Yeah, webex, gotomeeting, gotowebinar and teamviewer. All have become important parts of business that I use.

That damned phone lasted for three plus years, in my pocket everyday. My kids used it to make period phone calls. Many drops, stepped on, and generally just abuse. Then one day, I dropped it at just the right angle and a side near the hinge. It lasted for two more weeks before I accidentally snapped the lid of the phone off. Even without a working display the phone still worked! I could hear it ring or vibrate, but when I answered it, I had to put it on speaker phone to talk to the person.

Well, the display was obviously dead so anything phone related didn't work, but after three years the thing still "works."

Now the w450 they sent to me as a replacement. That thing sucks. The interface is painful, the screen seems smaller and the buttons just don't seem to work as well.

I have been thinking about a Math MMORPG that is based on educational learning. For instance:

Mage: Level of Mage is based on Mathematic ability of the player. If you can answer a high level Algebra problem then you can cast that 7th level spell. Effectiveness could also be determined by how close the player was to the answer.

Fighter: Thac0 is based on the historical knowledge of the user. "What year was the Battle of Hastings?"

Thief: ThaC0 could be based on something like Art History and thieving abilities based on something like Philosophy.

etc.

I think it would be great if this could be done and hosted by a nonprofit organization to promote learning. The concept would take away the MMORPG process of grinding away at useless button clicks and would encourage learning something other than stupid game mechanics. And finally once someone understood the system, playing would be better for casual gamers.

Bard's Tale: Yes it was rebooted on the XBox a few years ago (sort of), but they killed that game. The game that was in development by a fan group looked like it was going to kick so much butt (Devil's Whiskey), but then EA started sending cease and desist letters so they had to change it. I remember that it was going to be called"The Bard's Legacy."

I have to grab a copy of Devil's Whiskey.

Yeah, I worked at shitty little web hosting company and they had their own repository server for updates to all of the managed servers. The admin team has at least three security guys who's job it was to QA the repository on pretty much a daily basis. They monitored for security patches and posted them to the repository as soon as possible. And we supported about 4 different OS's at the time.
I can't see why you won't have your own repository with a few people who knew deb/rpm package building for your specific repositories. And then it's just a matter of standardization. "Here are the OS we support."

Make magazine had this covered back a while ago:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2005/10/diy_gps_tracking.html
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2005/10/diy_gps_tracking_with_mologogo.html

Mologogo with a cheap $60 cell phone.

Before your kid leaves for the day, check her bag and make sure it's on and working properly.
When she gets home, put the cell phone on the charger.

In the event that you loose your kid, you check the website and Mologogo will tell you where the kid is at.
My phone can tell me where any of my friends are, yours should to.

Easy peasy.

Hmmm, interesting. A little earing that makes a very light tone when you are facing North.

Yeah, I know what you mean, sorta. I have to retake Calc I sometime in the future, but what I got out of the class made me feel like I knew things few other people really understood in the world. I wanted to apply Calculus to other areas of my life.
But, I mean; there should be games and fun things that are just as addictive/fun as WoWCrack that actually teaches you something. Image WoWCrack games where you learned Calculus or even Algrebra. Your level was based on the equations you could solve. And rather than grinding on killing trolls or orcs you were grinding on equations.....
I wish I was a developer......

What the hell is wrong with this society? We have people holed up in their rooms playing these MMORPG's and they're not learning anything except how to raid and grind. They could be doing learning through grinding just as easily. If only we had people developing these kid of games. Could you imagine a kid/teenager/basement dweller saying, "I'm addicted to Calculus!!!!" Or, "I hate the grind between Partical Physics PHD 1.1 and Partical Physics 1.2."
We/they play these games with stupid rewards for something that is completely intangible. At the very best you could say that these games are teaching people who to function in a team environment and how to organize projects. That's really about it.
Oh MMORPG why can you be more educational.

I agree with you about the kobayashi maru test, but in a sense I disagree with you.
The way that the test was exploited seems almost like a modern exploit. Look at exploits to run code on modern gaming platforms:
- The PSP: Uses a tiff exploit. You get it to show a bad picture, it reboots and runs a custom firmware (if I understand that right)
- The Wii: Exploits a save game. You save an exploited save game, you play the game, you walk up to a character and the system reboots loading a custom firmware.
And Kirk isn't very subtle. At least not in the Star Trek I have watched. He's a tactician, he takes risks, and at times he is very brazen. But subtle? No. Not Kirk.

I agree with the idea of smaller. What about a necklace or a choker.