And likewise, alcohol companies realize that every time alcohol facilitates a fatal car accident, or contributes to the destruction of a marriage, or the requirement for a liver transplant, the company and their product get a bad rap. "Too much" alcohol contributes to things like prohibition, excessive taxes on alcoholic beverages, the reason why "closing time" is a legally mandated concept, etc. And for all of you drug legalization folks, its the reason why pot is illegal and likely will continue to be. Man people have proven, over many centuries, that as a group, we can't or won't consume the product in a responsible fashion, and therefore annoying laws and regulations have to be implemented and enforced to be the primary annoyance for those who can, and routinely ignored by those who don't.

Granted, the government is unlikely to pass any laws to make it more difficult for you to dress up like Spock on a daily basis or show off your prowess for learning Klingon, but there might be some sense in recognizing the fact that many of our best and brightest have chosen to spend an extraordinary amount of their free time and money indulging in an obsessive hobby instead of pushing the advancement of science and technology. I'm not saying that I agree with that assessment; people can do whatever they like. But I can certainly see the viewpoint of someone who hoped to inspire kids to grow up to be astronauts, or develop amazing breakthroughs in physics, or build amazing new vehicles, instead must consider that a great part of their lasting legacy is instead warming the hearts of deranged fanboys.

-Restil

This works fine as long as those who are investing money have unlimited opportunities to examine and dissect the workings of any such invention, or at least the plans if it hasn't been built yet. They would likely do so under terms of a strict NDA, and wouldn't be talking about it afterward, endorsements or otherwise. If the invention actually works as claimed, he wouldn't NEED to talk about it. Just set it up and start selling cheap energy at a rate below which all other conventional energy providers can compete at. That's the beautiful thing about energy. You don't HAVE to market it. People already want it and the lowest price will win out over all other factors, provided you're not doing something politically suicidal to fund/operate it.

Scammers tend to work in a different way though. They boast endlessly about their new product, and provide scripted demonstrations in very well controlled environments and prohibit anyone from having any physical access to the technology at hand, especially the investors. They then request large amounts of money to fund this slight of hand product. Most importantly, they never deliver.

The best scammers will use the investors' greed to their advantage. They offer up something that sounds generally reasonable considering the current state of technological advancement, but offers the opportunity to get a few years head start over the competition. To be ahead of the game in any emerging industry means you can make a 10fold return on your investment almost literally overnight. Many investors see that possibility as being worth the risk, since they falsely consider the risk to be the product not selling as well as hoped or perhaps not performing as well as promised. The fact that they were being duped from the beginning didn't factor into that assessment.

So, is this real? Probably not. If it were, we wouldn't be hearing about a "secret catalyst" that nobody's allowed to inspect, we wouldn't hear anything about the process at all. Or.. more likely, we'd hear about some experiment in a laboratory somewhere (probably at a school) where they discovered (probably by accident, or after a LOT of trial and error) some chemical arrangement that makes something like this work, ... and the best part of all, we always hear "maybe in 10 years, this technology 'MIGHT' be able to produce cheaper electricity". And then it goes through lots of peer review and refinement research. If it works, we hear more about it later, if not, well... we probably hear nothing at all. So this potential scammer, if he's actually legit, likely spent the last 20 years working in a lab somewhere, and did all of this work himself, bypassing the peer review process, collaboration with other scientists, or involving any lab assistants, TAs, students, etc. If so, that'd be a pretty important dot to look for on his resume, and it'd probably be a good idea to confirm it before writing any checks.

-Restil

That's none of your business. :)

-Restil

... just open up the drives and work on the plates with a combination of tools such as a sledgehammer, bolt cutters, router, drill, and/or hacksaw. Even if you don't separate the pieces, there's a pretty good chance that nothing you have on those drives would ever be worth the cost and hassle to attempt to recover. If it actually IS that important, than hooking them up long enough to run dd on it a few times would not be out of the question.

-Restil

If I told you I ate eggs for breakfast, you'll probably believe me. First off, there's no compelling reason for me to lie about it, and secondly, there's no reasonable way for you to prove me wrong, and even if I WAS lying about it, it certainly wouldn't be worth the effort to expose my perjury on that issue. As for the wet paint, if I believe you're right, I won't attempt to prove you wrong. However, if personal observation or specific knowledge of the painting event leads me to believe that the paint is in fact dry, there's a very easy way to test it.

-Restil

Wil Wheaton has done well enough for himself, but I really think he screwed the pooch when it came to Star Trek. Sure, he faced the risk of being typecast, and the character he played tended to draw derision from the audience, but he WAS a kid... and lets face it, he had about the most awesome job a teenage geek could ever hope to have. I figure he missed an opportunity with the character. Since the character he played was an awkward teenager, he could have embraced that role and had that character grow up as he did, mature, become less whiny, less naive, more confident, etc. While I realize you usually have to play the lines you're given, improv from good actors is always considered and sometimes makes it into the final cut. He could have helped guide the character into something more positively memorable instead of trying to distance himself from it. And if you ultimately do decide to cut your losses and run, it's better not to publicly complain about it after the fact. Even years later, opportunities can present themselves, but burned bridges tend to remain burned. Star Trek didn't end with TNG, and both Michael Dorn and Colm Meany were able to stay in the game longer than the duration of a single series. Wesley, recently graduated from the academy, could have easily found himself replacing ensign Kim on Voyager, which could have been REALLY awesome if they had Robert McNeill reprise the role of Nicholas Locarno instead of Tom Paris (who had very similar backgrounds).

Not to say that his career hasn't turned out well enough. I just think he really dropped the ball there.

-Restil

There are always bridges to be burned.

-Restil

Wait about 3 days and you can probably watch the entire game on youtube, with "commentary". You might not be able to easily tell how great the graphics are, but you can probably tell if the game is fun. So watch a few minutes of it to see if it's worth any further investigation.

-Restil

First of all, he's asking for advice. There's no reason to assume he hasn't already done some of his own research, but if someone out there has already accomplished the same goal and could provide a simple, clear, precise answer, then it certainly doesn't hurt to ask.

Secondly, his question, and any reasonable responses that result from it could lead to inform and inspire others who have considered something similar, but never followed through on it, not to mention those who never even pondered the idea before, but are now thinking about it. Even if the submitter ultimately leaves unsatisfied, others may indirectly benefit from the discussion, and ANY responses which provide ANY solution are still potentially meaningful to someone.

-Restil

I actually liked the in-box junk that came with the old Ultima games. The cloth map, and the trinkets, and the faux-leather bound user manual/"Book of Lore". Something real-world and tangible to bring just that little bit of extra life to the game.

-Restil

I don't know where exactly we all went wrong. I know WHY such a law was enacted, but how did we get this far? Student and teacher have an inappropriate relationship. Ok, fine. It happens. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen, and it has likely happened since there were teachers and students. Somewhere along the line, the issue of what is appropriate (and legal) eventually made its way into policy and legislation, and we were all content to understand that everyone knew the rules and occasionally we would have to slap down someone who violated it. For those of you who are 30 or older, think back to your school years. You've probably heard a rumor or two, or if it got really bad, maybe read about it in the newspaper, where some local teacher and a student had an inappropriate relationship. It was scandalous to be sure, but it was rare enough to be considered an oddity. Something that doesn't happen often enough to get really excited about. Just take care of it when it DOES happen and let everyone's lives continue as normal. It's likely that the percentages haven't really changed. What HAS changed though is the fact that with the internet making sure that every local story is potentially nationwide news, we now get to hear about EVERY SINGLE CASE. And if by some chance the national media overlooks one, someone on digg or fark will be sure to publicize it, with a snarky, memorable headline, so we don't miss out on any. This makes what is actually a very rare event seem like it's happening every day, all around us. It makes it seem so rampant that surely EVERY teacher is pondering the possibilities. So enough concerned parents get just loud enough for the politicians to pay attention, and the message is that we want to preemptively prevent this from happening.

The problem with politicians is they tend to be reactionary. When some kid shows up to school armed to the teeth and kills 15 classmates, those politicians BETTER DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Some new law better be passed that will prevent this thing from ever happening again. The problem is, the easiest, cleanest, and least debatable solution would usually revolve around some controversial issue, like outlawing all guns. Fortunately, there is enough resistance to make sure THAT doesn't quite happen. But consider teachers and social media, and how it relates with the bottomless pit of scandal that revolves around protecting our children at all costs. I'm sure, especially in the last few years, that a lot of the inappropriate teacher/student relationships had some element of social media involvement. That's a simple but potent fact that people and politicians can latch onto. Cut THAT particular cord, and maybe the relationships will
never materialize in the first place. The problem is, it seems too weak to just make it a general policy to avoid unnecessary off-campus communication with current students. That's not really a law... people can't really BREAK that law, and therefore we can't punish anyone who does. So they come up with something that's absolute, thorough (so nobody finds a loophole), and concise, so people can actually read all of it in one sitting. By the time you're done drafting such a
law, you end up with a much larger problem than the one you were trying to solve in the first place.

Chris Hansen must be proud of what he has achieved.

-Restil

Insurance is a protection against statistics, same as warranties are. If you purchase 1000 laptops, a certain percentage of those ARE going to break. However, Unless you purchase a particularly crappy brand, the cost to replace the percentage that breaks will not exceed (or probably even get close to) the cost of having an extended warranty on all of them. Although you probably don't want to purchase laptops in bulk, you can consider the same costs over the purchase of all of your
electronic devices, and consider that at least one of them will probably break, but not most of them. If the 52" TV breaks, that will hit you harder than if your ipod breaks, but ultimately it's still a wash in the long run.

Even house insurance is unnecessary (and not worth it), if you own a sufficiently large number of houses. Say you're a landlord and you own 100 houses, each worth $100k. Chances are good that at least one or two of them are going to be catastrophically damaged over the course of a 30 year period, but if you add up how much you're going to pay in insurance over that timeframe, it's a lot cheaper to just replace the house and pay for the damages yourself. Car insurance is a bit of a middle ground. If the car is old, you don't likely purchase comprehensive coverage on it, since you're never going to get its true value back. But you still have to purchase liability insurance. HOWEVER... if you know you're a safe driver and the chances of you being at fault in an accident are slim to none, there
are options available to post your own insurance bond for the amount of the required liability coverage, and therefore not be required to purchase auto insurance.

-Restil

That reminds me of when I first purchased this house. I was going to be doing work here for a while before I moved in, so I didn't want to move all of my expensive computers over here, but I still needed simple internet access. I ended up bringing over an old linux box so I could hook it up to the newly installed cable modem and I could at least use ssh.

Only problem is, the cable company requires you to first go through a series of webpages to agree to the terms of service and set up email addresses and such before they actually grant you an ip address, and I didn't have a functional browser on the box I brought with me... and lynx wouldn't work. Ended up having to call them and have them manually do it over the phone. The techie I talked to seemed to think it was very odd that I needed internet access but didn't have a web browser.

-Restil

No, they said they wanted to avoid extra wiring, not equipment purchases. Also, you don't need the dsl runs to each room, just to each access point, of which there will be at most a dozen or so covering the entire hotel (or maybe far less.. not sure how large it is).

-Restil

I don't think the issue is about security, just about keeping freeloaders off of the network, so the speed is available for the people who are actual customers. If you're THAT concerned about security, stay off of the unencrypted access points or route everything through a vpn.

-Restil