Phone suck for "reading" and movies ... Laptops mostly overload for reading and movies. There is other potential market places for this like perhaps a new class of games or games that already exist on iPhone that would like more screen.

I don't know the pricing on these things, but imagine if you bought one, and it came with two ebooks and a movie download from iTunes. I would rather have something like this on a long flight than having to flip open my notebook just to watch a movie, and when I was done, switch to the latest book i am reading.

This is what iTouch should have been.

A cost decision I'm sure.

My biggest problem with this is that it seems to be locked into the app store, just like the iPhone. In that sense, it does LESS than a netbook. Not saying this won't be successful, since Apple is nothing if not great at marketing consumer electronics, but what does this do for me task-wise that I can't do on a netbook? It's especially funny because, if you noticed, one of Jobs's slides touted PC software as a downside to netbooks. From where I stand, the huge open architecture of the PC is preferable to a tightly controlled store.

Those things existed in the 60s, and we somehow managed to plant a flag on the moon.

Find the 9-digit rate table for sales tax in Georgia?
Georgia publishes a taxes-by-county table (soon-to-be-current one is at https://etax.dor.ga.gov/salestax/salestaxrates/LGS_2010_Jan_Rate_Chart_Moore.pdf )
I have no idea how to map that into zip+4.
Apple doesn't appear to know either; they just have an extra screen expressly to prompt me which county I live in.

So how do private servers get made? Are they based on leaked code, running something that ships with the game in a different way, or are they written from scratch?

Nope.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1103/p02s02-ussc.html
"We found dozens of breaches throughout the levee system," says Peter Nicholson, who leads the American Society of Civil Engineers' levee-assessment team."

ASCE senate testimony: http://www.ewrinstitute.org/files/pdf/katrinalevees.pdf
"Rather than a few breaches through the floodwalls in
the city caused largely by overtopping, we found literally dozens of breaches throughout
the many miles of levee system. A number of different failure mechanisms were
observed, including scour erosion caused by overtopping, seepage, soil failure, and
piping."

"Where the storm surge was most severe, causing massive overtopping, the levees
experienced a range of damage from complete obliteration to intact with no signs of
distress."

Two specific breaches were investigated and failed in the way you describe:
"Finally, three major breaches, and at least one significantly distressed levee-floodwall
section, were investigated at sites along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals
which, as explained before, were clearly not overtopped.
Obvious soil failures within the embankment or foundation soils at or below the bases of
the earthen levees had occurred at two of the breaches. At the distressed section,
seepage and piping were evident. These types of soil instabilities appear likely to have
been responsible for failure of these wall systems."

Because two breaches failed in the way you described doesn't mean there were only two breaches, or that the sewer company ruined everything for everyone. It's possible the root cause was the panels weren't sunk low enough in the first place. It's definitely the case that there were other failures with other failure reasons.

Wikipedia looks like a decent place to start for an overview, but as always you'll need to check their sources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_levee_failures_in_Greater_New_Orleans

That earth loop link is fantastic, thank you! Failed to find it with previous googling, and hadn't seen the solution they recommend before.

Can somebody explain to me why 3-prong sockets can result in ground loop hum, and why the third prong is necessary? Shouldn't the ground part of a polarized connection be the same as the third prong, except without the potential ground loop problem due to having 2 grounds? I've read the 3rd prong is to ground a metal chassis to force a breaker trip in case of a problem, but couldn't you do that with the ground off a polarized connection instead of adding a new different ground? (Didn't learn anything about this until my PS3 started my sound system humming, have fixed the hum but still don't understand the principles involved.)

Also, why the polarized/unpolarized distinction? Why not just always polarize, even if it isn't required, since it is easy and doesn't hurt anything?

What is this unique licensing model, how is it different from standard chip licensing models, and why is Arm's success due to it?
Don't manufacturers just pay some fee for every chip? Where does this license come into play?

My favorite game education is I learned "obsequious" from Starflight II.

The newest coke machines, "Coke Freestyle", are networked with cell phones to report usage.

Shouldn't the idea of "move these bits representing music from here to there" be a separate application from the idea of "turn these bits into sound coming out the computer's speakers"? Especially since in most cases the "move these bits" step won't be desired?