The reason they're shooting it is to *try* to make it go off.

Typically this would be put in a bomb pit somewhere nearby. From reading the comments this is fairly common practice there. This one nailed it pretty well:

"I know many Jewish Israeli people who had their bag shot just because they left it unwatched for a couple of minutes. Yes, this is the unfortunate reality that Israelis live in, where Palestinian terrorist would do anything (such as put bombs cowardly hidden in laptops) to intentionally hurt innocent civilians. These are precaution measures intended to prevent loss of innocent lives (yes, sometimes at the cost of a cherished laptop because of a possibly careless border officer)."

Yay! I'm still young!

This is good advice, and gives me an opportunity to speak to the community at large: some of us who go to cons and are in a position to shake tons of hands politely decline. It's not because we're being dicks, it's because we know it's a good way to substantially decrease our chances of catching and spreading any germs.

I played the PAX Pandemic game, where the Enforcers handed out stickers to attendees that read [Carrier] [Infected] or [Immune] (There was also a [Patient Zero].

I got the [Immune] sticker, and by the time I got home on Monday, it was clear that I had the flu. I've had a fever between 100 and 104 all week that finally broke last night, but I'm going to the doctor today because I think whatever I had settled into my lungs. I'll tell him about the H1N1 outbreak and get tested if he wants to run the test, but at this point I think it's safe to assume that I was [Immune] to the Pig Plague, but definitely [Infected] with the damn PAX pox.

Even though it's been a week of misery, it was entirely worth it, and I don't regret going to PAX for a single second.

Bah. This is easily remedied by going at night.

This has been done before, IIRC Samsung released one of the first TV quality raster scanning system for laser shows.

Basically a standard laser show setup uses multiple lasers (to get your RGB) combined into a single beam then passed through a device, such as a PCAOM, which acts as rather like a programmable colour filter. (this isn't the only way it can be done with solid state lasers).

Two sets of mirrors can be steered in the X and Y axis to draw your shapes, beam effects, etc.

In the case of a TV or other raster displays the beam is steered much like you would an electron beam on a regular TV. It scans a horizontal line, moves down scans across, repeat. You can switch the direction of the scan (left to right, then right to left) on alternating lines to speed up the scan rate.

Wikipedia has some info on Laser TV's in general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_TV and LaserFX has some info on PCAOM's if you're interested in the older tech: http://www.laserfx.com/Backstage.LaserFX.com/Archives/Archives6.html

Early systems actually used multiple projectors overlapping or drawing the first 3rd, 2nd third, etc of the image to make up for slower scan rates.

This is why my motto (and fundamental rule for life) is Don't be a dick: it's simple to understand, and reasonable people can agree on what it means.

I so badly wanted to switch to Teksavvy, and I did for a short while. The customer service WAS great. So good they told me the truth that I was +5km from the CO and that the wiring going into my apartment had tons of noise on it :(

Sooo, here I am, still on Rogers. I would love to move somewhere closer to a CO.

Interesting... if you remove the story from the link, going straight to http://idle.slashdot.org/ you still get the Superbowl ad story, but under it you'll see an Idle Firehose in a new interface. The page title becomes Firehose as well.

Changes are afoot!

Sony BMG spokesperson: We're pleased to announce we are the final major music corporation to release electronic tracks without that pesky DRM! All you have to do is leave your house, go to a selected retail outlet, buy a special card there, go back to your house, scratch off the back of the card to find a code, go to our special MusicPass Web site, enter said code, and download one the 37 titles we have available, from Celine Dion to the Backstreet Boys!

Kid #1: Or, in the time it takes me to jump through all those hoops, I could just download all 37 of those albums off of Pirate Bay.

Kid #2: Or, I could just scratch off the back at the store, record the pin number, go home and download the album through a Tor connection, so you can't trace my IP number.

Kid #1: Also, what's with this first slate of artists? Celine Dion? Backstreet Boys? Kenny Chesney? Barry Manilow? Are you high?