I've done that. No weird glare from a backlit display. I second the recommendation for fresh bags. All these people whining "But I like to read in the bath, I can't do that with a ebook reader, waa! So that's why I stick with REAL books." Shut up. Get the e-gizmo you prefer, drop that sucker in a ziplock and get as splashy as you damn well please in the bath. We are geeks, are we not? It should not be so difficult to think of such a simple solution to such a trivial problem. Seriously.

I just finished my first novel on a Sony Clie TG50. IMO it's much better for writing than an iPad (which I also happen to have) because it is very much more portable with a longer battery, and has a hardware keyboard built in. Add-on keyboards for mobile devices universally suck for real work. I've tried too many and I've given up on them as being too clumsy. Haven't bothered getting a hardware keyboard for the iPad for this reason. I'd rather use my kid's netbook if I want to use an iPad-sized portable gizmo for typing. No, I probably wouldn't bother, the Clie is just too damned convenient. FYI TejpWriter is the best writing app I've ever used on a Palm. I shouldn't have to say that the coolest hardware is crap if the software is crap - this has been the problem with everything I've ever tried with any "mobile" version of Windows. It's always been pure crap which is why I won't even bother looking at WinPhone7. Even if it's miraculously not pure crap like every previous version I've handled, I've already wasted too much of my life with WinMo to look at it again. I've long since given up on MicroSoft, and I suspect the growing hordes of people doing the same has them grasping at every successful thing they see around them and trying to imitate it - badly. Unless they can stop imitating and start really innovating, they are doomed to becoming a third-rate company. (They're already second-rate as far as I'm concerned.)

How long before Amazon tries to ban this?

the 2nd amendment clearly requires membership in a well regulated militia.

Um, No.

You're completely wrong.

Read the actual words in the amendment and parse the syntax correctly (any good geek on this site should be able to do this).

The correct interpretation goes something like this: "It is an unfortunate necessity that a state must have a well regulated militia to preserve itself, therefore, the people shall be afforded the right to have weapons with which to defend themselves from the state."

Remember, the people who wrote this very simple code had very recently fought against a state that had used its very well regulated militia against the people. Of course that does not preclude reasonable regulation of citizen ownership of weapons to keep them out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them (crazed wackos, criminals, children). Criminals, of course, can be expected to ignore any restrictions and regulations that law-abiding citizens would observe. (They are criminals, after all.) For my own part, I'm happy to have the option of using a completely legal shotgun to defend myself against an armed criminal invading my house, rather than only being allowed to dial emergency so that the police can show up twenty minutes later to look at my bullet-riddled corpse. For the state to have any chance of protecting an unarmed citizenry from violent criminals, they would have to station police everywhere and constantly monitor everything all the time. (How's that working out for you, England?) I'd rather not live in a police state thankyouverymuch.

I voted Supernatural and Earthly because I plan to dress up as Jesus with tanuki ears and tail. The tanuki pouch will remain beneath the robe. I fully expect heads to asplode.

An hour or two? You must be kidding. TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life!

Feh. I don't care. I'll just stick with my REcursive writing. It's more useful for geeks like me anyway.

That's why I make my own hammers. My favorite is the 1.00 lb tungsten-steel head hammer with stainless steel shaft wrapped in a nice rubber grip. It's small but the extra weight is great for good driving force in smaller spaces and precision work. But I actually use my stainless/brass mini-sledge more often (it's not much larger overall than the tungsten one but it's a lot heavier), it's great for really putting some hurt on a stubborn part. And no discussion of hammers would be complete without repeating the old saw that when your only tool is a hammer everything looks like the back of someone's head.

That's funny, the only Disney movies on my shelf were made by Studio Ghibli.

From the smartest human on the planet:
How do porcupines mate?
You asked. But don't feel bad, you're not the first.

I don't see why people are afraid that Apple will fight the Pre iPod spoof. It just means that they have more people using iTunes, and likely buying stuff from them. These are people like me who have very little interest in iPods/iPhones but are eager to get their hands on a newer, better palm phone.
Flipside: These could be people who have iPods but want a Pre instead of an iPhone and don't want to give up all the stuff they already bought or collected into iTunes, or just don't want to learn a new way to sync the music. But even in this case, Apple can still anticipate continued iTunes revenue, so no reason to fight the Pre.
I just hope that iTunes is not the only method for syncing music to the device, and that media syncing on the new WebOS is much, MUCH faster than it was on older devices. It was always better to just take out the SD card and move the files directly.

Would a big wooden eagle fool a optical over flight AI?

No, I don't think that would fool anyone at all. But a vulture gliding in lazy circles would be an ideal UAV spy. Real vultures can glide for quite a while without ever flapping their wings. Given the proper circling flight pattern and good glide control, it might be damn hard to tell the difference between a vulture overhead or a spying UAV disguised as one. Now I'm starting to wonder why I've been seeing so many vultures lately.

No. I don't hate Windows. I just hate Vista. I tolerate Win98, but it's pretty snappy on the 4-year old box and still gets its job done reasonably well. Win2K and to a lesser extent WinXP are much superior versions than anything that came before. Vista is just crap, and Win7 looks like it will outdo Vista primarily by removing a lot of Vista's suck, and will probably finally feel like a real upgrade from Win2K and WinXP. Doesn't matter, in testdriving Ubuntu before loading it onto the box carrying that ancient Win98 install, I got to like it a lot more than any version of Windows I ever tried. Mind you, I don't give a crap about games, which seems to be a major complaint about any of the linux distros. For me, Ubuntu just works a shitload better than Vista possibly could, it's much easier to use, and has more polish on the desktop. As soon as WINE is improved enough to allow me to run Photoshop and iTunes (or those programs are ported to linux - I'm not holding my breath) I won't have to put up with Vista at all on this PC. Win7 will not only have to outperform Vista (which all reports indicate it will), but it will also have to outperform Ubuntu for me to start taking any interest in Windows again.

Of course, all this relates exclusively to my own experience and preferences. Others will have different, equally valid opinions. It all comes down to what you think will let you get the job done better for you by whatever measurements you choose to use. Having to tiptoe between different Windows/Mac/*nix/BSD/etc zealots is pretty damned annoying. None of them are the one OS to rule them all. All have strengths and weaknesses. Taking someone else's opinions on these things personally and getting pissy about it is just retarded.

Oh come off it. Those jokes are getting old.

I quite agree. The BSOD jokes are old, tired, dead horses that have already been rendered into Elmers, yet people still feel the need to continue beating them.

Funny thing is, I got a BSOD on Vista just a few days ago. Surprised the shit out of me. First time ever since I got this laptop with Vista preinstalled in Dec '07. I gave it a moment of thought and figured it was probably due to me sending it into my Ubuntu partition on an update reboot instead of letting it go back into Windows as it expected. I let it reboot back into Vista, and it seems to work just fine. Let it run the updater again, and now I'm happy in my Ubuntu partition. Don't let these remarks make you think I'm a Vista fanboy or MS defender. I still hate Vista, and use Ubuntu for 99% of the work I need to do on a computer. I'm just saying, MS has done a reasonably good job of making its OS handle weird shit a lot more gracefully than it used to.

And to bring this post back toward topic, the reason I started with Ubuntu in the first place was to replace my ancient Win98 install. It still works quite well (currently sitting at about 2 months uptime - had to shut the power down for a thunderstorm), and only rarely gives me BSOD or similar problems (once this year, so the BSOD jokes aren't even terribly accurate for this case). Only, that OS is so old that none of the new hardware I want to use with that PC is recognized by Win98. (Shocker! Who knew 10+ year old OS wouldn't be able to recognize that shiny new MP3 player I bought last week?) Such a waste to just retire a PC that is still in good working order, so I installed Ubuntu on it (dual-boot, natch) after I test drove it for a while on my laptop. Ubuntu runs a hell of a lot better than Win98 or XP ever did on that box, and even my wife thinks so, but she's not ready to upgrade her user experience to this century.

Now it would be very interesting to see a netbook capable of Win7 version come out that might work on that old box. Then I might be interested in actually purchasing a copy of Windows for the very first time in my life so that she would be able to do whatever on that computer in Windows, which she prefers, rather than Ubuntu, which I prefer. Somehow I doubt it, and eventually I'll have to clonify that ancient Win98 install on a new HDD (again) to keep her happy. It's too bad that change, even for the better, is so terrifying to some people.

Hmm... yet another late-night rambly post that someone might take offense to and mod Troll for no good reason. Oh well, one more beer and it's off to bed for me. Cheers.