How to tell if there's a partial solar eclipse occurring in Seattle: the weather looks even greyer than usual.

(It looked a bit dark out gone 6pm, the sun being completely hidden by clouds rather than just the moon. I think it got a bit brighter again afterwards, although that might have been wishful thinking.)

The August 21st, 2017 eclipse has a big long smear of totality across the northern USA. Seriously, drop whatever you're doing and go and see it. I saw the August 11th, 1999 eclipse from a patch of woodland somewhere on the French-Belgian border, and despite heavy cloud it was an amazing experience. The whole thing about birds going into trees to roost? Absolutely true. I've yet to decide where to go to see the 2017 eclipse, but it's going to be somewhere cloudless and definitely non-Belgian.

No, 110*sqrt(2) as I originally had it. My error-checking has errors. AAAARGH.

That's 110/sqrt(2). My typing is defective.

Voltage is fixed at 110VAC

Erm... Alternating current? Also, it's 110V AC rms, so it peaks at +/- 110*sqrt(2) = 155V.

Also, one slightly sweaty hand contacting a neutral pin while the other slightly sweaty hand touching a screwdriver touching live equals the possibility of a nice, healthy current across the heart.

(Admittedly I was brought up on manly European electricity instead of this puny American stuff, but I still wouldn't risk it.)

Yes, and thank you! It CAN be done.
Case in point: I happen to know the blogger who made the news last week for exposing the weakness in the TSA's scanners; as long as I've known him he's been fighting his own legal battles without representation. In college he fought parking tickets - and more often than not he won. Then he went into business for himself and (successfully, AFAIK) sued clients for non-payment. Now he's trying to take his case against the TSA to the Supreme Court.
He's part of the reason I've decided to fight my (first) traffic ticket on my own. Go Jon!

I managed to pre-order one in the USA through the Farnell export site; this was about 8:20am GMT. The page has now gone to a register-your-interest form, so probably not much use now.

Price GBP 24.55, estimated delivery date 16/04/2012. No idea what postage will cost, I'm prepared for something horrendous to get it to Seattle.

What people are missing is that they're now build-to-order. Instead of before, where the Raspberry Pi organisation had an initial batch of 10,000, the sale of which would fund the next batch to arrive at some indeterminate point in the future - RS and Farnell are ordering the things from the manufacturers themselves.

I was watching with amazement as both RS and Farnell got nuked off the intertubes within seconds of the announcement. This board is popular. The previous plans for ordering wouldn't have worked at all.

Would Apple have coped better with such a launch? Probably. But as the Raspberry Pi twitter feed says: "Apple has a market cap of $500bn. We have Liz's collection of fridge magnets and a few coins down the back of the sofa."

I'm really looking forwards to my Pi arriving. Given that I was expecting to wait at least until the summer to get one, things are going well!

So essentially you are arguing against progress because the movies of yesteryear told the story just as good as the movies of today? You got modded up for it too; on what other subject could an argument against technology get a positive moderation on /.?

BTW, I'd love to see how you'd bring this scene to the big screen with negative printing.

Bridge on the River Kwai had a budget of $3,000,000 in 1950s money. That's 24 million and change in 2012 dollars. Got another bad argument you want shot down?