I still use optical media, but not for long-term data storage or transport. I primarily use DVD and CD to run bootable diagnostics, repair or cleanup tools (memtest86+, WinPE, DBAN, etc) and OS installation. I've long found booting from optical media to be far more reliable and supported than booting from USB, despite being significantly slower. Granted, USB boot support has improved, but I still periodically encounter systems that outright refuse to boot from USB, even with SecureBoot disabled. Besides, when running WinPE to clean up a potentially-infected computer, it's definitely beneficial to use read-only boot media.

My handwriting is so horrible that not even the NSA can decipher it, let alone myself at times. Therefore, for clarity I prefer to type my notes, especially if they are to be seen by other people. Also, it is simply faster for me to type than hand-write. Therefore, I almost always keep a blank Notepad window open on my computer for this specific purpose.

Besides, I'm always losing pens or having coworkers take them without returning them afterwards. If I somehow end up losing my computer keyboard, then I have more serious problems to worry about than my note-taking habits.

Regarding the "police tend to confiscate phones and delete the video evidence" issue...why not use a method of recording that simultaneously saves a copy of the video in a private cloud storage service? Granted this is still not 100% foolproof, since once the police have the recording phone in their physical possession they could potentially gain access via the cloud storage app and also delete the file there. But, it's still an extra step of protection that could potentially help in some "they deleted the video" scenarios.

Or, how about this...a cloud storage service that requires a second different password to be manually entered (No "remember this password" setting) before any uploaded files can be modified or deleted? I do not know if any such services exist, but this would almost certainly prevent police from deleting the cloud copies even if they have physical access to the phone and the cloud storage app.

Only twice that I can recall have I put in what I would consider true Easter Eggs. The first one was in a program I wrote for the TI-86 graphing calculator that would plot on a world map the exact location of latitude and longitude coordinates entered by the user. There was an Easter Egg where entering a specific combination of button presses on the map screen would make the program plot the coordinates of my hometown that I lived in at the time.

The second Easter Egg was in a very quick Visual Basic program I wrote where you could pop virtual bubble wrap by clicking on the bubbles. It had an option to "tear off a new sheet" whenever all the bubbles had been popped. The Easter Egg is triggered after popping and tearing off a ridiculously high number of sheets consecutively, at which point a message box would appear suggesting the user may wish to seek professional help for their severe stress.

The various sounds that film cameras made, from the genuine click of a mechanical shutter, to the whirr of an automatic film advance/rewind, and even the high-pitch whine of the flash circuitry charging up.

Bonus: others have already mentioned floppy drives, but I'm going to go more specific and say Apple II floppy drives, especially when you first turn on the machine. Kids today and in the future will almost certainly never get to experience that glorious start-up chattering sound.

Indeed, and 8.1 IS free to existing users of Windows 8. But it definitely is too big to be considered a service pack, yet also not enough of an update to be considered a proper new version.

One thing that bugs me about Windows 8.1 currently is that there is no legitimate way (to the best of my knowledge) to walk into a computer store and buy a DVD copy of Windows 8.1 (Only Windows 8), or even download the Win8.1 installer or an ISO and burn it to a DVD or flash drive for later use, it's only available though the "Microsoft Store" for immediate installation at the time of download. I fix computers as a side job. What if someone brings a computer that has been upgraded to Win8.1 to me and they need me to do a repair install of the OS? I can't do that without Win8.1 media of some sort, so my only option is a total reformat and reinstall of vanilla Win8, followed by a lengthy update process to Win8.1. There is no way as far as I am aware to slipstream Win8.1 into the ISO for Win8. Plus, there's no guarantee Win8.1 will remain a free update forever, so if Microsoft decides to yank that free update path, then PC techs like me and our customers would be screwed.

If Microsoft does indeed go through with a truly "free" version of Windows, I anticipate that it won't be long until they panic and decide to kill it because "it's diluting their profits from Windows". That's what happened to the free (and admittedly quite limited) version of Office 2010 they put out. As restricted as Office Starter was compared to the retail version, it was still "good enough" for many people, myself included. This supposedly began eroding their profits for Office. By the time Office 2013 came around, they had decided that they didn't like the idea of having a free version of a flagship product eating into potential sales, so they axed it. I imagine a free version of Windows would meet the same short-lived fate. Yes, I agree with the general consensus that Windows 8.x is terrible compared to 7 or even Vista. BUT, just like with Office Starter, there will be many people for which a free version of Windows, restrictions and all, is "good enough" for them. This will eat into their sales of Windows even further (If that's even possible at this point considering the failure that is Windows 8), and they'll panic and decide to axe it to forcefully regain their flow of income.

With all that said, I will admit I'm curious to see how this plays out re: their method of releasing a free version of Windows. With Office Starter, it was (officially) only available pre-installed on new computers and (technically) could not be downloaded. If they release free Windows as a downloadable ISO, that might garner a little more adoption, but not much considering Win8's reputation. But, if they go the same route they took with Office Starter and make it only available on new computers, then really the only benefit would be a lower-priced PC, albeit with the added cost of having to deal with ads. Kinda like what Amazon has done with certain models of the Kindle.

Agreed, and there are quite a few cities and small towns that have plans either in the works or completed to provide their own locally-owned fiber internet. Unfortunately, there have also been several instances of monopoly/duopoly ISPs suing the cities or otherwise using questionable methods in an attempt to either block the fiber installation entirely, or force the city to halt work on their installation just so the ISP can then come in and install their own service to steal the cities' thunder. (Monticello, MN comes to mind - http://arstechnica.com/uncateg...). Unfortunately, the fact that the monopoly/duopoly ISPs can and often will do whatever they can to sabotage municipal fiber in turn makes some cities hesitant to even pursue it.

The major ISPs are crooked, plain and simple.

I agree, it would be best for both to be used as emergency numbers. It shouldn't be technically difficult to set it up so that the system automatically forwards calls to 911 if someone dials 112, or vice-versa. In fact, unless I'm mistaken, I've read previously that some GSM providers already do this.

However, if I had to pick one and ONLY one...I would choose 911 simply because you'd be less likely to accidentally dial it, albeit only slightly (I've heard stories about dispatchers receiving butt-dial 911 calls from cell phones). But, it is more difficult to accidentally fat-finger dial 911 as opposed to 112 since 9 and 1 are on opposite corners of the keypad, while 1 and 2 are right next to each other.

I agree, touchscreens are a bad idea. If you absolutely MUST switch to electronic voting, physical buttons are more user-friendly, and none of that "calibration" BS exists with them.

I am visualizing an improved electronic voting machine. It has a screen up top, but it is not a touchscreen, it is there merely to display information regarding the issue currently being voted on. Below the screen are four rows of four buttons per row. The first three rows of buttons would be used for the candidates, and the last row could be used to confirm the selection, clear the selection, go to the next ballot, etc. Each button is about 4 inches wide and 2 inches tall so they are large, obvious and easy to press, with a brightly-painted half-inch gap between the buttons to make the separation between the buttons stand out. Each button has its own small backlit LCD screen inside it that can dynamically change with the ballot to display various candidate names, yes or no, etc. Think similar tech to the Optimus keyboard, but with much bigger buttons and equally bigger screens inside the buttons. Whenever the voter goes to the next ballot, the displays on the buttons automatically change to the choices that apply to that particular ballot. Up to 12 candidates could fit on a 4x3 array of buttons, but in most cases there would be far fewer than 12, so I imagine the blank buttons could go completely black, to make it visually obvious that they will do nothing if pressed. If, somehow, there are more than 12 candidates, the 12th button could be used as a "more choices" selector that, when pressed, will change the candidate buttons to the next page of candidates, and it would be a different color to make it stand out so people realize there are more choices beyond the first 11 candidates.

Admittedly, there likely would be better designs that could be thought up. But, this quick off-the-top-of-my-head design still would be an improvement over touchscreens in my opinion.

Less expensive alternatives do exist, but thanks to the FDA they're not called or legally recognized as hearing aids, but rather "personal sound amplifiers". Thus, any search for a less-expensive alternative is best done using that term.

No, I'm not talking about those cheap infomercial sound amplifiers that look like bluetooth headsets or small pocket-size radios with headphones. I'm talking about professional-quality sound amplifiers that actually resemble proper hearing aids in appearance. They do exist, because I have one, an RCA Symphonix. The FDA might not call it a hearing aid, but I do. That's effectively what it is to me, a hearing aid that I purchased over-the-counter at an electronics store, paying only $300 as opposed to the $1,500 my doctor was quoting me. Despite it not being properly tuned to my particular grade of hearing loss, it still works pretty damn well for my needs, and I've been quite impressed.

So, it is possible to purchase a decent "hearing aid" for a relatively inexpensive price. You just need to know where to look and what to look for.

I would presume the set designers did additional work to hide the false nature of the set pieces after trashing them for the crash scene. I also imagine the dim lighting used during the filming of the final scene further helped obscure any obvious fakeness (Is that even a word?).

High school for me was fall 1997 to spring 2001, and the computer courses I recall taking were the typical "keyboarding" class, PASCAL and Visual Basic. We also did some stuff with AutoCAD in shop class, but I don't really consider that a computer course. Just about everything computer-related when I was in high school was incredibly mundane and elementary. Now, 10+ years later, I hear the same school has more advanced networking and IT-type classes similar to what I had to go to college to learn.

To be honest, I've found that I've learned a lot more about computers the past several years through simple hands-on experience than what I learned both in high school and college combined. Of course, the fact that tech is evolving so quickly as to render lots of knowledge rapidly outdated could have something to do with this.

I agree, there's truly no point in upgrading. Microsoft has a free compatibility pack that you can download and install which allows older versions of Office (2000 and higher) to be able to open and save DOCX, XLSX and so forth. I had Office 2000 with the compatibility pack, it met 100% of my needs without any problems whatsoever. I even got it to work on Windows 7 when Microsoft claimed it was incompatible (The ONLY problem I noted was that the stupid paperclip was pink whenever it popped up, but who uses that thing anyway?). I would still be using Office 2000, had my workplace not made upgrading to 2010 mandatory. I hate, hate, HATE the Ribbon.

Also, the Do Not Call registry is useless for most robocallers. They're blind-dialing either sequentially or at random. They don't care who has those phone numbers or if they're even valid numbers, let alone whether they're on the Do Not Call registry or not.