'Transporter' is the obvious choice. With those things available we can trade sitting in traffic for standing in line at the corner transporter booth. Plus, they will once again give Superman a handy place to change out of his Clark Kent identity.

"One man's terrorist is another man's war hero."

Exactly. From the viewpoint of The Empire, Luke Skywalker was a terrorist.

Holy Crap! Who comes up with these estimates anyway? I mean, that's a swing of 114,999,999,900!!

Wonder what the odds are that the true number lies somewhere outside that range? ;-p

Everyone concerned may be better off if he were to work on Piranha R2D2!

I'm thinking about installing Ubuntu PPC on it.

However, I do like to be able to use the lite version of Logic and Sibelius, which still run on a PPC. If I go to Linux, there's very little I can do with it musically.

Maybe this might be helpful?

Hollywood rarely gets it right. It's not impossible that they'll do a good job but, based on their track record, the odds aren't great.

"However, I dread the day when someone says "Hey! Bill Gates cured Cancer!"

No one person will ever be responsible for curing cancer. There are millions of people around the world working on that particular problem. However, if my mom's cancer could have been cured before she died, I'd really give a rats ass if Bill Gates received the credit or not. If kids can grow up with a (benign) parent instead of without one, that would be an extremely small price to pay IMO.

"The craft's 46-foot sails come equipped with solar cells thinner than a human hair. When solar particles hit the cells, they generate power for Ikaros. Mission controllers on the ground will steer the craft by adjusting the sails' angles, ensuring optimal amounts of radiation are reaching the solar cells."

What could possibly go wrong?

"Most Slashdotters have already figured out how to grow moobies."

There, FTFY.

"I went to the wikipedia page on sbinet and got wiped out by a wall of text. What exactly is a virtual fence and what is it supposed to do?"

Well, I think the plan was to bury a wire all along the border. Then, you'd just need all the illegal immigrants to wear this collar, see. And then, when they try to cross where the wire is buried, they'd get a shock that would send them scurrying back to the south...

Or, maybe not.

"Couldn't that $1.4 billion have been better spent buying Valium for the rampant xenophobes in Congress?"

Yes, I couldn't agree more. The only thing coming out of Washington that is good for 'We The People', is gridlock. When they actually do stuff, it always seems to cost us more.

Bookshelves full of books look nicer than YAGLAOTKC, (yet another gizmo laying around on the kitchen counter)... :-p

Again, I have the opposite viewpoint; if the price of the books were more reasonable, then wouldn't that offset the higher initial price of the e-reader? That seems the more consumer-friendly approach.

Disclaimer: Other than reading the occasional Gutenberg text on an old Palm TX, I don't own an e-reader. With the recent shenanigans by content publishers forcing Amazon to raise their e-book prices, I'm really not interested in even entering the market - no matter what the price of the e-reader. If they gave it away free, (a la mobile phones), I still wouldn't bite the lure. $15.00 for an electronic book is just too much, IMO. Especially when I can get all kinds of dead-tree reading material at the local used bookstore and library. They have plenty available there to keep me occupied for the rest of my life.

"... would be willing to pay the same if not slightly higher for ebooks as I would for dead tree books..."

Why? Not trying to troll. Just curious about this statement. Knowing that the cost to produce is significantly lower, (yeah, yeah, I get the 'supply/demand economics' argument), why are you willing to contribute so much more to the supplier's bottom line? Is it all in the convenience factor or is there something else I'm missing?

Help me understand as I have the opposite mind-set; if a thing costs less to produce, it should cost me less to buy it. Otherwise, there is non-free market profiteering going on somewheres, isn't there?

No, 2009 is still correct, if that's when he copyrighted his sig, (hah!). It will still be the correct copyright date in 2011 and 2012 and 2013... no scratch that last one. The world will (apparently) not likely make it past 2012.