There were more than 2 choices. The Republicans and Democrats have everyone convinced that if you vote for a 3rd party, you're throwing your vote away. They rally people around hot-button issues to distract everyone from the fact that they are 90% the same. If people want change they need to stop voting for Republicans and Democrats, especially at the national level. Even if you don't care, go out and vote for a 3rd party candidate. Barring a miracle, they're not going to win any major elections right away. But as their vote tallies steadily increase, it will drive the point home to the politicians in both of the major parties that we are sick of their shit. They're not going to change until their jobs are threatened.

Ok, this might be useful at the airport or something. But I actually like to talk to the bartenders at my favorite bars.

Agreed. However, I think the biggest factor here is: one of these happened at a school and the other one did not. Possessing a BB gun or even a butter knife at school can get you arrested. And "works bombs" and the like are already in a pretty gray area outside of school. I think that the felony is overkill, but I would find it pretty surprising for any student to do something like this and not get charged with a crime these days.

The way I handled it while working an IT in college: disassemble the drives. After everything was taken apart, I would destroy the platters by shattering them or bending and breaking them into multiple pieces (depending on the material.) I would also break any circuit boards. Then I would throw all the scrap in the trash and save the magnets (because they're awesome.) It was a good way to kill time while waiting for a disk re-image to finish.

I don't think that lossy audio compression is inherently hurting recorded music. Lossy is fine as long as good encoders and sufficient bitrates are used. At a certain point, no one can tell which is which (lossy or lossless) in a blind test.

I mostly listen to MP3 encoded rock music. The loss of quality is very noticeable to me at 128kbps. The loss of quality is much harder to discern at 192, especially if a quality encoder is used. I use LAME -V 2 when I rip CDs and usually end up with average bitrates from ~190-215, and I can't tell the difference between those MP3s and the original CD.

IMO there are bigger problems facing recorded music anyway. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

I'm not afraid of Google Glass.

If Glass becomes ubiquitous, the ramifications could be amazing. However, they could also be quite scary. But just because Glass could become scary doesn't mean that it will. I think that now would be a good time to reexamine our privacy laws and define what is ok and what is not.

SimCity had a closed but free beta. I participated in it. There were no requirements that you preorder the game or purchase anything else.

You're right, it is definitely a state issue. But we need other states to go along with our plan or it messes things up. I live in Indiana where we didn't used to practice DST. We ended up adopting it because it was decided that the drawbacks of being out of sync with everyone else were worse than the drawbacks of practicing DST. I don't like DST, but going alone causes problems too. We need to do exactly what Rep Johnson is trying to do: convince states to join a pact and drop DST together.

While modern DSLR cameras might have large buffers, normal consumer-grade or even enthusiast-grade point-and-shoot cameras don't necessarily have them. IMO it makes sense for an average person to buy a higher speed card. They're probably only buying one card anyway, and the price difference between a slow card and a fast card is small enough to make it worth it.

On a side note, it seems like if a company really wanted to bounce some questions off of random geeky heads, it would be more productive to write up the questions and have the intern go ask them on tech forums. "Ask Slashdot"

Does it really seem likely that a company would take the time to go through resumes and hold interviews just for the purpose of extracting "free" information from interviewees about their specific problems? Or does it seem more likely that a company would ask interviewees about their specific problems so that they can hire the one who has the best solution to it?

When I get asked specific questions in interviews, I'm happy to give the best answers that I can give.

People say that you get the "flu" from the flu vaccine because "flu" has become such a generic term for being ill. People say they have the "stomach flu" when they have norovirus or food poisoning of some kind. They say they have a "touch of the flu" when they have a cold. They don't realize that influenza is a specific illness that has a very specific set of symptoms. This is a pet peeve of mine.

That being said, many of the symptoms of the flu or a cold are caused by your immune system's own response to the virus rather than the virus itself. A vaccine causes an immune response too. Some people really do feel slightly unwell after getting a flu vaccine or any other vaccine. This is why they say it gives them the flu: because they don't define the flu properly, and because the vaccine really does make them feel under the weather. If you look at the side effects of the vaccine, they do somewhat resemble the flu (although they're much milder):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_vaccine#Side_effects

I don't personally get the flu shot because I don't get the flu that often anyway, and I figure I'll just take my chances. But it's completely reasonable to expect healthcare workers to be vaccinated when they're dealing with some groups of people who are particularly susceptible to the flu.

Technically, if you sell your physical media, you probably also have to delete the digital copies that you created from that media. Realistically, no one will ever come after you unless you're sharing them online, so you probably don't have to worry about this.

I'm not sure what they're hoping to do other than to harass law-abiding gun owners, but this is a bad idea regardless. It will give criminals a list of people who have guns at their houses. It may make them safer from break-ins by criminals looking for some easy cash and no trouble, but it could make them targets for criminals who are specifically trying to get a hold of guns.

Different types of guns have different uses. The people I know that have multiple guns tend to be outdoorsmen or collectors. They use them to hunt, shoot targets, shoot pest animals, and for personal protection. The people I know of who have used guns recklessly more often than not just own a single handgun.