Even if you have a recovery CD, it is so worth building your own install media. The key bit is you need to find your setupp.ini file. Find it, gmail yourself a copy. With that info you can turn a retail CD into an OEM CD.

(Info on setupp.ini)
http://www.thetechguide.com/howto/setuppini.html

The next bit is creating an OEM ISO. Use any WinXP CD you can find - MSDN, etc - and use NLite to create a custom image. Great opportunity to slipstream in the service packs, patches, and any tuning you want as well. Replace the old setupp.ini with yours, and burn the ISO. Use the license key that came with your machine.

http://www.nliteos.com/

As a bonus, this makes for a nice clean OS. None of the aftermarket junk the manufactures add in.

http://www.nliteos.com/

Well, sort of. For folks doing weblogic portal development or even the stock weblogic server install, it still uses the eclipse based IDE as part of the install. Heck, I use it. The reason why it might not show up is the wls/wlp version also comes with jrocket - the former intel jvm which is smoking fast on x86/x86-64 hardware. I know I did not have any hiccups.

The obvious thing would be to send them an invoice for a commercial license to your asset. Odds are, accounting will be more than happy to process it. No need to sue, or threaten to... Hell, you might just snag yourself a customer, if you are not careful for other assets too.

XP (x64) users here too. On a desktop, it was stupid easy. The mainboard and video card both had XP-64 drivers, which covered most of the hardware. (One thing that nVidia got right). Setting up XP-64 on my laptop took a bit more work, substituting Server 2003 drivers where the XP drivers did not do the trick.

Only a very small set of apps have issues, and most of those can be fixed by removing a brain dead installer restriction on the version of NT. Fixing ITunes was a real treat... Someone at Apple deserves a good beating for that one.

Most of my games are supported as well. A couple games, out of a very large steam collection, have issues. The worst is probably Dirt 2, where the stupid games for windows live client does not work, disabling the auto save. When I benchmarked COH, TF2, and a few of the other games I play - XP64 was faster than Win7 on the same hardware. Tis a shame that more people don't know about XP64, other than folks with an MSDN subscription or a workstation.

These UAVs are essentially remote-controlled aircraft piloted by real pilots.

Real pilots, who have no physical skin in the game. When I'm flying, I make damn sure I don't hit anything. In the class of aircraft I fly, but I suspect it holds true for almost any aircraft, a mid-air collision is a terminal accident. It would be very easy, as a drone operator, to not have that sort of visual focus.

It would be one thing if they are talking about flying these things at 50k or better, where they are in IFR space. They are not, however. More often then not the surveillance drones the police or other locals are thinking at 10k or less - which is in VFR, or my typical airspace.

I doubt they will use a railgun for that purpose though.

Actually, if they can do a magnetic launch - perhaps more catapult than disposable sabot - that would be the way to send stuff back from the moon. No soft tissue parts to worry about, so the high G launch would not matter for mineral return. Solar energy is abundant, so creating a magnetic flux and even molding stone return structures would allow for much more frequent returns than using a fuel based return. Only looking at 2.4 km/s to escape the moon's gravity well, vs 11.2 km/s here on earth.

The 2.8ghz i7-930 is $199 vs $342 for a 2.93ghz i7-875K, so almost double the price for 0.13ghz more.

To be fair, the Microcenter price is a bit of a loss leader. Trying to get a 930 just about anywhere else, and it goes for ~$288. While the multiplier is locked, the FSB on both the 920 and 930 can be bumped up to some crazy amounts. My experience with the 920 let the x21 multiplier clock up to a stable 4.6ghz using a H50 cooler. Same sort of overclocks folks are seeing with the $1000 975 Extreme Edition version.

It will be nice when the stock multipliers start hovering around 4ghz by default, rather than everything dabbling around 3.

They have zero tolerance for the children. Why would they expect parents to hold them to a more 'enlightened' viewpoint? What is good for the goose...

The problem is that since it's not a multi purpose media player like the PS3, people have to justify their purchases to specifically playing games. At least with the Sony machine you can play ordinary Blu-ray disks.

With the release of the Netflix player, we use our Wii to stream movies all the time. I know mine gets more use for media than games. It works really nicely.

(The PS2 still plays the DVDs, and while it would have been nice if the Wii could do that too, the TV it is hooked up too hardly appreciates the S-Video connectors, much less blu-ray)

My thoughts would be to bring our own back. If you harden a satellite as defense against anti-sat weapons, I suspect it might have the unwanted effect of letting critical bits survive re-entry when it does leave orbit.

Christians do have the advantage in the "whose religion is inherently violent" mudslinging match that nobody was killed in Jesus name while Jesus was alive, or while any of his students were alive, or their students, or their students, or their students, or their students.

http://bible.cc/john/18-10.htm

I'm pretty sure Peter was going for a head shot, and just got the ear. (A bit of context, this is the same Simon Peter that was one of the inner circle of followers - heck, the first Pope, if you will. Peter took a swipe at the High Priest's servant as they came to arrest Jesus, kicking off the process. While he might have been a lousy shot, the intent was sure as heck there, followed by explicit instructions to put the sword away.