Anything in the Boom line is good - they did a bunch of Disney/Pixar stuff, available in TPB which is kid friendly, and tends to be well-written. One of the biggest problem with comics, I think is bad writing...

My kid also likes super-heroes, so DC's Super-Friends is pretty good (and emphasizes non-violent problem resolution, which is actually good). Marvel's Super-Hero Squad is for slightly older kids, but still accessible and cartoony enough.

We also go through Scooby Doo and other DC Kids titles.

Free Comic Book Day is coming this Saturday, so it's a great time to take your kid to the comic store and pick something out. Lots of free promotional comics!

I'm learning Mandarin to speak with my wife's family and so I can understand what my wife and son are discussing when they switch to Chinese. I've learned a few things about the language.

First, all Chinese learn pinyin to start with - english characters - so they can learn their own language. Eventually, they phase in Chinese characters. Pinyin is not pronounced the same as English (for no coherent reason I can figure out).

Second, all Chinese type in pinyin on computers because their language is impossible to enter in any other way (remember that stupid keyboard Michelle Yeoh used in that James Bond movie?)

Third, Mandarin is WAY more complicated to learn than English. Aside from the tones (Chinese is a homophone language, meaning each tone has 1-9 pronunciations, depending on dialect, with Mandarin using about 4 and Cantonese using 9)... and the tones let you differentiate words like 'horse' and 'mother'. My wife insists that most Chinese make their way through foreign accents by figuring out the context of what they're saying.

Fourth, the Chinese word for their language is zhong wen which means a combination of Chinese language and culture - the language is mostly comprised of idioms of 3-4 words which are nonsensical unless you've grown up with the culture and stories. This is mostly because Chinese don't like to say anything that hasn't been said before, mostly because saying something different and shocking is culturally problematic. English idioms are used far less frequently and are usually easier to grasp.

Fifth, unless anyone has something better to suggest, I've never had good Chinese instruction I could process, from Rosetta Stone to Pimsleur, my wife's patient instructions, to using speech recognition software I configured myself, which would let me hear and understand the different tones.

Not to be all culturally superior or anything, but can we either make English the global lingua franca, or just get working overtime on improving live simultaneous translation technology (like jahjah?

I left technical college with a 3 month internship at a small telecom systems integration firm which was effectively unpaid. I wound up learning a hell of a lot, and got hired at a (low) salary. I worked the hours and learned the tech/industry and my contributions made the company money, and I got raises, bonuses and promotions. I made great contacts from day one. 8 years later (3 years ago), I left to start my own business, doing the same thing (for different customers, of course), and have been successful at it.

What you get out of something is what you put into it. Internships are a great way to try-before-you-buy. Any new grad may not know their head from their ass. They may not have the potential to succeed in a field. The risk is high in new grads, and internships help weed out unsuitable candidates.

When I was a manager, I engaged and hired many interns. As soon as my own business is in a position to do so (colleges around here don't touch home-office operations, and since all of my consultants telework, there's never been a need for a central office), I will do so again. There are a lot of 'diamonds in the rough' out there...

That said, I understand how internships can lend themselves to abuse... but my field (telecom, interactive voice response/speech recognition) is a very specialized field, and it would be impossible to break into it other than by chance or advanced degree.

I heartily endorse internships... but people who take them should always be wary. And they should demonstrate enough initiative to show they're worth the investment.

All my Windows PCs are imaged with Acronis, and all data is stored on a 1 TB RAID-1 NAS (Dlink has a decent one, the 323, and Linksys has one, too). Acronis works with Linux too. Acronis does incremental backups. The NAS cost $350 incl. disks.

All work is done on the NAS, and everyone has their own personal folder

I use Jungledisk client software running on one of my Windows servers to incrementally back things nighly up to the cloud on Rackspace. It costs me about $20/month for the insanely large 100+ GB I've got there. They manage incremental backups, I can restore back to 100 days.

I've been running like this for nearly 2 years, and every restore has gone smoothly.

Not in Canada. Netflix is hobbled mostly by the CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television Commission) - we can't catch a decent selection up here yet - a small portion of the US stuff, especially old stuff. Star Trek TOS isn't here yet. In Canada, we also have rediculously low bandwidth caps for residential DSL subscribers (most DSL providers also provide traditional TV/media services and don't like the competition). Smaller providers are being forced to pay for sharing infrastructure too.

But for all that, my behaviour has generally fallen into the pattern of paying a reasonable amount for content and streaming legally.

I'm pretty convinced that the secretive Harper government is fairly complicit with any US requests for Canadian traffic in the first place. It seems we're in the unfortunate position of being subject to US policy in this regard, whether we want it or not, and whether our traffic passes through US routes or not. In this day and age, privacy is a luxury we are no longer afforded by our technology. Unfortunately, search algorithms are such that we can no longer hope that the sheer volume of data lends anonymity.

How would this apply to VoIP phone records? Skype calls? MSN Live calls? There are international calls which get switched via US carriers. Are those subject to this privacy grab? For example, I've got Canadian customers who use US VoIP carriers to place overseas calls. I've got Canadian customers whose Canadian customer may choose to use a US route for least-cost-routing, unbeknownst to them. Is this just for PSTN or cell calls? By extension, all data packets going through the US will wind up getting monitored.

I take plenty of breaks throughout the day. I'm also not restricted to an 8 hr workday, since I own my consulting business. So I'm glad a lot of people took a 5 minute break, but I don't see the direct impact to the economy.

Did people preduce noticeably less during that day?

I think it's interesting, and makes an interesting form of marketing, providing something that captures interest as part of everyone's work habits.
Obviously, a classy advert like what we just saw from Google was a good example.

Amusingly enough the "Antimissle" typo in the title is also flawed.
Although technically, an anti missile system which can't hit targets is probably pro-miss(le).

...but I've misplaced that damned electronic thumb and Vogon poetry makes my internals all 'splodey.

Don't forget sport. Go Predators!

Beat him with the chessboard and pieces? Lateral thinking wins the game. :)

It depends on the apps. I used to run backgrounder with a SIP client - it worked on a 3G (and I could play games at the same time) until wireless went to sleep. Eventually I rolled back to the non-jailbroken OS. Multitasking without constant wifi was just not worth it for me.