A wide table in Excel/OO.calc, CAD. I agree with you though. Generally it's not needed.

Also should have added, that in both cases both monitors have different resolutions, which makes windows even harder to use well. I'd still like a third monitor. (hopefully when I get a new work laptop).

I'll bite... I use windows XP dual monitors at work and Gentoo Linux dual monitors at home. Both setups are nvidia video cards.

Work: I use the nvidia config utility to give me viewports. These are not as nice as the ones in XFCE4 mainly as they have been grafted in, and many windows apps don't like them, they do work. Multi-monitors are setup using windows builtin tools for that. Main screen on the left, secondary on the right. This means I need yet another third party program to mangle backgrounds so that they display correctly. (hopefully this has been fixed in win 7). I also used tweakUI from MS to setup my mouse to be X style with autoraise. This also only mostly works. Excel is my biggest grievance, I cannot have one workbook open on each monitor and retain DDE(dynamic data exchange, paste values, formats, etc) between workbooks.

Home: I have enabled dynamictwinview and used nvidias tool to set up the dual monitors. Main on the left secondary on the right. The background image just works. Full screen on a single monitor(mplayer, vlc, wine games, etc) all just work. XFCE4 provides great support for viewports. With the newer nvidia drivers, I'm not sure I even need the nvidia tools, and could just go back to using xrandr. In general everything works well on linux.

Preface: I'm a mechanical engineer who makes custom designs of a "standard" product for customers all day. Getting correct answers back quickly is a big part of getting sales.

Okay, seeing as I use Microsoft Excel pretty heavily every day at work I'd like to point out the reason it gets so much use in the engineering world is that it really is the lowest common denominator. No one that isn't fresh out of school (i.e. less than 3-4 years on the job) has even touched VB.Net or any other programming language. I have some python scripts running around to do a handful of things for me, but any tool that would like to send to others is done in excel. Not to mention that trying to add support for calculations via DLL in something like MsSql or postgresql would be a huge pain and take probably an hour of setup when all I want to do is bang out a quick set of repeat calcs on 100 lines of input. Despite having pywin installed, and a fully working python setup on my windows (XP, I have to get a new computer to get a new OS.) machine, Excel is still my goto app for getting things done quickly. It lets me build decent looking tables with a hand full of keystrokes and clicks (thanks MS for letting me pin macros). It lets me do some basic sed/cut/grep sorts of operations on my input data. It lets me run the same calc on each row/column of input in a few keystrokes. There are times I push my input data through gvim, or a one-off python script, and I have even been known to push data back to my home computers via ssh to do some more advanced stuff, but again, it all ends up in excel.

dynamictwinview (nvidia) and XFCE4 here as well. Works out of the box, as did my old laptop with intel graphics and randr.

Where are your storing the rips? also are they a stream dump of of the blue ray disk?

I didn't see an interface that would take a streamdump of my copy of serenity. ~30-40Mbps for just the video, and then add 5.1 or 7.1 DTS on top of that and the 10/100 ethernet won't keep up, nor an SD card, or a USB wifi dongle... My hardwired gigabit will though.

depends, 80% in a criminal trial, no way. In a civil trial 80% sounds like a preponderance of evidence.

Disclaimer: I've only been called for jury duty once, and was going to college out of state at the time, so was unable to go.

Never said it was trivial, just "do-able" given enough funding, and talented people. Also note, that I agreeing for the most part with the article, and against the GGP, in that the loss of the F16 engine is basically a loss of a F22/F35 engine.

Nothing I saw reported to have been leaked by wikileaks contained info on on-going, or future-useful info.

To use a car analogy, at this point leaking the spec's to a horse and buggy would not be upsetting at all, but a '64 mustang would provide a substantial amount of the info needed to build a modern car. An out of date "un-safe" car, but a car none the less.

I think there is a difference between the info wikileaks was leaking (info on past events), and technical data for currently used devices. I would say that if wikileaks were to release plans to the engine in the P51 I wouldn't car at all. It is no longer in use, as it has been replaced by newer tech. I'm willing to bet that there is not a substantial difference between the F16 engine, and the F22/F35 ones.

I wonder how long it would take to engineer and build a jet engine with the info available on the internet about jet engines and various design issues, for example, keeping the inlet air at below super-sonic speeds while the aircraft is flying at supersonic speeds. There was an article on /. a while back about that, and I believe it included basic solution.

What do you propose we replace "the creaking DNS system" with?

So why is foxconn spending hundreds of millions on automating its factories in china?

If only i had the option of a train/bus/bike to get to work... Unless I start working the night shift here in the upper mid-west i don't have the option of the bus. Work is an a suburb 16 miles from home, and the bus runs from the 'burb to downtown in the morning, and back out again at night. There is a single run per day and if i miss the bus, I would need to call and pay for a taxi, in a low density area, and that would cost quite a lot of cash. Not to mention that if I wanted to stop off at the grocery store on my way home, that would mean I'd also not have a bus for the rest of the journey.

Biking would also be a thought, but have you tried to bike 16 miles to work, in a 15 mph wind when it is 10F out and there is 6+ inches of snow on the ground?

Ahh, but what would you do?

I know what i would be doing, designing/programming the robots that do service work, but then I'm a mechanical engineer, and I don't see that field going anywhere anytime soon (on a macro scale).

yes see Auto-Tune

I'd probably be willing to buy one at 1.5x the normal price if I could watch the manufacturing line make my burger. Even better if there are signs at each station explaining what it is doing and how the interesting part of the station works. for example, how they pick up a lettuce leaf at the condiment station.

Granted it is likely that even an automated burger joint would still need a small number of people, for things like unloading trucks, loading hoppers, fixing the machine when it breaks, cleaning the machine. I suspose i could a floor washing robot for the floors, but cleaning chairs and tables seems like it will be a long way off.

Lots of places are already semi-automated. Next time you are in a McDonalds, pay attention to the fry machine, most only require the human to add fries to a basket, and press a button. I'm not sure why they haven't gone a step farther, and decided to automate putting fires in baskets. they could use historical sales data, current orders, and what ever other info is relevant to adjust fry production so it would match demand very closely and reduce possible waste, and provide a higher quality product to the customer. I.E. hot fries.