All the harry dresden books, for example, decided to be in a bold fond in the version I downloaded. Makes purchasing them a LOT more worthwhile (which I ended up doing for the first few, until I decided to give up on the series, but that's another story).

Ah, the memories! Here are some of the stories I've heard and or witnessed over the years.

1. Buttons: Every couple years, IBM would hold an open house where anyone in the community could come in and get a tour of the facility (Kingston, NY). This was back in 1984, IIRC. PCs were just starting to make an impact at this time... big iron was king. We're talking about a huge raised-floor area with multiple mainframes, storage, tape drives... MANY millions of dollars per system. A few hundred users on a system was quite an accomplishment back then and these boxes could handle a thousand users. We were also in the midst of a huge test effort of the next release of VM/SP. I had come in that Sunday afternoon to get several tests done (death marches are no fun). All of a sudden the mainframe I was on crashed. Hard. I'd grown accustomed to this as we were at a point where we were "eating our own dog food"; the production system was running the latest build of the OS. But, an hour later and it was STILL down. Apparently, a tour guide had led a group to one of the operator consoles and a child could not resist pressing buttons. Back in those days, booting a mainframe meant "re-IPL" Initial Program Load. Unless the computer was REALLY messed up and wouldn't boot. Only then would someone re-IML the system. Initial Microcode Load. Guess which button the kid pressed? It left the system in such a wonky state that it had to be reloaded from tape. All the development work of that weekend was lost and had to be recreated and rebuilt. (It was a weekend and backups were only done on weekday nights.) It took us a week to get things back to normal.

FUSCHIA I really hope that was intentional.

Of course it was... it was a setup for another poster to come along and elevate the irony level via a similarly-constructed officious-seeming announcement in order to enhance the joke and provide, hopefully, additional chuckles among the fine readers of slashdot. Instead, by observing my typo, and failing to take the opportunity to craft a joke out of it in the same vein... why that's a complete waste of a setup. Can you help a brother out and at least continue the joke when the effort of a setup has been made?

Yeah time-shifting is nothing new. It has existed ever since the Sony Umatic VCR released circa 1969. That VCR was too expensive, so Sony went back and created the Betamax (anc JVC copied it to create VHS) in 1975. DVR is not even the first digital recording method - that was miniDV and Digital VHS in the early 1990s. ----- People have been time-shifting for decades. All the DVR did was replace the magnetic tape storage with magnetic disk storage. Nothing revolutionary... it was an evolutionary change.

I'm not an engineer so I can't comment on the operating ceiling of the the thing but speaking as a former private pilot, 9,150 meters (FL 28, roughly) is already well above the point where the pilot-in-command would be allowed to operate without supplemental oxygen.In fact, up that high you'd be messing with the three-holer transport jets and would probably need a pretty high-quality heated flight suit.

The actual history of "going to the mattresses" comes from the Joey Gallo and the war between him and the Profaci family. The term appeared in the headlines in the early 60's in the headlines in New York newspapers.

Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Gallo#Gallo-Profaci_war http://tomfolsom.com/blog/

Their Cingular bill is going to suck.

That justifies baseless claims about the benefits of substances that have yet to be discovered? Or claims that organic farming somehow performs better at providing these hypothesized nutrients?

No. No, it doesn't. Those claims are still just as unfounded and hypothetical as they ever were.

Actually the correct steps are: * Present your thesis. * Exclaim PERIOD! * Clamp your hands to your ears and run away shouting "lalalalalalala cant hear you!", before any counter-argument can be made. And there you go, argument won.

as a human overlord to welcome our bacteria inhabitants

Here's one reason why... I was Bipolar II which meant I was mostly manic. As a result I was easily angered, very enthusiastic, easily empassioned and highly creative. My brain went a MILLION miles per hour in that state and I had brilliance that I couldn't contain at times. I already have an IQ of 160 and during that state it was up 5-10 additional points (when I could stay focused).

Tack onto that the boundless energy the condition gave me and the fact that I never slept in that state and you have exactly what you described. I felt untouchable and alive like no one could imagine. So why did I go on meds? Well, that's the trick. How do you get bipolars or other people who have a self destructive disorder that makes them feel superior or more intelligent go on a med that dumbs them down or slows them down?

I hit that point where I realized my condition was isolating me and shutting me off from everyone else around me. When I examined my life, I realized I had no one to blame but myself; I burnt people out like matches but couldn't see that I was the one common factor in all the damaged relationships. More exactly, my condition.

I eventually got better and now write my own documentation, get along with others, don't have mood swings at work, etc etc. It took me years and lots of hard work and effort to get over old emotional habits... the meds don't do it alone.

But I guess what I am trying to say is that sometimes brilliance comes with madness. Sometimes it's just madness, sometimes it's both. Getting them to help themselves though can be almost impossible though.

Just one viewpoint, take it or leave it.

Aspergers is to the body language and subtle social cues that define 2/3 of human communication as blindness is to vision or deafness is to sound. Only on the outside, no one knows you have an impaired perception. You don't get cut the slack that the person signing or the guy carrying the cane would.

You constantly monitor yourself every second to make sure you don't do anything wrong. You're labelled as weird, or rebellious, rude, or unpleasant to be around because you can't perceive the messages people are trying to send you. You have few friends because whatever secret magical language that's being spoken to generate new connections with people you totally miss. Many attempts you make to reach out to people end in disaster, and you can't for the life of you understand what the hell it is that you're doing wrong.

Those lonely nights spend in front of a computer are ones you'd probably rather spend hooking up with a girl you met at a bar instead of learning the intricacies of Yacc or device drivers. And it drives you absolutely fucking insane that everyone else is in on the fuck-fest that is life except you.

Any super-abilities you might gain from this condition are cold comfort, as they're used more as survival skills to get around the enormous deficits you experience in being able to read people. The money that you earn from your impressive abilities has to be the substitute for having lots of friends who could help you do stuff (e.g. you pay someone to install an super-heavy air conditioner in a second story windows because you don't have many friends you can call on to help you). It's not really a preference for certain kind of social lifestyle, it's a crappy hand of cards you're dealt that you have to make the best of.