I agree completely, supporting a persons personal equipment in the office should not be your responsibility, no personal laptops on the domain, no personal cellphones on the company plan, if you end up supporting the gear you will be stuck with supporting it whenever there is a problem.

Of course that works on paper more often than it works in real life, CEO or an exec asks for assistance with there gadget, you probably are going to help

Pitch Black was great, and Riddick while not as good as Pitch Black, was still enjoyable.

A good portion of my job is to asset risk and advise on extended coverage and warranty enhancements for small/medium and enterprise businesses on there fleet of servers, desktops, laptops etc. From what I know from that and what I see I tend to only buy warranty on electronics that I spent a fair bit on and that I would be inconvienced if they were to fail.

You have to look at it how important is the device to you, how long to you expect to be using, and of course how much would it cost to replace the unit completely.

In business when it comes to servers for example you have to figure out how critical the server functions are, how long of a life the server is expected to have as well as the cost impact to the company if that server was to go down. Its the last one that usually has the most impact to a client, especially when they compare the cost of it down for a hour to how much the enhanced warranty is. Of course things like a test/dev server would likely get a reduced warranty compared to an exchange server or a domain controller.

Just take the general idea there and apply it to your own purchasing habits. Extended warranty on a cell phone... what you are fucking stupid will you even want that phone in a year after the newest of the new comes out? A TV or washer dryer that you want to last for 5+ years, I think its a good idea.

Be smart about it, listen to the salesman, ignore his pitch but listen to the details, what does this warranty do for you.

With all those layers it doesnt seem that sliding one of these out and quickly swapping some RAM or any other part is
going to happen.

As well do these Iceotope guys actually make server hardware or just the cooling specs. Who do they get there guts from or are they just advertising and hoping the guys like HP, IBM or SUN (well maybe not SUN) decide to design there next generation of servers with this in mind?

I'd like to see how easy it is for replacement. doesnt look like there is a lot of room for other bits as well. I only saw a 1U model but do these guys have the same gear for larger more beefy servers? How about blades?

lastly how much does one of these things weigh?

"DVD's should be released much later after a film's release, and so move people to get back into the cinema"

Thats how it works now, unless its a straight to DVD film.

You are comparing a base limited warranty with an ADP warranty, apples an oranges.

Panasonic has ADP warranty as well which like the rest of the brands has to be purchased, I am not aware of any company that has accidental damage protection as there baseline warranty for a laptop.

For a different take on Astroboy you should check out Pluto, by Naoki Urasawa (Monster, 20th Century Boys)

Its a retelling of the "Greatest Robot on Earth" except its more focused on the Detective Robot and his tracking of a series human murders and the deaths of the most advanced robots in the world.

Excellent story and not so black and white.

From the link

"Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Iraq and Darfur, we are living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence."

So this is proving that we are more violent how? (yea I know I should watch it but I am going out for a drink)

Last House on the Left is a remake of Wes Cravens "Last House on the Left" from the 70s, there also has been many many "torture porn" style movies from the 60's to the 70s, I spit on your grave, Cannibal Ferox there is tons of examples of these films long before turds like SAW and HOSTEL hit the scene.

As for EW comments, http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

On "Bully" , Have you played it? Or are you just bringing it up because of the controversy that was generated by other people who have never played it and villified it because of the name and because of its creator Rockstar Games?

lastly "Tales of the Black Freighter" never existed, it was created for the Watchmen, while there was comics back in the day that were gruesome ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority) you should probably reference material that existed during that time.

THATS OVER 9000!!!