I know they claimed at launch (PS3, XBOX) that this would be a ten year generation cycle but damn it feels a lot longer than it sounds. I'm happy to not shell out several hundred dollars per console every five or so years but I also don't want to buy the same gen console as my next console when this one dies.

Perhaps the education isn't ten-fold but the people at the 200k schools rub elbows with the right people and that is what makes all the difference. The rich keeping each other rich.

Other than at Baptisms I've actually never heard 'Satan', 'hell' or any derivations thereof brought up at mass. Interesting though - I'm sure there all all kinds of different Catholic upbringings. A lot of this may come from Vatican I and then the last generation to be influenced by Vatican I is the offspring of the Vatican I followers? I don't really know. My child goes to a Catholic school and I haven't encountered this there or at mass. I don't doubt it one bit but I think things have changed. I didn't grow up in any kind of faith upbringing so I can't speak for anything from the past only the present as I see it.

The 360 has ESPN on the Video Marketplace which is free to use. It has some live events and you can follow whichever sports you like e.g. hockey and soccer. A lot of it, however, is mostly clips and archives and not live so there is definitely that downside. We're planning to use an antenna to get over the air 'live' feeds/channels too so if the sport comes on one of the big 4 networks here in town we should be good to go.

We recently ditched our DirecTV service we have had for years due to skyrocketing prices, inflexibility, and lack of time or desire to watch enough TV to justify the cost. We've been using the 360 (and PS3, AppleTV) to watch Hulu and Netflix as well as renting some movies and the transition hasn't hurt us one bit. We've talked about it for a couple years I only wish we had done it sooner. It was cool when Red State was available to rent (at $10) before it hit the theaters. I hope this is a continuing trend.

We could just attach them to kittens!

Thirty years ago it was postulated that 'They' may indeed be Giants. After nearly three decades of study, is there conclusive evidence that They are, as a matter of fact, Giants?

Maybe I'm stupider than I'd like to think or less of a dick than I like to purport I am but I could never come up with all these absurd patents.

Bah I always thought it was a butterfly.

And now you can get Mono!

Scientology is so first decade. Dahn Yoga is the cult du jour.

I would argue that is the case for basic business programming but once you have to develop for an academic purpose or structure/create complex algorithms, a healthy knowledge of logic and set theory is immensely invaluable. A lot of the programmers I work with here have degrees in areas other than CS (Business, Accounting, Culinary Arts to name a few) and can "program" -- make a website functional and navigable-- but these are also the same people who come to us engineers for advice beyond what amounts to be understanding if/else and some basic looping. So it depends on what type of 'programmer' you want to be. Web Developer or Engineer? Script kiddie or Analyst? Und so weiter.

I wholeheartedly agree. We were not happy that we basically didn't have a second perspective on the material presented when we went home to try to process it. My favorite CS class in undergrad was where we wrote proofs, languages/alphabets, big 0, etc. I feel that if you 'get' that stuff than you can be a good, language agnostic engineer. Of course there is much to be said for those who have worked in a single language and understand its nuances.

I had to take a symbolic logic and set theory class in undergrad that had a book written by our professor. Though initially tough it has proved invaluable to my thinking patterns and knowledge of computer science.

There is a CWA (Communications Workers of America) labor union in the U.S. and I've attempted to contact them but haven't heard anything back. I've contacted the national as well as the local branch. Perhaps I'll stop by the union hall itself.