If anyone is still reading this thread, I'd recommend whatever the latest version of "Upgrading and Repairing PC's" by Scott Mueller is out now. Great detail on the inner workings of PC components and fairly approachable.

Maybe it's more dependent on the mindset of the reader to start with. Diamond Age was pretty dystopian but what I took away from it was more focused on the innovative ways he envisioned incorporating technology into daily life and the ways that doing such affects our culture - positive/negative/neutral. I saw it as inspiring and many of the things he described there back in the early/mid 90's are just now showing up in "revolutionary ideas of the future" marketing. Same can be said of many others - Altered Carbon, Pandora's Star, Blade Runner, etc.

From the way you ask the question I think you know the answer is "don't" but were hoping someone here would be able to convince you otherwise. When I was younger I'd say go for it - I would have just bought a separate hard drive and sled for the laptop and shut down/swap hard drive/boot up when I wanted to switch between work and play. The hdd sled is pretty 'easy-access' on most laptops and while it's a hassle to have to shutdown every time, it beats having to carry an entire other laptop and it covers more potential holes than the usb/livecd boot option. That said, with the stakes as they are today for protecting company data and networks, I would never do work or connect to their assets while running the other drive. And by the same logic of the stakes being what they are, even if you were scrupulous about that rule, if the company detects the change somehow, someway they may just can you for it to be on the safe side. This is a very common entry vector for hackers/malware. I admit it sucks to have to carry two laptops on travel. Tablets are convenient for carry size but there's times when they just don't cut it and you need to step up to the laptop level hardware. So generally I just carry a personal laptop or suck it up and limit my personal computing to what can be done on a tablet.

it's fun to see MySpace being used as the meter stick of how bad something sucks...

Actually it started off as a printing press company in 1895. I don't think they really got into government stuff for the first 80-90 years. That said, I have seen tons o' fail built upon the direction of some CEO or exec level 'leader' that read just enough buzz words in the latest wall street journal or Wired to be dangerous. Cloud computing, virtualization, SOA, web services, OOP. All can have brilliant uses but the problem is that those with a limited understanding of the technology embrace it and want to apply it to everything under the sun. Is your raid SOA compliant? Have you looked into virtualizing your furniture? Sounds silly but you'd be surprised.

I have one and I find it frequently distracting. On my vehicle it occupies a large chunk of my rear view mirror when activated and the brightness can make the remaining 2/3 of the mirror hard to see. It is by no means a complete picture of what's behind you and you definitely have to still look in the mirrors and/or over your shoulder to get the complete picture. Otherwise you will likely hit something/someone. Still, it can be useful to see just how close you are to a lower profile obstruction (low wall or car) when parking. I guess I would just prefer a screen that wasn't part of the rear-view real estate.

I don't know, maybe sluts will be the next protected class. There's enough of them out there (M and F) that they could form a powerful lobby/PAC, that is if they weren't too busy boinking everything that moves....

In this series of shots it looks like Cassini is passing in front of some bright headlights, apparently out of nowhere, or is it just me? http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/?start=4&storedQ=2387927

Of course, once they've shot you, you're probably not too interested in watching a video....

Having had to work with many people who either came from a school with very limited genEd requirements, or where some students found some loopholes to get out of them, etc., I can now appreciate those 'pain in the ass worthless' classes. I've strongly suggested to some of them that they go back just to take a few of those classes so that they (maybe) can see that it doesn't matter how fast their code runs if they can't work well and communicate with others (coders, engineers, HR, administration, customers, end users, etc) and technical writing actually has to be read and understood by those same others in many cases. But that's only one of many reasons that it makes sense to take them and actually expend effort on learning in those classes.

That said, I have to provide a couple of caveats. First, even taking those classes there are no guarantees that you will be a well rounded, socially apt individual capable of communicating with everyone with backgrounds from PHD's to GED's. Some will take the courses and either be incapable of assimilating the material or just refuse to. To some extent, that's where the socialization outside of class can help. In some cases, people are just narrow minded jerks and are basically content staying that way.

Second, we could have many pages of discussion on the general state of education in the US today and how many of those classes are in fact fairly worthless on many campuses. The bar has been lowered at the elementary school level which in turn forces the bar to be lowered in each tier up through high school, which in turn means that teachers of genEd classes at universities have to either lower the bar or fail massive numbers of students. At places where non-tenured teachers have their salary and/or jobs somewhat dependent on pass rates and student evaluations, the obvious pressure to drop the standards means that those students that are 'above average' will find the courses pretty lame.

My advice would be to take the genEd classes. Maybe reach out to some successful people in the industry and ask their opinion on which types might be most beneficial, ask recruiters or hiring managers what they look for as well. There are plenty of people in the various sectors of industry that would be happy to give their opinion.

The label on the fridge that said "SHIT BURGER" gave it away....

iPad leaks.....

...or am i the only one that came here in search of witty Godzilla comments? Come on /., how many opportunities like this do you expect to get??