...but I definitely see the need for a special Medic Alert badge for this.

Another disclaimer...I WAS an IBM'r until fairly recently.

I truly hope they have updated Symphony. The version that I tried a few months back was based on Open Office, but was at least two generations behind (was a late 1.x or early 2.x core) and was total crap compared to OO 3.x. To add insult to injury, they had it integrated with the Notes 8 interface. Opening a spreadsheet or document would bring it up in Notes instead of a separate window. There were options to change that behavior, but based on how poorly the app ran to begin with I opted to change the file associations to just point to the newer OO. The combination of Notes + Symphony absolutely killed my four year old T42 laptop, even with 2 GB RAM installed. It took nearly a gig of RAM just to boot up in the morning, and the CPU would occasionally spike and hang at 100%, something that could be traced back directly to Notes + Symphony.

(I was a long time IBM'r until the Spring cullings...)

There are install packages on ISSI, but if you read the fine print it states that you have to get a license key through the proper channels. You can install it all day long but it won't work without a key.

You're not the only one, but I suspect we're a dying breed. I don't have a facebook account, or a twitter account, or any other social networking crap account. Heck, I even refuse to get those stupid store discount cards. True, they might save me a buck or two occasionally, but I don't want people tracking what I do, what I think or what I buy.

Thanks for clarifying that. I have limited experience with Vista (just enough to know that it's a pile of crap) and haven't dug into Server 2008 enough to realize that PAE had been disabled. XP and Win2k3 are still my primary Windows environments.

The 32-bit x86 CPUs can only access 2^32 bytes (4 GB) of physical memory. Windows and other OS's implemented work arounds like PAE (Physical Address Extension) which allowed the kernel to reserve part of physical RAM to use like a disk paging file. PAE worked, in a way, but the overhead of moving bits of memory from higher addresses to lower addresses (so the CPU could access the contents) and back was hardly worth the effort. Calling this a "licensing issue" is complete BS.

I agree on the short life span of most current lithium based batteries, but the high cost is mostly due to the fact that every manufacturer designs a new battery for almost each new device, therefore making them relatively short-run production items. Spare batteries for laptops, cell phones, etc are high profit items. They don't want them standardized to the point that you could go to the corner shop and pick up a Duracell or Energizer equivalent.

The auto industry needs to standardize on a small handful of basic battery units (the fewer the better), then build up the packs as needed. When a traditional lead-acid car battery goes bad it's usually a single cell, not the entire battery, but because they're so small it's easier to replace it as a whole. The typical electric car will require a suitcase-to-steamer trunk sized battery pack which just isn't practical to replace in its entirety. Better to design it around the multi-cell model, then the local garage can identify and replace small standardized units as needed.

Once production is ramped up on standardized units then prices will come way down.

You forgot to mention that the Navy has a stated interest in rail guns and energy based weapons. They're already building excess generating capacity into their designs to eventually accomodate those if/when they're ready for deployment, so they might as well take advantage of it while waiting.

"...Now money should not be backed by just one precious metal, but should be backed may various different precious metals..."

Awesome! I knew my collection of AC/DC and Metallica vinyl would be the new currency some day!

I have an older Magellan mapping GPS receiver that I still use regularly. The screen is relatively small, is monochrome, and it doesn't do route planning, BUT I can zoom out as far as I want to get a really firm grasp of where I am in relation to where I want to be, then zoom in to show the fine details (including topo lines) so I can decide which route would be best to follow. If I get distracted watching the scenery and lose my way, no worries, I just zoom out until I find something familiar and then plot my way back to my path. It's that sense of knowing where I am at all times even in unfamiliar territory that takes the stress out of travel. I'd never go far without one.

When I decide to pick up a movie or three, I compare the price between the DVD and Blu-Ray versions. If the Blu-Ray is more than about $5 extra (as it is in most cases) I snag the DVD instead. My Blu-Ray player does an excellent job of upscaling older content. Most often the standard DVD is good enough.

...developers function far too much in isolation from their user base...

Where else have I seen this? Oh, yeah, *cough* Vista *cough*

He's just practicing that ol' "Buy American!" bit instead of running off to China like the rest of the rich and abusive.

A couple people on here have suggested I was in error when I flamed the original posting so I went digging for the original summary. Here it is verbatim:

An anonymous reader writes "Two days ahead of the Tiananmen Square 'incident' several high profile Internet sites have been blocked in mainland China, these include Twitter.com, Flickr.com, Live.com, and Bing.com. While Internet blocks in mainland China, blocking such high profile sites is unusual. In addition, blog reports suggest even state-owned television broadcasts are suffering multiple instances of muting lasting several seconds (again, not unusual for some foreign stations broadcast over cable, but unusual for local state-owned media) suggesting state security, online or through other technology, has tightened significantly, perhaps in anticipation or discovery of protest plans."

and link is here: http://yro.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?id=4715073&op=view

I was speaking of journalism in general, the original summary for this story just gave me an excuse to lash out. Most news sites these days seem to have trimmed editorial staff to the bone and are employing semi-professional writers in general. I usually just roll my eyes, huff and move on, but in this case it pushed me over the edge.