Physical games don't play off disk and haven't for a while. They take up the same space as a digital version on the SSD. The disc is just a different form of ownership/license verification and a method of delivery of the initial set of bits which is beneficial if internet connections are slow or metered

For this reason I never use my debit card anywhere other than at my bank. I use either cash or a credit card. If credit card info gets stolen it's still a hassle, but not an all my money is gone (until things get resolved or possibly forever) hassle.

Does it count if my cash comes from my wallet instead of an envelope? Does the retail setting matter? Perhaps I dislike the high % cut that credit card companies take from retailers and philosophically prefer cash. Cash also works when the credit transaction system goes down, though that is rare.

Google should enable Strict Transport Security to protect their users from this type of thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... It's about time they thought about disabling SSL 3 as well and cutting out the IE 6 users of the world even from basic search.

128k music gives me a headache. Literally. I do not know if this was an artifact of bad encoders back in the day or what, but I found there to be a strong correlation between listening to such files and onset of headaches. Whatever your brain does to fix things up seems to overtax something in mine. I got rid of everything below 192kb around the turn of the century and anything not in 320 around 2002-3. A couple years later I went completely to lossless formats for anything new. Either FLAC or Apple Lossless depending on playback environment. Being able to losslessly transcode to a supported format for the needed playback device of choice is the biggest benefit. I wouldn't want to have to rerip everything again as that involves physical media and is time consuming compared to selecting a bunch of FLAC files and turning them into Apple lossless, monkeys audio or whatever. There are very few things where I can tell a difference between 320 MP3 and a lossless format. Typically it's something like cymbals or other complex sounds towards the higher end of the audible range.

Almost anything at the same price point is going to be better. If you want better AND cheaper, it is a bit harder, but very easily doable. Bose himself may have created some great products in his day, but the company for the last 20 years or so has mostly been putting out overpriced crap. Personally, I just use Polk monitor 40's in for my side and rear speakers in my surround setup. I think they sound better than Bose and it cost me something like $200 for 2 pairs. My left and right mains though are Poly Natalia's I built. Link to the design: http://blackdahlia.com/the_poly_natalia__a_diy_loudsp.htm The Poly Natalia's are pretty amazing even compared to my Ultimate Ears Triple Fi 10 headphones (retail $400, but they were available for $100 about once a year when in production)

There are very few good programmers out there. I suspect there is a high likelihood that if you have hired one of the few as your intern that the code he is looking at is in fact bad. I've seen much more bad code than good code in my career. 50,000 lines is pretty small. If it really is bad, it shouldn't take long to fix so why not let him have a stab at it? He's an intern, part of what he's supposed to be doing is learning things. Something that size should be fixable in a month if the things surrounding it are any good whatsoever and they don't have to be thrown out as well. The last code I worked on that size that I claimed was bad and many longterm employees of the company where I worked at the time insisted was great ended up being about 1/3 of the original size at the end with significantly fewer bugs, additional new features, and had lower maintenance costs over the remainder of the years I worked there. Total investment...About 50% of my time for a month. If the intern achieves the same type of results, great, you've found a stellar programmer you should hire full time. If not, your intern wasted some time and you throw away what he produced and get a new intern.

Maintainability and documentation were gradeable aspects for both the undergrad and graduate programs I attended.

What? Where do you live? Do you know anything about volcanoes or how far a pyroclastic flow will typically travel. If Mt. Hood (I imagine this is what you meant by Portland) blew it's top Portland would get covered in ash, but nobody would die instantly. Mt. St. Helens is 53 miles NE of Portland as the crow flies. It blew up fairly recently. 1980 in fact. We're still here. Now Mt. Hood is a bit closer at 40 miles, but still far enough away that it is unlikely that much in the way of real damage would occur. However, if Mt. Tabor were to suddenly become active there might be a problem. It's smaller, OK, it is more like a big hill....but it's technically an active volcano and it's within city limits. In fact there's parks on it and water reservoirs...and roads....and houses. It's smaller though, so it's not like the whole city would disappear. I'd be quite safe at my house in the burbs.

You don't think the military really spends that much money on wars and hammers do you? All that funding has been going into NASA to build an arcology on the far side of the moon. It'd look suspicious if they put that much money into the NASA budget so they're just leaving it in the military budget where there's been bloat for years and people assume it's being spent on earth based projects. You really think that "secret" space plane is the only thing the military has been spending money on in space? If Obama were honest when he responds to the construct a Death Star by 2016 petition he would just say: "We already have one. And it's cloaked." But he can't. National security and all that. It will be interesting to see what fiction he makes up instead.

Well thanks for the info. I think you've given me enough to work with. I think maybe I'll pick up a UHF antenna to start. During good weather I can get away with a cheapy small indoor antenna I'm borrowing. It does give troubles picking up the signal on a couple channels during especially adverse conditions.

So lets say I don't live in Alaska, but my Metro area still has a station on channel 5. What would you recommend? Is it feasible to use an all in one? Something like this? http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?mc=03&p=HD8200U&d=Winegard-HD8200U-Heavy-Duty-Platinum-VHFUHFFM-HDTV-Antenna-(HD8200U)&c=TV%20Antennas&sku=&more=yes If so is there a particular model that research (which I haven't done) would indicate is best?

Shutters on the OUTSIDE of the window work best. Inside shutters reflect some of the light back out, but its already through the glass at that point and some of it is converted to heat inside your home. Outdoor shutters block any of the light from getting inside the glass except of course any light that may enter between the slats.

It's been years since I have worked on either an MTA or an MUA, but as I recall RFC 821 doesn't say much about memo headers at all. It merely specifies multiple recipients results in multiple RCPT commands being issued. I don't think there is any restriction on number of recipients in the to field of the header or anything that states recipients beyond the first should be placed in the CC field of the header. To SMTP that is all just data and it really doesn't give a crap. The more recent RFC 2821 does have some things to say and does specifically mention even BCC, so I'm not sure where you're getting the idea multiple recipients in to was ever non-standard as far as SMTP is concerned. As wikipedia would say: Citation needed.

Buying local for me means buying from powells.com instead of amazon.com when it comes to books Sometimes I'll even look stuff up on their website, then call in and they'll have it ready for pickup and checkout at the front when I get there. It's too bad more local businesses can't figure out how to make a good website.