A state legislator introduced a bill to require telcos to change "receives a phone book" from "yes" to "must request it". By the time it came up for a vote, some of those who'd previously supported the bill now were against it--even one of the bill's authors. Yellow Pages advertising is big business here in the US. Regional telcos are grabbing at anything they can to "monetize" and the ad revenue in phone books was a cash cow. I get a "real" phone book published by the telco and one that's purely ad driven that I toss into recycling straightaway. Once the Greens start slapping these senators at the ballot box, stuff like the phone book "opt-in" thing is going to have to go from city to city. Palo Alto and some neighboring cities have already banned plastic grocery bags, styrofoam cups, and containers. Telling the local phone company that they have to ask each of their Palo Alto customers if they want a phone book is just another issue. Unfortunately, yelling at a city councilman at a council meeting for caving to a lobbyist is easier than at a state senator at a local town hall meeting. And it gets more press.

When Wired first came out, I couldn't read it either. I flip through it while standing in line at FRYS only to put it back wondering who could read it. Seems after reading various books on aging that wired was targeting young eyes intentionally. Now that it's been out a while, the original crowd can't read it any more. Ironic. Appropriate. We should all send an email to their layout manager saying "GET OFF MY LAWN". I wonder who their revenues are doing with the original readers now to old to actually read the thing.

Yep. The iPad is an extension of the desktop. It's not happening yet, but I can envision a future iPad-like device (FILD) that has enough "limited" compute power and portability to allow for casual use around the house and about town. A friend has a MacPro tower but codes in Java from his MacBook because it's easier and he likes lounging on the couch with books open around him. If the FILD gets close enough to an authorized compute-server (like your desktop or the compute farm at the local coffee place), and it becomes part of the system with a display you can manipulate with fingers. Run whatever stuff on the compute-server with display and storage on the FILD. Then coffee shops wouldn't just have free WiFi. They'll offer power stations for laptops and paid access to their local compute server. You can use a laptop on battery to work for free or pay to use the coffee shop power and compute server.

Since this involved illegal computer access from an information provider (don't think Amazon's been classified as a telecom provider. yet.), why not involve the consumer fraud devision of the Washington State Attorney General. If a bunch of AG people and sheriffs descend on Amazon's offices with search warrants for "Any and all computers, disks, hardware, etc.", I think Amazon will take notice pretty quickly.

If you had to do any linear regression or error analysis, knowledge of statistics is important (e.g. being able to answer questions like "Is this a good datapoint or an outlier"). And Calculus is used to derive the formula for linear regression. I didn't touch it since I was an undergrad, but I still know and can use it. My sister-in-law who got the same B.S. in chemistry asked me why I remember this stuff when she was studying for a nursing degree. It trained my mind. Being able to do algebraic manipulation should be send nature to you. Do whatever you need to do to learn that cold. You'll need it for calculus and statistics.

I didn't buy this game, but if I had and it stopped working because the company "remotely turned it off", I'd be back at the point of purchase (aka my local game store) to complain. If they won't give me another game of equal value or a full credit-card refund, I'd contact the credit card company and request a charge back. I'd tell that to the owner of the store and all my friends. This might possibly result in the owner's credit card processor putting their account on hold, thereby limiting their ability to take credit cards. If I bought it from an on-line store, same thing. If enough people return the game as defective (it's got DRM that doesn't work), maybe Ubisoft might take notice. The game store owners surely will.

A colleague used dreamhost and I saw all the terrific extras they offered. Then I saw that they don't support Drupal, which I needed for a client's site. Between the major ISPs that support Drupal (bluehost and a2hosting), I decided I didn't like the "this is your account name based on your domain" rule that Bluehost imposed. I also vehemently oppose the Mormon church and their meddling in politics in California (the owner is Mormon and donates lots to the church). A2hosting has been terrific for both me and my client. Dreamhost is ok if all you want is a light-duty phpbb or wordpress site which my colleague seems happy with. I'm willing to give up the ability to compile stuff (no gcc even though you have a shell) for a shared account.

Sadly, this may be part of your corporate culture. It's up to you to decide if you're up to the task of educating and remaking the the entire culture. A friend worked for a small software bioinformatics company that got bought by a hardware maker who wanted to branch out into this nacent market. Unfortunately, their entire company culture viewed software development as overhead and something they just gave away with the hardware. It took them three years to mismanage the new (and last) release, outsource development to India, and drive away key people. When three developers announced their resignations on the same day (they didn't know the others were looking), senior management had a collective "oh shit". They ended up shuttering the remains of the company.

If you can't educate and enlighten management to tell the difference between the help desk and key developers, then I think you should look for someplace else.

MacOS X 10.5 ships with BootCamp which can boot a Windows partition (Parallels and Fusion can use this partition for their copy of Windows) and run it instead of MacOS X.

There are two commercially available to run Windows on MacOS X. Parallels and VMware's Fusion both require a commercial FULL RETAIL copy of Windows to run a Windows application in a virtual environment (not emulation).

There's also Crossover for Macintosh that can run _some_ Windows applications like Office without installing Windows.

The Linux users are out of luck it seems, but if you use SPICE instead of your Windows-only solution, everyone wins.

Some colleges require you to live on campus for the first year. During that time, you'll have to "suck it up" and live with the networking restrictions. Or switch to a computer and OS they don't support, like MacOS 9 or CPM or RT-11 or whatever to ensure you have the privacy you need. Or just don't use the computer (or the phone) for anything you don't want anyone to know about. If the school requires you to run an OS that they support, then you have your answer. For more ideas along this vein, read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother:

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Brother-Cory-Doctorow/dp/0765319853

Some colleges are really worried about the infringing material on their networks and applying some rather heavy handed response. Yours seems to focusing on prevention rather than assuming the students are adults and capable of making their own choices and dealing with the consequences. There's a fine line between "policing" and "fascism". Your college crossed it, IMO. If they require the dorm resident advisors to search your room periodically for "contraband", then I think you have to find another college or a good lawyer to fight it.

Take physical notes with pen, paper, and notebook--it uses a different part of your brain than typing. I still can't actively listen to a lecture and type note. I have to take them by hand. A client told me about Lightscribe, a pen computer which he uses for meetings and downloads what he wrote to his computer later:

http://www.amazon.com/Livescribe-2GB-Pulse-Smartpen-APA-00002/dp/B001AAN4PW

I bought a bunch of _paper_ and office supplies, maybe about $50 worth or so. The sales associate kept insisting that I had to apply for a Office Max preferred customer card but I kept refusing. I said I rather buy the stuff elsewhere than give them my personal info. He finally shut up. I paid cash and walked out.

I get the same thing with Safeway whenever I pick up something there.

I worked in an environment like this--500+ "desktops" running a mix of Solaris64, Solaris, SCO, SunOS, and HP/UX). We used cfengine, automounter, and a bunch of file servers for the different environments (compilers, perl, GNU utilities, etc.) NIS tied it all together. This was back in 1996. Why is this so hard for the OP _today_? If some marketing weenie needs Powerpoint, can't they run that on Wine?

Actually, M$ is opening itself up to lots of litegation in the UK and Europe. They better backpedle on this position i-fucking-mediately or they'll risk having XBoxLive banned in lots of European countries.