The amount of power used by the laptop is going to be pretty much a rounding error. You'd be better off making sure the tires are properly inflated.

Except more efficiently powering your laptop will not prevent you from fully inflating your tires, nor will it make doing so any less effective nor more time-consuming.

Similarly, fully inflating your tires will not prevent you from more efficiently powering your laptop, or eliminate the significant gains from doing so.

No matter how relatively significant the gains, there are gains, and they are cost effective and well worth the effort. And if you add up all the various "rounding error" type gains to be had in most vehicles, they cumulatively add up to a significant amount of savings.

I watched the first season of Game of Thrones on netflix, then gave up.

The discs are nearly empty, with two ~55 minute episodes per disc. The subtitles (vobsubs) are ugly as hell, compared to the beautiful subtitles included when broadcast, the copy protection is aggressive, wasting my time, there are no special features to speak of. etc, etc.

Except that's just a striped down front page. Managing the horde of comments is the challenging part, and they made no attempt to do so.

Without a doubt, the biggest tech failure of the year is slashdot's new mobile site, and the horendous beta desktop site. I can't imagine the motivation behind the flashy, slow, non-functional mess. If classic.slashdot.org ever goes away, so too will I.

I was considering a tablet instead of a netbook some time ago, but hit on a major stumbling block right away... Ethernet ports.

RJ45 gives me faster and more reliable network access when I need it. RJ45 allows me to connect to the network (and the internet) in places (or particular subnets) where there is no wifi. RJ45 allows me to configure my WiFi router/AP out of the box, or when the configuration gets erased. RJ45 lets me configure my WiFi PTZ camera to join them to my WiFi network in the first place. RJ45 allows me to use my netbook as a basic server or network analyser temporarily, or as an end-of-life job. RJ45 allows my netbook to act as a wireless bridge for other devices, and provide wifi and network access for your tablet, smartphone, ultrabook, etc.

Even if I could install a real OS like Linux on a piece of tablet hardware, the universal lack of RJ45 ports would be a continual problem. Carrying around a bunch of dongles is a nightmare. And netbooks are cheaper than decent tablets anyhow.

Now, if anyone can find me a nice cheap and small laptop that also has actual RS-232 ports built-in, I'll buy one in a second, since USB only provides 5V, and some serial devices strictly need the old +12V/-12V signaling to work... Not to mention issues with timing and similar...

instructions unclear; got tumour stuck in revolving door

(For anyone actually wondering, 95.45% is actually the percentage of data expected to fall within two standard deviations of the mean in a Gaussian distribution. Five standard deviations is much, much more stringent—and not really standard outside of particle physics. As we all know, most amateur scientists have the knowledge and ingenuity to discover novel quantum interactions and particles on a regular basis, and merely lack the necessary funding to access synchrotrons to test their theories.)

I really don't think his intention was to discredit amateur science by linking to the search results of "proof that amateur science sucks."

Well, it's sort of complicated.

On one hand—it's probably worth pointing out that the American punitive system is absolutely insane, and the mildness of this should not be taken as evidence of a defective process simply because it doesn't follow suit. Indeed, there are some fairly involved legal and philosophical reasons as to why the punishments aren't more extreme. Here is a paper on it. (I haven't read all of it, but it seems sensible enough from the first few pages.) One of the key points is that a lot of money goes down the toilet on dead ends and genuine errors anyway; another is that scientific misconduct isn't actually illegal, so the power of funding bodies to defend themselves is somewhat limited. In the end, the top priority is still getting them out of science.

Case in point: I'm using an inverter that I bought 6 years ago, rather than buying a new laptop with a longer-lasting battery right now (cellular data, too... in the back seat of a car that's travelling 100km/h through the countryside).

An inverter is a terribly wasteful way to power a laptop, and when that waste is powered by gasoline in an ICE, you might be quadrupling the expense.

My old EeePC is powered by 12V, so I can use an old $2 car cig-lighter cord, with no dual-conversion waste. If your laptop is not (most aren't) I strongly suggest a $12 investment, which you will get a return on in a matter of days:

http://dx.com/p/universal-car-cigarette-powered-adapter-charger-for-laptop-cell-phone-pda-gps-81013

By changing the amount of average monthly balance on the checking account I can select what kind of spam I get via USPS. Seriously. The running joke around here is that if you keep the average above $10K, you are bougie since all your firestarter paper comes by mail!

I get no such spam. Of course every time I sign-up for a bank account, I jump through hoops sending in cards or calling-up automated phone numbers to opt-out of ALL information sharing.

I find that impossible to believe when the exact same processing system is used for both credit and debit cards.

That only proves you are a fool. There is no "debit reporting agency".

Debit cards do not affect your public credit history. Credit cards, do.

the old adage about possession being 9/10ths of the law does ring true here: it's much easier to keep what you have than to get back what you don't.

There's no truth in that at all. The fact that you have to write a check doesn't obviate any responsibility you have to pay your bill, nor does the bank's possession of your money obviate them of the responsibility to fully reimburse you for fraud very quickly. Legally, the two are entirely equivalent.