Oh I forgot to say. "I'll probably be modded down for this". Didn't cite any sources, after all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording is a good starting point. Skip to Ambiophonics from there on.

I have a hard time disagreeing that 62 channels of audio isn't just a tad much.

It's not as much as you think when you start considering some of the possible reasons behind it. TL;DR: What these people are trying to accomplsh with using 62 channels is to provide you with binaurally realistic style audio wherever you sit. THAT is why they need so many speakers.

Explanation:

In stereo sound, you've got two speakers - one for the left ear, one for the right. If you sit bang-on in the sweet spot between those two speakers, you'll get the perfect stereo image. Move to one side, however, and the stereo image gets distorted. That is, if both speakers are playing a sound equally loud, this sound now no longer will appear to originate from the point between the two speakers, but instead have a slant to sound as though it originates from the direction of the speaker that you're sitting nearest to.

Now imagine making a multi-track recording an orchestra and placing a speaker on top of the chair of each of the musicians, then playing back the recording. Regardless of how you move around, the stereo image (remember, you only have two ears) will be perfect. However, for moving pictures it is impractical to fly around speakers across the room just for the sake of the stereo image.

Now consider audio as pressure fluctuations. Any point source of audio will produce a circular shaped wave front. If you put a sheet of cloth in front of an orchestrea, the middle of the sheet will be hit with the sound wave first, and the sides of the sheet will be hit by the wave front later.

The point of this whole introduction is, if you have record audio with an array of microphones along that sheet, and then play it back with an array of speakers set from left to right, you can "HOLOGRAPHICALLY" reproduce the shape of that wave front so that the sweet spot is all across that "sheet" Every spot is the sweet spot.

What these people are trying to accomplsh with using 62 channels is to provide you with binaural recording style audio wherever you sit. THAT is why they need so many speakers.

If you want to be really obsessive about it, line up the strands of ground beef vertically in a ring mold and then press them lightly together, but that can be a bit of a pain.

Ah, the old Blumenburger.

Nice, but you forgot the geeky bit. Slow-cook chicken bits (legs/drumsticks/wings) for several hours at 70-75C in a marinade of water, honey, sweet soy sauce, tomato puree, pepper, garlic, ginger, chillies and onion. Pat dry, then grill on coal. Meanwhile reduce the marinade into a sauce. Use for basting and pour over the chicken after grilling. The low slow-cooking temperature is high enough to kill off bacteria, yet low enough to prevent the collagen in the chicken to contract to the point where it gets bone-dry. Result: Fall of the bone, succulent chicken with a great BBQ flavour. Perfect every time... and you'll never have to worry about chicken that's black on the outside and raw on the inside. Reducing the sauce down will intensify the flavour (and as any chicken flavour lost into the marinade is added back onto the chicken, it will be bursting with flavour).

Same in Europe. Not that I mind. The FBI warning is entirely non-intrusive compared to the techno-ridden, flashing, non-fast-forwardable "PIRACY. IT'S A CRIME" clip that we have to put up with if we actually pay for our media. One more reason not to.

I'm pretty sure that P2P has cost the music industry hundreds of dollars from me personally over the last 14 years.

I'm sure I've cost the music industry hundreds as well, but for entirely different reasons. The litigation around the Napster thing made me realize what a bunch of scumbags the music industry really are. I've still paid for music, of course. I've got some CDs at charity shops. Others directly from independent artists. At least like that the money is going where I want it to. I've come to appreciate lastfm and jamendo for the rest of my music needs. I'm still listening to all the music I want, but the music industry simply aren't having my money anymore.

You've got it right when you say "compared to normal people". Being a (good) software engineer takes a better-than-average brain. Better-than-average as in 98% of the world population won't ever be a good software engineer, no matter how much time and effort they put in it, because they simply don't have the brains for it.

Now let's assume a company with highly talented individuals. Some experienced, some novice. Why does salary need to keep going up? Simple. They should be paid more, because they're worth more. An experienced software engineer can be ten times as productive as a novice, will solve the same problems in less, more elegant, more maintainable code and have lower bug rates. They meet deadlines more consistently too. Yet, despite much better quality, lower risk and ten-fold productivity, it's rare to see more than a five-fold difference in salary. Being undervalued for their accomplishments, do you think it's strange developers switch career?

It's the experienced coders that you want. Compared to novice coders, they're an absolute bargain. *That* is why you want to keep increasing their salary. Oh and by the way. Experienced coders have no problem doing IPv6, .net, AJAX, XML, "in the cloud" and whatever newfangled crap you throw at them. They've been learning all their lives. They'll learn that new stuff faster than you can say "get off my lawn".

£745,000. 75000 people. Fraud or not, they've scammed these people for on average just under £9.95 a person. Don't know about you, but if I found out I'd been scammed by two teenagers to the tune of a tenner for being greedy and gullible, I'd consider that a very cheap lesson and I might even have a laugh over it. Well done, Hunter twins, for making a million dollars out of greedy people. And another lesson learned: If you've got money, people get envious.

Now what I always find interesting is when the numbers don't work. According to TFA, "investors paid $47 for newsletters listing Marl's stock picks and $97 for a home version of the software". Yet on average, the investors are down just a tenner? I don't mean to nitpick, but to me that sounds like the bloody thing actually worked. Oh, wait, it was unregulated software. What would you expect from two 16-year-olds?

I'm a bit worried about the precedent this is setting though. If I choose to buy a newspaper with a horoscope in there, or if I buy horoscope software and the predictions don't come true, should I sue?

Facts should not be copyrightable. The fact that street A has postcode B, therefore should not be copyrightable, never mind that you 'invented' or 'generated' those facts. But I don't think your analogy is particularly strong.

If you blatantly make an analog copy of the Mona Lisa, that's copyright infringement even if the target work doesn't have the exact same colour values as the original. But what's happening here is more like trying to paint a copy of the Mona Lisa without ever looking at the original, merely based on descriptions a bunch of people give you. In other words, you will never know for sure how accurate your representation is going to be.

After years of work, you present your result to the general public, and it looks, well, like this. Next thing you know, the Canadian Post Office sues you for copyright infringement. Somehow I don't think (I might hope not!) that the judge will agree.

I'm interested in whether this would apply for bacteria only or if it goes for viruses as well. You see, bowel disorders (specifically inflammatory bowel disease) are a lot more prevalent in children with autism than in children without. I'm probably going to be flamed to hell for this, but this study would suggest that there might yet be a possible link between vaccines and autism. Studies so far have focused on the heavy metals in the vaccines.

I find general health worth tracking. For a while, as part of my new year's resolution, I had a spreadsheet to track my body weight and blood pressure as well as to keep a log of everything I ate and drank and the amount I had exercised. I also had columns where I'd score my subjective well-being and stress levels, and one for general comments. Some interesting findings were that, unfortunately, exercise had a positive effect on my blood pressure. I also found that my stress levels strongly correlated with my alcohol intake the night before. Nothing like some first hand experience to learn something. Later on I found out that the hormone cortisol is responsible for those stress levels and yes, released when taking alcohol. I'd hardly call what I did solid science, but it is nice to find out when solid science confirms your own feeble efforts.

Guess who was the first man on the moon according to one of *my* textbooks (written by a teacher- no, not in the US).

Louis Armstrong.

Absolutely brillant.

Let's see - I've got at least acetic acid, citric acid, malic acid, tartaric acid, sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, ammonium chloride, fructose, sucrose, maltodextrin, and monosodium glutamate. I might order in some sodium nitrite too, one of these days. Then there's ethanol, Iron (III) chloride, hydrogen peroxide and sodium hydroxide and, AHA! some fertilizer. Then of course there's the precision scales and an improvised dragee pan - can't do without those for the good stuff, obviously.

Point in case - I happen to be a rather passionate amateur cook (thinking I should try making my own smarties one of these days). Most of the above chemicals are just cooking ingredients. Also, occasionally I like to grow my own veg. Peppers, tomatoes, that kind of stuff. And when I'm not cooking, sometimes I play around with electronics and make my own circuit boards.

Extremely suspicious, I'm sure.

Can we stop the "AAAAH!! TERRORISTS!" bullshit already, please, and get on with our lives?

You're in danger the second you step into Iran. Don't do business there, don't visit there.

There's obviously a different perception about what "justice" means there compared to in the United States. Frankly, I think the meaning of justice is distorted in both places; in one place by religion (and if you don't happen to believe the same as they do, death is deemed appropriate), in the other by money (and you'll rot in jail or at the very least be financially ruined for life if you step on the toes of big megacorporations). The message is the same. Conform to those in power, or be doomed. As long as *that* is the message of justice, we can't have true justice.

Every three months? At 900 dollars you can get 900 silicone keyboard protectors which will give you a clean keyboard every DAY for nearly the next 3 YEARS. And here's an other crazy idea: Silicone is more heat resistant than bacteria. Perhaps you don't want to toss away those silicone covers in the bin after a day, but sterilize them and re-use them.