> I've had at least two UPSes add injury to insult by simply dropping dead
> and failing to even act as a power strip, merrily cutting power to
> everything attached to them despite mains power being available
> (and every 'unprotected' device not even flickering).
> Thanks a lot APC...

What model(s) were You dealing with?

Hell yes! This is what I did at Ericsson.

1. Cell phone towers can be redundant, independently powered, and well protected (as long as the protection does not interfere with radio signals.) The link to the "network" does not need to be a wire, it can be a microwave link to another terrestrial site, or to a satellite.

2. We keep saying: keep cell phone towers in reserve (in large office buildings) with their own power supplies so they can be (literally) rolled out, connected to its other parts, and started up after an emergency. This is unpopular with the major telcos, since it costs money.

3. We pioneered the 8-hour/24-hour install at Ericsson many years ago. We would get notice 24 hours before a site was supposed to go live that such-and-such government wanted cell service at such-and-such location. We would strap the cell site to the bottom of a helicopter, and deliver it the next morning. 8 hours after the crate touched the ground, the cell site was active. It's nice to have a cable running somewhere, but more often than not, we depended on microwave links.

One more thing...and this is a FCC policy thing...We could create an "emergency" mode where a quad-band cell phone will talk to any network in range, and where the networks can even load balance between themselves (so no network goes "down.") We have the hardware, it would just be a software patch.

Under Texas Law, YES, it is illegal to proposition a minor, where a minor is anyone You are not married to who claims to be under age. Even if You can see via webcam that grandma is old enough, the second she says she's under age You stop or You become a felon. (I don't know about computer generated characters.)

(Chapter 33 of the Texas Penal Code)

Of course, Your laws might vary. Not all of use live in Texas.

I will not touch the issue of international "commerce" not being covered by the Texas Penal Code. If they guys with guns and uniforms say it's covered, who am to argue the Supremacy Clause?

This is what I would do.

There are hundreds of tutorials on interfacing (PS/2, USB) keyboards to AVRs and to AVRs with Arduino Boot Loaders installed on them.

A cheap LCD would let your students see their accuracy in real time (WHICH IS CRITICAL!)

Now for the tricky part: You need a microcontroller, custom PCB, LCD, keyboard, battery, and charger for $50. It can be done. I could even build in some tutor programs for that price, but the $50 would be just for the parts.

Given that the US nanny-state has outlawed pajammas that can catch fire when placed in the flame of an acetaline torch for 20 minutes, I wonder how they will respond when faced with clothing that can outgass, catch fire, and explode under the right circumstances?

Books are the wrong way to go.

Try groups that get togeather. (Ham radio groups mentioned on ARRL.org are a good place to start - everyone's an hobbyist engineer.)

Try web sites, like AvrFreaks.net. Try discussion formus on web sites.

First, You left a few things out when you only mentioned 3 nations. I can mention more than 3 counter examples:

Norway has Western Europe's highest gun ownership rate and the lowest violent crime rate. (http://gunowners.org/op0746.htm)

Mexico's strict anti-gun laws (compared to Texas) correlate to Mexico's higher violent crime rate.

Washington, D.C. has stricter gun control laws than does Virginia, which correlates nicely to the higher crime rates in D.C.

Second, gun deaths is the wrong statistic. Gun deaths measure every gangster shot dead by a cop. Only a delusional psychopath could confuse a rapist with an innocent victim. Try measuring the violent crime rate, and correlating that to gun ownership. You will get much more useful data. FFF has some great data on cities murder rates compared to their gun control laws: http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0210e.asp

Third, Your numbers are for the entire USA, which includes places where guns are not available (e.g., New York City, California, etc.)

If you look only at murder rates in the places where guns are commonly carried, you get a very different picture of the USA.

Every political web site I have ever set up was shut down through fony DMCA complaints.

I wonder if you could configure a boot disk to image the machine onto a NAS, and then wipe it? Do you care about verifying the image?

How configurable is a Symantec Ghost boot disk? Is there a FOSS alternative to Symantec Ghost?

How would you tell the images apart. It's inevitable...Mary will need a copy of her "My Documents" folder from 2 years ago.

> But it's more fun to rant and whine.

It's more honorable to make a stand against tyranny.

I recommend the slightly newer V7 over the older Q7.

Also SmartDevices has a number of even newer tablets, but they are single-boot. (R7, T7, Ten)

It's MY tablet. I will have root access. I will boycott companies who try to deny me that control.

The real story here is that Fed.Gov can take over control of any media outlet without the consent of the media outlet.

Controlling the media is 90% of any coup...so who else is thinking of skipping an occupy rally today to hack this system?

Forget the EEPROM. The concept of programming a ROM seperately from a chip is so 1970's.

Get a programmer that programs chips with on-chip flash.

I'm biased in favor of Atmel's AVR architecture. http://www.avrbeginners.net/ http://www.avrfreaks.net./

You need to decide: will you go with dated (but doable) through-hole technology, or will you go surface mount (SMT) which is more modern, but more difficult to solder. That will impact what kind of programmer you need. Atmel AVRs can be programmed in-curcuit with a cheap dongle.

I don't always design in-circuit programming, debugging, and emulation into my circuits, so I keep a few of Atmel's AVR boards around. The STK500 is awesome: http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=2735

$82.16 at Digikey: http://search.digikey.com/us/en/cat/programmers-development-systems/general-embedded-dev-boards-and-kits-mcu-dsp-fpga-cpld/2621773?k=stk500

You can get samples of the AVR Microcontrollers from Atmel's distributors, or they are available at many resellers, including DigiKey. Search for "atmega" and limt yourself to DIP packages.

One issue you would have "venting" the energy of a volcano is that the magma can be hot enough to melt your gear. It is molten rock, but that does not mean it's just barely molten. It can be much hotter than the melting point of a rock. Water melts around 0 degrees Celsius, but that does not mean all water is 0 degrees celsius. It can easily be 95 degrees celius.

Another issue is that magma tends to clog pipes...when it hardens into rock.

There are various kinds of rock, that have different melting points. Making it flow through a pipe without melting the pipe or clogging would be difficult. Think of piping sewage, but with molten rock. You can have some magma hot enough to melt your fancy alloy pipe, while other bits of slag are coagulting to block off the pipe.

So, let's say to drop a heat exchanger into the center of a large magma chamber. Let's say it doesn't melt. Let's say it doesn't clog. How do you avoid the magma working its way up through the rock and coming out where you weakened it with your drill? Reinforcing rock is difficult.

If you do manage to get a heat exchanger working, you will quickly suck the heat out of that local area. Rocks do not conduct heat well, especially when they cool and fracuture.

You might be better off trying something a bit easier, like reflecting lots of sunlight on (purified) water so it boils, then runing that steam (which is now under pressure) through a fan (stem turbine) to turn a generator.

If you think you can tap magma, good luck. I'll stick to things that seem very simple.

RecycledElectrons