Nice post! I am running a ten year old Dell on XP with a 15 year RT monitor (I broke the nice 21 inch or whatever they were selling in 2002, and replaced it with a 'throwaway' 17 inch CRT from a friends business). The only thing I have replaced in the machine is the video card, and it is still going strong. I admit that the last high end game I bought was HL2, but it plays nicely. I am not a person that buys into the 'three year old hardware is obsolete' crowd, but the 'planned failure' model pisses me off. I am writing this post from a 2009 netbook my brother bought, HD failed, so I installed Ubuntu linux from live boot to a USB external HD. Works fine.

It's not real science if it comes from Instituto Superior Taquito, although they do make some great snacks.

My first Bible was 20,000 Leagues Under the Holy See.

While I agree with your point, I think your admitted anger (username for example) is directed at something that could be solved if your anger was directed at a different problem for which I share the same, if not quite as pointed, anger. Education should be locally based and locally controlled.

I know many Canadians from the SW Ontario region who fight for jobs at Anderson Window (one of the last good family run companies in the US). Where do they shop for subsistence goods? 2-3 times a year, they drive into the US, back up to Winnepeg, and shop at the Costco/Walmarts there ~200 mi. each way, do not quote me on the distance. Reason? It's cheaper to drive across border four times and shop the mass retailers than it is to drive 50-100 mi. and shop the same places in the US.

I agree with you, people should RTPWRT. I read yours and the parent, and I fully agree. I am currently taking a course in higher level calculus (I'm a biologist, not an engineer) because I want to expand my engineering/compsci/logic/maths before I pursue a phd, as I don't fully understand some of the lab equipment I work with and some of the analysis I do. I fully understand the concepts that I am testing and the methods that we are using, but I am not a person that likes to put things into a machine and get things out without knowing how it happened. Point is, I thought that beyond the extravagant pricing of credits for an online calc course, I would be done. After I registered, I found out that I also had to purchase the supplemental 'materials' from the university bookstore. Not resellable, of course, because there is a unique user for the purchase. I have gotten by so far with used text books (some of which were published in the 80's, often found at used book stores for a dollar). Sure, it has taken some effort on my part to google things from the curriculum that I can't find, or even easier, just ask people I know who might have some insight. I got a $3,000 (four calc courses worth) education on partial derivitaves over the course of four days from a theoretical physicist friend of mine by taking him and his wife out to a nice dinner and asking him for help. He's no Richard Feynman, but I have known him for 20 yrs (2nd Grade). Cost to me, $300. Sometimes I think that the Greeks had it right, open forum, open discussion. If there is a question of intellectual prowess severe enough to come to blows, then fight it to the death. The victor has the right to share the knowledge with others that want to learn. Untill, of course, a giant thinks he is smarter than him.

'The only music that you can hear for free is when the birds sing,' apparently doesnt hold in the US. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/26/2141246/youtube-identifies-birdsong-as-copyrighted-music

I don't think it was about looking for knowledgeable people, it was about finding a jury that would be most easy to sway from making informed opinions on the evidence presented. My background would probably lead people to think that I am competent in (or at least believe in) forming opinions based on presented evidence. Therefore, struck from jury.

Because the defense gets to question jurors first, the prosecutor did not even get a chance to talk to me. I was called in to the court room with the defense and the defendant, and the prosecutors (also of course the judge). After cursory introductions, the defense asked me one question about my level of education and one very broad question about DNA evidence in trials. The defense struck me immediatley, and the judge sent me on my way.

I probably would have been more specific, except that as the lawyers cannot actually discuss anything involving the process regarding collection or analysis of evidence, the question was more along the lines of "do you think that DNA evidence can assist a jury in making a decision." I would have been more literal if I actually thought people could so pedantic about a somewhat sarcastic antecdote.

will be well enough educated in technology to make a reasonable decision based on evidence. The last time I had jury duty on a first degree murder case, the person selected from my pool brought a herd of ants into the jury room with his lunch bag (plastic bag from store checkout) and kept going on about how special he was because he and his wife had the only set of twins in the world with identical fingerprints. I am a biologist and was strucken from further review by the defense because I answered the question "Do you believe that DNA technology is accurate?" with "Yes sir, I believe it is accurate." It must be great to be a lawyer.

I would accept it if they reqired the researchers disclose how they will plan to license their results. Or they could do something like provide legal documentation for those researchers who choose to disclose. That way, crowd-sourcers could actively choose those projects that are both cool and fit their feelings on freedom of information.

Is that RMS?

Work pod, travel pod, overnight pod, they're all the same pod!!! Doesn't anybody else notice this!!! Am I going crazy!!!

Try $100 each. And where I'm from, publicly funded stadiums for the atheletes and owners to profit from in the sake of 'beautifying downtown and bringing jobs and businesses in'. I am a sports fan, my family has had Vikings season tickets since their inception, and Target Field is beautiful. I do not agree with public funding for inflated business models, which is what sports has become. If you are worth a $1,000,000,000 stadium, build it yourself, and if you expect me to pay for it, well, you are losing a customer.