It's crazy stuff that Homeland Insecurity does that has me nervous to fly into the USA in January for a vacation. I also don't want to go to Mexico, not because I wouldn't enjoy it, but because it'd mean another trip past thugs at DHS at the American border.

I think his unelected status is a bit of a red herring, to be honest. The unelected Lord Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy is pretty much exactly as dodgy as the duly elected Rt Hon Peter Mandelson MP was. Plus there are plenty of other very dodgy elected politicians (as the recent expenses furore demonstrated), and lots of entirely sensible and honest unelected peers (especially the non-party-affiliated cross-benchers) who do very good work, are acknowledged experts in their fields, and who are definitely worth having involved in the legislature. But yes, there does seem to have been a bit of a tradition of "two strikes and you get a peerage" in British politics over the last few decades: the novelist and convicted liar Jeffrey Archer is a prime example, and it can only be a matter of time before David Blunkett gets kicked upstairs too.

They're taking Canadian Tire money then?

I hooked up one Ubuntu laptop out of dozens today at the U of R. We do have a Kununtu guide on our website.

Now SaskTel has good prepaid. For $20, I can phone as infrequently as I need to, and the minutes don't expire if I make a 1 second call every 2 or 3 months (or something like that). The minutes used to expire if you didn't add another $20 card in that time, but a law change prevented that.

I now have 3 consoles, all purchased or repaired in the last year.
An NES with Duck Hunt and Super Mario (and 8 other games) ($25).
A PS One with 5 games ($10)
And a PS2 with 2 games $40.

I play on a 13" colour TV, and a 20" Sony TV that I got for free this year when someone moved out and left it as trash.

And I don't have a wife to supplement my income. HD is for my 25" LCD computer monitor, not TVs. TV is for my friends to pay for, at their places.

They could just opt out, as The Onion explains how.

I may need to opt out, as I saw the Google Car south of Moose Jaw as I was driving by. At first I thought it was a car with a bike on top, but then I saw it was a big camera system. I was looking right at it too! And my face has never appeared on the Internet before (while I've been in my car). I'm gravely worried (but not really).

I like this result. Make Dell unhappy with CriminalSoft. They can make a new image with Open Office or crappy Works.

Rub the paper on your head, and use static electricity to hold paper together.

Otherwise use your hand.

And speaking of black holes, I had one for lunch. I put a meat patty and a veggie patty into the same burger. The Meat and the Anti-Meat annihilated each other and I was left with a Black Hole Burger.

In many cities, buses have bike racks on the front so you can bike and ride.

Even my voltmeter works better when I reverse the polarity; instead of -1.5V for a battery it becomes 1.5V.

In this Post 4/1 World, nothing is the same. Slashdot has stories that you can believe in again, because they are sponsored by the tech gadget of the week.

Fortunately (-: reverses the :-) infection. (-:

The trick is getting the infectious smilies and disinfecting smilies into perfect balance. McAfee and Symantec will have products available for that shortly, sure to take your smile away when you pay them for the anti-smile software.

An alcoholic "tape worm" if you will? I picture a micro-Bender drinking all of my beer inside my small intestine.