Oh fuck that. I can plug my Nexus into my Windows machine, create folders, copy files, view any video format I want. Or I can have an iDevice, have to use the evil that is iTunes, convert to formats that Apple has decreed as sacred, and basically give up all control of the device. IOS devices are good for people who never want to go beyond the parameters Apple sets.

I think you would have a hard time figuring out what Occupy WASN'T protesting about. That's why the Tea Party has succeeded to some extent, and Occupy has failed. The Tea Party, by and large, set the parameters for what it was fighting, and stuck to them. Occupy was all over the map.

Can't speak for the iPad, because the only real interaction I had with one was a day with an iPad 2, which I found a bit heavy. Further, I really do dislike IOS and have since even abandoned my iPhone for a Nexus 5.

That all being said, I do use my Nexus 7 a lot. For me it is the perfect form factor. A 10" tablet is really too big, and my phone is on the smallish size. I pretty much do all my recreational reading, and a fairly large portion of my work-related reading on my Nexus 7, and it's small enough to be rather book-like in size, but large enough that it renders PDFs, ePubs and most web pages fairly well. I'm not going to get that readability out of a smartphone, and a 10" tablet or notebook is just too big.

That should actually be that Kepler-444 is of the same type as Alpha Centauri B, the smaller secondary star in that system. The primary star in Alpha Centauri is a G dwarf (yellow) like our sun.

What's interesting about this star though, is that according to the paper, Kepler-444 is not some primordial supergiant, but a K dwarf (orange, of the same type as Alpha Centauri) with a smaller companion red dwarf (or possibly two companion red dwarf stars which are closely bound to each other).

Fuck that, I've been trying to install FreeBSD on my Commodore 64. Crapping Commodore 1541 disk drive keeps mangling my installation CD.

That's pretty much how I remember it. There would be all those awkward asides referring to events in the films, as if anybody who hadn't seen the movies would actually be reading the book. I found it fairly distracting.

Get back in your box, Richard Stallman!

Another one of my favorite films. David Niven and Peter Falk were also a riot.

So you see nothing wrong with a professor using his status to obtain sexual favors?

I think The Empire Strikes Back still stands up very well. I agree the other two don't have the same magic they once held, but Episode V, which, ironically, had the least involvement from Lucas of the original six films, is extremely well plotted, with better dialog and much more convincing acting. The only thing that comes close to Episode V is the final confrontation between Luke, Vader and the Emperor in RotJ. Unfortunately, that's only a handful of scenes in an otherwise mediocre film.

I read just one of the Dune prequels and refused to touch another. So far as I am concerned, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson just pissed over the late great Frank Herbert's legacy.

I wish Brian Herbert had done what Christopher Tolkien did, and just simply release the unfinished stories and plotlines, rather than trying to "finish" the series with appalling novels.

Maybe I'll give the Zahn novels another try. I mainly just remember finding the prose pretty stiff.

I have no idea whether Guinness was an asshole or not, but he was a very good actor, certainly the best one on the set of Episode IV. I recently rewatched his brilliant take as George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and was reminded of just how good he was. That's not even mentioning his extraordinary work with David Lean in Bridge Over The River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. A personal favorite is the original The Ladykillers.

So far as I understand it, while Guinness disliked the dialogue (who can blame him, a lot of it was pretty bad), he was grateful for the money it gave him.

I'm a white Canadian 40-50 who even owned the Princess Leia action figure back in 1978 because you needed a complete set to be cool, and dreamed at night of getting a Millennium Falcon playset. I'll throw down my money, even if I know I'm going to hate the results, because my childhood until about the age of 13 was defined by Star Wars.