I agree that it sounds like a scattering mechanism, but in that case how is it different than a simple matte finish? Matte finishes are just roughened enough to scatter rather than reflect images. I was hoping they'd announced a near perfect AR coating method.

I have to say that as annoying as the customer service is at Radio Shack, I respect the fact that you can still go in there, walk all the way to the back, and find racks and racks of honest to god electronic components. You can still get resistors, capacitors, jumpers, enclosures and tons of connectors. They're the only brick and mortar store I know of that still carries that stuff. I wish one of the big chains still had a "computer components" section for people who knew what they were doing. CompUSA, for all their faults, had a section in the store for people building PCs from scratch, so you could get motherboards, cases, etc.

Everywhere I've lived I've found a local computer repair store with better prices and service than BB or Staples or any big chain. I live in CT right now and around here it's PCW computers. They have intelligent people who don't bug you unless you ask them a question, and they sell high quality individual components. I don't know how the repair services are at these small stores, but it can't be worse than Geek Squad.

A few months ago I tried to set my Dad's computer up for wireless, so I went to BB for a standard PCI wireless card. They had absolutely none. I asked a salesperson if they had any, and he goes, "here's a USB one." He said USB is just like PCI, except it's on the outside of the computer. I explained that the computer has a lot of PCI slots, so I didn't want to waste a USB port on it. He goes, "computers don't even come with PCI slots anymore." I told him thanks for his time, I'm going to Staples. The guy at Staples had no idea what PCI was, and when I explained that it's a slot inside the computer, he couldn't believe that I'd actually take a cover off the computer. So I went to newegg and just ordered one.

And remember, I'm not talking about arresting. I'm talking about investigation.

I agree with you there. I certainly think that going off and arresting a person based on a 25% or 75% or even 99% chance that they'll commit a crime is ridiculous. But if that search inspires the local police department to, say tail you for a day or two to make sure you don't commit the crime, I don't see what the harm is. They wouldn't even have to talk to you - just make sure you're not doing something illegal. I think an analogous situation would be if you walked around in public asking strangers how to suffocate someone - eventually one of those strangers would get suspicious and go to the police, and the police would (or should) investigate.

Of course all this is in the limit of infinitely large police forces and budgets, and assuming people don't take advantage of it (e.g. using your buddy's phone to search for ways to kill someone, just for kicks...).

I agree with your logic, but I think the poster's argument was that NASA is still contributing to society outside of putting people into space. There's a vocal group of people out there that think the only things we got out of NASA were Tang and Velcro (neither of which came from NASA, incidentally), and that its current form is an utter waste of money. The poster is pointing out that NASA still is doing research relevant to society, not that society is necessarily better off than if NASA had never existed.

Wow you're the first person in this whole comments section to actually respond to the poster's question. Everyone else is so excited to tell the person what the best laptop is, they dont realize that the poster wants to know how to compare laptops, not which one to buy. I agree, newegg is the best place to go to make comparisons, especially for individual parts, but also for full systems.

Would they be able to use other, more modern wars/conflicts with more reliable numbers to test the same statistical analysis? For example, we know how many Americans died during, say, WWII better than during the U.S. Civil War. Would they be able to reproduce those numbers for WWII using their census-based analysis? Immigration/Emigration rates would be different, but they should be able to account for it in the same way they accounted for it in the 1860 timeframe. If they don't get it right for the 1940's, they're not going to get it right for the 1860's. The British also had quite a few wars (according to wikipedia) in the mid 1800's, during which there was a census, so they could compare to that as well if they wanted a comparable country in a comparable time.

I found that interesting as well. Even safari has small bumps up on the weekend. I do know that Firefox has become a lot more accepted in work environments probably because it's been around so long that IT trusts it by now. I wonder if the fact that Chrome usage increases more on Sundays is because enough people are still working on Saturdays that IE wins.

I thought you had to reverse the tachyon polarity.

Only if you route it through the deflector dish first.

The Northeast grid has gone down before, and there were no meltdowns. As other folks have pointed out, those things have backup generators. I assume that in the blackout of 2003, those generators kicked on.

That's true, which is why I said "mid-latitude and high-latitude" in my original post. I'm aware of the possibility that MSesow lives in an equatorial region, but in case he/she lives in a mid- or high-latitude region, these charts may be useful.

You're totally right, my bad. I should have said the CME from the flare will deliver a glancing blow to the planet. I didn't know that bit about the AR1429 vs. AR11429, very interesting. Is that something that NOAA has started doing, or is it just spaceweather.com? (I didn't call it "spot number", I just called it "spot 1429". Should have said "AR11429".)

At the lower left of the spaceweather.com site, there's a little chart that tells you the chances of high-latitude and mid-latitude geomagnetic storms over the next 1 and 2 days.

yeah yeah yeah, I noticed it after I submitted. Should've checked before hitting submit, yada yada yada...