If uniforms are being suggested because IT guys currently are dressing inappropriately(gasp)

Yes, this sounds like a passive-aggressive fix employed by a gutless manager.

Frankly, I have no plans to see this movie -- I never had even the slightest interest in it.

That's fair enough; I wasn't looking forward to being beaten by the Pocahontas bludgeon again. But I've got to say that the film is a technological wonder - lots of moving parts, fractals, motion capture, other stuff. Cameron (and ILM, WETA and other folks) set this bar pretty high.

... Microsoft security researcher confirms advantages of open source transparency

I gather you don't have a use for it. Great, don't buy one. But I ride my Segway an average of 200 miles each month, and wouldn't be without it. I live a sane distance from work, and commute back and forth without (a) getting sweaty and (b) adding quite so much to my carbon footprint as I did when I was using the Volvo. So yeah, Segways have their place. This Yike thing probably has a niche, too.

I'd drop ABP in a heartbeat if advertisers simply stopped using animation. I don't object to adwords or quiet banners - someone has to pay the bills after all. But those noisy, CPU-soaking, neurotic pleas for attention drive me to do something about it.

If they want my eyeballs back, they'll have to become more civilized about it.

... to see what might lie beyond 50 years. The technological singularity is going to slam us hard. Try to visualize something other than Flash Gordon serials, or Star Trek, or Ray Kurzweil's fantasies about virtual sex.

I mean, look: you're going to be obsolete in 50 years. You'll be functionally replaced by an intelligence that is jaw-droppingly greater than your own, and which doesn't live in the same meatspace.

That new intelligence may view the greater universe around us as just an endless permutation of the same old shit. Really, how could exploring EPOTSOS at stellar distances, and at glacial speed C possibly be interesting? Here's the real frontier: deep below 11 dimensions of string theory. The answer to who we are is way down there, not way *out* there.

I've said it before. There are probably lots and lots of civilizations out there. They'll all become introspective before you ever find them. The ones that have the means to find you won't be inclined, you poor unremarkable Permutation, and in the relatively near term you'll understand their lack of motivation.

Cheaper than having to re-write all the COBOL that's out there...

Lighting and sound is geeky enough to be interesting, and easy to apprentice if you know little about the subject. There's likely a children's or community theater group in your area that can use a hand. Bog knows it's absorbed all my free time...