Until I had my first child, it was quite the experiment. Lots of room for error too. But I suppose it is better to leave things to chance, and hope on that first ultrasound that everything looks to be developing properly.

If they would make a Chromecast app I'd be more than willing to buy movies through their service. I already have about 30 Google Play Movies titles but there are some titles in Amazon streaming that are not available. Until they make it viewable on my screen, I won't buy any more from them.

Web developers have a different level of acceptability than in aerospace. I remember a code review for a tiny bit of code that did almost nothing but flash an LED on a failure condition. Three engineers, from three different areas had to approve the change. There was a code review board. There was paperwork and signoffs. Documentation had to include test results, cert results, someone's firstborn and a blood sacrifice to Moloch. The unfortunate engineer that submitted the code had to *defend* it in front of a room full of people whose chief entertainment was watching software guys squirm ("They ain't real engineers" "Here's a quarter kid. Go buy a real degree.").

Wimps.

In the last company where I worked, they changed web code on the fly. The developer edited code directly on the web server. An refresh from the client browser during the update could mean that the look of the page changed one moment to the next. Hell, there was one time when the whole webroot directory was renamed on the live server so the new site could be installed. Too bad for anyone browsing the old page...

Pshaw... You aerospace guys think you live on the edge? Change review? Bwahahaaha. Regression testing? You kid. Dev/Test/Stage/Prod migration? What are you, five?

Back in the day, writers earned their keep from underwriters (subscribers). I believe that with tools like Blender, relatively inexpensive broadcast and DVD quality cameras, the ability to collaborate across the world, cheap/cloud storage, and a plethora of amazing stories, we could back to that model. I for one would welcome alternatives to big studio garbage that assumes that because it has a spaceship or an alien race (aliens that look exactly like humans, especially) we'll just buy tickets.

And we often do, because the other "choices" are "Bad Grandma" and "Teen Love Story".

Some would argue that there are no genres. Everything is fluff around a few basic stories. Whether it was gods and warriors, kings, princesses or magical forests, the settings were just trappings around a quest or a boy meets girl or journey. I've heard folks argue that sci-fi requires some element of science to be truly sci-fi, but I think that precludes a lot of good fiction. There's a story about a machine that (placed railroads/mined/logged). It would be considered a folk tale today (or even a faux tale) but in its day might have the definition of sci-fi.

Anyhoo, one of my favorites new series is/was the BSG respin. I got lots and lots of flack for enjoying it. I consider excellent sci-fi, yet because it had religion and aspects of magic, many don't agree.

"Deep Impact" could be a variation of the Cyclops myths. Like the people on earth, they knew their death. How does a person deal with the knowledge of their future extinction? There are also many mythologies that foretell the end of the world. Whether by a Beast or a meteor, it explores similar ideas.

All said, I agree that much of what is called sci-fi today is drivel. Gorram Fox.

We average about 50 hours a week, but there are weeks when it goes up to 60 or more. These aren't too often, however. Plus you know that scene in "Office Space" where we hear that there's a good amount of staring into space? There's some of that too. Take that out of my day and it's a more normal 40 hours of actual work.

The problem is in finding people. I interviewed over twenty candidates last year but no matter that the resumes read "Linux expert", many couldn't change a password expiration or expand an LV.

This happened to me. The boss man had "taken the initiative" and brought in a new consultant. The guy was an idiot. He opened tickets with the software vendor asking things like how to set the date on a Linux system. He told one of my co-workers that if the root password was lost, he'd need to boot with a rescue disk and do some trickery with /etc/shadow. Tasked with building a cluster, he failed miserably blaming it on poor documentation and other nonsense. I tried many times to tell the boss man that his consultant was an idiot but was told I was being "combative" despite the guy's obvious failings.

It all worked out though. As this guy's contract was being renewed, we asked him to show what he'd done. All the lies he'd told the boss man evaporated when it was revealed that his cluster was just a cluster fuck, his vaunted "remote management" system was really just a "yum install webmin" (left unconfigured), and he'd informed another co-worker not to reveal where he was sitting.

Even years after, the boss man still insisted that the contractor "had fooled everyone."

So no, if the boss is an idiot, you may as well just distance yourself from the idiot. Let him dig his own grave.

How can you claim that they price older games at lower than used game prices?

Back in the cartridge years, I was able to pick up games by the BOX load from flea markets or yard sales.

Competition simply doesn't exist in a market where things are under copyright. As there is no compulsory licensing model for software, it's not like you can purchase your product from a different supplier. If that were the case, I'd be able to play Heroes VI and not have to do business with Ubisoft's Uplay crap. (or Origin for EA games, etc)

Consider that I wanted to buy a game for my wife, but that game was no longer offered for sale because original company went out of business and was sold. Under the no-resale model, I'm SOL. Unless I happen to get lucky and the company that owns a portion of the sold company (they are never sold 100% to a single party) feels like monetizing some IP, and spends the time to collect all of the other IP fragments, and remarket the game, I don't have the option to buy it anymore.

With the resale model, I could hop down to my local gamestop, or craigslist, or secondhand store and try my luck there.

I am distressed by your high Slashdot UID. :>

She seems to know her stuff. I show some of her videos to my daughter.

If someone cannot separate their libido from their technical and work related duties, then the problem is not Nixie Pixel's.

Does she lose credibility because she's attractive? I dunno. If anything, I'm more critical of the bubble-headed, "I played ResEvil so I'm a geek grrl!! lol" type. And actually, those types irritate the crap out of me. But looking at her vids, she has technical knowledge that's no worse than many others that I respect.

Having Prime makes me more likely to buy an item. In fact, when I search I generally click the "Prime" filter. Many of the items I won't buy without Prime because the extra shipping discourages me .It's not that I care all that much about the actual shipping cost, just the total price. When a retailer puts an artificially low price then tacks on a large shipping price then I get annoyed and don't buy from them. With Prime, I know the price I see is what I'll pay and have it there in two days.

I don't use the Prime video service because it sucks. I can't watch it on AppleTV or Chromecast natively and selection is quite poor.

I don't think you can say I hold the purse strings when my taxes are withheld before I even get my paycheck.

You know, I'm really old fashioned and like to browse books. Electronic browsing is not quite the same, however. What I have thought about doing:

On laminated plastic boards, about the height and width of a standard paperback but about as thick as a piece of cardboard, print out the covers of all sorts of books front and back. Use an RFID or QR Code sticker that can retrieve the book from the digital library. Place all the "books" on a browseable shelf. As a kid, browsing the local used book store or library was one of the few pleasures I could afford. I think this would meld the convenience and cost savings of a digital library with the fun of browsing a physical item.