Technically the Earth, Sun and all other massive bodies in this solar system all orbit each other simultaneously. But the sun is the most massive so it gets to be close to the center of the system.

Ditto for our solar system and every other solar system in the Milky Way.

It might also hold true for the whole of the universe but I'm not sure how many times we'll circle the drain before we meet the big bang's evil twin, the big squeeze.

Comparing Chrome 8.0.552.11 dev to Firefox 4.0b6 on Sun Spider.

Chrome: 335.6ms +/- 2.8%
Firefox: 543.6ms +/- 2.4%

System: AMD Phenom II 965 w/ 4GB RAM on Win7 Ultimate.

Recorded media (both analog and digital forms of photographs, audio and video) are as much a part of our cultural heritage as paintings and sculptures from previous eras.

Losing the last copy of a TV show or movie is not much different from losing the last copy of a book. It isn't just the great works that deserve archival, since future generations can learn about the state of society from both low budget movies and merchant ledgers.

And to more directly answer the question in your first sentence, I think it's unfortunate that several of the early episodes of Doctor Who were lost for the purpose of saving warehouse space.

Java isn't that tough. If he were to find a local college willing to let him audit or, if necessary, pay for just a Java class then it would probably be a worthwhile investment. If he has experience with procedural languages and programming then a good Java course would let him catch up with OOP design.

I think Java still makes a good poster child for OOP design and is more portable and accessible than C# or any other .NET language.

They're rolling out their bandwidth meter to more areas now. Last month I hit about 350GB without getting a call.

The e-brake is just a mechanical application of the rear brakes. The rear brakes are also controlled by the brake pedal so if you've faded your brakes by riding them, you're not going to magically get some new stopping power with the handbrake.

Skip the default password search and just get http://www.backtrack-linux.org/

Doesn't matter what the key is if it's using WEP. That's barely a couple minutes of number crunching for a cheap when it was new 3 years ago laptop. Seriously, it takes longer for a seasoned chain smoker to finish a Marb 72.

WPA-TKIP has been shown to have exploitable weaknesses so it will likely be cracked and then trivialized soon as well (if it hasn't been already). WAP-AES is reasonably secure at the moment but I wouldn't be surprised if that falls within the next few years as well.

Encryption is, and always has been, an arms race.

Except that, from the poster's description, these maps are in no condition to survive any sort of feed mechanism.

My layman's recommendation would be to follow Wilschon's advice above and use a digital camera to digitize them. You'll probably want to rig a mount system that will allow you to move the camera on a parallel plane to whatever surface you have the map on.

Depending on how accurate you want the digitization to be, you'll probably want to use much better lenses that are built in to a typical snapshot camera. You should solicit the advice of a photography expert to find out what lens setup would work best for capturing images of a flat plane at .3 to .6 meters with no distortion and consistent focus.

With or without using a car analogy?