You also have a problem when the cashier themselves are in the Type 1 category. This happened to me at a drugstore a while back. Everyone was standing in one line that was generally straight back from one of the cashiers. Things were going well with most of the other cashiers calling "Next". Then a few people noticed that one cashier off to the side was just standing there fiddling with her fingernails. When someone asked her why she wasn't taking any customers, she replied "Oh, you all are in her line," which naturally forced the breakup of the nice orderly queue. Ugh!

I also have two cats. Neither of them eat shit. Q.E.D.

Well, using your two data points coupled with the results of this study, I can only come to one conclusion -- eating shit makes you smarter!

In terms of racing humans, Gilder says the Lego robotics kits can only manage around 1.5 moves per second, whereas human players can make between 5 and 6 moves per second, amazingly enough.

So, if we could build an ARM-powered human, it could solve the Rubik's Cube in 2-3 seconds?

I'd say these articles at least demonstrate a history that indicates this product is in true development and why the company might have shifted direction so dramatically.

I'd argue the exact opposite. Every single one of those "supporting articles" was a press release issued by GoSolarUSA. You do understand what a press release is, right?

update - they're not actually 2 inches by 4 inches!!! oh the horror!

This is clearly just the lumberjack elite trying to rip us poor consumers off by selling us less than what we paid for. They call them 2-by-4s, but then they try to get out of delivering that by using technical terms like kiln, moisture, and shrinkage. We should launch a class action lawsuit against Big Lumber. Or at the very least they need to come clean and start calling them by what they're really selling us.

Since when is a helicopter crash surreal?

The helicopter crash itself isn't surreal -- the story is ("It's a surreal story...").

Just kinda underwhelming?

Maybe I've become a relic, but I don't enjoy reading for long periods of time on a screen.
If I do, I want a book, or at least, a printout.

That's where the whole e-ink thing comes into play -- a screen that uses reflected (instead of emitted) light. As much of a cliché as it is, the screen really does disappear once you get into whatever you're reading.

The Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III is from around 2007 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_EOS-1Ds_Mark_III [wikipedia.org]). So if this info is correct then 2001-03-06 is wrong.

This clearly is irrefutable evidence that they Photoshopped the '7' in 2007 to make it a '1'...

Would an old gamesave file count as something I "created"? If so, then I can probably go back to '86 or '87 on some old 5-1/4" floppies that are still around somewhere. Otherwise it's '91 or '92 for me.

The color inversion happens because e-ink screens are bistable -- the screen uses no electricity when it's displaying either the light or dark elements. In order to change what's shown on the screen, it needs to 'clear' what was displayed previously. This manifests itself as a brief 'flashing' of the screen. Incidentally, when it flashes is the only time that an e-ink screen consumes any energy. Conversely, your LCD monitor that doesn't require this flashing is constantly using electricity.

Also, the flash only takes about a quarter of a second. How long does it take you to turn a page in a paper book? I guarantee it's not too different. Certainly not enough to make an appreciable difference in your reading speed.

Because 90% of the population has no fucking clue what decibels are?

Are you serious? Do they not teach the Dewey Decibel system in school anymore?

I might not have a problem with that, but my town is small enough that my zip+4 uniquely identifies my family's PO box.

That's true of nearly any PO Box. At the same time, narrowing it down to a single PO Box really does nothing to help them since your 'location' is wherever the post office is located, which they could have figured out from the regular 5 digit zip code.

There's a right way and a wrong way to go about negotiating. I didn't say that he shouldn't negotiate. I'm just saying that taking the "give me what I want or else the project gets it" approach is most certainly the wrong way to handle this.

Of course my other thought is that I'd much rather go back to writing and working with marketing than getting back into IT.

Wrong thing to say to this crowd. Although, honestly, I completely agree with the sentiment and feel that you'll probably be better off in the long run if you do that.

And another bit of advice: don't even think of trying the pseudo-blackmail suggestions that have been modded up so far. You'll find yourself out of work before you know it.

Worked for me in Chrome.

I tried the demos on both Safari on a Mac and on Chrome under Windows with a User Agent string that identifies itself as the latest build of Safari. The Chrome version had considerably fewer options on a number of the samples (no 'rotation' option on the video sample, only about 1/3 of the transition effects for the image gallery, etc). Just pointing out that while some of it works, there's quite a lot that doesn't, and apparently it doesn't even let you see those incompatible options.