Yeah! My boss and I had a meeting in Boston on Monday, he lived in lower Westchester and I lived in Poughkeepsie at the time. So I got a rental and drove to Boston Sunday afternoon and stayed in a motel Sunday night. My boss went to LaGuardia on Monday and flew up, and I picked him up at the airport and we went to the meeting. Then I dropped him at the airport and drove home Monday afternoon.The rental car, gas, and motel went on the expense account, and I found it a reasonably pleasant trip (except for driving in Boston which is NEVER pleasant).

To take the plane with him I would have had to get up at 3-4am to get down to LaGuardia for the plane ... something I really hate doing! I think I made the right choice on that one.

I wouldn't mind flying if it weren't for the damn airports. Arrive two hours early, put up with all that security that keeps getting worse and more intrusive, what a pain! And most times it's not cheap, either.

And then there is the placement of airports. Once I had to go from Poughkeepsie NY to Boston. Figure a 2 hour drive to the airport, wait that two hours because they want you there early, flight time, and getting from the airport to somewhere to stay. I got a rental car and it only took me four hours to drive, that's HALF the time.
No thanks.

Down here in Florida, they used to have a nice flight from Orlando-Sanford to where we wanted to go, but that went belly up. Now it's a one-two hour drive down to Orlando International (and the one-hour option involves paying a small fortune on the damn toll roads they have here, but that's a different gripe).

Airplanes, airports, and flying are just NOT CONVENIENT!

I don't have a Kindle. I doubt if i will ever buy a Kindle. Don't know about games or music or movies, but when it comes to books I buy them in the ultimate DRM-free format - PAPER! Nobody has yet figured out how to put DRM on good ol' fashioned books. No problems buying them new OR used, no problems getting them from the library.
In at least this one area, I take pride in being a Luddite!

$35 for a book? I wrote a book and (through not making the best choice of publishers) to date I have made less than $20 on it. Some people SPEND money to self-publish, and end up making less than they spent. Should we have to pay another $35 to register a copyright?

Or a short story. Some markets pay $10, $5, $1 for a story ... should we have to pay $35 to regi9ster a copyright? No way!

But I agree that the current term is too long ... way too long! Go back to the 28 years or something similar - perhaps the greater of 28 years or life of author. And maybe one FREE renewal, but only by the original author, no estates, trusts, corporate purchasers, or corporations claiming work-for-hire, all those just get the 28 years and that's it. PERIOD!

Would Disney really go bankrupt if Steamboat Willie dropped into the public domain?

No, you have it backwards. Chapter 11 is "reorganize and recover," Chapter 7 is "bye, bye, company!"

I'm beginning to think ... and hope ... that the "True Name" for Windows 7 is really going to be "Windows Chapter 7." Wouldn't that be nice?

It's hard to beat some of the old classics, like Kasner and Newman's "Mathematics and the Imagination" or the four-volume "The World of Mathematics." Assuming, of course, that those are still in print.

Leisure Suit Larry is MODERN compared to its predecessor. LSL 1 was based on a text adventure game called "Soft Porn Adventure" originally written (I think) in Apple BASIC but then ported to PC BASIC. A lot of the puzzles and events in LSL 1 were identical to those in SPA. Only the user interface was changed to a graphics format.

I must have been 7 or 8 when I got my first "ChemCraft" chemistry set for Christmas. By the time I was in Junior High, my best friend had a well-equipped chem lab in his basement, and I had one in an unused upstairs bedroom (my father even ran in gas for my bunsen burner). We used to make regular trips (driven by parents, of course) to a local science supply business to purchase glassware, chemicals, and such.

Now we have stupid paranoid lawmakers passing stupid paranoid laws, and even stupider fogbound bureaucratic government agencies enforcing the laws in a totally ham-handed manner.

Aaaarrrrgh!

Is there **ANY** way to get rid of all this idiotic nonsense?

(I could suggest that we elect Libertarians to **ALL** public and lawmaking posisitons, but I have a feeling that's not going to happen ... anyone have a better idea?)

The only thing Obama was more positive in for this election: He POSITIVELY SPENT LOTS MORE MONEY!

This was an E-bay election, and Obama way outbid his opponent.