Clarification: When I say Dodd-Frank passed during the Clinton's, it was when Hillary was a Senator, I'm assuming you are including that as part of the "Clinton Administration". At least when I deal with most people who hate the Clinton's anything done while either one of them was in office that they don't like was a Clinton's fault...

I spend two hours a day on the train. I used to alternate between my laptop and phone during the commute but the Switch has replaced those.

Interesting. That hasn't been my experience at all. I work at a major investement bank and the majority of the middle tier of our trading systems are now written in Java. Have been for years. I'm not talking web based apps either. These days the back ends of a lot of the trading systems are a collection of Java apps running on Linux servers (usuall Red Hat) using using pub/sub messaging for communication and jdbc to connect to Oracle, Sybase or DB2.

I've been doing this for a while (10+ years) and went through the progression of doing everything in C, then C++, then Java. When told to start using Java to say I was skeptical would be an understatement. But over the years Java has become great for this purpose. We experience no random memory growth (leaked memory) from our processes. We leave them up for weeks on end processing large volumes of trades with no issues. Since we run our programs for long periods of time startup time isn't an issue and really doesn't take that long anymore anyway. The time saved coding in Java instead of C++ is also beneficial. No more having to learn every vendor's version of their C++ threading library and trying to stitch it all together in one app. Too many times would I have to write an app using serveral vedor libs that I would need to modify and they all implemented threading, logging, etc. their own way. So as you jump from one file to another there is no consistency on how things are being done. Maintenance nightmare and the learning curve is huge for new members of the team.

Plus, as a manager trying to hire competent C++ programmers out of college is almost impossible. Seems like many schools just don't teach it anymore. So if HR only gives you a junior programmer budget and you need a C++ programmer you end up getting the guy nobody else would hire.

Disclaimer: Above experience anecdotal. I'm sure there are people out there who have had really bad experiences.

I always thought Lego James Bond would be cool. Lot of good villians over the years, plus all the different gadgets James Bond gets. Would be similar to the different suits and suit upgrades in Lego Batman...

I'm pretty sure I broke the 48 hour mark fighting the Sunrise Wildfire.

They teased us too. After about 16 hours of fighting the fire our engine was relieved and we were told to stage at a military base that was nearby. When we got off the engine some medics took our vitals and then told us to go lay down on cots that were set up. We laid down for about 15 minutes and then our engine was assigned to a new area so we had to get up and go back to fighting the fire. I don't think any of us slept for those 15 minutes.

When I finally got home I think I slept for almost a day.

I'll third this. I'm using eeebuntu base on my 701. Works like a charm and still leaves some room on the tiny drive.

Almost everything worked out of the box. Only thing I had to fix was the wireless on/off hotkey.

Haven't tried the webcam but I usually use my eee offline on the train.

Before switching to eeebuntu I tried easy peasy, stock ubuntu and eeeXubuntu. All had many issues and needed quite a bit of tinkering after install.

MicroProse. Wow! I remember them. I spent way too much time playing Darklands back in the day even though it was buggy as hell. I recently felt nostalgic and played in again using DOSBox. Aside from the graphics it still holds up pretty good. I'm still pissed that they never came out with any sequels or add-ons.

I don't buy it. I've got two friends who work as Cell Technicians. Basically their job is to drive around all day fixing broken cell towers, providing routine maintenance or installing hardware upgrades. They've both been doing this going on almost 10 years. Neither have had any health issues.

There is one odd thing though. Between the two of them, they have had six children. All girls. I made a joke to them about the radiation from the towers affecting their Y sperm and they told me they wouldn't be surprised. Amongst their coworkers' children there are about six more girls and only one boy.

It's most likely a coincidence and unrelated to their job though. I'm sure something like this on a large scale would have been noticed. Then again I could be wrong.

All this is anecdotal so take with necessary grain of salt.