I should have been clearer, I was referring to retraining costs when they need to replace the hardware, in the event that Apple no longer has a suitable product available.

Initial training, iPhone probably has a small advantage, but these things will have to be replaced eventually. If Apple no longer makes suitable hardware, they'd have to switch platforms and incur the resultant retraining costs.

That clause says nothing about using the products to support the use of such weapons.

I like the idea. Smartphones have enough computing power and sufficient battery life to perform militarily useful functions, with a minimum of added weight to the soldiers gear.

I'm not sure about the platform choice though. One company controls the hardware and software. There are no alternatives in either category that allow you to benefit from prior investments- replacing the hardware or OS requires junking everything you already have. And if the public APIs don't let you do what you need, and Apple can't or won't, it won't do what you need and thats that.

Android, or even Windows Mobile, I think would be better. A lot easier to switch to another device and minimize training costs, a lot easier and cheaper to get a device custom designed and built for specific military applications. These two are far more open- anyone with a properly trained engineering team and some money can make devices for these platforms. You need a specialized gadget integrated? You'll have a dozen companies salivating at defense budget dollars. You'll get it done, balancing capability and cost will be a meaningful choice and you can make it based on the needs and the budget, not because it's the best of limited options.

Maybe not.

But if we added up all the ideas we are tempted to dismiss due to apparently trivial benefits, we'd probably see a worthwhile dent in overall usage.

for that long, just about anything currently on the market should be fine.

Others are discussing hardware, I'll discuss the OS choice a bit.

A 64 bit OS might be worth considering, in the timespan you are dealing with they will probably become standard. He might be fine keeping the computer, but at some point he might need a software upgrade that requires it.

As much of a mac fan as I am, in 10-15 years, who the fuck knows what sort of processor they will be using. I'd be hesitant to recommend one for such a long service life due to their propensity to change processors more often than that. Scratch them off consideration entirely if they are even on your list.

Linux is a possibility, if all the software he needs(or equivalents) is available. This can work now.

Windows Vista... Some find good luck with it. If this needs to happen now and he needs or demands windows, research heavily the hardware and software that works well under Vista. Vista can be made to run well, but there are a lot of crap drivers and a lot of applications that really don't like the security features.

If you can delay the purchase, consider Windows 7. It's like Vista, only done right.

You could get any old thing and run XP, but looking that far into the future, you really should be looking at a 64 bit OS. Sure, any hardware you get now should run a 64 bit OS ok, but it would be best to plan from the start specifically for it.

C, C++, and Java, for all their differences, are related languages.

Learn something entirely different.

Assembler is good. You don't need to know enough to actually be able to use it on the job as a primary language, but you should learn enough to give yourself a practical understanding of how data is manipulated by the computer. Just because modern programming tools hide this stuff, doesn't mean it isn't useful to understand it.

As far as high level languages go, you already know a procedural language(C), an Object Oriented language(Java), and a hybrid Proc./OO language(C++). Learn a functional language next. You may not ever use it in the real world, but exposing yourself to a new way of looking at problems can only help.

And learn SQL. Download Postgre or MySQL or some other free RDBMS and play around with it. Even if you never use it specifically, it gets you thinking about how to organize data effectively to solve a given problem.

Ok, if the tax laws say they should get this refund, and they aren't getting it, they have a right to petition in court to force the issue.

And if the bailout law specifies exact amounts they are getting, well, they have a legal right to those amounts in addition to what the government already owes them.

As fucked up as it sounds, if the law says they are owed this money, thats what the law says, and they should get it. Congress should look at the situation though, and see about changing the law so that their next stimulus payments get reduced by, oh, 165 million plus whatever these bonuses were for(can't remember the exact amount).

I'm not a fan of how this bailout is proceeding in general. Ok, this is a big problem, and the failure of these companies risks a full blown economic depression. We can prevent that from happening by spending hundereds of billions of dollars to prop up these companies.

Ok, fine. If thats what it costs to prevent the second Great Depression, I'm fine with the government spending that much. Not happy about it, but its definitely the lesser of two evils IMO.

But it seems more like a nationalization plan than temporarily propping them up so they have time to fix the problems that lead to this situation. I don't like this.

At least this time they have a plausible mechanism to link video games and bad things happening to people. Most are like "gamers do bad things so games are bad" without further thought as to why that correlation exists or if it's even more significant a correlation than non-gamers doing bad things.

Granted, though, this effect really has nothing to do with video games. For video games to be worse than other sedentary activities you'd need to show a great deal more information.

Interestingly, this comes as more and more video games are requiring physical activity beyond agile fingers. So this problem, as it relates to video games, is being mitigated by some of the most popular video games on the market now. I'd be interested to see studies comparing the lifespans of gamers relative to other sedentary activities, though I'm not sure these active games have been out long enough to have a significant effect on the numbers.

Another thing to consider is the mental and social aspects of some games. Sure some games are just silly games you zone out and mash buttons, and those are fine, but many require some real strategy and quick thinking that can't simply be taken from a strategy guide or walkthrough. The rise of cooperative and competetive online play adds additional strategic thought practice and social engagement needed to be succesful. The potential risks of being more sedentary need to be weighed against the potential advantages of the more intelligent and social games before deciding games are overall bad.

Still, I'd call this better than most "video games are bad" articles. Not that improving on those would be all that much of a challenge.

Shutting down Erotic Services isn't going to help. Maybe it would have helped if they never had it in the first place, but at this point with so many people looking for that stuff thinking of Craigslist, they'd just move their ads to other sections. Which would simply increase the difficulty of enforcing any relevant laws, and would screw over the legal erotic businesses that sell their services there.

Even stricter regulation carries a risk of this. When Erotic Services ads started to require phone verification, hooker ads in the personals sections increased dramatically.

I'm not saying that there isn't more that Craigslist can do. There might be. But simply shutting down Erotic Services, or simply regulating it more strictly, is probably not the answer. Screws over legitimate businesses and doesn't even help the people you are trying to help and makes enforcing the law harder. If there is a solution to this, we'll need a more creative mind than someone who simply comes up with "shut down that section".

Ok, with open source it should be a lot easier for bad guys to identify and even insert security holes.

However, security holes are a severe problem mainly when we don't know about them. Once we know about them, workarounds and fixes can be devised. And, in the case of open source, it is much easier to find and fix security holes.

The holes are found by the community or the maintainer and generally the existence is made public pretty much immediately whether it's a small or large hole. Closed source you might wait months before you hear of it and still longer for a fix. Open source you know RIGHT NOW, and if it's a popular piece of software a fix is probably in the works within minutes of hitting the bugtracker.

Now an argument could be made that this doesn't work well for smaller, less popular projects. Maintainers might have dissapeared, and there might not be enough people who know the code to produce a prompt fix from the community. Ok, fine, I won't argue against this. However, closed source apps put out by companies in similar situations will suffer the same problem. No company is behind it that has the resources to fix problems. With open source, you can at least hire someone to fix your unmaintained app. Sure it might be expensive, but at least you have the option, with closed source, you're just screwed if it's mission critical.

Windows 7 Beta 1 is better known as Vista.

Beta 2 is Vista SP2

RC1 is officially called Beta 1

RC2 is officially called RC1.

Windows 7, basically, looks like Vista done right.

Do not forget to include the power source specifications.

While I don't see it as terribly likely for standard wall outlets to change in 50 years, it is possible that a new technology will emerge that prompts the standard to change. It could be a different frequency, different voltage, different physical pin arrangement... All must be specified so that adapters can be constructed in the event of a standard change.

Are these old documents they've just now gotten around to reviewing, or are these bugs largely in new material?

If the latter, how does the bug per page ratio stack up with the past?

Depending on the answers to these questions, the quality of the documentation may actually be improving. It may be going down as the summary and article seem to imply, but we can't really say either with any confidence given the information provided.

Palin already had an official government account.

That said, I think this suggests a need for the government to set up some sort of official email system for transition officials. @transition.whitehouse.gov maybe, and set up autoforwarding on the 20th.

Oh, I should point out another thing that is relevant. Video games influence crime. that much is proven. Assume they figure out the bit I discussed above, there is still another important question.

In what manner do video games cause someone to criminally behave in a certain manner? Does it alter their personality directly? Does it trigger underlying mental problems? Were they simply the victim of horrible parenting?

It's not as simple an issue as either sides hardcore defenders seem to think.