My cable provider is Cox, and they are in the process of moving to some kind of switched digital provisioning system, with the consequence that CableCards don't work any more. So to get any non-clear content, one now either needs a DVR or cable box. They evidently have a workaround device for Tivo, but this is not going to help me use my CableCard in my TV.

I can't tell if anyone in a low-modded comment suggested this, but how about the Hauppauge HD-PVR? http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html Have yet to buy one, mainly because I don't think the machine I'm using is fast enough to keep up, but it looks like it should work until component video connectors go away.

Despite over 700 replies to this point, I don't think anyone mentioned West End theatres http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_End_theatre/ or alternatively http://wikitravel.org/en/London/West_End/. It's been a while since I was in London, but we discovered that a half-hour before showtime, there were deeply discounted tickets available to shows trying to fill the house. We had a great time going to whatever was available. Definitely worth a shot, since as everyone else has noted, you should try not too plan too much, and just go for it. Have a great trip!

Actually, the levels >were over dangerous levels. Admittedly, not fatal. Fun fact: they first identified the problem when a patient (victim?) reported losing his hair after the scan. The follow up LA Times article today says that when the hospital contacted the 206 patients, 80% reported losing hair after their scans. That's pretty serious exposure.

Oh, another fun detail: the dose administered IS DISPLAYED ON THE FRONT PANEL AFTER THE SCAN!!! In 18 months, nobody ever questioned why the level was so high. If the machine delivers the dose according to the program, it must be right, evidently...

I completely agree, except that mine is a Palm III xe. I find reading books with this device slightly annoying, but it is always there, and the convenience outweighs any annoyances. It has a backlit screen, and is completely silent, so I can read in the dark, wee hours without disturbing bedmates. Of course, I'm pretty much stuck with DRM-free content, but I find that to be an advantage, not a disadvantage. I finally voted "Have a non-Kindle ebook reader", since I believe that eBook == DRM, is that wrong?

Silly me. I read the question, and assumed there would be responses about specific institutions.

My daughter is a senior at the University of Redlands. As far as I know, they have no official support for Linux, but she has been aggressively pro-Linux since high school (I made sure I sent her off to school able to dual-boot to WinXP, but on the rare occasions when that might be useful, I have to remind her she can). There have been a couple of situations in which she has needed help from the campus IT folks, and there has always been someone Linux-savvy available.

And her on-campus networking experience has been uneventful. While we helping her move back in last weekend, one Windows user complained to me about the spyware the campus network requires him to run - my daughter does not seem to need that, her system "just works". Her main complaint about the campus network is that they throttle the dorm traffic pretty severely...

I know I could take a Kindle into the 'executive reading room', but just seems so wrong.

I seem to remember in the early days of the web, there was a graphics format called GIF. Somebody like Unisys held a patent on the format, but initially didn't seem to care that most Web users didn't realize there was a patent. Then, one day, Unisys woke up, changed their attitude and announced that licenses would be needed from now on - several thousand dollars? Almost overnight, PNG was born. So, I guess in a sense, IBM has a point - patents lead to open source development. However, they neglect to mention that in cases like ReportLab (makes a Free/Paid Support PDF generator library in Python) a sudden change in licensing policy might result in innovation at the expense of existing innovators.

Patents are a valuable part of a thriving commercial system, and there are obvious benefits from patent law. But I think there are also significant benefits from patent-free zones. The trick is to figure out how to maintain the balance to ensure fairness, and enable benefits from both patented innovation and patent-free innovation.

Hate to burst anyone's bubble, but way back in the late '80s, the Feds were confiscating money in Dade County, FL if they found traces of cocaine on it, based on a theory that only money related to active drug dealing would be contaminated. For reasons I never understood, the task of calling them on this idiocy fell to the Coroner's office. They collected money of all denominations from cities around the US and a few foreign locations (I recall one was London). Their criterion for identifying cocaine was GC/MS analysis. Their summary result was that all US paper currency tested except "SOME" brand new bills fresh from banks were contaminated with identifiable cocaine. I read that as well over 90%. I was finally able to Google a legitimate reference to this information.

Please focus on the last two paragraphs.

From a Los Angeles Times article dated 1994 (http://articles.latimes.com/1994-11-13/local/me-62172_1_drug-money?pg=1):

"In its decision, the appeals court relied on uncontradicted evidence that more than three of every four bills circulating in Los Angeles were tainted with drug residue.

That evidence was provided by Ojai-based forensic toxicologist Jay B. Williams, who said he had done numerous studies since 1982 that turned up drugs on samples of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 bills taken from throughout the West--from banks, casinos, stores and restaurants.

Williams, who has specialized in drug and alcohol tests for 27 years, said last week that the percentage of contaminated bills ranged from 15% in Bozeman, Mont., to a little more than 75% in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

The bills he tested contained quantities of cocaine as small as a nanogram, meaning one-billionth of a gram, to as much as a milligram, one-thousandth of a gram.

Williams' tests are consistent with other research nationwide. In one study, Florida researchers analyzed 135 bills gathered randomly from cities around the United States; all but four tested positive for cocaine.

One of those researchers, Lee Hearn, now the chief toxicologist for the medical examiner's office in Dade County, Fla., said: "The only bills that didn't have contamination were crisp new ones that had limited circulation, if any at all."
"

No disrespect intended, but who said this was news? The spleen has been described as an overgrown lymph node (the place where white blood cells are born um, perhaps the whole 'lymphocyte' name thing comes to mind?) for decades. Maybe the discovery that they get mobilized when the body suffers major trauma is new, but I doubt it.

Everything old is news again?

Precisely correct. The whole point of my original post was that the VVS was no match for the USAF. Too small, too poorly maintained and most of all too little time in the air due to budget restraints. I think the avionics have greatly improved in recent years but it means little since they don't have the budget to procure any of it, or fly it once they do. I still believe the russians make the best airframes though. The Mig-29 is some kind of miracle. Inherently stable airframes are not supposed to be able to perform those kind of aerobatics. It doesn't mean much in practice, but from a gear-head perspective it is one amazing piece of engineering. The engine issue goes all the way back to the 1930s. For some reason, they never placed the same emphasis on powerplant design that they did on airframes. The Klimov VK-1 and its derivatives, big improvements over the RR Nene upon which they were based, being the exception that proves the rule.

One testament to the quality of Russian airframes is the still active market for third party upgraded Mig-21s. With modern Israeli avionics and weapons, this 50 year old airframe is still a viable interceptor for the budget conscious air force. Hard to believe.

The other big tactical innovation was the boom and zoom. Americans tried to only attack from above in a diving slash. Then they would continue straight on at high speed, disengaging. One of the few advantages the early war American fighters had over the Japanese Zeros and Oscars was speed and control in a dive. By making the fight vertical they forced it on their terms. They couldn't climb with the Japanese, so they typically just broke off after the first attack, regrouped and tried to regain that altitude (and therefore potential energy) advantage. Claire Chenault developed this tactic in China even before the US entered the war.

They could have. No, they couldn't have, at least not if they wanted it to be distributable with Linux (which was kinda the point). The Linux kernel is GPL v.2 only, which is incompatible with the GPL v.3. Furthermore, even the GPL 2 provides some protection against patents, as a couple people have pointed out. In short, FUD.

What a load of horseshit. You can distribute binary device drivers alongside the Linux kernel if you wish, as long as you have the permissions of the rights holders. Nvidia drivers anyone? There is absolutely zero preventing distributing GPLv3 device drivers. Everything you said was false.

Ah, but you can't. Quantum mechanics applies only to quantum particles, not big honking spaceships. Of course nobody has integrated quantum mechanics with classical mechanics yet, so you never know ;)

The thing is, quantum mechanics is just a mathematical system that seems to work pretty well. As in, it predicts what really tiny things will do extremely well. When a quantum particle takes on different states at a time, that is a mathematical concept that, when applied, produces a result that agrees with what we actually see. It involves complex numbers, high dimensions (that don't necessarily agree with what we consider "dimensions") and other mathematical constructions. The math works great... but you have to be careful about extrapolating too far and assuming the math is the reality.

If I'm not mistaken (although I often am, sorry in advance) Cox has been doing this for months now, and nobody posted anything about that. If I 'typo' a URL at home, when connected via my (or my neighbor's) Cox cablemodem, I get a Verisign page indicating that www.whateveriswas.com is Under Construction.

Is this not muchly the same thing??

It pisses me off, but not enough to hunt down a better alternative.