There are numerous options for dash-mounting or floorboard-mounting tablets and laptops available on Ebay and other internet sites and there are plenty of legitimate reasons for doing so. Many auto-insurance adjusters operate "mobile claims" vehicles that are equiped with the ability to print and prccess claims right at the spot of the accident. Their are many jobs such as home health care providers where employees spend more time in a vehicle or away from an actual office space. The ability to scan and send medical documents instead of hand delivering them could be a huge time saver. Maybe even a life saver.
Is this really so uncommon in Germany that it warrants a news story?

The freezer trick has worked for me innumerable times. There are some caveats:
1. Place the drive in a freezer bag packed with as many "silica gel" packets as you can muster. The silica gel helps wick away moisture from the drive.
2. Before plugging the drive in, wait until after all visible condensation has evaporated from the drive.
3. Have a plan in place as to what data is most important. Backup the most critical data first because you won't have a lot of time and repeatedly freezing the drive only increases the chances of the drive experiencing an unrecoverable failure.
4. Use a Linux machine to read the drive. Linux implements a slightly different method of reading NTFS partitions then Windows. In fact, if Windows can't see the drive to begin with, try reading the drive with a Linux system before you even begin sticking the drive in the freezer.
5. This method should only be used as a last resort. If the data on the drive is absolutely CRITICAL hire a professional.

That's a category error. Christians don't assume the existence of an omnipotent "creature." They assume the existence of an omnipotent creator. A "creature" is a created being. The Christian deity is an eternally existent being that relies on nothing other then himself to exist.

Series 5 and 6 of the new Who actually did something that Doctor Who has needed for a long time: it made time travel an important plot point in several of the stories. Time travel has obviously been an important part of Doctor Who, a story about a time traveler, since it began in '63, but usually time travel has been used as a plot device to get the Doctor into a dramatic situation. Steven Moffat has taken time travel and made the paradoxes an important part of the story itself.

Unfortunately, Moffat has failed to resolve any of these dramatic time travel story lines in a way that makes any sense. He uses time travel as a device to get out of a sticky plot complication without worrying about if it makes any logical sense. The finale of Season 5 illustrates this: The future doctor goes back in time and gives Rory the sonic so that Rory can free the Doctor so the Doctor can go forward in time so that he can go back in time to give Rory the sonic... The only way that I can digest that poorly thought out resolution to the problem of getting the Doctor out of "the perfect prison" is to shake my head and let it slide because I like Doctor Who. But seriously... couldn't the writing staff of the series come up with a better resolution than that?

Absolutely. Catherine Tate was brilliant as Donna Noble and really helped to balance Tennant's interpretation of the Doctor.

I'm hoping that a new full-time companion for Matt Smith's Doctor will enable us to see a different side to the Doctor than the current "Mad Man in a Box." It would be nice to see a more serious side to the Doctor a little more often.

One possibility is that global temperatures have been cooler than the norm for the past several thousand years and whatever caused that global cooling trend has now corrected itself and Earth's temperatures are returning to more normalized levels that were experienced around 5-10 thousand years ago.

What we should be debating is not Climate Change but Climate Engineering: engineering Earth's climate to be most beneficial to humanity and other species as we and they exist today. We should focus on maintaining the climate to which we have become accustomed rather than being puppets of either natural or man-made climate variation.

Climate fluctuations over the course of a single decade, or a single person's lifetime does not allow for enough data to seriously consider the question of Global Warming/Global Cooling/Climate Change. We, as a species, have only been accurately recording global temperatures since around 1850. This record itself is not sufficient for providing a true picture of Earth's changing climate. For this we must resort to Paleoclimatology.

Anecdotal evidence in the form of "this winter has been really warm" is totally unhelpful. Where I live this year has been pretty warm... but last year was one of the coldest that I can remember since I've lived here. Both statements are true, but neither of them indicates either a global or regional trend.

Climate change is very real. The Earth's climate has changed dramatically over it's 5.5 billion (6,000?) year history. Change is inevitable whether it is caused by humans or other natural processes. What we as a species must decide is whether or not we want to affect that change in a way that benefits humanity or if we want to allow these processes, whether natural or man-created, to determine the fate of our species. I for one support the global engineering of climate to benefit humanity and preserve as many other species as we can in order to sustain nurture our species to create a better tomorrow.

No pun intended, but this is an apples and oranges comparison. The iPad is not a personal computer, it's a tablet computer and is therefore in a different category than the Commodore 64.

That said, the boast that the Commodore 64 is the "best selling computer model of all time" may not be entirely accurate. It's important to note that the sales figure quoted actually includes a number of different models of the Commodore 64:
the Commodore Max,
Commodore 64
Commodore SX64
C64GS
and the Commodore 64C.

That's actually five different models, not just one.

Perhaps the proper term is "simulated stereo."

Those are the Canadian memory addresses. Just like Canadian Bacon... it's just wrong.

My 1541 was actually more expensive than the actual C64 when I got it back in the day.
Oh... and get your 1581 here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Commodore-1581-Disk-Drive-tested-and-working-/190608048217?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c61200059

If you really, really, really need a retro keyboard you would be better off buying a non-functional Commodore 64 from ebay for about $20 or less with $15 shipping then purchasing a Keyrah board from amigakit.com for about $35 and turning the thing into a USB keyboard. Total cost: $70.00. Plug it into an existing machine and load one of the free C64 emulators (Frodo, Vice, etc.) and enjoy.

It's not how much time you spend... it's how much you can accomplish in the time you are given.

Commodore is not just about nostalgia. A big part of the Commodore community is about seeing just how far you can push 8-bit technology. Ram Expansion Units (REUs) and other cartridges that expand the capabilities of the base machine are simply fun to play with. One of my personal favorites is the Turbo Chameleon cartridge that adds VGA-out, stereo and ethernet to the old C-64. The Chameleon can also be used in stand-alone mode as a FPGA system running c64 and Amiga 500 cores. A cheaper option is the MCC-216 which does not have the ability to act as a cartridge in an actual c64 but does allow the end user to run Amiga, c64, Apple II and Atari 2600 cores.
If you have an old Commodore lying around that no longer boots you might be interested in the Keyrah: a small board that fits inside the Commodore's case and allows you to use the old system as a USB keyboard. Great for emulators.
Check out www.amigakit.com for options!

My IT Training came from on-the-job. The Navy was still all dumb terminals and MSDOS. My job, as a journalist, eventually required the command provide me with a system for desktop publishing. That meant either Windows 3.1 or MacOS 7. Fearing Mac, they gave me Windows and Aldus PageMaker. When the command began rolling out Windows to the rest of our personnel, I was the only person on-hand who had any knowledge. I became Tech Support. When they began networking the machines together in a workgroup, I assisted with that as well. Not to mention that cabling a ship for closed circuit television is only a few steps removed from cabling 10Base2 ThinNet.
When my ship pulled into Hawaii, I spent my liberty installing Slackware on my personal laptop. By the time I got out of the Navy, I had plenty of experience with Windows, Unix (Linux), and networking. I got a low-level, low-paying job at a financial corporation and quickly worked my way up by proving my ability and obtaining requisite certs, etc.