"It looks like you're located outside of the United States. Although you're welcome to read about Google eBooks, please note that Google eBooks are only available for sale to customers in the U.S. at this time."

sigh.

It is probably all marketing fluff. NASA is taking a page from Apple.

Probably Beatles music has been beamed in the direction of Alpha Centuri.

Could it be that creating content is simply much more labour intensive than it was years ago?

Creating a level in the old days was easy, because the required detail was pretty low. I recall building my own Quake levels (I replicated the office where I worked) in just a few hours. I have no idea how levels are created for the latest FPS games, but the stunning amount of detail has raised the bar very high. I am guessing the amount of effort involved is also very high. And since content takes longer to create, to get the game out in a reasonable time they have to cut the amount of content.

They never said that 2010 wouldn't be like 1984.

Advertising Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, apparently.

At first I thought it was some sort of explosion. But as it lasted I decided that it must be an earthquake. When dust began falling from the ceiling tiles I began to get a little worried, but it didn't get any stronger. If that was a 5.0, I can't even imagine what a major quake like a 7+ would be like.

About half the people evacuated the building, but mostly because it is really nice (29C) outside. I stayed inside to call my wife at home, who reported that the quake woke up the cat but that was about it.

The problem is not the tools (well, not *always* the tools), but the developers. You can provide the best development tools in existence to an incompetent developer, and you will end up with a crap website. It has nothing to do with the quality of the tools or the maturity of the application frameworks.

Hell, humans have been building houses for 1000s of years, yet an incompetent builder can still build a house that will fall apart. I don't think the problem is that the hammer and saw still have a ways to go.

Some of the estimates have to be multiplied by 8. That's why they are calculated separately. If there are no hardware interfacing features, then your outstanding optimization algorithm can be used.

I really don't know why this is as accurate as it always turns out to be, but it really works.

I look at the specs of what needs to get done, and I do a quick back of the envelope estimates as to how long each feature will take (e.g., feature A: 5 days, feature B: 2 weeks, etc). Then I multiply each estimate by 3 and add it all up. If some sort of hardware interfacing is required, I multiply the estimate by 8.

My supervisor for my Masters degree taught me this trick, when I was programming a sensor control system for a wind tunnel. I didn't believe him at first, but he turned out to be right.

They were probably Australian nails. Got mixed in with the shipment by accident.

Misfits from future Earth society escape six millions years into the past through a one-way time gate, only to find that the pliocene-era Earth is dominated by an alien species with artificially enhanced mind powers.

Hmmm, sounds silly when I type it out, but it is one of the most brilliant series I have read. What really makes it stand out is that, unlike most authors, Julian May will readily kill off major characters. So you are never sure who is going to make it to the end of the story.

I enjoyed this series so much I named my cats Julian and May ;-)

...so I will post the same answer: For me it was useless.

I did my Masters (in Engineering, not Comp Sci, but my example might still be relevant) and discovered that, although I enjoyed the program, as far as my career was concerned a Masters degree was worse than useless.

After I graduated I was hired at a starting salary. My Masters' experience counted for nothing. I was therefore making less money and had less seniority than my former Bachelor's classmates, and was essentially doing the same work. When I was looking for a job, some employers were openly suspicious of my intentions, saying that since I had a Masters degree I would probably quit after a couple of years and go seek a Phd (so why hire me?).

Would I do it all again? YES! Because I really enjoyed doing my Masters and was very very interested in the research that I did. That is the most important thing. If you don't love the subject, you will hate doing your Masters.

I know many people who have done Masters degrees, and the only ones who benefited career-wise were those who continued on to their Phd and those who did MBAs.

I used to prefer dead-tree books until I got an iPod Touch last December. Since then my reading habits have been revolutionized. I've read almost 2 dozen books since then, and all but 3 were on my iPod. It is not the *same* as reading a paper book, but the benefits balance the cons quite nicely.

...where will I sleep?

idontthinkthatwillworkverywell.