Now that I think about it.... You think the flock of geese that brought down US Air 1549 was just maybe caused by a bunch of nefarious characters flying loads of birdseed to the ends of the runways...

When we make drones illegal, only criminals will fly drones. How many commercially available drones are made from titanium? Folks do know that drones didn't exist a decade ago like they do know, right? Hobbyists built the first drones from readily available R/C parts and motors. i.e. The terrorists will still be able t make drones even if regular folks can't buy them. But what is the range of a drone? How about a high powered Browning? Do we have a problem with folks taking random shots at planes? We do sometimes... The incidents are easy to find with Google. I guess if we outlaw guns--we would never need to worry about anyone shooting at a plane again...

Planes hit birds all the time. Have we been smart enough to pass a bunch of laws to keep the birds from flying around planes? But in all seriousness--planes strike birds all the time and rarely encounter any issues. Of course there the was the Landing on the Hudson, but that was a flock of geese. Geese tend to be much larger and heavier than any hobby type drone.

But hey, before folks have a chance to think logically, might as well pump out the FUD to get these toys out of the hands of potential terrorists--or ,maybe we can come up with a reason to ban drones that saves the children....

Lords of the Fallen is performing so badly at retail, I am thinking the developer wishes there was no DRM. Then at least the developer could blame those damn PC pirates--taking all the game sales. Instead the developer just has to the face the fact the spent years creating a crapping game that no one is going to play. Heck at least if it had been pirated--some one would have enjoyed the effort put forth.

My wife is a teacher and her school has been very successful with DonersChoose. It is kind of amazing actually. The various classrooms have added/upgraded/replaced technology in just about every classroom. The teachers get exactly what they want and it typically takes less than two weeks from the time the teacher writes up the request until the product is in the classroom. The parents this year have already bought new tablets for the class--right at 10 days total time from asking until the devices were in the kid's hands. Hard to argue with results. Beats the six plus months (if ever) from the old request process. The school has even adopted a new process to ensure the devices get configured and secured according to the school's IT policy that gets the job done without interuption to the teacher or class. (i.e. the new stuff doesn't arrive--then sit on some IT guy's desk for a month waiting for them to get around to putting an asset tag on the device.)

Ha--says either the young dude or the single dude. Wait until you get older and have a full household. That 4/1 would remind you of the old 56K days if your old enough. The number of wireless connections in my house floors even me. Ain't technology grand.

As a North Carolina resident--this past legislative session has been pure entertainment, if not extremely scary. The legislature has far more pressing matters to deal with then stimulating growth and ensuring our state has the latest in technology offerings. Not sure if you folks have been paying attention but women are making their own decisions regarding birth control and pregnancy and to top off the gays are trying to get married!! Who can think about prosperity in times like these!! If not for our conservative overlords legislating morality, North Carolina would be lost!! Lost I say!!

Mine is three, four in August--Endless Alphabet, Sight Words, JumpStart Preschool 1&2, SuperWhy, Tracing ABC, and Kids Number and Math are the ones we like on Android.

The Ipad has these and more. Before having a kid, I had heard of Team Umizoomi and dismissed it as garbage. For all its silliness--Team Umizoomi was what got her adding and subtracting. By three she was counting 100 and by 3.5 she was doing + and - with anything under 20. The quirky things that make parents happy. :)

The tablets help with forming letters, sounds, and now the sight words. But nothing beats real books. We read to her every day, by two she was pretending to read on her own. There are cheesy princess and mickey/minnie books that are rated learning to read--one or two really simply sentences a page. Not sure whether she has memorized the books or learned the words--but she rips through them now. New books she can read about three in four words on the 1st pass through.

The money spent tends to be for the educational apps--had a late addition. Seeing how quickly my toddler has picked up reading and math with the help of a tablet has been amazing.

Been working on getting my nephews away from playing games and instead learning how to make them. The Hour of Code was a great start. (The Steam prize was enough a motivator.) Hopefully this will catch their interest and give them a little more exposure to how computers work with the side benefit of becoming better thinkers.

Thanks for the work. (looked for a place to donate--contribute seems more about participation than donation.)

That was my first thought as well! How old are you and do you have a family? :)

#1--why watch NBC? CBC, BBC, and if you don't care about perfect English--the list gets a heck of a lot longer. But why even bother with streaming from a website--why not grab one of the usenet or torrent postings?

Winter.Olympics.2014.Team.Figure.Skating.Pairs.Short.Program.720p.HDTV .x264-2HD
Winter.Olympics.2014.Ladies.Moguls.Qualification.1.720p.HDTV.x264-2HD
Winter.Olympics.2014.Mens.Slopestyle.Qualification.HDTV.x264-2HD

You get the point--if you are going to cut the cord--I'd hope you know how to get content before you made the move...

One last link: Instructions on watching live: http://deadspin.com/how-to-wat...

One of the trickiest things to get worked out was streaming music through out the house. Having a large collection, I've found MediaMonkey to be the best audio file manager and playback solution. Personally, I've gotten hooked on the AutoDJ option of MediaMonkey.

There must be a sexier way to do this--but currently when MediaMonkey is queuing and playing music with AutoDJ, I'll use NCH Broadwave Audio Streaming Server to turn the MediaMonkey machine into a live streaming box that can be accessed from the various stereos/TV around the house. The nice thing about this is when you are in the kitchen, game room, outside deck, or even sitting on the dock you will always heard the same music.

There has to be a better way to do the live streaming. I keep hoping MediaMonkey would provide the functionality, but MediaMonkey currently only streams from your collection via DLNA. i.e. No streaming of "Now Playing" over IP. Someday I'll figure it out...

Do you have DVRs on any of your TV's? I've cut the cable so to speak and only get local channels through traditional means. Everything else that gets watched s dropped on a local server and streamed on demand to the various TV's/DVRs and stereos.

pyTivo works really well if you have Tivo's attached your TVs. At $750 a pop though--Tivo's can be a really expensive set top alternative. You can find old Tivo II's on ebay with lifetime service for reasonable prices.

For TVs without Tivos--the Western Digital WD TV boxes work well. As do Xbox's and PS3's. The one DLNA server I've found that does a good job wiht the varous media formats and web streams is TVersity. I'm still running a very old, free to use version of TVersity, so I am assuming the latest versions haven't lost too much functionality. (I think some of the TVersity functionality has been shifted to the paid version versus the free edition.

For my zip code and household--Shrepa worked like a champ. Confirmed what I already knew in less than a minute. i.e. the information is accurate and came quick. Took the better part of three weeks to get the "official" word.

Not only would I have a robotic car if my insurance rates went down 80%--I'd gladly pay double the insurance to have a robotic car. All the wasted time driving--would love to not have to physically do the driving!