My 486 used SIPP memory... same thing as a SIMM but with leads soldered on them to plug in a header instead of a card-edge memory slot.

Dang. Typo broke the first, more-punchline-worthy, Schlock link.

I'm really begining to hate the keyboard on this new laptop.

This actually looks good to me. Most helicopters can be shot down with a rifle. They are huge engines with large fuel tanks and large, whirling blades, and it is not that difficult to get them to destroy themselves with their own momentum, height, or fuel.

I concur. Helicopters are a collection of single-points-of-failure, disasters waiting to happen. (Particularly the pilot - they have to be continuously controlled and crash almost instantly if anything incapacitates him.) Their vulnerability is justified only because their extreme usefulness oughtweighs it. With eight rotors I'd be surprised if this vehicle couldn't at least come to ground safely with at least two of them destroyed, and the multicopter approach has been under autonomous computer control from the start - made practical only by the automation.

I envision this thing's missions as being primarily extreme rough-country ground transport, with short hops to bypass otherwise impassible terrain, reach otherwise inaccessible destinations or targets, attack from above, or put on a burst of speed when time is of the essence. Think a truck-sized "super jeep" ala Superman. Being primarily a ground vehicle lets it perform longer missions and reduces its visibility and vulnerability compared to a helicopter.

Just because you CAN fly doesn't mean you DO fly all the time. As is pointed out in the webcomic Schlock Mercenary: "Do you know what they call flying soldiers on the battlefield?" ... "Skeet!"

The best solution for the court's display system would be to hard-wire it so they would not have to worry about WiFi.

Putting up routers with temporary internet access won't help them if reporters and whoever else is in the room continue using their own hotspot or ad-hoc network - people in the room might not like the idea of going through the public WiFi or having to re-configure all their own wireless stuff.

It may be "only one tool" but it is representative of the rapidly escalating cost and effort that goes with pushing fundamental physics to the next level.

Physics is not accessible to mathematics

This is very much still an active topic of discussion, actually, and certainly not as settled or clear-cut as you seem to think. You can start with Wigner's essay.

And just to provide the opposite viewpoint to yours, some people will of course argue that physical reality is mathematical.

The point was not about precluding discoveries elsewhere but how proving new theories and refining existing ones is thousands, if not millions of times more expensive than it used to be.

100 years ago, researchers could make fundamental physics discoveries in their garage. Today, further advancements in fundamental physics require things like the LHC. Fundamental science moved pretty far up on the cost and effort curve - much faster than any budget can keep up with.

Put another way, don't let perfect be the enemy of better.

Really, Greece less corrupt than Poland!!! You are on the crack pipe mate. The Corruption perceptions index 2012 has Poland scoring 58 and ranked 41 in the world, where as Greece manages just 36 and is ranked 94. Greece has the worst corruption problem in the whole of the E.U. including all the ex communist states. Greece can only dream of having as little corruption as Poland.

The point was he made a really really stupid and dumb decision that ultimately cost his life. If Steve Jobs is able to be so insanely stupid, and refuse proven "cancercure(tm)" then so are other people.

Getting back to "deaf culture", the way I see it is that if parents refuse treatment for their deaf children then society should have the right to withdraw the financial support they would otherwise provide to that child. In short cochlear implants while not cheap are cheaper than supporting a completely deaf person for the rest of their life. Want to remain deaf do it with your *OWN* money.

You would likely still want to retain fuel transfer capabilities in order to rescue carriers if their on-board fuel generators go offline for whatever reason until they can be repaired or swapped out and supply other ships along the way anyway.

And that was exactly what I said.

If you use the carrier as the fuel supply ship, the carrier still needs full fuel transfer facilities and crew.

Windows is more convenient than DOS when I need to access something on a network share or just need to take/read notes or do other copy-pasting on the side.

As for Linux, the CDT430 only has 16MB RAM. Most remotely recent Linux distributions will not even install with less than 256MB RAM.