I have student loans managed through Sallie Mae. I receive statements by email instead of paper. When I logged on, I was directed to a page that tested my ability to view PDFs. If you can't read the PDF, you must get your statements in paper. Well, I usually download PDFs and read them with SumatraPDF. It's a lovely, FOSS, very lightweight (~1 MB) PDF viewer for Windows. Unfortunately, the Sallie Mae test only checks if I can read the PDF with a browser.

So, for the first time in several years, I tried out Adobe Reader. I had to install 8, as the 9 installer kept crashing. Jeebus, it's slow! I don't care so much about a measly couple of hundred MBs, the damn thing crawls. I can download a 10 MB PDF and start reading it before the Adobe plug-in finishes loading the first page.

You make a good point. However, Google Earth now has an option to regress the date of the imagery along a timeline. You click the timeline button, and you can slide it back and forth and see older satellite images along with the date of the photo. My area, although fairly rural, has imagery back to '95 and as recent as '07.

I think you might want to get him liquored up after the flight.

I was sailing near Montserrat during the June '97 eruption. I didn't hear it, but I could definitely smell the sulfur. The skies gradually turned dark over the course of days and remained that way for quite a while. I remember thinking it was pretty cool until I found out how devastating it was to the people living there. 19 lost their lives.

I've also seen Etna (at NAS Sigonella from 15 miles), St. Helens (recent minor eruptions), and Kilauea (March '08 explosions). I've seen magma from Etna and Kiluea.

Kilauea is the most spectacular, in my opinion. Especially watching the magma enter the ocean. There was a massive amount of Vog in March and April all around the Big Island. I was able to clearly see the observatories atop Mauna Kea from Hilo before the explosions, but not after (I left in early May).

Or the 16 GB microSDHC cards. The 32GB ones are just around the corner.

What I don't understand about all the end-game whining is that the first 2 Fallout games had an ending, too. It should come as no surprise this one ends. Although, I don't agree with you that's it's a well composed ending.

Even if he never has to find out whether or not it would work, it's paid off in peace of mind.

If you aren't a complete tool, you won't get overpriced OCZ modules when building a low/medium end system. The memory speed gains of OCZ over generic modules on such a system isn't a going to make much of a difference... for a much greater cost.

I don't think the GP meant high-end modules are always a ripoff. I think he meant it in the context of this system build. Those modules have their place, but a sub-$400 system is not it.

No, it means Apple gets to use their patented ideas exclusively for the next 18 years. If they keep using it, it's not dead. If they keep improving it, it's not stagnant.
It'll only stagnate and die if Apple lets it.

Multitouch gestures?

I'm not saying there isn't prior art for what Apple has patented, but PenPoint doesn't seem to be it.

That's what's responsible for these bad boys. Well... low margins AND human stupidity.

It's not quite as nice as AdBlock, but Privoxy is doing a swell job of blocking ads in Chrome. The biggest problem with Privoxy is that it's all or nothing. Otherwise it's about 95%(*) as effective as AdBlock at stripping out ads.

* - 67% of all statistics are made up.

A handy guide to converting to metric.

Seems like a more expensive and less capable version of the N96.

+ 8 mp camera (which I don't care about anyway)
- fm transmitter (as much of a requirement as 16gb internal storage)
- dvb reciever (nice to have when in EU)
- N-Gage support.

Thanks, but no thanks. I've got an s60v3.2 phone already. This wouldn't be much of a step up, besides the camera and internal storage. N97 on the other hand...

I use my phone as an mp3 player with it's integrated fm transmitter to listen to my music in my car. With a 16gb microsd card, it's got a decent amount of storage for that. I also have maps for a large part of the world (several gb of data) on there. I do a lot of world travel and I'm not sure where I might end up. Can't always rely on google maps.

I'm up in the air at the moment over whether or not to get an N96 now, or wait for the N97 later this year. The big deal for me is the 16gb of internal storage in addition to a 16gb card. With that, I'll finally have a phone with the storage I want. Right now, I feel like I'm a little squeezed in.