In the future, 80% of basic training will consist of recruits un-learning what they learned from video games. Lesson 1: No rocket-jumping. Lesson 2: No tea-bagging enemy corpses.

Uh, that's standard for any Lotus Notes install. You must not have read appendix 666 in the install docs.

I'm willing to consider that both may be true.

Regarding the larger point of Presidential power, yes he was elected president, but the Constitution wasn't up for a vote. When he was inaugurated, he swore an oath to follow the Constitution, and he doesn't get to pick and choose which parts he likes. The 4th Amendment protects us from unreasonable search, and the broad, sweeping data collection go well beyond reasonable. The Constitution defines separation of powers, so when he unilaterally decides not to enforce certain parts of laws passed by Congress, he is usurping their legislative power. He has the highest authority of the executive branch, but the Constitution defines the limits of that authority, and he has gone well beyond those limits.

You have a commonly-held misconception of what constitutes impeachment. Impeachment does not mean "removed from office", it means that the House has voted to impeach. Once a president has been impeached, then the Senate holds a trial to determine if he will be removed from office.

Both the parent and grandparent are correct in saying that Nixon was never impeached, because he resigned before the full House voted on articles of impeachment. I think the parent doesn't understand that Bill Clinton was impeached - the full House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment, sending it to the Senate for trial. The fact that the Senate voted not to remove him from office doesn't change the fact that he was impeached.

Out of that $32 you quote, over half of it is the can opener and cooking pot that a) is a 1-time cost, and b) could be obtained for less than $5 at a garage sale or thrift store.

I know I'm not the only /.er who read this and thought, "Po-Ta-Toes. Mash 'em. Boil 'em. Put 'em in a stew."

It will even be quite a wait from that point. At least a Generation... (ducks)

I took my 13-year-old daughter, who was absolutely dying to see it and thoroughly enjoyed it. And this wasn't entirely due to spending the whole movie drooling over Chris Hemsworth - she has enjoyed most of Marvel's recent movies. As for my take:

The Good: Loved the opening sequence with the Dark Elves. If they had made a full-length movie based on the Dark Elf/Asgardian war, I'd go see it. Really enjoyed Loki again, particularly when he was taunting Thor by repeatedly changing form. Also the exploration of the strained relationship between Loki and his mother. Eric No Pants - as the parent referred to him - was a great addition to the movie, especially showing how badly being possessed by Loki has messed with his mind. The Battle of Asgard was a visual masterpiece, and did a great job of showing Asgardian technology as the pseudo-magic they're trying to portray. Really enjoyed the final scene with Thor and Odin discussing his realization that he was not suited for the throne. And it had what I think was the best Stan Lee cameo of any Marvel movie so far. (Also liked seeing the IT Crowd's Chris Dowd in his small role.)

The Bad: Jane was forgettable and Darcy's character came off as forced, like she was playing a caricature of her character in the first movie. The main villain really needed more development; as is, he was rather forgettable. I'm sure they intended to portray him as cold and emotionless, but instead it just seemed flat. Part of, I think, came from having him speak in subtitles so much of the time. (I felt his strongest scene was his confrontation with Frigga during the invasion of Asgard.) As several others have noted, Jane's "infection" with the Aether seemed pretty badly done.

Overall, I'd say slightly better than the original Thor, not as good as the Avengers or the first Iron Man. (And as an aside, the previews for the next Captain America and X-Men look very promising.)

The pic that first got him in trouble came out when he posted it himself, probably intending it to be direct-message only rather than publicly viewable.

This. I'd love to be able to share my Steam library with my wife and daughter, but with some usage controls. Neither one has a Steam account right now, and, ideally, I'd like to be able to set up sub-account, including some parental controls regarding game ratings, time limits, and the like.

But the real problem here is, as many others have mentioned, that Family Sharing isn't really sharing if only one user can access the library at a time. I completely understand not allowing simultaneous use of a game, but the entire library? If I'm playing Left4Dead2, why should that lock my daughter out of Peggle?

I don't think you quite understand what Calibre really is. Think of whatever program you use to organize your music collection - whether it's Windows Media Player or Amarok or iTunes or whatever. Now substitute "e-book collection" for music collection, and you'll be close. The difference is that Calibre is primarily an organizational tool. You can import ebooks from dozens of different formats, convert from one format to another, and keep them all organized in one library.

So to address your concerns, both really depend on the format of the document. Calibre supports just about any format you could think to throw at it, so if you pick a format that supports annotations, you won't have any trouble. You mention PDF and PDF/A - either one can be imported into your Calibre library.

I make heavy use of Calibre at work. I have imported tons of internally created MS Word documents with different policies and forms we use, PDF manuals for hardware and software, plain text files, just about anything.

Another great feature I haven't seen mentioned much in the thread is Calibre's ability to subscribe to a page and automatically download it for offline reading. Combine that with Dropbox syncing files to my phone, and it's the closest I've found to the now-defunct (and much missed) Newsroom.

Fellow Epic 4G user here, and yes, I'll give it up when it is pried from my cold, dead hands. (Or, more likely and less dramatically, when the device itself is dead.)

I've worked with dozens of phones, and have never found a keyboard that was as easy to use as the E4G. Yes, I have used the supposedly fantastic keyboard on Blackberries, but really wasn't impressed. And while Swype is good for jotting out a quick text message or email reply, but when I'm using my phone to SSH into a box, or trying to google the exact error message something is throwing up, or doing just about anything where I would like to be able to use my screen to actually display stuff, nothing beats a physical keyboard.

I don't understand the phone makers' obsession with thinner and thinner phones. At least give us an option for one that's twice as thick, but has an actual keyboard. Especially now that 4.7" screens seem to be the standard for high-end phones. That gives a lot of room for a very usable keyboard. One thing that sets the E4G keyboard apart - an actual row of number keys. They could fit them in because, at the time, the E4G was one of the larger phones out there. Imagine how nice a keyboard you could fit behind the huge phones of today.

To swipe a joke from Rooster Teeth's Red vs. Blue:

I can sum up the argument against getting a tattoo with the following bullet points:
1. Tattoos are permanent.
2. You are a goddam idiot.
Point 2 may seem overly argumentative and insulting, but let me explain. Just think about yourself, 10 years ago. 10 years ago, you were a goddam idiot, weren't you? Imagine the stupid sort of stuff that 10-years-ago-You would have wanted tattooed on his body. Now, realize that, 10 years from now, you will look back at now-You, and say, "10 years ago, I was a goddam idiot."

Almost the right answer.

I'm the one-man IT department at a nursing home. I generally don't provide tech support to our residents, though there are are a few PCs in our library that I'm expected to keep up and running. In addition to the risk of malware, there's always the chance that some "knows enough to be dangerous" user will seriously screw something up.

The answer is here: http://www.faronics.com/products/deep-freeze/ (No, I don't work for them, this isn't a paid endorsement, that's not even a referral link.) Set the PC up once the way it's supposed to be, then install Deep Freeze. Any time you boot the PC, it's back the way I set it up. Aside from hardware failure, any problem that comes up is as simple as, "Have you tried turning it off and then on again?" Staff shuts down the library PCs every night, and I told them to just hit the switch on the power strip. Why bother with a proper shutdown when there's nothing to be written to the hard drive anyway. Next time it boots up, Windows doesn't know it wasn't shut down properly. I don't bother running AV software on those machines. Once a month, I un-freeze them, run Window Update, then re-freeze.

The basic version of Deep Freeze is $45/seat. At a typical IT salary, it pays for itself pretty quickly in avoiding re-installs. The only thing to watch out for is not to use the "boot thawed on next boot only" option when running Windows update. Sometimes you'll get updates that need to run stuff after reboot, then reboot again, and you can get stuck in a boot loop. (There is a fix available.)

If you really need a free-as-in-beer solution, I remember years ago stumbling on instructions for doing something similar with XP by using the Enhanced Write Filter software from XP Embedded. If interested, you can do your own Googling, and I have no idea whether this involves violating licensing agreements or copyrights.

Most laptops have built-in webcams these days.

For a while, I had my laptop set up with a "decoy" XP install. Anyone booting up that would have their pics uploaded to a dropbox account I created specifically for that purpose. I also had an Pidgin set up to auto-login to a decoy Instant Message account and start minimized to the system tray, with the tray icon hid. I figured if the laptop was ever stolen, I could watch for the IM account to go active, then chat up the thief and inform him that I had his photo and offer to not call the cops if I could simply have my laptop back. Obviously not a bulletproof solution, I admit. The last time I wiped and rebuilt the laptop, I didn't bother setting it up again. I figured my laptop was protected by a combination of full-disk encryption and the odds that few people are going to steal a 5-year-old netbook.