worked in a poor school to get grants to buy real computers - I've done my bit - what have you done but be am Anonymous Coward?

Well, Sinclair was under $100 - I'm sure the programmers who learned on it and liked it probably bought better computers later

" provide a programmable platform that was good for teaching" - well, they failed at that too. If that was their goal then they should have just bought all the kids LeapFrog LeapPads. More lessons, cost effective, and can be bought by people not part of some government partnership.

The 8-bit generation of under $200 computers did more to teach programming than OLPC has ever done. OLPC is a nifty government contractor and nothing more. Sinclair did more for programming than OLPC.

Let's see, I had to pay for a copy of windows on a machine that never ran windows, and now we have the whole EFI thing. History is a great teacher.

WWZ (the book) is a great piece of story telling, but it is tragically stupid and requires one hell of a suspension of disbelief. A group of AC-130s ends Yonkers. I would also imagine 5 fully armed rednecks in an F-150 can kill an amazing number of zombies. I get that these things are fascinating models for disease, but a plague would be a whole lot worse.

They are doing a rather large push to use the language in everyday things and movies is one of those things. If the next generation learns it at a young age it will be preserved. Language is an important part of any culture, one of the most basic building blocks to understand what is important.

note: to those wondering about modern terms - the language isn't dead and new terms are created. This is sometimes done by adding words together (the Dakota word for automobile is long and painful) or adding a suffix / prefix (well, computer for an English example).

I should point out that part of that map is not very truthful. It counts money going to Native American reservations, maintenance of Federal land, and military bases and missile silos as returned state funding. This is deceptive and tips the balance in states with a low population. I also believe they seem to be failing to note the "Minerals Management Service royalty".

If you get in, you can make some cash and Apple pays on-time.

oh, I see, the Mayan calender is really the due dates on some reports to the galactic overlords - great 2012 will be fun.

I get the feeling your comment is more "Insightful" then "Funny".

You must be in management :)

"The corn used for fuel was grown specifically for fuel, on fields that had been put-aside (pay to not grow type)."

I would love to see your source on this statement, because I believe it to be false.

Also, there is plenty of diesel being run in the winter in places like ND, you just use the winter formulation and don't use pure bio-diesel. It does take more battery to start then a regular gas engine. On the other hand, hydrogen has serious problems with cold weather (Honda's engineers pointed this out on one of the weekly news programs).

Here is the part I never got. Ok, two people both subscribe to the monthly service. They meet and pass songs back an fourth. Why in the heck did Microsoft / Record Companies limit the number of plays? What is the purpose? If it is tracking, then count the new songs at sync. It just seems like a really stupid way of doing things that misses the possibilities and actually saves Microsoft money on the download.

Well, it did last 10 years with ~267,000 miles. It wasn't a great car, but it did ok. I learned to hate the dealership enough that I wouldn't buy another car from them, and the four recalls were a little much. Some of the recalls where kinda scary (brake recall - damn anti-locks sounded like a jackhammer).

I gave it to my uncle who is a good mechanic, so he will probably fix it up and give it to someone to drive another 100,000.