So long as the villain says, "before I kill you, Mr. ..." I figure I can narrowly--but spectacularly--avoid that whole "imminent death" problem.

Thanks for the info, slashmydots. Indeed, that is a bit pricey!

Still, if I needed the speed, I can see why that could be a great option--either the PCI-E drive or a RAID setup. It's also good to see that the write cycles are improving.

There should be some rule on /. about posting articles that you can only see if you pay someone money...grrr.

At $740 per terabyte (that is, $.74 per gigabyte; over 10 times the price for rotary storage), this is hardly a "good deal." To my mind, the only reason to invest in solid state drives is if you need to do something that mechanical drives might not be good at--for example, portable hardware that might get dropped.

Since my terabyte data drive regularly hangs out at around 80% full, it's simply not acceptable to pay solid-state rates for the storage I need. Also, this doesn't take into consideration the fact that SSDs aren't yet able to make drives of this size very readily (last I checked). A TB drive is therefore likely to wind up being a lot more than even $740.

I'm sure other people have uses for the things, though.

I'm just waiting for the day when I can get an ARM-based mid-high-end PC and expect it to run all the applications and games I currently expect from an x86_64 CPU. It's becoming apparent (to me, at least) that ARM is a much better kind of CPU than x86 derivatives, so naturally, I want one--so long as it doesn't put me in the same boat as Mac users were in 10 years ago.

Yes, brain function has a tendency to influence how good a person is at something, but all it really takes to learn the general skill set is enough interest and motivation to get it done. (I won't claim that a person with severe mental impairment follows the same rules, but that can be said of any severe disability.)

I know of plenty of people who have learned programming simply to get a job (that they needed, but didn't want); my own father is a plant scientist working as a farm advisor, but in order to keep his equipment functional, he's learned quite a lot about computers--including some very basic programming and scripting skills. (He also works with GIS and such, and has been tasked--usually for lack of anyone better being present--with installing Unix and Windows NT systems, among other things, way-back-when.)

I think this same trend of interest/motivation leading to ability is true with virtually every field: if you find it interesting or necessary, you'll work to figure it out. Notably, there's a metric for measuring intelligence by a person's number of interests and aptitudes, rather than the traditional (deeply-flawed, IMHO) Intelligence Quotient tests (which test for math skills and little else). The difference here is that a person with a ton of interests will be self-motivated to learn a lot of things. Even a person with little interest in something (like me and most mathematics) can score well in classes (get an "A" grade) if presented with the right motivation. Why should programming be any different?

I strongly suspect that the rhetoric about only certain people being able to do this kind of work (based on innate ability, rather than education/skill) is largely a function of the human need to feel needed. If everyone can do it, a person with this skill set will undoubtedly feel less necessary--even if that's not the case. This isn't necessarily a "nefarious" thing, so much as a "you're a normal human being" thing; accordingly, I mean no offense by saying this. :-)

Conclusion: obvious.

Of course, I also don't happen to know of anyone who's dying of organ failure; naturally, that would change my hypothetical decision.

The next step seems to be a portable power supply...

= Maser Gun! Nice.

Reading Slashdot counts as "adventurous," right?

Nuts to all that dangerous rock-climbing and hiking stuff...!

"Golden!"

Added to some good ideas, above, you might try the following:

Tell each male employee that they shouldn't say/do anything to a female co-worker that they wouldn't say/do to their sister.

If you wouldn't proposition/pinch/insinuate/whatever toward your sister (and you better not...) then you shouldn't do so toward a female co-worker. This won't work with all male employees (i.e. those without sisters, or with dirty-mouthed family relationships), but it should provide a decent "baseline" for some of them--and give some good hints to those who are truly clueless about how not to be a jerk toward female co-workers.

Note that this isn't a complete solution, by any means; it's just a helpful "hint."

Yes, it is (nominally) Slashdot dogma. It's also just as stupid as the dogma that causes jocks to beat up nerds. Whether motivated by fear, revenge, a lack of understanding, etc., it's just as ridiculous to pick on [party X] because of what they enjoy. If we really are justified in having animosity toward jocks, why are behaving much like them (if by proxy)?

Personally, I have no interest in sports, and find giving someone lots of money to play a game rather ridiculous. Nevertheless, hating them because of the fact is also ridiculous--and inconsistent, given the typical Slashdotter's views on whether it's OK/good/wonderful to have professional video game matches. Different? Not really. Arguably, the jocks work a lot harder, though.

In any case, I see no good coming from holding a grudge about being the target of projectile food in high school (we're mature adults...right?). Likewise, most jocks I know now have some regret about having acted in that way.

Option 3? Don't destroy a life.

Also, there's no guarantee that this EXPERIMENTAL technology will be less harmful (or even not MORE harmful) than an unhealthy excess of exercise. Both seem bad, but at least our bodies have mechanisms already in-place for exercising (within reason); we aren't at all built for adding machinery. I'd leave the latter option for medically-justified prosthesis.

It's already the case that one has to train roughly 7 days a week, 10+ hours per day for about 10 or more years to even be able to ENTER the Olympics, never mind winning a gold medal. The suggestion that a person might one day have to have surgery, drug injections, and so on just to compete in an international games festival is sickening to me. Yes, some Olympic athletes already do this--probably because they're short-sighted, excessively "driven," and/or stupid. That still doesn't make it "right."

I realize that it's technologically interesting (and hence /. news), but I REALLY hope this never truly comes to pass. Sports just aren't worth such abuse to a person's body (or the gajillions of dollars spent on the Olympics, for that matter...but that's another topic). I have trouble justifying such human abuses as the Games already cause to young athletes (resulting in such things as sterility in women, irregular bone growth, joint problems later in life, etc.). Why on Earth would we want to add to that?

I guess this is where we'll see how obsessed with technology and sports the world really is...