These machines are in the Philadelphia airport. My first time going through one, I didn't know that I had to remove *everything* from my pockets. It was sensitive enough to pick up my wallet in my back pocket which contained no metal other than what is found inside of credit cards and my Patco FreedomCard train pass. It also picked up my belt buckle... small and thin... not one of those WWF styles.

What the TSA people saw on the monitor was a mono-color human silhouette, with little squares of another color indicating the general area of where the questionable items were on my person.

I was asked if I had anything on my person, and I was patted down just in those areas identified on the monitor. My hands were also swabbed for a particle detector. After that, I was allowed to move on.

Overall, I think the machines worked fine. And while the $90 million spent on machines is a lot of cash, that money went to pay people who did good work in manufacturing the machines, assembling parts, writing code, provided maintenance of the buildings they were built in and so on. It wasn't just thrown out the window. That money went to working individuals who will pay taxes on that money who will give the government an opportunity to pay off the national debt. Furthermore, if those $90 million machines prevent just one terrorist plot that may not have been picked up by the previous generation of detectors, then it will have paid for itself multiple times over.

IMHO, not perfect but good enough.

In the US at least, we can do away with the penny.

I was thinking Sit-N-Spin

Everyone knows The Answer is really "42"

A federal online tax would be interesting, but there a are some states such as Delaware that don't have any sales tax at all... not sure how well that would go over.

So the researchers studying the toads obviously don't know much about them other than their mating habits. The toads in my area leave sometime around the mid to late fall. But it's not like they're packing their bags and catching the cheapest Southwest flight to Miami. They really can't leave because even if they hop 5 miles away, its still going to be cold. Perhaps a more astute observation would be that the frogs were not observed to be in the area, which doesn't necessarily imply that they left the area, but possibly, like they do in the winter, burrowed themselves in the ground.

What the article failed to mention is that part of the frog's strange behavior involved etching out signs in the mud of the nearby pond that read "EARTHQUAKE COMING". And FYI... yes, it was in all caps.

my car telling me to slow down because I'm going over the speed limit.

Unless its mandated by law, I highly doubt many people would buy a car with such a feature, myself included. While I'm not one to usually talk on the cell phone, I do have the occasional need to hold the phone up to my ear... or go on speakerphone as to be inconspicuous... if there's a call that needs to be made and it can't wait til I reach my destination. The last thing I want while on an important call is the car issuing warnings or the cell phone asking me to press 7 to continue. I'm sure a large number of people would be in the same boat. (ok... bad choice of words :)

My wife is looking for employment. She's looking at an executive director position for a small non-profit organization where she might be able to pull in $50K... but she's also a gamer. From TFA, 60% of 8.25 for ten minutes of play... That's $4.95 for ten minutes ~ $30/hour ~ $60,000 / year. "Hey Honey... I found a job for you!"

I've used that exact same methodology, but I've taken it to the next level...

I throw out the number completely, then pass the script into an application development program, and voila, finished project in exactly the amount of time it took me to write the script

I think you meant that the first 90% of the project takes the first 10% of the time line, and the remaining 10% of the project takes the other 90% of time.

Tools -> Options -> Main -> Homepage

It could probably make a nice Rolex though.

Silly Human... you're supposed to replace the can with the phone!

Awesome... Totally Awesome!