I'm wondering about starter wear and such...
I realize there won't be much piston/cam/rocker wear like there normally is at startup because the engine was very recently lubed but still, the starter is going to get a workout.
I would shift into neutral and not stop with the break long enough to trigger the thing, just idle in neutral.

raped to death by Canadian ninja turtles in a friendly foreign country?

In my kids' school district it's worse than that. Unless the machine is one of three particular make/model combos they can't have them (even if donated). Mid-top end HP desktop, mid HP server or Apple Power Mac.
Mind you I was able to get my company to be willing to donate ~400 Lenovo T40/T40p/T41s to the school so every grade could have a cart with a classroom's worth of computers (there is no computer lab at the school because there is no space), and the district refused. I understand not wanting to support one of these and one of those spread all over, but you would think for 400 basically identical units they would consider it...
-nB

yup.
We roll our own machines in my lab.
They generally cost a bit more than what I could buy raw $$ wise from Dell/HP, but they suit our needs better: slots (2x PCIe x16, 4x PCIe x4), ram (8-24 gig depending on user needs), CPU (i7), etc.
We don't bother with RMA on most compontents as it isn't worth the overhead cost. Aside from the time to submit the actual RMA paperwork, there is the tracking of what was bought when/where, generating a shipper, getting the crap over to shipping, etc. RMAs are not worth it unless the component costs over $500.
RMAs on Wafer chucks ($18K to $40K) and chillers ($30K to 50K) are totally worth it. RMA on a $100 video card? not so much.
-nB

I had a family member buy a 55" sony when that was still ~$3K. then proceed to connect the HD receiver to the HDTV with a composite cable...

someone needs to call in for an information request about call 1407 and why is an info request a "call".
post the call number, repeat, recurse.

Yes, but I would call that minimal. Also not stocking something on base is not a violation of the constitution.

I applaud EA for the statement (even if it is PR):

Whether or not you agree with the decision, those of you calling out people as whiners causing the Taliban name to be removed are missing something a touch ironic.

Fact of the matter is, this won't change anything in-game worth caring about. EA is not removing the guns/changing the types/etc. the game play its self will be fundamentally the same thing no matter what the team is named.

I'd like to play that in real life... Can the engineers be merc snipers?

Best teambuilder ever in my group was a paintball match. 20 Vs 20 on a rather large field.
-nB

... and the ZOMBIE Beatles may reunite, or not.

Happy now?

http://xkcd.com/792/

If you are expecting collapse, then gold is not that good of an investment, as not much will be worth a whole ounce of gold and buying smaller pieces exposes you to way over spot prices.
1, 5, and 10 ounce silver rounds/bars, ammo (for trade and protection), salt, durable foodstuffs, and toilet paper are the most valuable commodities. With those you will likely be able to trade for anything else you need.
Depending on your morals, level of need, and the social situation at the time of need if you can not trade with any of the above, you have a realistic chance of *taking* what you need by way of the stored ammunition.
-nB

Based on geometry alone, no.
However I think a Cortex series core would be vastly easier to re-implement with double bit error ECC Parity.
If I were a Rocket Chip Designer:
Cortex A6 redesign:
2 ALUs with parity checks on output, run combinationally. Any parity errors, re-run calculations.
All register memory is ECC capable of detecting 2 bit errors and correcting single bit errors.
similar over designing on all other functions in the die.
Dual instruction caches, again parity checked.
Built as Si on sapphire.
increase geometyr of gates to > 90nM (likely 130nM).
Adjustable clock gating so the thing can be clocked as slow as possible for a given job.

Realistically though, that will cost a lot of money. You can get a RAD750 running at about 600MHz for $200,000 already.

It's not that it would knock out a track. A single cosmic ray hit will not ablate the metal layers. It's that the newer parts use much lower voltage to get lower leakage to get higher speed. Lower voltage == lower gate charge, in some cases the difference in charge states is < 100 electrons*. A single cosmic ray is capable of changing the charge state on these gates enough to make a bit undefined. That is a BadThing(tm).

-nB
* My info is specifically on flash and a couple years old.
(n-m)==100.
0-m electrons on the gate == logic 0
n+ electrons on the gate == logic 1
between m and n electrons on the gate == undefined value.

Largely this is a function of geometry. The smaller gates required for higher speed operation are also vastly more sensitive to imparted charge from ionizing radiation. Large slow chips are inherently more robust, so when you do things like Si on sapphire you get a lot of bang for your buck.

I don't doubt that a fast core could be RAD hardened, but the current generation of Core2 arch and ix arch from Intel/AMD/IBM are virtually impossible to make into a rad hardened build. You really would need to do a redesign with things like ECC registers and the demand for such chips is so low as to not be a profitable endeavor for any of the main players. Demand is satisfied by the RAD600/750 families (PowerPC 750 / Apple G3), so why invest gobs of money into R&D for a product that has little to no demand?
-nB

In the united states a jury trial can be demanded by the defendant for any matter criminal or civil for amounts in excess of $20.00. IIRC if the judge disagrees with the request for a jury a loss by the defendant can then cause the defendant to be required to pay for the added cost of the jury trial.