open it up first, a lot of them are just a solid chip now, not flash soldered to a board.

..how much spam does everyone actually see?

I use gmail and I get very little spam that actually shows up in my inbox. I would say ~maybe~ 1 message a month at the absolute most. I also have a yahoo email that I use as a throw away account when I have to give an email. Even that one isn't tooo bad. Nothing ever shows up on my corporate email, but I know that one is heavily filtered.

I'm not saying spam isn't a problem on mail servers, but how much does it effect the average Joe?

I want to work where you do, I've found my professional life to be depressingly similar to Office Space. Still not showing Jennifer Aniston my O face though.

Thats the biggest problem right there. In MD, you get either $15 or $30 a day, and your employer is not required to pay you for time lost.

So let me get this straight: you want to subject me to mind numbing boredom, for little more than the cost of parking and a sandwich? It's little wonder everyone does whatever they can to get out of it. Frankly, it's offensive that you think my time is worth so little.

Thank god somebody finally said this. Madden is probably the most important sports game of all time. I can remember being just blown away by the number of plays available. It's also the first game franchise I can think of that had yearly updates. It's spawned it's own superstition - the madden cover curse. Nobody even bothers to release a competing game anymore. It's even influenced how football gets covered on t.v.

NBA Jam, while not a console game, also still ranks pretty damn high on my list of "fun to play" games. It's kind of anti-influential, since sports games have since gone to increasing levels of realism. It really was one of the last just for fun sports games.

not a game in and of itself, but I remember the 3DO controller allowed you to daisy chain a bunch together. 8 Of us used to play 4 on 4 FIFA soccer, that was always a blast.

Most Americans don't even KNOW about the Libertarian party. Many who have heard of it, don't have an accurate idea of what it is. Go ahead, start telling people you know that you are a Libertarian. I've been told I'm wasting my vote, a notion reinforced by TV. I've gotten dumbfounded stares. I've even had a guy respond with "So you're extremely Liberal?"

Some days it just doesn't pay to chew through the restraints.

Oh I don't know, considering how nobody really mentioned the Keating 5 during the election, and taking a look at his wife, I'd say that McCain was able to talk his way out of a scandal and into a white woman's bed with no problem.

multiple writes of the entire drive with random noise is considered to be pretty good. I don't believe that the average joe who wants to just steal your CC nums has access to the equipment or the knowledge to recover data from the drives in that scenario. Even less likely if you come up with some sort of mechanical destruction. I know it takes a while to do those multiple writes, but I'd just set up an old machine to do it.

I would hit the platters with a belt sander. Wear a dust mask. Another option would be to run a bead along them with a welder. I know my MIG machine will render magnets non-magnetic, so I have to guess that it would be pretty effective at demagnetizing the platters as well.

My Mom taught High School for years. I'd estimate the largest portion of the problem starts at home. Administration fearful of litigation and looking like a failure is a close second. She tells this story when ever it comes up in a debate and it still makes my jaw drop.

Angry Parent: Why did you fail little Johnny. Hes not going to graduate because of you.

Mom: Little Johnny has turned in 2 of 18 homework assignments, 0 of 2 papers, and has test grades of 27%, 42%, and 31%.

Angry Parent: Well, what are you going to do about this?

~smacks forehead~

Whats worse is that Angry Parent called up the administrative food chain. It finally came down from the mountain that "Something Must Be Done", and little Johnny was assigned an extra credit project so that he could pass the class.