I've been on the receiving end of both- same day and month's notice. I've decided that they both suck, but I found it infinitely harder to be productive when I showed up to find out that I wouldn't be returning the following day. Having the month's notice was nice only from the standpoint that I could prepare for my imminent departure as opposed to having it sprung at the last minute.

"but we need you to stop making parts for the space shuttle, and no we're not going to tell you why."

With the lead time on parts and equipment prior to a mission, it's difficult to try and keep the cancellation of the program hidden. Eventually, someone will notice the fact that there's fewer and fewer external fuel tanks "on the shelf", so to speak, and begin to wonder why.

In the retail or restaurant business it's easy to move inventory to another business that is in the same line of work, but there's not much call for spare Space Shuttle parts. While I'm sure that a lot of the personnel involved in the program will be able to continue working in the field (either in private industry or possibly still within NASA), I think that the just-in-time supply of parts is really the reason that people need to be informed with a significant lead time prior to the suspension of activity.

I still lose my breath every time I look up and see the Milky Way. It's such a majestic sight, and seeing it never gets old.

Like many others that have commented, I remember seeing Star Hustler in the mid-80's as well, as a PBS weekend sign-off. Many a time my dad and I would go outside to check on Jack's observation for the week, and always had fun looking up at the sky. Even though the sign-off would be after midnight, we'd sometimes stare up at the sky pointing at things we could see for hours at a time.

Jack always kept astronomy accessible to everyone, and for that I thank you. You will be missed, Jack. I know I'll be one to keep looking up, and will make sure as many people as possible do the same.

as long as it has $80,000 of Bellagio chips you can cash in, who cares what it's called!

When we go to B&N, we'll usually drop between $200 and $300. The $25 "membership" pays for itself in one purchase, so in my mind, it's a good investment. For others, it may not be so cut and dry- especially if you buy a paperback for $8 and you have to fork over an extra $25 just to save a buck. The membership is very beneficial to the bulk buyers, even if they only purchase once or twice a year.

I've bought books online, usually ones I can't find in the local retailers. The advantage to places like Amazon for me is that they have a wide selection, so when I know exactly what I'm looking for, I can usually find it quick. In general, when I'm book shopping, I don't necessarily have a specific book in mind, and I find it a lot easier to be in "browse mode" in a brick/mortar store than online. You can grab a book off the shelf and flip through it and actually see if it's what you want. With a fiction novel, that may not be as big of a deal, but when I'm buying technical manuals or the like, I'd rather be able to flip through and see what all it has to offer as opposed to the brief blurb that is previewed online, which may or may not be indicative of the quality of the book.

And for every game you mentioned, there's piles of crappy games as well. But that doesn't detract from your enjoyment of the ones that you consider to be "jewels".

StarCraft is probably the only "modern" game that's really held my interest in the same way that some of the older ones did.

Nostalgia plays a part, but I'm hard pressed to find a modern game that can hold my interest for hours on end like the older games.

I've got nothing against the fancy graphics and surround sound audio, but I think that newer games lose some of their playability in lieu of presentation.

There's lots of cool games and game systems out there now, but in my mind nothing beats the old ones.

Compared to today's multi-player, multimedia extravaganza's, the old games and consoles may be low-tech, but they still have a lot of fun and enjoyment for all ages. There's a lot of nostalgia around the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision and Nintendo NES, and I'd love to have a few of them to play around on again.

Choppy graphics and cheesy music may seem pretty awkward in today's gaming arena of digital audio and photo-realistic video, but I'd take the old games anyday.

I operate prety much in the same vain. I've been a linux user since '95, and an exclusive linux user since '03. I've converted a few people, but anytime someone asks me which is better, I always start by asking them what they use their computer for. If it ends up that the have a lot of application dependencies that are better satisfied by using Windows, I'll gladly tell them to just stay with Windows. If they do a lot of work that is OS-independent, I'll extol the virtues (as I see them) of linux. But I also make sure they understand that there could be limitations if they try to augment their application base from what they originally tell me.

I think the biggest problem with moving someone from Windows to Linux is that unless they're at a level of understanding whereby they know what each can and can't do, there will be a point where they either get something from a friend or download something that requires Windows to run. Someone who understands the inner workings of things may be able to get them working under linux, but general users aren't going to be able to figure that out, and to them, the system will just be broken and it will suck.

If Dell really wants to promote linux as an option, then allow systems to ship with a dual-boot configuration, so that the end user can make a choice based their own usage patterns.

And for Halloween- "Mars Attacks!"

Just like the printing press, radio, and television, the Internet has made it possible to disseminate information to more people, faster.

No matter which media we obtain our information from, we are presented with both fact and crap, and it's up to us which we elect to believe as the truth.

The technology used to present information has no bearing on intelligence, in my mind. How we choose to use that information does.

Since one of the participation requirements is that you have to "promise not to reverse engineer the box", I'm guessing that it will do something more than just plain-text pass through "counting" of packets over time.

And since every packet is going to go through this box, that means that every packet can be monitored as it's registered for "bandwidth" purposes.

My vote goes towards the black box approach, otherwise why would the be so adamant about people reverse engineering it?

I skipped 12 as well, but for issues with the Intel video drivers that were in the kernel. It's been a known issue since 2009, but hasn't been fixed, and only affects systems with both the Intel processer and GPU. Supposedly, it's fixed in the F13 kernel, so I guess we'll see.

They just photoshopped out the guy behind him- holding his nose and lighting it.....