I think you're both overestimating the costs of a manned mission and underestimating the costs of rovers. If we did a manned mission *right*, I would guess that the total cost would pay for something on the order of 50 rovers.

I'm sorry that I don't have mod points, but you should be ashamed of this post. You've totally ruined whatever argument you were trying to make by calling khallow "a big stupid poopy head".

The problem isn't that the manned program is not valuable, but that it's not funded or organized well enough to actually provide a return on investment. If you refused to give the planetary scientists anything bigger than a sounding rocket, the unmanned programs would look pretty worthless too. Understand that all the progress we've made since the 70's with mars probes could be done in one week with a manned mission -- and if it was done spacex style, it could be done on something close to the current budget. Hell, look at some of the alternative proposals that private industry came up with in the 70's for the shuttle, which were discarded in favor of the reference design shuttle.

Or the RIAA will be crushed under wave attacks. Either way, we win.

Not necessarily. It all depends on how fast said gold is going. After all, you punch a hole in the side of a tank using liquid copper.

I hate to be that guy, but is this marketing spam? I mean, it's not like it's some lost version of the game or some unreleased sequel. Its a late prototype of a widely released game that may or may not have the exact same ROM on it as the one that shipped. Rare? Yes. Interesting to anyone other than an high level (read:obsessive) collector? I doubt it.

"Cheating"...it's the "terrorism" of the gaming world.

Putting an end to Gamestop's business model is exactly what the publishers intended to do when they started moving to digital downloads. Add to that the DMCA which makes it illegal to circumvent such practices and the non-existence of the right of first sale for digital goods and Gamestop is up a creek without a paddle. And as much as I dislike Gamestop, so are we.

Unsurprisingly, a regular van is an even better choice, mileage aside. Even less surprising is how common regular vans are. It's almost like someone designed them for that purpose...or something. Unlike SUVs.

You know what's more "geektastic"? The shuttle actually flying to space.

No doubt that ASUS has no reputation for good customer service -- but I've been fortunate enough to not have to deal with them, yet. That said, Dell's consumer level CS is incredibly bad too. Their business class CS, however, was, as of last year, still really solid. I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Dell server, or even a desktop for employees, but I wouldn't touch their laptops with a ten foot pole. After all, the best warranty is the one you never use.

I'll be honest, I haven't given a Dell laptop a serious look in years, but I handled tons of them through the late 2000's and the build quality was so poor that I really don't even look at their equipment anymore when picking a laptop for myself or someone else. I don't know if they've changed recently, but I haven't heard anyone make that claim. It doesn't matter to me what OS ships with the hardware if the hardware itself is flimsy. A laptop that won't bend, crack or break at the hinges within a few weeks is worth a $50 premium, IMO.
I actually feel that Asus and Toshiba build much nicer laptops at about the same price point, but I'm sure someone will disagree (after all, this is /.)

There's this pesky thing called physics that likes to get in the way: Namely, your device will be topheavy to the point of being unwieldy for non table use. The brilliance of the top containing only the screen is that it makes the thing balanced. I suppose you could put some additional stuff in the clamshell top. Ideally, the SSD, since it is a "low bandwidth" device (compared to a GPU or RAM) and requires only a few traces to be added to the cable running between the halves.

Not to point out the rotting dead fish in the middle of the room, but this is exactly what happened with cable TV, and yet there is no real outrage on that front any more. I'm not saying it's the right thing...or even "acceptable" but customers seem to never balk at ads, and content streamers never turn down a revenue stream. It feels almost inevitable.

I'd like to meet the web developer who spent several days re-implementing the frame set in javascript. It's probably on his resume and everything!