And how does this work with the fact that your regular lock is easily bypassed using a bump key?

Seems to me that your argument should apply to regular locks and yet it doesn't seem like it is...

Loved the Stainless Steel Rat...but I also really enjoyed his more serious book "Homeworld". An interesting look at a big brother society... He was one of the better Sci-Fi authors. He will be missed.

Reminds me of the bit from "The Games" where John and Brian are arguing about whether or not genetically modified horses should be allowed to compete in the Olympics... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0pRe4GApTg

UC Davis has a 2 MW reactor...

K-9!

Larry Niven as well. Ringworld Engineers. 1980.

Surprisingly (at least to me), you can send classified documents up to a certain level via certified or registered mail, I can't remember which one it was... I thought that there would be more drama surrounding it but apparently not...

I also really enjoyed "Homeworld" by Harry Harrison. Protagonist is an EE. Big brother state. It was part of the "To the stars" trilogy, but I particularly liked this book.

I also liked some of his other books like "Rebel in Time" and "Bill, the Galactic Hero".

Unless you have a car which doesn't have a robust transmission...

Our Hyundai Accent apparently has an automatic transmission which has a design issue with the thrust bearing which can wear out in about 100,000 miles. We had ours go at 180,000 but a 100,000 mile transmission failure is not unheard of in the older Accents apparently...

You might want to give Eric a try. Eric is an IDE for python which can call Qt designer. This allows you to create the gui using Qt and with PyQt write your actual program in Python.

Plus, there is an assumption that these networks are up 24/7. If the are used on an as needed basis, flying a SIGINT plane may not turn up very much...

When we were traveling across the United States, there was about 45 minutes of our trip through Utah where we were not receiving GPS signals. I believe it happened in the early afternoon. Fortunately there were not turns involved during that portion of the trip.

Yep, and ignore sales and marketing at your peril as well...

Clearly this is a person who has not been around for very long...or only around during good times and not any hard times...

The issue I think centers around why the changes from the book are being made. Sure there are reasons why sections of a book could be shortened or changed to a certain extent for various reasons.

It is the arbitrary nature of the changes which are annoying. Bree was changed from a friendly welcoming town with various people for the most part living together without issue. In the movie they change Bree into a slum and the Inn into a dive. Was there any reason to do this? No. It was arbitrary. That is what is annoying. People making changes for the sake of making changes. Does it impact the general story? Probably not, but why change it? Tolkien set it a certain way, so why not respect what the man wrote and present it that way.

There are many examples of where they got so many details of the books just right in the movies, but the butchered so many others that really comes across as a lack of respect. Treebeard's character was changed significantly from the book. Why? To make the Hobbits look more important? That is not what Tolkien presented in his book. So, an arbitrary change was made which significantly changed a character in the book and ruins the character.

It is as if sections of the movie were re-written by committee, or just changed for the sake of changing something. I think that is why purists get upset. It is these changes which are made which come across as having no respect for the story the author was telling.

I think that John Sandford's Kidd series are also a good read and worth a mention at the very least...