I once had a Charter installer tell me that I should have driven to their office and picked up the Charter Internet cable modem (the thing my router plugs into) and associated cables, connectors, etc., and installed things myself instead of taking advantage of their free installation. I just may do that next time, if for no other reason than to avoid dealing with Charter's A-hole installers.

Read your employment contract to see if anything like this is covered. If not, it's reasonable to expect the company to pay you some money for your time; however, more likely they will refuse and perhaps eventually fire you because of their hard feelings towards you (ie; not getting something for nothing).

Amen. Where are my mod points when I need them, arrrgghhh! You deserve some upvotes.

So what will gamers use to battle each other, spitwads and rubber bands?

I once had a Section Manager who came up with a "cook book" of hours each employee should charge to each of the various project numbers regardless of what they were actually working on in order for the Section he managed (several hundred employees) to always balance its budget exactly. Please note that there are very strict government rules against allowing, much less demanding that employees charge their time to anything other than the job number for the work they are actually doing, and many of us rebelled against this obviously immoral and illegal procedure of his. Eventually he was caught, but there was no public censure. After a short while he was transferred to some other management position at the government funded company.

A friend of mine almost blinded himself when he was young because he was fooling around with the Klystron amplifier from a microwave oven. He thought it was turned off, but it was not. It "cooked" the lenses in both of his eyes enough to make them completely opaque. For some reason I'm not clear on, they were not able to replace the lenses as they do in standard cataract surgery, so my friend has to wear very thick eyeglasses, and carry a magnifying glass for inspecting small objects.

Yes indeed. I had a ham license in 1961 when I was in high school but let my license expire after I entered college. Now that I'm retired, I'm thinking of taking up the hobby again. I used to be pretty fast with the key, but I understand that these days the ability to use Morse code isn't even a requirement for the test.

Were illegally spying on all those Americans??? Surprise, they still do, except now it's legal!

Then Samzenpus is a little late, because reddit has deteriorated so much lately that I've begun visiting Slashdot more often. :-/

What has happened in the past (and was reported on in the news a few weeks ago), is that a judge orders you to divulge the password(s) and if you refuse he sentences you to contempt of court and keeps you in jail/prison until you do reveal the passwords.

As a long time Slashdot subscriber, I wish you all the best in your future life "CmdrTaco". You will be missed (in spite of what everyone says about you, haha! ;-).

I shop online quite frequently but have never had a credit card number misused because I use disposable Citi-bank "virtual" credit card numbers that are only good for one merchant, expire when I want them to, and have a maximum limit that I can set so that no more than what I specify can be charged to the particular credit card number I generated for that specific transaction with that specific merchant.

Exactly. I began the sign up procedure but stopped when it got to the point of asking for my real name (or something else personal, I forget).

Google has been stinking for awhile. Now it's beginning to suck.

The retina certainly does handle a small amount of processing and classification that could probably be mimic'ed with some analog logic, but the bulk of image processing is done in the much more complex visual cortex(although you do mention "visual system" in passing). Also remember that the human brain is an immensely complex analog processor. Analog logic can be simulated with digital logic of course, but digital is much slower depending on the level of precision required. Neurons have a digital component when sending an impulse along their axon, but the timing of the digital pulses depend upon biochemical and electrical analog activity (ie; a neuron is an integrator among other things).