BYOP (bring your own phone) T-mobile value plan. Here in Chicago the coverage seems better than AT&T (e.g. no holes at Lake Shore & Monroe and near UIC).

One would think though, but they don't. Apple doesn't support even relatively recent 'old' hardware: they abandoned the $500 (no subsidies back then) 2008 iPhone in June 2010 when iOS 4 came out, after merely two years! No security fixes, nothing. And since most app developers don't bother with iOS backwards compatibility, most newer apps (and app updates) don't run on that phone either.

So now that we finally got rid of the shuttle, how about giving that other big orbiting bottomless sink of of money a good dunking in the Pacific, and then get on with actual science?

Why does NASA feel the need to waste my tax dollars to repeat this nonsense over and over?

Last I checked DHS are part of the US government. So all they needed to find out about stuxnet was to talk to their Federales buddies who helped create it.

Compact fluorescents have truly horrible light quality compared to incandescent lighting. Unfortunately CRI (color rendering index) is not required information on light bulb packaging. As I found out the hard way CFLs are also unsuitable for most types of enclosed fixtures, due to the temperature sensitivity of the electronics. And they smell really bad when they fail.

Does this support the iphone 2?

...if he were still alive. He built his (and the world's) first programmable binary computer with program storage, the Z3, from old mechanical relays.

'Installed' doesn't mean 'enabled'. Plus, 87% of all statistics are made up.

The 16 GB iPhone 2G appeared in February 2008.

How about a pdf vulnerability fix for the 2G? Or is it too much to ask for some basic OS support for a 2 year old $500 Apple product?
And while they are at it, maybe they could reverse the recent degradation of the 2G map accuracy. Might be just AT&T reducing the number of 2G towers, though.

You are an idiot. Taxation is no more theft than paying your cable bill. You're a citizen, you benefit from clean water, not getting blown up terrorists, the internet and a crap load of other things the government either pays for directly or has subsidized for development. Unless you like brown water and having the rent cops and firemen, stop whining. Please get over your Ayn Rand fantasy -- even Jesus told his disciples to pay their taxes. Roads provide voluntarily? By who? Whose gonna pay for the asphalt, upkeep or to make some knuckle head doesn't cause a 10 car pile-up because he's doing 110 at rush hour? And seeing as UNIX and ARPNET were both military (read government) creations, Slashdot wouldn't have existed with US taxpayers money.

That's a great list, I have every one of those and use them often, but it has a very steep starting point.

Books like Gettng Started in Electronics by Forrest Mimms, Practical Electronics for Inventors, Tab Electronics Guide to Understanding Electricity and Electronics (2000) by Randy Slone, Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics (5th ed.) by Stan Gibilisco, Grob's Basic Electronics by Mitchel E. Schultz, or MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery by Charles Platt are more suitable first book for a starting point.

Also ARRL's Ward Silver has a great little hands-on book of lessons, ARRL's Hands-On Radio Experiments that is cheap ($20 US) and a great 2nd book. (Electrical Engineering 101 2nd. ed by Darren Ashby is another great 2nd book, oriented to new EE students / grads).

Make-zine and their blog are full of interesting hobbyist oriented stuff for beginners, and cool projects to inspire you to learn more.

For licensed amateur radio operators, the QRP community and their own QRPedia is a area of kit-building and home-made of simple radio transmitters and receivers that can be simple to get started, and fun to operate (as the solar cycle improves).

All About Circuits is partial (unfinished) online basic electricity and electronics textbook.

Fun stores (of many) include Ada Fruit Industries, and SparkFun.

The more hobbyist friendly big parts distributors in US are Jameco, Digikey, and Mouser. Anyone interested should request a catalog from them. They also ship to Canada, and Digikey does operate in Europe, but Farnell is generally better to deal with. G3SEK's Technical Topics website includes a list of UK electronics suppliers that deal with individuals (rather than businesses-only).

Enjoy!