhile until the loophole gets closed if you were to say buy a huge block of airtime from a major carrier, and setup your shop just outside of US jurisdiction. Regulation creates opportunity, and often profits which make the illegal drug trade look paltry.

What this really is -- The beginning of government mandated health care rationing. Anyone who really thinks otherwise is deluding themselves. This is going to spark a way for health insurance, with government health insurance plans for veterans, the elderly, and the poor being the first, but not the last to be subject to denials of care based on a list generated by congress (*at the behest of insurance companies).

I've dealt with this stupidity before. I have a rare and progressive neurological disease called neurosarcoidosis. A change in my state laws gave insurance companies a blanket pass for denying coverage of experimental treatments and care. With no approved treatment for neurosarcoidosis, they thus began to deny every single claim for treatment.