Works just as well if you hand the phone to a toddler. They love to chat.

Funny you should mention that. I have a Panasonic Viera 50" circa 2006 that is still running fine, except for a faint burn-in from the cable box we used to have. The first 60" 3D Samsung LED I bought downstairs to replace my 70" projection set that died, (Sony said they had discontinued parts for it) came out of the box with a one pixel black line across the screen, and had to be replaced. (So far, the replacement model is working fine)

Some of the arming crews decided to speed things up by plugging in the pigtails that controlled the missiles early, so they could launch aircraft faster. That was one major mistake. The grounding plug that prevented a premature firing was also either removed early, or fell off. Both were not supposed to happen until just before launch. And the use of ancient bombs with noticeably deteriorating explosives (which made them both unstable and more powerful) greatly magnified the disaster. Finally, only some of the crew were trained fire fighters and most of them (along with a lot of their equipment) were taken out when the first bomb went off.

Fortunately both the A-bomb broken arrow and the Forrestal fire resulted in major changes intended to prevent a similar incident from reoccurring. Tragically it took 134 lives in the later case, and very nearly an awful lot more with the near nuclear detonation.

> the "switch could easily be shorted by an electrical jolt", without specifying where such a jolt would come from, or ever actually seeing the switch in question.

That was exactly what started the fire on the USS Forrestal that killed 134 sailors and crippled a front line carrier, nearly sinking it. An electrical surge when switching an aircraft over to internal power launched a rocket, striking another aircraft, puncturing and igniting it's fuel tank.

But a story about a 600 year old man and his sons building a boat with bronze age technology to hold every life form on the planet with sufficient genetic diversity to prevent inbreeding with a year of supplies, collecting them from every remote corner of the planet, and returning them all to their native habitat afterwards (which somehow wasn't destroyed by the flood) makes perfect sense. From polar bears to penguins, koalas and kangaroos to the Inaccessible Island rail, a flightless bird. Over 8000 species of ants alone. Don't forget the fresh water tanks for any aquatic life that wouldn't survive when salt water flooded their habitat. Returning all those fresh water life forms back to their home lakes and ponds all over the world afterwards must have been some trouble....

Honestly, I have an easier time believing a bearded man in a red suit comes down a billion chimneys on Christmas eve delivering toys.

I remember old articles where ATI and Nvidia were both caught out gaming benchmarks, in one case by embedding particular benchmark game strings in their driver, and short cutting a few algorithms to boost their score.
 

What blew me away is how real it was, (space is dead silent, the only thing astronauts hear is their own breathing) so real that that the flat screen PDAs were actually used in the Apple/Samsung case to demonstrate prior art. They also enhanced realism by using real products (GE-Whirlpool, IBM, Pan-AM) that were household names at the time.

Pick up a copy of the book and read the description of the "news pad" device they were using, keeping in mind it was written in the late 1960s. You could dial an electronic code for iany newspaper in the world, which had headlines that would update every few minutes on a tablet like device. Sound somewhat familiar? When have you ever seen a 40 year old movie nail technology that accurately? I look at a lot of old movies and find even their near future predictions quite laughable.

Another thing I find interesting and somewhat sad about the movie, (released during the heyday of Apollo) is they fully expected there to be large scale manned bases on the moon by 2001 and at least a few examples of computers exhibiting true human like artificial intelligence. Someone jumping in from that time would be very disappointed at how little we have truly progressed in these areas.

What always amazing me is how incredibly cool looking but uncomfortable those '60s furniture were. Bean bag chairs and cool looking seats that give you back pain after an hour or so.

Although I guess you could teleport a whole army of spoofers around with this.

I'll be happy when the pope stops shielding pedophile clergy, stops acting like his church is beyond the law of the land, and fully cooperates with local police.

http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/Cloyne_Rpt

Hitler kept a picture of Henry Ford on his desk; and it wasn't because he liked his cars.

You should have said windows 3.1, or windows for workgroups. Just to see what the hell they would do.