"We need to get over this outdated notion that there's a "right" way to use a keyboard. There isn't."

That's probably true. There isn't necessarily one best way to use the keyboard, I don't think, especialy since finger propertions and keyboards themselves vary a little bit. But, there are definitely wrong ways to use a keyboard that can lead to repetitive strain injury.

Btw, I never took a touch typing class, and my standard "home" position gradually evolved to be *close* to that of a touch typist, but isn't quite (A-W-E-F on left hand, J-I-O-L on right hand). My speed is probably over 90wpm usually (been a while since I've taken a test). No typos while typing this post, no looking at keyboard. Being forced into touch-typing (arg, just made a typo as soon as I said it, but in my defense my cell phone was sitting on the monitor and it just went haywire for a second), I probably would've been slowed down like you were. I'd hate to see someone who was a self-taught typist end up with some sort of RSI, though!

See http://www.techlib.com/area_50/xraydefender.htm -- tho techlib.com isn't resolving right now (server down, I'll bet), so you'll just have to try an alternate source:

http://www.techlib.com.nyud.net:8090/area_50/xraydefender.htm coral cache says gateway timed out...
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/www.techlib.com/area_50/xraydefender.htm wayback machine doesn't have it archived...
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SErH8Fhj52cJ:www.techlib.com/area_50/xraydefender.htm+site:techlib.com+backscatter&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&ie=UTF-8&source=www.google.com -- you can at least read the text on google, and get thumbnails of the images on the page:
http://www.google.com/search?oe=UTF-8&q=site:techlib.com+backscatter&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi
Too bad the schematic isn't readable at thumbnail-size, but maybe techlib.com will be back up soon?

"OSS/DIY medical gear!"
Measurement is already here.
Link #1 - http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/
Link #2 - http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=homemade+ekg
Of course, control is another issue, but there's still some things you can do with little more than a soldering iron:
Link #3 - http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-A-TENS-Machine-to-Remove-Pain/

I think the imagery is supposed to evoke a sense of the human-drawn caricatures and pseudo-cartoons in Time and The New Yorker, to give the article an illusion of boldness/seriousness/elegance/grandeur/something ("delusion of grandeur" might be more appropriate---I could probably come up with more innovative uses---and just to give it a shot:
1) Campus bookstore for a school famous for engineering or aeronautics.
2) Set for a science-oriented education+news show starring former astronauts.
3) Large, manned environmental test chamber, akin to Biosphere-2 but less geared toward ecological studies.
There's three. Who else has ideas?)

Why run linux version 6 when you could run linux version 13?????
Thats right, YOU TOO could be running the latest and greatest, instead of an ancient, dinosaur version of linux! ;)

I have seen the sig "I like paying taxes; with them, I buy civilization." I do not think enough people have pondered that statement.

When I am next employed*, I will be more than happy to pay my taxes. After all, my fiance (who has a rare facial neuralgia) has benefitted from taxpayer money via state programs.

* = If you're in the delmarva / manhattan area, I'll work like a slave** for you to support myself and my fiance. Email me! 0.707107 at gmail.
** = Obviously, with all her health problems, she has still done me a world of good, or I wouldn't still be with her, so I care enough about her to work overnight shifts, overtime, etc., to make sure her healthcare costs are paid.

I got a Monster cable as a hook-up instrument cable for my bass guitar some years ago. It was what I could find with a thicker signal wire, hence less resistance; I thought it would have better SNR, as N is picked up all along the length so less attenuation of S should improve SNR. It turns out the shielding was *not as good* as the el-cheapo instrument cables I had been using, so there was actually more 60hz hum!

The poor who have rare neuropathies in their faces (like trigeminal neuralgia) do not relish the idea of being worked on by dental students. Sure, dental students working on the poor is useful, but it's not the best solution to the problem. Universal healthcare is really the best solution to that problem, although having dental students train on volunteers is still useful, though perhaps starting the training on robots would avoid some unfortunate accidents by newbies.

Or possibly utilize a surrogate mother. My gf and I have been looking at bother adoptions (adoption and surrogates) because she has to take *incredibly* strong antiepileptics for trigeminal neuralgia. Uterine transplantation seems almost like an unnecessary step---if your mother can be the surrogate, why try to move the uterus and bring additional risk on the baby?
Disclaimer: didn't RTFA.

What?!?! The INTERCAL manual hasn't been rendered obselete at all!
Of course, you really ought to start with fundamentals, like Brainf***, before moving on to a structured language like INTERCAL.

Ah, sounds sensible, then =) Hey, if you ever start up a fumble-finger wall of shame, can I be an honorary member? *g*

There's a scary amount of legacy code in VB. When I was interviewing for a job recently (PS: anybody hiring coders in the DelMarVA area?), the interviewer was asking about some porting work I had done. There were a whole pile of VB projects in use, only one or two of which the budgeters could justify examining---and that only meant re-working them in VB.net, so that they could be extended in the future without needing a legacy development environment.
VB already *is* the next COBOL.

This is the sort of thing I've considered doing, but I've worried about locking myself out, if I'm trying to connect remotely and having a particularly bad case of clumsy typing.
A similar example to my worry follows.... it's a very interesting idea, but I wonder what procedures you have in place to prevent the following??

---

Sancho:> Hey, orangesquid, can you check out something on sancho3 for me, in /var/log?
orangesquid:> sure, let me open a shell

os@orangesquid.net:~$ ssh sancho3.sancho.com
Resolver timed out
os@orangesquid.net:~$ grep sancho3 ~/sancho-hosts
11.22.33.49 sancho3
os@orangesquid.net:~$ ssh 11.22.33.46
^C "Dammit, clumsy hands"
os@orangesquid.net:~$ ssh 11.22.33.49
Connection timed out
os@orangesquid.net:~$ ping 11.22.33.49 -c3
Ping 11.22.33.49 (64 bytes) from 99.88.77.66
---
4 packets transmitted, 0 packets received
"Stupid auto-block..."

os@orangesquid.net:~$ mail sancho2000@gmail.com
Hey, can you unblock me? Typo!
.
os@orangesquid.net:~$
MAIL FROM: postmaster@sancho.com
You attempted to send mail to "sancho2000@gmail.com" from 99.88.77.66. This IP address has been banned. Sorry.

Oh, that's right! I forgot,thanks =)

Since you're clearly familiar with the series, I'm curious---what did you think of Forward the Foundation?
To me, it had a different feel (besides the fact that it was a prequel)---maybe a different pace, or a bit different writing style. Not in a bad way, but just something I noticed.

Can you point me to where in the series that's mentioned? I *sort of* remember something like that, but all that's coming to mind is the mind-reading human that confounded some of the best minds (outside of the monastic psychohistorians) in the Empire.