"Toaru Majutsu no Index" is the name of the anime series referenced by the name Misaka. I beleive they are making a reference to Mikoto Misaka, one of the primary protagonists. Incidentally, I enjoy that series, I've seen that series twice over and I don't remember there being promiscuous amounts of panty shots of the characters. Were there some here and there? Sure, but it's not something I'd deem unsuitable for anyone who's at least high school age. Ironically enough, there's a particular scene where one of Misaka's friends points out that Misaka always wears shorts underneath her skirt. So you can't see Misaka's panties.

Anyone else get the feeling that Google's ChromeOS is now subscribing to a very Apple-like philosophy that things should "just work" without any tweaking needed by the end user? And thus any tweaking functionality will be at best, minimal? Sorry Sergey Brin, that's a giant step backwards. If you choose to go that direction, you'll not have my business for your ChromeOS, ever. I actually enjoy tweaking the hell out of stuff. For example, just took my first real leap into Linux just yesterday. Messed with KDE until I got it looking reminiscient of Windows 7, because I actually quite enjoy its UI.

Can't wait to get my hands on this in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Gonna miss my trusty M203 and spewing n00b tubes all over the map, but gotta upgrade someday.

And that is why I pirate Windows.

So they're willing to give it a chance... But how much are they willing to pay for that chance? Let's get some pricing details, MS. Still, an audiophile friend of mine resolutely refuses to use Vista/7 on his main machine because he claims he had problems doing 192 kHz audio playback in Vista with his E-MU sound card.

Correction: The Gameboy Advance SP had no headphone jack; the original Gameboy Advance did, as did the Gameboy Micro. But who bought a Gameboy Micro, anyhow... My first video game platform ever was an Advance SP. And I had to go buy a dongle to use headphones.

Q10. Fullscreen text editor to keep me focused on my writing and not on my RSS feeds. http://www.baara.com/q10/

This is coming from a 17 year old. I second the dude who mentioned Mindstorms- my dad brought home a book on robotics when I was 12 or 13 years old. I was so intrigued that a few months later I got the Lego Mindstorms 2.0 building set for Christmas. When I got some experience, we joined a FIRST Lego League team. I stayed on the team until I was too old for the competition- but it was a lot of fun. The programming environment for the RCX was this wierd, but kid-friendly visual drag-and-drop environment, and it was pretty much the same for the ROBOLAB stuff. You could define custom "blocks" as you progressed, and there were even third-party firmwares (NQC, Not Quite C). The NXT, the next-gen Mindstorms, is even better- the programming hasn't changed much, but the hardware in the $250 kit is superior. Robotics is how I got into coding stuff, and I think it was because I could see my programming at work- much easier than on a computer. Right now I build webpages for a summer job, and I had much more fun messing around with that kit. But it's taught me how to think like a programmer. So, give your kid a sandbox to play in. Be sure you give him tools and toys that aren't easy to break, or hard to assemble. Let him go at it. And give him some challegnes- once he knows the ropes, have him make his creation do something specific, with progressing complexity. In the competitions we had certain "tasks" we had to do within the 2.5 minute time frame of the match. But of course help him when he gets stuck- complexity and frustration early on will make anyone want to quit, especially when they could be watching TV or playing Guitar Hero ...but the latter is an excellent alternative.