You said it in the end - sync to your iPod. If I had an Apple device, I might be able to bring myself to make the effort to leash iTunes. But I don't, and it doesn't offer me any other compelling reason to use it. The other nuisance for me in iTunes was the default behavior (a few years ago, at least) to take over my…

Made me chuckle. Yeah, it's a copy-cat. But also evidently well written. I may have to read these.

This. I used to comfortably install QuickTime, at least, for full codec support. For the past few years though I've had to run a strict Apple-free policy on my machines because of how badly they spam the system with updaters and unwelcomed additional installs.

A lot of the northerner reactions are from people who are most definitely not a reasonable distance inland. Its a lot like the earthquake reactions — Sure the West(South) deals with more of them, but in part that means infrastructure, emergency services, construction techniques and society in general are adapted to…

As an IT pro, I spend a fair amount of time in cmd.exe running things like PsTools. I really need to get around to doing the full Cygwin setup - I spend almost as much time in putty working on linux servers, and always cringe when I need to flip back to cmd.exe for workstation stuff.

I got that Grazier said that - sorry, I wasn't precise there. I disagree with his statement that it was bad science. I was looking to give you an example of science I disagree with from the show, but I see that my only points of contention were plot points that came solely from the creative crew - Story trumps science…

I'm not sure I understand tossing that out there as an example of bad science. Sure, if we teleport the USS Enterprise a few thousand feet up, it would probably snap like a twig. But here's the thing - we couldn't do that. We don't have ships that can do that. I'm willing to accept that by the time we can…

@InAnimateAlpha Never heard that term before. The way you put it, I'm a jackleg PC tech, network tech, telecom engineer, auto mechanic, carpenter, electrician, plumber. Does it need to actually be your occupation to use the word? That whittles the list down a tiny bit, haha.

This isn't for an extra few inches. My dad was a general contractor, I practically grew up on job sites - it's not uncommon to see a few hundred feet of cords strung together like this at a job site. I learned the 2nd method, not the 1st. Not surprisingly, most of the cords had aftermarket plugs & sockets on the ends,…

My read on it is that this is not an intact specimen — if it were, it is likely to be 8 meters long, but it's long dead and the arms have rotted or been eaten short.

Interesting... Is that your task bar in the center of a dual monitor setup? I've considered it before for symmetry, etc ... but it never felt comfortable. Seemed harder to hit, being in the "middle" of the screen vs at a hard edge.

How is it Google's fault if Yale left personal information on 43,000 individuals on an open FTP? Next we'll blame Google for kiddie porn and web-stalking, right?

I've never tried this one, even though I knew about the wrist bands. I've always had luck with putting pressure just on the inside of my legs, just above the knees. Balling up a pillow and squeezing it between the legs works, if you're laying down.

I'd love to know more about the technical side of that. We have both Avaya and Aspect switches in our site, and while there certainly are "private" internal numbers that we use for routing calls too and from the various call centers, these numbers always drop into the end of the queue with no differentiation between…

I understand that, and I notice I wasn't too clear when it came to that point - got off track. What I was getting at was that sales people, given their lack of hands-on knowledge of the product at hand (in my case, cell service/equipment) would default to transferring everyone who wasn't a sale to general customer…

As someone who still works in a call center, dealing with three clients on three different phone systems... I'm not aware of any system that can cut the queue. Transfers might save some effort bouncing around the IVR, but you're still holding in the same queue. Also, my experience with several clients tells me the…

If you find you frequently have use of public charging stations, you could make yourself a charging-only USB cord - snip the data pins, just leave the +5V & Grnd connected. Some phones will even charge faster (SGS line, for instance) with the data lines shorted - this tells the phone it is connected to a dedicated…

Its not unique to cable - Verizon & DirecTV have worked the same, in my experience. Also, I'd almost prefer it if medical professionals scheduled you in a window like the cable company - it would be more honest, at least, if they said "Be here between 8AM & 11AM, and we'll get with you sometime in there."

Cool stop motion. I don't see the two levels of stop motion - this is just a stop motion video.

Orbital mechanics are very predictable. I'm sure there's some questions in how well the momentum will be transferred from the satellite to the asteroid, and that affects how much the asteroid would move - but as long as they strike it in the correct direction (kinda hard to mess up), the odds of knocking it closer to…