Roger Zelazny is damn good. The Amber Series (both the original 5 about Corwin and the next 5 about his son Merlin) is awesome. but his best is the single book: A Night In The Lonesome October. That book totally kicks ass. Plus I would highly recommend the Amber Series and A Night In The Lonesome October on audio. They are read by Zelazny himself (except for book 10 of the Amber series as Zelazny died before he could read it). He has one of the best voices ever and since he is reading his own works, he gets the emotions, inflections, etc. perfect. Alan Dean Foster's Shadowkeep, Pip 'n Flinx, etc. Robert Lynn Aspirin's Myth series (at least the 1st six or eight then it got weird once Aspirin got writers block). David Drake's Hammers Slammers and Ranks of Bronze Keith Laumer's Bolo series (even the short story collections by other authors and a couple of books by others). David Eddings' Elenium and Tamuli series (I was never much of a fan of the Belgariad series personally) If you liked Robotech, the written series by Jack McKinney was pretty good. Frank Herbert's Dune series though the prequels by his son made the series a bit better/fleshed out more. I liked Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series though it needed to be in moderation / spread out - read too many in a row and they got harder to take Larry Niven's DreamPark series was good. John DeChancie's Castle series was entertaining. Christopher Stasheff's Warlock series ( at least the first five or so) was good as was the 1st four of his Wizard in Rhyme series.

I have been telling my clients for years as more and more laptops have gotten built in cameras or more clients have webcams hooked up to their desktops -> put a piece of tape or a post-it note over the lens when not in use. I may be paranoid but it definitely keeps that camera from doing that.

Remember that this is an ballot initiative to impose a state income tax on residents of Washington state. This would be on top of the Federal income tax that they pay. I am not saying whether it is good or bad, just that it is an additional income tax. In some states like TN where I live, we don't have a state income tax; but we also have fairly high property taxes and a fairly high sales tax on everything. I would have no issue with TN getting a state income tax as long as they took away the sales tax and/or dropped the property tax to almost nothing; however, this will never happen because this is how the counties and cities get their money. I can understand that people have enough problem with the threats of their Federal income levels rising let alone adding another 5 to 9% tax at the the state level. Should they rich pay more in taxes since they make so much more? I don't know. But I can see where they would get a bit upset at more and more people trying to take more of the money that they earn away. But this is for the people of Washington state to decide. Though a flat tax definitely seems to make much more since at least on a Federal level.

I don't know how useful / distracting an entire interactive windshield will be, and I can easily see possible issues; but I had a 1995 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP with a true HUD that projected speed, turn indicators, etc. up on the glass. When you combined it with the radio control knobs on the steering wheel, I really only had to take my eyes off the road to look at the rear-view or side-view mirrors. It was not distracting at all even though it was directly in front of vision when looking straight out the front from the drivers seat; and it really helped / eased concentration in my opinion. It didn't add squat to the cost of the car and the only downside was that the windshield was expensive if you had to replace - you had to use a special coated one instead of just any replacement. Personally, I cannot figure out why all cars don't come with one. I truly miss mine.

Well, I will say that I am glad that there is such heavy competition between nvidia and ATI; but I will also say that I do computer repair work for a living (over 15 years). I have had pretty much nothing but problems out of ATI cards over and over again. Driver errors, system lockups, etc. I have used all of the tools from both nvidia and ATI to make sure all drivers have removed from a system before putting in a new Radeon; but it is amazing that even going from one Radeon to another I get the same errors as going from an nvidia to an ATI card. ATI's technical support has always been very friendly but rarely can even help with the problem. Their normal solution: it must be a bad card so take it back and replace it. One time I did that just for shits and giggles - well I did it for 4 times until the local Best Buy said enough try something else. I put in a nvidia and it worked PERFECTLY the first time. I really wanted the Radeon to work. It was cheaper and from the benchmarks, had a little better performance than the geforce. But I wasted much money in time trying to get the thriced-damned radeon to work than I did paying $20 more for the geforce. This has happened again and again with ATI cards. I have tons of issues, get frustrated and get an nvidia card which works perfectly. So I swear off ATI. Then months down the road, the radeon gets awesome reviews and is cheaper so I 'give in' and try again. And the result - the same shit. So, I finally just said NO MORE, and told my clients to use only nvidia cards unless they are willing to pay for all of the time I have to fight with any ATI cards. What has happened? I have had no graphic card problems when installing new cards. Is this the same for everyone? NO. I have friends that do the same thing I do and most of them have had no where near the same problems with ATI cards. But for me, no more ATI Radeon cards.

There have been studies that show that talking to other people in the car is very distracting and dangerous - one study even concluded that talking to yourself was very dangerous and distracting. These same studies showed that eating or drinking (non-alcoholic drinks - even water) was very distracting and dangerous. Of course, they also showed that sneezing while driving was very distracting and dangerous. In other words, ANYTHING that isn't just driving is distracting and dangerous to your driving ability. So, let's make EVERYTHING illegal while driving (especially breathing cause that is definitely distracting and therefore dangerous).

Still down. Oh we of the great /.! We salute you! Another one bites the dust.

Perl as Voodoo is 100% - I have seen Perl do things with such weird code that it had to be voodoo magic!! However, I don't see Fortran or Pascal listed which is both hilarious and so sad that I took classes for both. (One reply mentioned Pascal as being like Roman Catholicism and I would agree to that wholeheartedly.)

Actually you are WRONG. This has already gone before more than one Federal Court and found to be LEGAL. While I think it is all the biggest load of BS, you need to get your facts straight. The only way to "fight" this is to get congress to change the law and make it either impossible or much harder for DHS / Customs to do this. Otherwise, you can bitch about it all you want but do nothing when they take your laptop.