I did a "nuke the site from orbit" job on my sister's machine which had gotten infected from something she did to it. Spotting limewire on the machine, I uninstalled it and told her if it happened again (ie, her machine is loaded with malware and she's got crap like limewire installed), she'd have to pay me to clean up after her.

Oracle's fix going forward is probably to say "Everything will only run on Oracle Solaris, now piss off."

I remember that power brick -- saw one attached to the ill-fated inspiron model that used a prescott P4 (I believe it was the 9100) a few years ago.

Being able to solve NP-Complete or NP-hard problems optimally in polynomial time would allow engineers to produce better/smaller (on the circuit level) computer systems faster, as the field of physical design automation and testing is littered with NP-complete (or NP-hard) problems. It would also leave a lot of engineering researchers free to look into something else.

PS2 support, so far as I know, died with the PS3Slim, but that was a hardware change. My original model PS3 (sans OtherOS) still plays PS2 games quite happily. The PS2 support on the PS3 was by virtue of including most of the PS2 hardware in the PS3.

Yeah, my university has a biomedical engineering master's degree program. They're getting popular now.

And, last I heard, the fuel efficiency of rail is frickin' awesome. While the engine itself is around 1-2MPG (diesel), that engine is towing tons and tons and tons of equipment behind it (American Association of Railroads claims that they get around 457 tons moved one mile per gallon of diesel fuel).

The Sony eReader devices function well, I am told by people whose opinion I trust.

OneNote is a extremely useful piece of software, and the primary reason I keep an Win7 VM around. It easily qualifies for "best tool for the job". Nearest piece of work I've seen is Jarnal (pen input) and/or Tomboy (wikiish notes). The handwriting recognition and math functionality is top-notch (realizing that the handwriting subsystem shipped with Win7).

The Wii will still kill GameCube memory cards (due to heat - has happened to me, so +1 anecdote) if you leave them in and the machine on or in standby. Thus, I consider the Wii to have three operation modes: On (green light), Off (red light), and Overheat (orange light).

Slashdot needs an edit command which nukes karma associated with the post (resets modpoints). Although I've wondered now and then if /. should be considered more of a newsgroup than a forum.

Those color competitors, IIRC, had severe drawbacks to them in their own right (the Game Gear's larger form factor and needing 6 AAs for it -- reusing your 8-bit Master System design for a handheld was probably not the best idea) and the original Game Boy had deep market penetration. When Nintendo finally did produce a color version of the Game Boy, it was a pretty halfass color screen, but still maintained the platform benefits. Nintendo didn't produce a device with a screen "like" the Game Gear's until the Game Boy Advance; which was able to leverage improved screen tech.

I have the regular Nook, and I hope B&N does produce a color eInk device. The LCD in their new offering moves the device closer to 'generic 7" Android tablet' than electronic reading (IMHO). I bought the Nook on the strength of its eInk screen (less eyestrain, low power usage, etc), and have not been displeased with it.

s/free/fully subsidized/g

I'd briefly consider crackpots and wingnuts on that list, for certain values of "estimate".