"He is believed to be the sole author of the Windows Vista operating system."

He'll be remembered as one of the most malevolent and self-interested sacks of human waste ever to walk the Earth. A man whose excesses knew no maximum height and who's cruelty knew no lowest depth. He was foul, despicable and disgusting... but I don't think even he was that evil.

Yeah that sounds pretty dumb. But also weird: They're talking about lush gardens and foliage on a building that was inspired by something that existed on a dessert planet with no vegetation... Are they going for aesthetics, or is this the harbinger of a drastic ret-conning of Tatooine's landscape for the next media release? With Lucas, you can never be sure.

A friend of mine in med school wanted to help out with the building/early staffing of a hospital in Ethiopia, but she wasn't selected for the program (so she went to Cambodia instead to do other humanitarian work). I know nothing whatsoever about the details, but I have to imagine any hospital built today, anywhere in the world, would have some sort of technical infrastructure. A network with WiFi or perhaps even some sort of program that manages and sorts patient data... all these sound within the skill set of the average geek and could make a major positive impact. Apologies for the lack of solid information and here-say nature of the post. Regardless of what you do, I wish you the best of luck and I hope you find a project where your talents are put to good use for the benefit many, many people.

I was hoping to get my friends together at 5:30 for an End Of The World party... but they're all busy early, so we're have a Post Apocalypse Party at 6:30. What a difference an hour makes.

You can read the story from the perspecive of Mordor if you like, but I'm still waiting for a version of the original LOTR that removes the offensive word "hobbit" and replaces it with the more politically correct, "large-footed halfling".

"He probably would have killed off at least 1 of those people if he had a second season."
And when he got a movie, he killed off two.

You are correct about the useless nature of "treat levels" which this system provided, however you missed the point of why it existed in the first place. It was brought about because the government needed to look like it was doing something, and in America that's just as important as actually doing something. Specific information would be far more useful, but it takes time and effort to collect, connect and distribute. If a threat is centralized in one place and that place gets a proper, specific warning, people everywhere else are going to say "Why didn't I get anything?" even if there's zero chance they were at risk. Additionally, there isn't always reliable or detailed intelligence with which to make good warnings. When there isn't, the government can't just say "Yeah, we have no intel today." because they'd look lazy and incompetent. Enter the Color Coded Terror Alerts, the government can please everyone by making something that sounds like a warning, but without the burden of correlating data, or the risk of revealing there is none.

There's a nice little add-on program for Photoshop called Exposure that will emulate all sorts of film stocks. Kodachrome, Portia, Velvia, Tri-X... hell, it'll even emulate Daugarrotype. Granted it's far from the real thing, but it does preserve the color palettes that give these film stocks their various personalities.

"The Gettysburg Address"

Four score and seven frags ago...

"None of these people are proven to be pirates. Uwe Boll claims they are."

Uwe Boll also claims to be a film-maker, so I think it's clear we should take anything he says with a grain of salt.