I seem to remember in the late 90's or very early 2000's you could use SMS for free (I forget the carrier I used... one of those that eventually became part of Verizon). Nobody seemed to care about it...then the teenagers found it and suddenly it was $0.20 a message.

Useful or not, it will probably look pretty cool in a summer blockbuster in a couple of years.

Is his real name Valentine Michael Smith?

I thought you send a team of oil rig workers (the only people on earth who know how to use a drill) instead of astronauts up to the object, drill inside, sacrifice themselves to detonate the thing "manually", split the object in two so that each piece falls into the ocean, and then outrun the resulting tsunami by running up a hill.

Man... just when you start trusting Hollywood.

Are you advocating one giant content-monopoly?

I was going to say spend a million or two on a "enterprise solution tailored to fit your needs" that never actually works like you wanted, but middle management loves because the salesman took them out for drinks, then spend another half-million on training so that everybody gets up to speed. Then after wasting time for 6 months, use some wacky combination of access and excel that lives on some shared drive *somewhere*, Finally give up and scrap the whole idea when a new operations director comes in and has a NEW enterprise solution lined up from his good buddy at yet another company.

"That dog"?!? His NAME is Dogmeat! :D

Actually, that's probably the grandson of the original Dogmeat.

Do you live in the deep south? (If you're outside the US I don't know)

Seems like the kind of shirt 1/50 people here would recognize... at least I would hope so.

In recent versions OSX even goes a step beyond "are you sure you want to run this app?" into "you cannot run this app unless you go into security settings, enter your admin password and then authorize the app to execute"

It works in Civilization.

I used to be a programmer with no degree. I'd like to think I was pretty darn good at it... I knew several languages (C, C++, Python, Perl, Java, and several more) that I had taught myself. I did this for about 9 years, before I finally got a degree in CS, and then got a Master's in CS shortly afterward.

One thing this did for me is open up my mind quite a bit. I'm still a good programmer, but I now know programming isn't it. There's a lot more that goes on when it comes to developing good software, and though I could code up some pretty good stuff really quickly, now my code is better, more thought out, and most importantly, I am much more likely to ask the question "Is this really the problem we're trying to solve?" leading to actually useful code instead of neat stuff it turned out really wasn't what was needed.

In addition, I'm better at interacting with people. I used to have the attitude "This makes no sense to me, therefore it's stupid" and now I realize that maybe I don't have all of the information, there's something I don't know (this is key!) which would help me understand and realize my position isn't exactly right, and so I don't just get mad and storm off anymore when things don't make sense.

Getting a degree made me a more well rounded person... I found a love for history, music and literature that I didn't quite have before. I can have conversations that don't just involve the latest tech and video games. (though I still love talking about that stuff)

I guess my point is... a degree doesn't make a great programmer, but a degree can help make a better person (which is the whole point really... it's not to "learn a trade", it's to expand your horizons and explore the world and become a critical thinker) and so given the situation, I would likely lean toward hiring a great programmer with a degree over a great programmer without one.

Wait... wasn't it ATH0? Not O... ATO was come online, ATH0 was was put the line "on hook", whereas ATH1 was take the line "off hook"...

I think you could combine ATH1 followed by ATO to essentially accomplish an ATA

Someone already rebooted Star Control II. It was called Mass Effect. :)

I'm kidding, but seriously, go play Mass Effect 1 and compare it to SC2. There are a LOT of similarities there.

For starters, check this out:

http://aliens.wikia.com/wiki/Ur-Quan_Kzer-Za
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Thorian

Heck, the thorian's mind controlled minions are even referred to as "thralls"

You use a finger on your right hand, duh

Unity 4 (which is now in beta) supports Linux. This might be what they're waiting on as far as open sourcing it.