Polygraphs are not generally used as 'lie detectors' but as interrogation tools. They are the flourish made by the magician with his left hand while he palms the coin with his right. Their purpose is to be a prop used to throw the person being interrogated off balance.

The US does not have an official language at the Federal level. If a state only wants to issue ballots in English, I believe they can, but they are also allowed to issue them in other languages if they want to. If Nevada wanted to they could provide you with options for every single written language in the world.

And people are absolute idiots if that pacifies them, because the everything works out exactly the same either way. Seriously, if you actually care about this sort of thing what Blizzard did is equivalent to saying "well it wasn't rape, it was surprise sex!"

That just isn't the way the human mind works. We get pleasure not just from a thing, but from the context of the thing as well

People can be given the same food, and if it is delivered in fast food boxes vs. fine diningware, they will tell you it either tastes so-so, or GREAT! Give people generic cola in it's generic container and they will tell you it isn't as good as Coke or Pepsi. Put that same cola in a Coke or Pepsi container and they can't tell the difference between it and Coke or Pepsi.

These are not delusions people have, we are not just being shallow, the exact same stuff really tastes better to our brains under different circumstances.

The same reasoning applies here, even if the end result is the same, being rewarded for playing less feels better, than being punished for playing more.

The Egyptian symbolism is there presumably because it was brought by some of the people Jacob brought to the island

The Egyptian symbolism has nothing to do with Jacob for a couple reasons: First, as a Latin speaker, Jacob was born long after the height of Egypt (at the earliest around 400BC if they were speaking Old Latin) By even that earliest time very few, if any Egyptians could still write or understand hieroglyphics. Second, the same Egyptian glyphs and structures appear within the Source of Light, where Jacob has never been, and without the hieroglyph'd artifact stuck in the hole there would be no light, so it was obviously there long before Jacob.

The fact of the matter is that there is no particular reason for the Egyptian stuff. The writers obviously thought it would be all mysterious and mystical, with no depth of thought as to how it would be explained.

Except what you typically do at a computer isn't reading. You are typically looking away a lot, gazing at images, or gazing away from the monitor. Reading is something different. Reading is sitting there entirely engrossed in what you are reading never really looking away for extended periods of time. For that type of reading something like a Kindle is IMO far better. I have a Safari Books Online subscription, and I'll occasionally try to read extensively at my computer. Most of the time I end up just pulling out my Kindle DX and bringing up the mobile version of their site to read it on there. There is a level of distraction trying to read at my computer, and there is a level of discomfort reading on a high contrast black on white screen. Contrary to the low contrast "problem" people like to complain about with the Kindle. I find the images low contrast but still with crisp letters and very easy to read.

I have to agree with a few other posters, nothing makes me more productive than listening to techno while I program (Specifically the DI.fm Eurodance channel). It almost feels like my thought processes get structured on top of the beat, using it is a foundation for the flow of my work. It is only really useful when I am actually writing the code though, when I am working on high level design I tend to turn it off. Weird thing is, I don't even really like techno. It isn't something I listen to at home, and I don't like the club scene. When I'm working though, nothing is better.

This is one of the features I've been looking forward to in 2010, and while it is nice in the beta, I hope they can improve upon it before release. I think the most irksome thing, is that while the windows can float, they are still linked to the main interface. So for example, if I've pulled a code window out to my right monitor, and bring something up above Visual Studio in my left monitor, as soon as I click the code window VS in my left monitor comes to the front. If I minimize VS, the ripped away code window goes away as well. Furthermore, you have only basic sizing control of the torn away window, you can't individually minimize it. I have no idea if these things are even something they could do with the new WPF UI architecture, but they would be nice.