Librarian here. Why pay for access when your public library is already paying for the good stuff? Knowledge will always be free at your local public library. Most US libraries have access to paywalled news and scientific articles through Academic Search Premier, Gale and other databases. Our county library system offers free access to Zinio's magazine service, which is pretty sweet. Local (community) colleges usually have reference services available for county residents, and are often willing to mail you a journal article. Using these services take some effort (writing an e-mail or using your library card) so they aren't ideal for instantaneous gratification. Check out http://www.publiclibraries.com... to find your local library.

As far as where to get your news, start with an RSS reader (Feedly, Netvibes, gReader) and get the rss feeds for:

The twitter feed of your local newspapers
Google News
Your favorite TV news station (CNN, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, etc)
memeorandum for politics
A few international broadcasters of countries that you are interested in (VOA, BBC, RFI, RFERL, etc)

I'd start with New York City's public library system. Find a librarian to help you get access to the various electronic databases, which includes Academic Search Premier and a bunch of others. If you need a specific journal article, print out the abstract or citation that you found on line, and bring it with you to the library. You can often find similar and/or more up to date articles for free with the help of the librarian. If access to the article isn't available through the public library, you might be able to get METRO access to a university library or private special collection: http://metro.org/referral-cards/. A librarian could also try to ILL you a copy of the article, but it takes some time.

Public university libraries are almost always open to the public...that's SUNY and CUNY. If you are lucky, you can get a daily guest password for the computer databases, but YMMV. I'd call around to a number of public universities and ask about guest policies.

I love Feedly. But it is NOT a straight RSS Reader. It personalizes and selects those stories that it thinks you want to read. It also has some pretty neat discovery features. That said, I've used Feedly for weeks, without realizing that I had missed stories from some of my favorite sites. I like to switch between Netvibes and Feedly, honestly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inchoate_offense

>I guess the next step is writing a novel using a hexeditor?

I attempt (almost always unsuccessfully) to write a novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.org) every November.

Of course, the perfect text editor to use for NaNoWriMo: Nano!

I find it lightweight, fully featured and easy to use. It can easily call up the "spell" spellchecker - but it doesn't give suggestions. It also doesn't give a word count.

So when I need more advanced features, I fire up Open Office. http://www.afterthedeadline.com/ has a great grammar checker as well.

I also keep an encrypted diary on Linux using Lifeograph.

I'm very happy that the opensource movement has plenty of free tools for writers!

I've worked in some crowded office conditions, but absolutely nothing like what is pictured in this article. There are 10 people crowded into this 1 person office space. I could see six people fitting into this space humanely - eg without violating the fire code / without personality conflicts / without bumping into each other while working.

I guess this is why they only hired skinny people for this internship!

However, good clear writing can be judged. The study points out that the best wikipedia entries are done by editors who are GOOD writers who know how to a) contribute new sentences (write a first draft), b) re-write sentences (re-drafting), c) add references (source checking), d) make grammatical and other edits (final drafting).

The formula for writing good content has not changed. It's just the proportions (collaboration) that have made the process more efficient and provided more content which are in need of lots of editing!

Lots of people go to ftc.gov -- its traffic rank is around 10,000...

This anti-stab knife is horribly flawed. Sure, it is difficult to stab with it, but it looks unsafe. By unsafe, I mean, difficult to sharpen, difficult to chop and cut veggies and meat with. This will lead to injury. Loss of fingers. Etc. This sort of dangerous product is the sort of thing that should be kept off shelves, IMHO.

Is detecting a bullet once fired even practical? A typical rifle bullet travels between approximately 700 m/s to 1000m/s.

Assuming a 1000 m/s bullet, like a 50BMG or 338LM, if a sniper is positioned 2km away, it will take 2 seconds for the round to reach the target. 1km, 1 second.

Problem is that most sniper engagements are not at extreme long ranges. Most occur between 275-550 meters. That means a quarter to a half a second.

That is not enough time to get out of the way of a typical bullet, even if your reaction is instantaneous.

I agree that private individuals and corporations have a right to restrict what they want. But they have to play by the rules that we all agreed upon when we joined the site.

When you sign up, you have to agree to an acceptable use policy which bans "obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit" images.

So how exactly is a woman breast feeding obscene? It is not, of course, and I dare say that the Facebook owners ever intended for these photos to be banned.

But the way that Facebook censors interpret the rule is that is if there is any nipple showing, it gets deleted.

Clearly, management needs to rewrite the censors rule book to allow an exception for breast-feeding.

This has almost nothing to do with the first amendment, and more to do with a woman's "right to privacy" -- ie. the right to do what she wants with her body without prudes or religious nuts making it illegal.

Can the police put a beeper/tracker in a container which is sold to a suspect? Yes, according to United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983) [ http://supreme.justia.com/us/460/276/index.html ] and United States v Karo, 468 U.S. 705 (1984) [ http://supreme.justia.com/us/468/705/index.html ].

Basically, a person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements.