"Yes, you can give me a lot of money and I will provide you with rock-solid assurances about things that will or will not happen after you die."
Dude, why not just give your money to a church?

Yes! Along these lines, I have been thinking about my friends who have not yet read Cryptonomicon, and might enjoy it. They need to read it now, because in another couple of years (like, 5), it will be hopelessly quaint. It will require effort to remember how difficult communication used to be.

Destroying the earth is notoriously difficult.

Are you suggesting that change that is faster than "people" can "cope" with, simply doesn't happen? This would come as quite a surprise to coal miners, polar bears, Iranian ayatollahs, newspaper publishers, and the RIAA, to name a few.

I took a little bit more out of this, and maybe extrapolating too far but probably not. The important story here is that the iPhone App Store, at least for games, is a mature market. The market pressure means that not only will you not get rich, and not only will you not break even if you spend actual money developing, but you very likely won't make any money at all. I agree with previous posters that this guy's $4.99 price point is laughable, but let's figure he could sell 20x the volume with a $0.99 price point-- that's still nothing-- $3,800 gross sales, before Apple's (and the IRS') cut. Enough to pay your developer, if your developer is also your cat.

And that's worth knowing, because it's not true in many computer marketplaces. Bottom-feeders still have a path to profits in many areas, but apparently iPhone games is no longer one of them.

If you wonder why people (esp. Americans) insist on referring to Ukraine as "The Ukraine," I believe the answer lies with the Parker Bros. board game "Risk". Their wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_(game)#Territories doesn't say this, but I'm pretty sure older boards had a space that was not called Ukraine, but "The Ukraine". Corroboration from Seinfeld: http://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheLabelMaker.html If you're wondering if Americans learned geography from any source more reliable than a board game, well, you already know the answer.

Relevant passage: 5-705. Methods of Destruction. Classified material may be destroyed by burning, shredding, pulping, melting, mutilation, chemical decomposition, or pulverizing (for example, hammer mills, choppers, and hybridized disintegration equipment). Pulpers, pulverizers, or shredders may be used only for the destruction of paper products. High wet strength paper, paper mylar, durable-medium paper substitute, or similar water repellent papers are not sufficiently destroyed by pulping; other methods such as disintegration, shredding, or burning shall be used to destroy these types of papers. Residue shall be inspected during each destruction to ensure that classified information cannot be reconstructed. Crosscut shredders currently in use capable of maintaining a shred size not exceeding 1/32 inch in width (with a 1/64 inch tolerance by 1/2 inch in length) may continue to be used. However, any crosscut shredders requiring replacement of the unit and/or rebuilding of the shredder blades assembly must be replaced by a crosscut shredder on the latest NSA Evaluated Products List of High Security Crosscut Shredders. The list may be obtained from the CSA. Classified material in microform; that is, microfilm, microfiche, or similar high data density material; may be destroyed by burning or chemical decomposition, or other methods as approved by the CSA.

My first thought was, "Great! Maybe this will pave the way for somehow getting music onto my phone from Linux!" I am currently trying to get the XP side of my dual-boot machine running again, after 6 months of inactivity since I switched to Ubuntu, just so that I can run iTunes and load some music onto my iPhone!!

I have had luck with Wine for other things, but current itunes has status of "Garbage" at winedev, and even in the comments for the older versions I can find no testimony of successful xfer of music to ipod under wine. Good thing I didn't wipe that XP partition....

Well, you got the long-term part right.

The body of knowledge related to engineering manned space flight systems resides 50% in thousands of volumes of documents from Apollo forward, and 90% in the minds of a small group of very capable engineers. Any 1-year gap in productively employing those people, and they, being capable, will move on to something else for which they can be paid. When you finally assemble the $$$, you find that the expertise needed to provide the return has retired or otherwise moved on.

That's at the design level. At the execution level, a similar effect occurs, but in this case you can lose a lot even if you don't lose the personnel. In an effort as complicated as a manned launch, there are about 100,000 things that can go wrong. 99,900 of those things are documented, with preventatives and correctives-- somewhere. But if you haven't been through the process for five years, you're better off starting from scratch than trying to re-assemble an execution system.

I don't give a hoot about manned space flight. But if we can see ourselves doing it in 2020, we have two choices: either a) plan on spending 2015-2020 ramping back up, with attendant casualties; or b) don't stop.