Rasberry Pi is as quiet and small as you can get, and BMC running on it is nice. http://www.raspbmc.com/

Going on right now (well, starting soon) is the greatest wild party in the middle of nowhere, 2 hours from the closes cell signal, and they have internet access. Ask some of the Burning Man guys to help with such a setup. They don't use 4G, but they have T1s in nearby towns and they microwave it out to the festival site. It works very well, even in the worst dust storms, and is not nearly as reliant on the whims of cellular carriers.

This fire is burning right next to actual people, not sure why we need to worry about SF 200 miles away. Actual people are right on the fire line in danger, they should be the ones reported on. I know this is a tech site and the bay is the tech center, but remember the firefighters and civilians that are actually on site, and not just experiencing a minor inconvenience.

Can I just get a phone that I don't have to recharge every 8 hours if I actually use the thing? More apps, more features, more browsing all means a worse experience because it is a wireless device that I always have to have plugged in for power.

I agree there has to be some middle ground. Completely ignoring it and pretending it doesn't happen doesn't seem right, but we don't need to glamorize it. I used to be a photojournalist and shot pictures of a murder scene at a local college. We had a ton of pictures and the editors and I decided to run one that we considered in the middle of the road from everything I had shot. It was a wide shot of the whole scene at night with detectives and the street corner, and if you looked closely you could see a sheet covered object in the street. It was the person that had been killed, but small and off-center in the frame. Our goal was not to present a grotesque image but to show the scene as it was. A few people complained that it shocked them, and my best answer to them was I am sorry, but I am also glad you are shocked, we all should be shocked that someone was murdered on our campus. We can't just hide the fact that bad things happen, but we can take a minute to sit back and judge how we should present it. Live coverage doesn't allow that to be done.

They made a bad call on Pluto, but they're trying to get it right with Vesta, they must be referee-like.

Planets orbit the sun, asteroids orbit something else. If a rock among other rocks is orbiting the sun, and it meets the other qualifications, it's a planet..

We need to find water on Mars in order to support manned missions, bringing it from Earth makes the cargo weight that much heavier.

Mars probes typically return this kind of water on Mars data every few years or so. The problem is, it's nowhere close to the water level found on Earth and therefore it's ability to support any form of life is quite low. I'm not sure how newsworthy this is. It doesn't make much sense to me.

One of the most distinctive features of Linux Format was a DVD edition sold around the turn of the millennium that saved modem-connected users from having to download the latest packages. It was cool.

Yep, my brother and I used to buy 2600 there and share it. B&N has always had a good supply of geeky materials.

I'M KING OF THE WORLD!?!

Your comment is about five years late. This was an Obama cut that got undone by the House.... it's all (D)s involved.

There are two ways to put Windows on a Mac, Boot Camp and virtual machines which both put the full capabilities of Windows in front of the user and programs and therefore malware. Windows on a Mac requires antivirus and antispyware solutions just like any other PC.