As a former sys admin in the CS department at BYU, I can say we ran quite well without coffee. Two words: Mountain Dew. Though I'm not sure which is worse when it spills into a keyboard.

Bingo. Cities (generally) subsidize sprawl by providing infrastructure at no cost. Cities look at current growth and say, "Gosh, that suburb is exploding! They'll have 500,000 more people in 5 years! We better build a freeway out there for all those new houses!" But if the city doesn't build a freeway, what does the developer tell his prospective clients? "You'll love the rural feel as you try to commute with 500,000 of your closest friends on this charming 2-lane country road"? I don't see where it says cities _have_ to build roads because people want to build out there. If the developers want to build out there, let them foot the bill. Meanwhile, cities can take the money (ok, so it's mostly state and federal money) and support the infrastructure and urban form that already exists.

And yet when I have to write a research paper for class, do I have to go to the library, look up relevant journals in the card catalog, hunt through an index to find keyword references, dance all over the periodicals section finding the proper volume and issue, and then have to sit there then and there to read it and summarize it? No. I can sit at home, log in to my university's library, do a keyword search over a vast number of journals, and get the abstracts and articles immediately. Does my university not have a printed copy? No worries- they've got access to three online databases that have the article.

Now, I'm sure the university pays large sums of money for this privilege. But it looks to me like the internet is meeting that original reasoning just fine, notwithstanding the amount of people on facebook during class (and then come up to me later not understanding what a constructor is... even though the professor spent the whole hour explaining it.... but that's a different topic).

During my time serving a proselyting mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a major flood hit the town we were in. For two weeks my companion and I took off our white shirts and ties, put on our gloves, and went to work. No questions of religion asked, no offers of 'listen to us or we won't help you', just a lot of work alongside hundreds of other volunteers. Now, I can't speak for every member of my church the same as you can't, but to me, being a Mormon means trying to love every human being, no strings attached. Do I succeed? Of course not- I'm not perfect. Do I try to share my religion? Yes, because I believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the best way to happiness in this world and the only way to eternal life in the world to come. And I respect people's choices- if they say no, I stop pressing the issue. Do I stop loving them? I try not to, cause they're still a human same as I.

Balancing a sate budget isn't an easy thing, and it's not just elected officials who are involved. At the state level you have tired, hard working, generally honest civil servants who crunch the numbers, come up with scenarios, and then tell the politicians "well, we can afford to fund schools, prisons, or roads. Pick two." Sure, some states spend foolishly, and some politicians (and civil servants) are crooked, but can we step back from our cynical viewpoint for just one minute and look at the whole picture, not just the negative side? There are crooks, and there are people who are trying to help. And based on my totally IANAL opinion, I think this state law does go against the constitution. The internet changes things, and we need to sit down and hash out some new laws (or perhaps ammendment?) for dealing with interstate commerce via remote purchasing (email, phone, etc. perhaps this has already been done with mail order/shop by phone?).

For me, taking notes isn't for review later as it is for current understanding and recall. I try to put what the professor is saying in my own words as I take notes, and thus I will know when I don't understand something and can ask questions. Also, I've found that if I take notes I remember more of what was said, even if I never look at the notes again. Studying my notes rarely does me any good for tests, but the fact that I took them in the first place means I'm a lot more likely to remember the material in the first place.

... unless your a militant vegetarian. In which case it's time to call out the riot police.

I needed a review to tell me this? Flash totally hikes the processor usage and thus increases heat, decreases battery life. I run ClickToFlash to block all the annoying ads, etc, but watching youtube or other video sites totally drains the battery. Rather annoying, and I can see why Steve Jobs hates flash. /fanboyism.

GUI-less administration is also a boon for remote administration. Being able to send out a command or a modified config file to an entire lab of computers rather than having to make each change on each computer is a wonderful thing. (disclaimer: I've never admin'ed an ubuntu setup, so I'm not saying this isn't possible in Ubuntu).

NRA Membership

You can't fix greed with a software patch.

Depends on if you include "special" files. For example, if you define an Aperture Library by it's container file, than my biggest is over 100GB. If you reject that definition of a file and just say it's made up of a bunch of smaller files, then its 1 to 10 GB.