You're correct that there are other causes of mortality that are worse than gun homicides. Things like heart disease and cancer have a much higher mortality rate. But another way to look at it is we have ~four 9/11's every year from gun homicides.

Here is the study abstract, and how the numbers were collected:

STUDY OBJECTIVE: I test the hypothesis that having a gun in the home is a risk factor for adults to be killed (homicide) or to commit suicide.

METHODS: Two case-control analyses were based on national samples of subjects 18 years of age or older. Homicide and suicide case subjects were drawn from the 1993 National Mortality Followback Survey. Living control subjects were drawn from the 1994 National Health Interview Survey. Ten control subjects matched by sex, race, and age group were sought for each case subject.

RESULTS: The homicide sample consisted of 1,720 case subjects and 8,084 control subjects. Compared with adults in homes with no guns, the adjusted odds ratio (OR) for homicide was 1.41 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.20 to 1.65) for adults with a gun at home and was particularly high among women (adjusted OR 2.72; 95% CI 1.89 to 3.90) compared with men (adjusted OR 1.23; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.49) and among nonwhite subjects (adjusted OR 1.74; 95% CI 1.37 to 2.21) compared with white subjects (adjusted OR 1.27; 95% CI 1.03 to 1.56). Further analyses revealed that a gun in the home was a risk factor for homicide by firearm means (adjusted OR 1.72; 95% CI 1.40 to 2.12) but not by nonfirearm means (OR 0.83; 95% CI 0.62 to 1.11). The suicide sample consisted of 1,959 case subjects and 13,535 control subjects. The adjusted OR for suicide was 3.44 (95% CI 3.06 to 3.86) for persons with a gun at home. However, further analysis revealed that having a firearm in the home was a risk factor for suicide by firearm (adjusted OR 16.89; 95% CI 13.26 to 21.52) but was inversely associated with suicide by other means (adjusted OR 0.68; 95% CI 0.55 to 0.84).

CONCLUSION: Having a gun at home is a risk factor for adults to be shot fatally (gun homicide) or commit suicide with a firearm. Physicians should continue to discuss with patients the implications of keeping guns at home. Additional studies are warranted to address study limitations and to better understand the implications of firearm ownership.

Intentionally Biased Huh? Much like that website you linked to? I'll give you this: Certainly more study and better data is needed. Unfortunately federal funding for unbiased studies seems to have vanished.

Quite frankly, I'm tired of hearing the same old "Guns don't kill people, People kill people" type arguments. I'm tired of the emotional theater. We need to make public policy based on real world data.

Some (Sad) Real World Statistics:

• - In the United States, every year, more than 100,000 people are shot or killed with a gun. (Source bradycampaign.org)
• - An estimated 41% of gun-related homicides and 94% of gun-related suicides would not occur under the same circumstances had no guns been present. (Wiebe, Douglas J. PhD. “Homicide and Suicide Risks Associated With Firearms in the Home: A National Case-Control Study,” Annals of Emergency Medicine 41 (2003): 771-82.)
• - A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a completed or attempted suicide (11x), criminal assault or homicide (7x), or unintentional shooting death or injury (4x) than to be used in a self-defense shooting. (Kellermann, Arthur L. et al., “Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home,” Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 45(2) (1998): 263-267)
• - There are five times as many deaths from gun assaults as from knife assaults, where the rates of assault with knives and with guns are similar. (Zimring, Franklin, and Gordon Hawkins, Crime is not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)
• - Every year there are only about 200 legally justified self-defense homicides by private citizens compared with over 30,000 gun deaths (Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States, 2008, Expanded Homicide Data Table 15 and Table 15 & National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (2008 (deaths) and 2009 (injuries). Calculations by Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.).
• -Gun death rates are 7 times higher in the states with the highest compared with the lowest household gun ownership.(Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 2009)
• -Higher gun ownership puts both men and women at a higher risk for homicide, particularly gun homicide. (Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 2009)

So, clearly we have some major problems here. I would normally never argue that we should take away citizens' rights, and gun ownership is clearly a right in this country, but we have a major conflict here. The right of gun ownership VS the right of life. When you have an epidemic of gun violence that deprives citizens of their lives, you have to weigh these two rights.... and compromise.

Perfect analogy. Different tools, different use cases....

I can't even begin to comprehend how people can defend Windows 8... unless they are getting paid.

It's pretty clear what Microsoft is doing with Windows 8, and it really has little to do with desktop user experience. They are trying to get developers to build applications for their mobile/tablet ecosystem by leveraging the one thing they are dominate in - The desktop. That is the sole reason they force Metro on everyone and are selling the upgrade for $40. If people are forced to use it, companies will develop for it (or so their thinking goes...).

Unfortunately for them, it's not working. Companies still look at the Windows mobile platform as a joke (behind Blackberry for crying out loud) and instead of effectively leveraging the desktop, they are destroying it. The criticisms of the OS are spot on and unless they are addressed, you're going to find people looking for alternatives. Right now there aren't that many viable ones - but if they don't get their act together soon, there will be.

This goes beyond being people being "afraid of change" - Microsoft just really just dropped the ball. It's almost 2013 - You shouldn't have to fight with an OS on top of all the critical work you use a desktop computer for.

For smaller shops, I see nothing wrong with naming your servers whatever you want. It's when you start to get bigger (say, over a dozen servers or so) that you are probably going to want to define a proper naming convention.

I actually name servers after people who are close to me in my life. It's nice to have a little reminder of those you care about while you are working.

I gotta say, I've tried several "Cloud" services and I am not impressed when it comes to TCO. While it's nice to have on demand provisioning, the performance of the virtual server instances are generally very poor compared to basic dedicated servers that are similarly priced.

Don't believe me.... run a simple sysbench and test the cpu and file io on EC2 (or your favorite cloud service) and compare it to a hosted dedicated box. In general on a similarly priced and spec-ed VM/machine you are going to find orders of magnitude better performance on the dedicated box, and that performance equals money saved.

In addition, many dedicated hosts now have 2 or 4 hour provisioning times - so if you don't need more boxes instantly, it's not as if you need to wait that long.

So yes, in the end, cloud services can be convenient.... but you certainly pay for that convenience. They are great for testing and development, but long-term hosting.... eh.... most companies would be better off if they stopped drinking the kool-aid and looked at other options.

Whoever wrote this article is an idiot. "E-Ink" is a high-contrast, bistable liquid crystal display. Please refer to an active-matrix TFT as such. There are many types of LCDs, all with different properties.

Funny how a very active site says "© 2008 Microsoft Corporation" in the footer.

We cut cable TV last year. When we had cable, 99% of the time we were watching the local channels anyway. After the DTV switch we got a ton of free channels. The only thing we couldn't really live without was our DVR, so we bought a DTVPal DVR by Dish Network - works decent, no monthly fee.

Don't miss cable, or the expense, one bit. Couldn't be happier with the decision.

Honestly, I can deal with the computers quite well, they do what they are programmed to do without emotion. What I can't stand is the a-hole users and management who expect IT to solve any and all of their problems, with no budget, no staff, and no respect - all while being overloaded with an endless number of projects.

I'm sorry you never learned excel in high school, but when I am in the smack in the middle of a project that can prevent our company from losing millions your vlookup question is just not a priority.

Now I understand why with almost 8 million people in the city, with some of the highest taxes in the country, the reason NYC constantly has no money and has to cut critical services all the time.

Seriously, NYC has some major problems when it comes to infrastructure costs and planning. Just take a look at the MTA countdown clocks and the hundreds of millions they pour into it with absolutely no results, but they can't keep critical bus and subway lines. The WTC is still nothing but a giant hole. The Fulton Street Transit Center is a disaster. Hell, the Second Avenue Subway line dates back to 1929!

*sigh*

It appears that this bill is extremely poorly written in how it defines peer-to-peer software:

From the bill:

First off, wouldn't "the Internet Domain Name system" include reverse DNS? Secondly, "Peer-to-peer" software is nothing more than machines acting as both "clients" and "servers" and the broadness of what they believe "peer-to-peer" programs are could include public web servers.

This car appears to have a gasket problem...
Which gasket you ask?
The one between the seat and the steering wheel.

GM is an international company, and thus, has to appeal to other demographics than the United States.

FTA - GM clearly acknowledges that this prototype will be a tough sell in the U.S. but they believe it will appeal in places such as Mumbai and Shanghai, where people are more used to walking and biking around.