Do they have plastic bullets?

Sure, they would be hard to detect. Just askin'.

Also, metal detectors don't only detect solid blocks of metal. They can faintly see all sorts of objects.

So here's the deal... some people will no-doubt be screaming that a background check should be required before buying a 3D printer. And we can of course extend the argument and say background checks should be required before going to the hardware store. Etc etc.

At some point, people are going to re-look at the argument that it is people with bad judgement and/or negligence that cause gun violence and gun accidents. The arguments against guns that center on availability of equipment are valid, but there are no practical solutions.

What, take guns away from citizens? Make them harder to buy? These arguments vanish when you realize that the people committing crimes don't follow the rules, and that this country is filled with guns already in private hands. Not to mention the constitution allows for gun ownership. It just won't work.

Ok, so fast-forward to 2013 where you can 'print' your own guns or just go to the hardware store and build one the old-fashioned way.

The only practical way to protect against gun violence and gun negligence is through education. It is through learning about morals, causes and consequences, and gun safety.

Siting in front of a video game all day that awards points for kills is not going to work.

Oh, and I am not saying this is something the government can simply thrust upon people -- this will take decades of careful work from parents and educators alike. There aren't any "turn-key" solutions to gun violence and gun negligence. But the long road is worth the trip.

Here's where he misses the boat: Nobody should do a job they don't enjoy if it is avoidable.

I'd much rather work for less money and enjoy my job than hate my job and have more money. This of course assumes both paths are fully available and that I don't have an enormous money problem.

Jobs you enjoy lead to passion, and passionate work often leads to promotions, business opportunities, other interesting work, side projects, etc.

I'm an engineer. I recently moved to a job where I get paid less and the cost of living is enormously higher. But I LOVE the work. And that, my friends, is priceless.

I was totally with you until you said:
--snip--
  That 97% think that man is causing climate change does not mean that it is right. It simply means it is the best theory that fits the observations
--snip--

This is only a statistic about published papers. The statistic might say more about which models are most considered for publication than which models best fit the observations.

A better study might look at the scrutiny applied to these 97% vs the *rejected* papers that disagreed with the 97%.

Again, all we have here is a statistic about paper publishing.

They might as well have scanned over the "common" media (TV, newspapers, etc) and generated similar statistics.

You cannot do these type of studies and from these data conclude what the "best" theory is. You can only say what is the most popular. Well, most popular *published*.

I mean, obviously, this is not something anyone would want to see for any reason.

And if anyone were to see them, why, they might find who is responsible for the utter lack of intelligent action before and during the 2012 September 11 terrorist attack.

Yeah, we definitely can't open that data...

This doesn't show power consumption. It only shows ratios that are considered a sort of measure of efficiency.

It's like showing "miles per gallon" instead of "gallons used". In the case of facebook, they may be driving at 40 MPG, but they drive a million miles a day and that's a lot of fuel!

Hook, line, and sinker.

He's taking the blame to remove heat and save the company. Probably has very little to do with him.

There's a company called "Batch PCB" that will do small quantities of PCBs for reasonable costs if you don't mind waiting a bit. They just put several designs together onto one PCB, send it off where they are getting a bulk rate, and then cut the boards apart when they are done, and send them out.

The hassle of running a machine like that is really not worth it.

But yes, very interesting and impressive nonetheless.

You need to get over windows.

Windows is THE main reason you are having trouble supporting your folks from 600 miles away.

I would install linux (Debian if you're pretty seasoned with linux, Ubuntu otherwise), give her a non-admin account, import her "My Documents" folder and "Pictures" folder from windows (and put desktop shortcuts in). Set up a browser, install the same plugins (flash, adblock, what have you), set the homepage and bookmarks up identically, and believe me, an AOL user will be just fine with this.

Explain that at her level of computer knowledge, it's dangerous to go any other route. It is worth giving up the ability to install any one of the thousands of "seasonal screensavers" (spyware with pretty pictures) for windows xp in exchange for peace of mind and reliability.

If you do this, and give them exactly what they need, which is probably a web browser and skype, everyone wins.

As a bonus, remote admin is a snap. Don't ever install any updates (your mom can't anyway without admin access). Keep it simple! Linux (especially Debian and by extension Ubuntu) has come a long way on the desktop and is very user-friendly. My five-year-old son uses it every day and has yet to complain about it.

"windows and mac are not an option": Well what are you really asking then? "How can I keep my mom using windows and aol without having any problems?" Good luck with that. Don't kid yourself.

I second this, for coding, having portrait mode displays is great. Incidentally, lots of websites look better in portrait and you'll generally get more content and less white space.

I have two 30-inch displays where I work, one is the matte cinema display from Apple, the other is a Dell. The Apple one is softer and probably more 'linear' in it's response to brightness, the Dell seems to get darker and brighter but tends to look a bit darker than the Apple. Both are highly acceptable though!

I would say unless you're doing graphics work, focus on the size and resolution (and price) and let the graphics guys argue about color and gamma.

You can use IF() to detect zero and empty cells.

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/34638-if-cell-blank-do-%22x%22-if-cell-zero-do-%22y%22-if-cell-%3E-zero-do.html

So what's wrong with average()?

It's a simple function call, the input is the data, the output is the average... if you were in C this would be a lot harder without some data formatting or in between functions.

Excel's programming language is definitely not bad. There are plenty of things to not like about Excel, but the language isn't one.

Try Matlab if you really need something more advanced, but don't count on loving the language if you hate Excel's...

Then, it vibrates and you end up writing all over the page.

Yeah, this sounds great doesn't it?