When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was The Flying Hockey Stick, in which a kid straps an umbrella and a fan to a hockey stick, assembles a very long chain of extension cords and then proceeds to fly all around the world on various adventures. Even as a child I knew that such a contraption would never work in real life, but the important take-away for me was that I learned the willful suspension of disbelief in the interest of enjoying a fanciful story. Obviously, anyone who invests real money in a scheme to deploy airborne heavier-than-air wind turbine power generators is either engaging in the same sort of self-delusion, or dumber than a box of armpit hair. I hear there's one born every minute.

Funny how you start your homophobic rant by quoting a rock song written and sung by a queer, then you assume that someone referring to Mr. Banks' spouse as his "partner" implies a same-sex relationship. In fact, his partner is a woman, you ignorant piece of maggot slime. Fuck you, hater. I know, I know... YHBT YHL etc.

how about a building with some square footage, like the Pentagon?

OK, I'll give you a better reason. The toxic fumes from whiteboard markers give me migraines. But that's just one of many reasons why I don't work for [corporate code factory].

The original tubular Apple iSight camera had a three-piece mechanical iris lens cover made of white plastic that would open and close when the front bezel was twisted, in addition to the LED on top of the device. It was behind a glass cover, so there was absolutely no functional value to this "door" other than to let the user know that the camera could not possibly be looking at them when the device was switched off. I'm sure it must have added greatly to the cost of the camera, but Jobs and Co. must have thought inspiring a feeling of privacy and security in the user important enough to justify the cost. Once cameras got small and cheap enough to build into every machine, this method of visual feedback was dispensed with, at least on machines built by Apple. I have explained to countless Mac clients over the years that the light is indeed hard-wired to the camera and cannot be disabled, that after I get done configuring their machine it will be safe from any and all malware (assuming they do not change certain settings), yet if they still feel the least bit uneasy, a piece of tape or post-it note over the camera is nothing to be embarrassed about. After all, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you...

On the upside, maybe the compressed air will keep crumbs and other foreign matter out from underneath the keys, thus helping to prevent one of the most common modes of failure with existing keyboard technology.

The Extended Keyboard II is actually an ancient barge of a keyboard; beige plastic with the old six-color Apple logo in the corner. I picked up 10 of them for $50 on eBay a few years ago. It connects via the long-obsolete Apple Desktop Bus, requiring an adaptor for use with USB. I find the current keyboard offerings from Apple to be mediocre at best. If I am going to be typing more than a few paragraphs, I prefer to break out the old beige keybarge. I have often heard them referred to as "The One True Keyboard" by those who know. For me, the only thing that ever came close was the original keyboard that came with my IBM PC/XT (long since landfilled). I liked the springy sounds it made. Each key had a slightly different tone. Would love to have samples of those sounds to assign to keypresses. The sounds of serious typing...

Typing this on an Apple Extended Keyboard II plugged into an iMate USB To ADB Adaptor. Best. Keyboard. Ever.

Have they been slashdotted? All the so-called mirrors I have found so far point back to them.
Does anyone have a link to a working mirror or a torrent?

I was just browsing pictures on NASA's site the other day that showed workers on lifts wearing harnesses. In an environment where dropping a wrench could cause millions of dollars in damage, these have got to be some of the most careful workers around, which leads me to believe that something really unusual must have happened, like several things going wrong at once. TFA is quite short on details. It goes without saying that damage to expensive equipment can not be compared to the loss of a human life, but I'm saying it anyway.

Children do not have the same rights as adults under most legal systems. Additionally, while they are in school, the school is usually given some form of guardianship-by-proxy over the children, so that some adult is always in control of, and has responsibility for, those children. This probably explains why the school administrator felt justified in coercing the child to log in to her facebook account from school, even though the postings in question were probably not made from school grounds. Regardless from where the postings were made, the fact that these children felt entitled to make slanderous statements in response to perceived slights shows a profound lack of judgement and an obvious failure of their parents, and the educational system, to instill in them a sense of propriety, decency and common sense. As usual, I weep for the future.

Like I really want the security of my city depending on someone who's been huffing exhaust fumes and performing a mundane, repetitive task all day. Also, having humans touch currency that is then going to be shuffled in with other currency and redistributed to countless other humans passing over the bridge seems to me an ideal vector for any number of terrorist chemical or biological attacks. Other than that, the Homeland Security angle sounds like a great argument.