... start to finish. I'll flip over to it from time to time to check on the score. If it turns out that Seattle is beating the tar out of New England, I may keep watching just because I really can't stand the Patriots.

... a few months ago. Now, all of a sudden, I'm without broadband again.

... provide an excuse for their buddies in the chemical, pesticide, and GMO industries that allows them to ridicule the American consumer as a bunch of no-nothings. "See... these rubes^Wpeople don't even know what they're talking about so why should we have to label food that contains man-modified genetic material or household chemicals that contain chemicals that nobody's been able to prove with 100% certainty cause cancer?"

Perhaps the paper was trying to indict the educational system but, more likely, that's not how this poll's result are going to be used.

I've heard of Winmodems. Today I learned about the Winmouse. Ugh.

I've been using a Kensington Expert Mouse trackball for years and left-click with my thumb, right-click with my pinky, and manipulate the large track ball with the other three fingers. I got it after my index finger started to develop signs of arthritis after having used a regular mouse for so many years. (Anyone remember the Logitech 3-button bus mouse and the Point text editor? (Yeah that long.) I want to find another one of those trackballs.

... just what would the fighter escort hope to accomplish? Are we really ready to order fighter pilots to shoot down airliners over a phoned-in threat? I guess all it'll take now to spook passengers and completely disrupt air travel in the U.S. is a few bozos with bunch of pre-paid or stolen cellphones.

``We even instruct children to 'stop, look, and listen'.''

So the govt. puts out PSAs that urge people to `stop, look, and look again' when crossing the street. It's a good practice, anyway. Cyclists don't make much noise -- most of the noise made by a car is from the tires and the road surface and a bike's skinny tires make the cyclist much more stealthy -- and a bike/pedestrian collision can be nearly as deadly as one involving cars. Of course, the govt. could always mandate that cyclists clamp something to the fork that is used to hold baseball cards in the spokes. (As a kid, I actually preferred using plastic-coated playing cards as they were louder than baseball cards.) I actually expect something like that to be making its way through local legislatures instead of teaching pedestrians to be more alert when crossing the street.

My hope is that there'll be a way to define your own fake car noise. I'll want my silent electric car to emit a sound like George Jetson's "car".

``IBM simply moves the job to a cheaper foreign country where they have an office...''

Indeed. I recall reading a story about IBMers being told that the internal posting for a job was not intended for U.S.-based employees. Recent news tells us that IBM is laying off N people but hiring the same number. So it's all good, of course. Wanna bet on how many of those new hires are going to be based in the U.S.?

... will stop my tin-foil-hat-wearing friends from going overboard whenever one of their conspiracy-obsessed friends posts a comment about chemtrails or whatever government-is-out-to-get-you theory of the day is making the rounds.

...participate in any childhood activities if a**holes like these cops and bureaucrats had been around when I was that age. Our Little League practices were over a mile away and we rode to/from the field -- sometimes as a group but often alone -- without anyone calling the cops. We rode bikes to the public pool -- well over a mile a way -- all summer long, crossing all kinds of busy streets along the way. Even at night. Again nobody called the cops.

Of course, this was a time before pins started showing up in Halloween candy and the kindly old lady down the block could still hand out homemade popcorn balls in your trick/treat bag without risking spending the rest of her life in the big house or on some predator list. I can't quite pin down the time frame when it began but, apparently, some disease began afflicting adults that caused them to hate children. And the unafflicted adults began overreacting to the sight of a child unaccompanied by a cordon of security guards by calling the police whenever they catch a glimpse of one.

... has been such a big hit?

Next new thing on digital cameras: Curved Screens. Just you wait. They're gonna be huge. HUGE I tell ya.

Bah! With a phone camera, it's not point-n-shoot but point-n-pray. In the time it takes the camera in my phone to let me get the zoom set to what I want and then focus on the subject, my point-n-shoot camera has been powered on and has already let me take several shots that are, you know, actually in focus. Especially if I'm indoors. I'm not a big user of flash unless I can adjust the output -- most camera's flash units are too "hot" (IMHO) and overexpose the subjects -- and I've yet to see a phone camera with that feature. My phone's camera is all but useless for taking sharp photos unless the subject is lit by the noon day sun and then it's nearly impossible to see the subject on the screen with all the ambient light. The resulting photos look in-focus on the camera but when I view them on my computer I'm often left wondering "what the heck were you focusing on?". Nothing looks really sharply in-focus. By-product of the crummy optics, probably.

If I know I'm going some place where I'll likely want to take good photos I'll take my DSLR. If the locale isn't exactly camera friendly, I'll slip the point-n-shoot into my pocket. As an absolute last resort I'll use the phone's camera but I find its photos barely passable.

You're right about it being about having the camera on you. Back in the film days, folks would often keep a smallish 35mm with them at all times. Far easier to whip out that little Rollei than dragging the big Nikon or Canon out of the camera bag in the back seat.