My first printing of _The Art of Computer Programming_ vol 1, 2 and 3 are kept behind glass. On the other hand I have a _Perl in a Nutshell_ that rolls around in the trunk with my workboots and a jug of windshield fluid.

This really is a topic for mobile phone specific forum. My favourite is HowardForums. Here is a link to the US pre-payed/MVNO forums: http://www.howardforums.com/forumdisplay.php/325-US-Prepaid-MVNO-Discussion

There are lots of people there who know what's up with pre-paid and low-cost options.

Blackberry, like all the phones that came before iPhone, was designed with the needs of the carrier first. The carriers need handsets to have a small data footprint so that lots of subscribers can be handled on a network at low cost to the carrier. Blackberries and their apps are still caught in the requirement to do something useful using microscopically small, closely controlled amounts of bandwidth.

What Apple did was totally break the bandwidth blockade by going to the carriers and saying "here is this shiny sleek gewgaw and you can only sell it if you also have data plans that are much cheaper than what you have now". And the miraculous thing was that the carriers caved.

Opening the bandwidth spigots meant that any idiot could make cool apps do things that the RIM guys had spent years optimizing to run with almost none. A BB can do usable email with 200 BPS, but who needs that when I have 250 KBits and can just do IMAP on my regular email provider?

That's when everything changed.

I wonder, when the dust settles, as I suppose it one day must, will anyone add up the appalling costs to the NZ taxpayers to play out this farce? The Crown is likely going to have to fold their entire case and may face liability for wrongful conduct. It's all well to say that the Americans have achieved their goals just by putting the fear of god into all the offshore quasi-ethical file-share outfits and screwing up Mega's business. But NZ taxpayers will face millions in court costs and lost police and prosecutor time sorting this out. If the costs are large, the embarrassment significant and the gains are negligible or non-existent, how many more times will NZ or other small powers accommodate American expeditions of this type so willingly?

I think there's an onus on New Zealanders to complain to their parties about the policies that let this happen, use access to information to ferret out the complicit officials into the light of day. Make the costs and embarrassment of following though on this farce a political issue for the government.

Soldering gun? Nobody can make a decent joint with one of those. At least not in anything less than AWG 12 conductors. I use a temperature regulated station, thank you very much. And I do really clean work with it.

Maxxis Hookworms to the rescue:
http://www.maxxis.com/Bicycle/Urban/Hookworm.aspx

There are several choices for fat low-pressure tires that are not knobby and that have good performance on pavement.

Bike? Gimme half that -- I ride a unicycle.
And Cowboy Neal rides the other wheel!

The IOC and the Olympics has been nothing more than a deeply corrupt, out-of-control marketing engine and ruthless trademark troll for 30 years. I think the Los Angeles games was the turning point.

They took a paint company on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington to court because they had retail stores in Vancouver in 2010. They lost of course, but it was still a monumental hassle.

There's a good writeup of how crazy the mess was from Vancouver 2010 here: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1777/125/

I'm sure a summer olympics is 100 times worse.

He will be charged with everything they can think of. Made up stuff, real stuff from jaywalking to treason.

He will be facing 300 years possible sentence if convicted of even half of it.

He will be facing a 5 years incarceration just waiting for a trial.

They will offer a plea deal: plead to being a bad boy and you can go home tomorrow, wear a radio on your ankle for a year and that's it.

He will do the deal.

The US will get a conviction, which they will trumpet from the rooftops. They will have a precedent that they covet, and anyone running any similar operation will pretty well have to stop it, lest they meet with a much worse fate.

The American's, no doubt, believe they are doing this fella a favour, since their first instinct was to scoop him up into a black helicopter, or even just nuke him remotely while he rides his bike to school.

T. J. Bass
_Half Past Human_ (1971)
_The Godwhale_ (1974)

Unlike anything else I've read. Definitely two, maybe three reads.

I'm not Imelda Marcos, but I think I lost count at 12..

How about snowboard and ski boots?
Ice Skates?
Snowshoes?
Water shoes?

I live where we get weather, so boots means a pair of very warm boots for winter/snow, plus a pair or rubber boots. I happen to own hip-waders too.

Then I have everyday shoes, and an old pair that I wear in the workshop.

Work boots -- with steel toe and all that. Hiking boots since the work boots are a bit too heavy for long walks.

And dress shoes.

At the moment I also happen to have a walking cast, since I broke my foot. But that's not a pair.