The thing is, I don't see really any benefit for this. Google docs doesn't exactly offer more features, most netbooks come with at least 20 gigs of storage (even the SSD based ones) and performance is only increasing.

Can you still get SSD netbooks? I see none for sale here. My old Acer Aspire One came with a 8GB one, and OpenOffice. (Of course, that Lin-pus stuff was useless so I blew it all away, and installed Debian. Without OpenOffice; if you like word processors, you're probably better off with Windows.)

If you bought it at the right store you got a pricedrop in the first few weeks it was out. I hear the UK had a serious price war over MW2.

I'm not trying to disagree with you, but usually any Xbox game that has a LAN multiplayer option can be fooled using XBconnect or some other tunneling software. This is how we were able to play the original Halo online before Halo 2 was released. So, perhaps not all hope is completely lost.

I sure as hell hope you aren't "performance driving" on any road I'm on. If you want to do this for sport on a private track, fine, but don't endanger the lives of those (non-consenting) around you just to get a thrill.

Not the point.

I'd need to hire a car for that specific journey, seeing as there isn't a flight. (This is the UK, most internal flights cover distances more like 300-400 miles).

Ironically, while the electric car would be most useful within cities in the UK (where pollution is likely to be at its worst), this is also where the electric car is least practical. Lots of people don't have off-street parking, let alone a garage, so you could never charge the damn thing.

I think there will be a counter-trend to the Transformers, Panic Attack, Avatar movement. There are many great story tellers out there without that kind of budget. The studios are cowards and thus a great deal of important work goes unnoticed.

Well, that's a little bit like saying, "I lost a quarter over there by the wall, but I'm searching here because it's got better lighting". :-) But yes, in all seriousness you raise a valid point that it could be better reviewed this way but you have to ask - by whom? The whole idea of peer review is that you get "peers", who (provably) know a little something about the field. If you've ventured into the surreal world of physics fora on the intertubes, you will understand my reluctance to put any stock on such "open" reviewing.

Your criticism of "cliquishness(?)" would be valid if people were saying that you should grant Nature a greater benefit of the doubt as compared to Journal of Physics but the fact is that Arxiv is non-peer-reviewed and I've seen some doozies on there on par with the awesomely funny crap I get at my university email address (the crackpots mass mail their delusions to the entire faculty/grad student directory at large universities :-), a boon for a collector such as myself I must say!).

Having said all this, I have been given to understand (by my colleagues in high-energy theory - arguably the most prolific field on Arxiv) and I paraphrase here, that Arxiv is more like a bulletin board where they can pass ideas back and forth on far shorter time scales than in traditional publications. But when it comes to ideas that (they feel) have survived the maelstrom of brainstorming, the final product must be published in a peer reviewed journal as a first step (of many many many more) to entering the field's gestalt.

Think of Arxiv as Wikipedia's sandbox if you will ;-).

A day from solar zenith to solar zenith is about 360.97 degrees of a rotation... I've always thought it was a better measurement to consider a full rotation to be a "day".

You should see what they actually ship them in. Tiny little 3cm x 1cm boxes (two of them, Blizzard can't count and sends more than you order) inside a 40cm x 25cm Fedex Worldwide Express pack. It's like they're trying to beat HP's record (good luck - they ship individual mice on pallets).

I'll come out and say that I agree with you... in theory. In theory, I wish I could pay a price and then be able to see my purchased movie anywhere. Real-world problems interfere with that ideal, however.

Movie studios won't just put the movie up somewhere where I could get it for free. They'll want to make sure that I'm actually authorized to watch the movie. This means they'll rely on DRM. This, in turn, means they're likely to rely on one location for authorizations to take place. If those authorization servers go offline, you lose access to the content you've paid for and need to pay again for access to it. In addition, movie studios aren't going to want to run servers letting you download a file over and over for one small payment. They'll want recurring payments.

This is why I think that streaming is the better option. Something along the lines of Netflix. Pay a fee and get access to the library of content. As long as you pay your monthly fee, you can watch as many movies/TV shows/whatever as your plan allows. (I'd prefer unlimited, but we are talking about movie studios here.) There should be many different companies doing this providing access to the same content. This way competition will keep prices low and quality high. (Besides, I'm sure the movie studios don't want Netflix to be to them what Apple/iTunes was to the music industry.)

Of course, I already have a Netflix account and love streaming via Roku, so I'm mostly there. Now if the movie studios would just get with the times and let their content be streamed. Heck, I'd even accept a 6 month lag on DVD release versus streaming release if they're that concerned with streaming cutting into DVD profits!

Princess and the Frog is another movie worth seeing even as an adult. Interesting story, colorful characters, funny jokes, pretty animation, and good music. Maybe not terribly original, deep, or groundbreaking; but a worthwhile kid-friendly film.