I started with basic way back when I was a kid (I'm 30 now; some would say I'm still a child, but now I'm a child with arthritis and acid reflux :P), probably around 8 years old, plugging in BASIC games that I found in 321 Contact magazines. While I look at BASIC now and think, "Ugh, who would use that language", it did at least help me learn the basics of math and variables when it comes to programming, and by the time I hit college I already covered the Intro to C++ course myself quite some time before.

If it weren't for 321 Contact, I would've never even gotten into programming.

Both magazines are well designed and contain great bits of info if you're into that sorta thing. I highly recommend OFF-GRID, as it's got great information that's useful just in your daily life, even if you're not a survivalist.

Definitely a shame, but one big reason why your local paper isn't that big is because of a lack of financial support. The paper I used to work at in my previous town of residence went the same way; they weren't able to generate enough revenue for the corporate owners, so they had to budget less for news and more for advertising in order to stay afloat.

In cases like that, the best you can hope for is a change in leadership/ownership of the paper. I myself would love to see newspapers go non-profit.

Disclaimer: I've worked for 2 newspapers, and currently work for a media company (in the online division).

Why? Because a local newspaper is going to cover more relevant info, with more details, than numerous other mediums. It's an at-your-leisure consumption device, too.

I get the Sat. & Sun. local papers here. The Sat. for general weekend news, and the Sun. for big feature stories. Our paper frequently has some amazing local content; I recall a great 2 page spread on a local barbershop, and when one of the historic buildings burned down, they had almost daily coverage on the progress.

Plus, it's great for information on important city council stuff. Our city has been having the Great Trash Debate for some time, and now it's finally coming to a close (trying to figure out if trash pickup should be privatized, or if they should increase the cost of trash stickers to cover rising costs of maintenance for the trucks).

If you live in a major metro area, seek out the smaller hyper-local publications for your area.

I'm an owner, and am VERY satisfied with my device.

The complaints I have are minor. It can take a little bit for it to connect to a wifi network, but that's not a huge deal. Sometimes, it's a little sensitive in registering taps, but that's once again not a big issue. The carousel is a little too speedy for my liking, but I rarely use it, and when I do, it's usually just to open the very most recent thing I've opened.

I haven't noticed any real speed issues with it; at least, nothing show-stopping. Books read fine. If you're trying to fly through a bunch of pages like you're thumbing through a book to find a certain page, sure, it can slow down there, but I almost never do that. Games & streaming content perform perfectly.

I didn't notice any real issue with the browser; I was able to load websites faster on my Kindle than a local iPad owner, over the same wifi connection.

Typing is easy for me; in landscape mode it can be slightly difficult, but not unusable. I usually use portrait mode, anyway.

The lack of physical volume controls doesn't bother me at all. It's stupid-easy to get to, and keeps me from accidentally raising/lowering volume.

I do wish I could change the lock screen photo(s) easily, but that's not exactly important.

Regarding the lock/power button, I have NEVER accidentally tripped it, and I'm using it on a daily basis in a variety of situations.

If you look at reviews on Amazon, there are a good number of 4 and 5 star reviews; more than 3 or less.

Sure, I can turn on a TV and find something reasonably entertaining (or functional as background noise) if I'm just bored, but that doesn't solve the problems surrounding the fact that I want to watch certain shows, at certain times. I'm not paying another monthly bill PLUS buying a piece of hardware just to do that when I can get a good selection of TV shows and movies streamed to any one of my computers or my Kindle Fire for a significantly cheaper price.

The industry evolution needs to stop trying to trap people into one delivery system and accept that internet delivery is becoming increasingly popular.

When I took my position, I accepted a much lower number than what's quoted, and I'm salary. I'm actually surprised there is even a need for this bill - pretty much every full-time IT person I know is salary, and there isn't any hope of overtime pay.

One thing that's interesting about the economy is you can actually get nearly everything in game as a free player through dilithium mining. It takes a little more work, but for those of us with tight wallets it's a nice system. I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to switch to the free model or not.

I'm sure my feelings will be completely synonymous with yours. I pre-ordered the game knowing that, after such a long time in development, it was NOT going to be a stroke of brilliance. In the tech and game world, something going that long under development would have to practically be re-written to be worthwhile in the major players scene.

I played the demo, and you know what? I enjoyed it. Sure, I'm frustrated by the level design and 2 weapon limit, but such is life. Either they target the nostalgic, older crowd, or the try and bring in the younger generation of gamers who grew up with Halo and CoD as their first gaming experiences. Honestly, most of us who knew the Duke when he came to life have (mostly) grown up and have little gamers of our own to raise.

Whatever works for them. I'm anxiously awaiting my order to arrive, and I'm sure I'll relish every little duke quip.

I myself am one of said artists, to an extent, but I am a firm believer in Kickstarter being a great tool for artists. I myself have been funding the production of my new album (blues) for a couple years now out of pocket. I've been trying to figure out how to handle preorders, and after seeing the Asylum Street Spanker's campaign, I realized a great way to do it - a Kickstarter campaign. The money goes towards equipment for live shows/touring, and also gives fans of my music a chance to snag copies of the new album (a month early, in fact), get commissioned tunes, or even get one of my old beater guitars should they feel generous enough (or think I'm famous enough to warrant it's purchase). Essentially, I'm turning the fans into the record label. They front the project, and get what they want in return. I love the idea of being able to directly support my favorite bands without dealing with a record label taking an obnoxious cut, and Kickstarter is the perfect way to do it.

Also, once the album is out and I've got my gear, I'll be using Kickstarter to not only sell my album (outside of Amazon/iTunes/physical locations), but to help with another project I've been dreaming of.. A way to get guitars to kids in low-income families. I'm guessing that's probably more in-line with what you'd like to see Kickstarter being used for. There are a lot of kids who love music, and want to get into it, but don't have the financial means to do so. Guitars are relatively cheap, and are quite prolific in the music industry.

Not all of us self-absorbed starving artists are complete bastards :)

I've actually found Amazon's cloud service incredibly useful. I listen to music on a myriad of devices; my Android phone, my laptop, my desktop, my work computer.. While I typically don't rely on the cloud service to stream music (unless I'm at a machine with limited storage), it's nice to be able to download my music to all my devices when I want rather than having to manually copy them or utilize my Dropbox account (which I tend to keep full of other stuff). Any time I purchase an album on Amazonmp3 (at least once or twice a month, if I can keep myself restrained), I have it loaded onto the cloud service. Then, when I'm ready to listen to it on a certain device, I just log into my account and download the album. I'm not going to bother uploading all my previously purchased tunes (seeing as how I've got them all loaded and backed up at appropriate locations), of course, but it is nice for situations when you think you've copied an album over to another machine and delete it off of another device (such as my phone), but then discover that you didn't.

Same. We just can't allow it. If we don't have control of the equipment, we can't take responsibility for the damage that happens to it or our network if something goes bad. Hell, our corporate HQ doesn't even support non-Blackberry devices on the Exchange server (fine by me, seeing as how we've got a pretty decent webmail client).

The largest following that I perceived with the device was the connection to TechCrunch and the price point. Once the drama with Arrington ensued it certainly brought some amusing attention to the device, but the price jump killed something that really didn't seem to have a whole lot of "killer instinct" in the innovation/competition department.

Did said Tennis player spend most of his life playing tennis with his right, though?

I myself am a south-paw, but I learned to do many things right handed from the start, such as guitar, or shooting a gun. Re-training yourself to utilizing something akin to a writing/drawing utensil, after having done it for 10 or more years, can be a little difficult, I'm sure.

Exactly. Just running Nessus does not a proper security audit make.