Keep in mind that with Fellowship, especially in the beginning, Tolkien was aiming the writing at children. The story started as an extension of The Hobbit, and got more serious as Tolkien developed the plot. That's why you have some really weird stuff like Tom Bombadil at the beginning. Of course, the writing remains awkward, but it loses simplicity quickly.

Wacom actually makes screens you can draw on, it's called the Cintiq. They are, however, quite a bit more expensive than the Surface Pro. Of course, the Surface Pro won't replace the larger model Cintiq devices.

The real problem is that the RT, which is the subject of the article, is a fancy tablet with a nice keyboard cover. There's no legacy application support, for obvious reasons to anyone reading Slashdot. There's no Wacom digitizer functionality. It does have Office, in the Desktop view. Microsoft failed on the RT by not having any obvious advantages over the major competitors in the space and by creating confusion between the RT, the Pro, and plain Windows 8. If a potential customer isn't sure which Windows tablet they need, they are just as likely to get an iPad or Android tablet because of the ecosystem those have.

Ingres is still supported and developed commercially by a company called Actian. They also have a GPL version of the database software you can download.

It's certainly not anything in high demand, but it seems that it's still commercially viable for now.

Yeah, the major US operators have done their best to make money no matter what way you go. If you pay full price for your phone or go for their subsidized offerings, you still have to pay $100/mo for service if you want a data plan. There is no service price difference either way. Often, you have to go on a two year contract either way as well. If you don't take their subsidized phone, they just make a better profit on you. That makes it advantageous for customers to upgrade every two years as there is no benefit to them for keeping an older device.

The only major operator that isn't that way is T-Mobile, where you got a lower price if you brought your own device. That was on their old "value" plans. Now they have fully unbundled the two things and you can get a phone with discount on an interest-free installment plan and choose whatever service you want. The downside is that T-Mobile has fairly poor coverage outside their major areas. I'm lucky to be in a region that has decent coverage with them. It will be interesting to see how the other majors respond to the new T-Mobile plans, but they might just be too big to care.

Of course, pre-paid MVNOs operate differently, but are subject to the whims of the majors upon whom they depend for connectivity.

I only wish such good mobile plans were here in the US, but the corporations have made sure to make it near impossible to happen.

In the US, out of the four major carriers, only one (T-Mobile) offers post-paid service that is cheaper if you bring your own device. For all the others, the monthly price is not affected by if you take a subsidized phone or not. This makes it advantageous to constantly "upgrade" your phone when the contract is up. Doing so does lock you into a contract with high early termination fees, discouraging you from leaving. The only advantage of being month-to-month with those carriers is if you are planning to switch. Also, given the fragmentation in spectrum usage in the US, switching carriers usually requires purchasing a compatible phone.

The MVNOs such as Virgin Mobile, Boost Mobile, TracFone/Straight Talk/Net10, and others operate a little differently and may offer lower prices if you bring your own unlocked device.

For pre-paid service, you usually have to pay for the phone up-front, so there is often no subsidized price.

I understand that the situation is different outside the US, so it might very well be cheaper in other countries to pay the full retail price of the device.

For those who are having trouble looking it up, Cocoanut Grove fire on Wikipedia.

Looking at the chart, and reading their descriptions, it does look like they are following insustry-standard codes for what they mention at least. The only difference is that they are painting the whole pipe, not just marking by bands.

Examples:
Picture 5 (http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/all/5)
Caption: "The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes return the warm water back to be cooled."
The suggested markings ("Chilled Water Supply" and "High-Temp Hot Water Return") match the colors shown. You can also see labels on the pipes over on the right of the picture fitting the description.

Picture 9 (http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/all/9)
Caption: "The bright pink pipe in this photo transfers water from the row of chillers (the green units on the left) to a outside cooling tower."
The suggested markings state that this color should be used for condensate / steam, which seems to match the description. Likewise, you can see a label to the left on the green pipe stating "Chiller Condenser Water Supply". The suggested markings indicate this would also match. The label on the yellow pipe is "Chiller Condenser Water Return", which might possibly fit with "Low-Temp Hot Water Return" as suggested on the linked page.

So, it looks like they are following standard conventions as close as possible. Keep in mind this tour isn't just for people who live and breathe pipe standards, it's also for the average person too and is meant to be a little fun.

Nothing built-in, unfortunately, but Google Voice works well. If both parties have it, they can send messages to and from the application and it's all counted as data. Since it's a normal phone number, people without it can use standard SMS on their end. The only difference with normal SMS is that Google Voice doesn't handle short codes (those four or five digit numbers often used by marketers and special lists). If you want something even more cross-platform, Google Talk, which uses XMPP, also works great and is a full-fledged IM service.

Given the animosity between Apple and Google over the whole Android thing, I don't think they'll be working on or agreeing to any kind of cross-platform messaging system anytime soon. Even then, they'll run into issues with the cell carriers in the US who will be very upset over being cut out of revenue they used to get.

Actually, the USPS doesn't have any air fleet nor do they do own any railroad assets. They have to purchase space from other carriers like UPS, FedEx, DHL, and AmTrak. Basically, like any other private company, they have to contract that part out.

I'm not sure if they get any special breaks on their ground vehicles, though.

I wish CSS could support a bit more programmer-centric syntax too, but I've found a great stop-gap with SASS and Compass using the SCSS syntax. It's basically like CSS, but better because it supports variables, mixins (reusable snippets), and other shortcuts for making CSS. The tools themselves might be coded in Ruby, but they generate plain CSS that you can use anywhere.

Yeah, if you don't use OS X enough to be familiar with the annoyance, you would probably be confused. It's quite the pain when you're used enough to the way the other OSes handle it and happen to be using OS X.

I think the escape sequences mentioned are similar to what is described here.

Interesting on Firefox behavior. I normally don't use the keyboard for movement there, so I wasn't aware. Besides, the behavior is different depending on where the "focus" is. For example, textboxes in forms grab control of the movement keys. Scrolling with a touch pad or mouse is more consistent.

Concerning VI, "G" in command mode will get you to the last line of the file you are editing. Likewise, "1G" or ":0" (zero) will take you to the first line. Similarly, ^ and $ will take you to the beginning and end of the current line in command mode. If you're not familiar with all the text movement options, I highly suggest learning as it makes things like deleting 10 lines at once very easy.

Oh, thanks for the information. I don't work all that often in OS X, so I wasn't aware of that modifier. I'd personally like the behavior the other way around, but it is what it is.

The issue the parent had is that certain keys on the keyboard behave different from how UNIX and Windows traditionally handle them. For instance, PgUp and PgDown only scroll the viewport. They do not move the cursor. The fun is when you're very used to the cursor moving and then press one of the directional arrows to find you're back in the original position. You have to remember to click the mouse in the document to re-set the cursor position. Likewise, Home and End move the viewport to the very top and bottom of the viewport, not the expected beginning and ending of the line, if you're in a multi-line textbox.

So, while the keys do work, they are quite different from other OSes out there, leading to some very annoying behavior if you're keyboard-centric.

That e-mail was written in 2010, after Oracle started the whole litigation deal. The explanation is that the enginer had looked over things and just taking a license, if it had to be done, was going to be less painful than essentially rewriting the whole platform.