This is absolutely needed. The powers that be forget far too often that they themselves are human and not only make mistakes but are corruptible as well. Kudos to your locals for doing this!

Of course this wouldn't stop a sudden application of silly putty on the lense and/or microphone. The mic would be the better choice there - "I'm sorry sir but we seemed to have had audio transmission issues during that incident."

And MPS430 actually has support in Linux now. Google for "mps430 linux" and you'll find a host of options. One of those is a port of the Arduino IDE called Energia. Though that one is not ready completely yet. (I had trouble getting it to run on Mint13.)

Regardless the TI Launchpad stuff is supported well enough outside of Windows.

Technically a zipgun is made from plumbing parts: http://www.scribd.com/doc/23323372/Zipguns-Pipe-Guns-Silencers

But you're right about the imagination.

Sad but all too true.

(Posting to remove mis-mod.)

"Make Room! Make Room!" by Harry Harrison.

Dammit! Now I want the Thingiverse files for a galactic assault cruiser!

*searches E-Bay for quantum string reels for his Makerbot*

http://filkertom-itom.blogspot.com/2007/08/049-wikipirates.html

They've got nothing else to do..."

The more free they become the less they wonder why they should pay heed to those in power.

Sorry - meant "The more free they become the MORE they wonder why they should pay heed to those in power."

First - the internet doesn't immediately rank as a survival item. Not even close.

BUT I agree with your point that it should be very close after satisfying those needs.

The problem is that a great many companies want to lock down what you can and can't learn on the Internet. They want you to be nice little servants and only learn those things that don't open the doors to you thinking about things other than those immediate survival things.

The more you educate people in how to think and what's available outside their front door the more free they become. The more free they become the less they wonder why they should pay heed to those in power.

And to those in power that's a dangerous thing. And until we fix the system (not likely any time soon) you will see them clamp down and clamp down hard on anything they consider a threat to their nice cushy positions.

I have nothing digitally worth risking the life or myself or my family.

Really when you come down to it a disaster is just that and keeping the people around you safe is a million times more important than anything else you may have.

That said my choice of solutions would be a FedEx box full of hard drives to a friend across the country or a good tape safe that is water and fire resistant.

Of course like most I/T people I don't back up nearly enough. ^_^

'Scuse me....something I gotta go do...

You're not wrong. But neither is the parent. And this is all known by anyone that's been in the I/T field for any serious length of time. It's all a balancing act. And since you have to balance security with efficiency your friend through all the pitfalls (besides common sense) is documentation. Make the end user sign a piece of paper saying the device is his and will only be supported for X purpose and only to Y point.

When the user breaks something you told them is unsupported past a certain point that documentation will help point the user in the right direction and keep both yourself and the company safe from rampant I broke my $device while doing company work on it! Fix it or get me a new one!

First - I want to see in the license where it requires them to pull it off systems.

Second - What the hell are they going to replace it with? Are they saying you have to download and install Java manually? OpenJDK supposedly doesn't work with all things.

Third - What does this mean for Ubuntu derivatives like Mint? Are they going to have to pull the jdk as well?

Forth - Can we _please_ take up a collection to have the Oracle execs framed for terrorism and shipped off to Gitmo?

Honestly this is just stupid.

Because this director specifically says he wants to completely depart from the existing Doctor Who. In the hands of Hollywood that can only mean a disastrous big budget action film that means nothing to existing fans and would be Doctor Who only in name.

It would be a large-scale train wreck similar to the US version of Top Gear.

I'm reserving my collection of Pandoricas for certain CEOs, bank presidents, and members of government. ;-)

DO NOT WANT!

What the hell?? I mean why would anyone...oh yeah...greed. Forgot about that for a moment.

I sincerely hope that this does not get made.

Anybody got any Daleks or Cybermen we can sic on these guys?