With repeated items and the new level of sophomoric humour I assume that BB Gadgets is trying to become the next slashdot. Since I already read slashdot, there's less reason to come here anymore.

I really do miss the 'old' (meaning about a week ago) Gadgets.

If they really wanted a dramatic presentation, they would have used the river in Chicago, when it is dyed GREEN for St Patrick's day...

The Chicago River is green every day - they just dye it a different shade of green for St Patrick's Day.

@6 - free international shipping doesn't surprise me too much if you take into account the situation.

With the quantity they ship (and the small size of individual items) they can get a reasonably low shipping cost by pre-sorting and waiting to ship until they have full containers (which probably means an average of a day or 2 of delay in shipping).

It's just another example of economies of scale at work (ship 1 item and it costs a lot, ship 10000 and it doesn't cost that much for each).

@9 - as @12 said, check with your local waste people. I'm in the western Chicago 'burbs and there are several hazardous waste drop-off places around here.

Even better is that our county (DuPage) runs a latex paint recycling center every summer. They run a site where you can drop off old latex paint. The kids they employ strain & mix any good paint and put it into 5 gallon buckets. It's then available for anyone to pickup - I used a nice grey for my garage and a really decent flat white was used as an undercoat when I repainted a lot of our current home.

I'm actually in the process of moving right now (relocating for wife's job) so I've had to get rid of several almost empty cans (colors that aren't in the house anymore).

Since it's winter and the recycling operation isn't running, I've been drying the paint (dried paint can go in landfills, it can't pollute groundwater). I've taken an old plastic storage container and poured the paint into it - as the surface dries I skim it off onto a piece of cardboard. When I get a big pile of dried paint, it goes out with the trash. It takes a while, but it's doable if you have time.

There are also paint hardening additives specifically for waste paint (at most hardware stores) but they only really work well if you don't have too much paint to do.

"It’s not soy milk, it’s soy juice. There are no soy titties. But people don’t call it soy juice, because calling it soy juice makes you throw up in your mouth." - Lewis Black.

My daughter has the Yoda version of this backpack.

She bought it at Disney's MGM Studios this year during their Star Wars Weekend. We have plenty of photos with Yoda peeking out around her head.

She used it for the entire trip and was amazed at the number of people asking her where she got it...

Didn't see any of the Chewbacca ones there, however.

In the movie Blast From The Past, the dad (played by Christopher Walken) drinks warm Dr. Pepper.

Since that part of the movie was set in a bomb shelter, I don't know if they had lemons available...

Very cool - we're moving soon and this will be great for the kid's shower.

It's interesting to look at the reviews. 3 of the 6 are from parents that bought it for their daughters in college and another is by 'Curie Girl'. Obviously the reviews don't have any statistical validity, but it is great to see that there are girls/women who're into science (but, part of this is probably just me getting old and not realizing that this is more the norm then it was when I was in college).

When I was in the Army I always packed in zip lock bags when going into the field. They're relatively cheap and come in lots of different sizes. The heaver 'freezer' bags are tough enough to last for many weeks of field duty (but it's easy to take extra, just in case).

I still use zip locks - when the family goes to Disney World, I always put my wallet/tickets/etc in sandwich sized zip locks.

"So, what do you propose doing with the discs? Landfill them? Store them forever?"

I'd expect you to respect the license/copyright of the work in the same way you expect others to respect the license/copyright of your own works.

If the work was under a license that allowed you to make a copy and then resell/give away the original, I'd say what you were doing was fine. Since the works are probably not under that sort of license, what you're doing is probably not lawful and also not very ethical.

What's wrong with hanging onto the original CDs until you've listened to the audiobook and then, after deleting the rip, giving the CDs away?

I assume that you'd be pretty upset if the reverse happened and someone took one of your CC-licensed books and wrapped it up with copy-restricting DRM before giving it to his friends?

Basically, if you aren't respecting the rights/desires of other copyright holders why would you expect them to respect your rights/desires?

"So these days, I buy most of my audiobooks on CD and rip them, then give away the discs to charity, which is kind of a pain in the ass, but it beats the alternative."

By giving the disks away after you rip them, doesn't that transfer any rights to the ripped files to the charity also? Or do you give the CDs to the charity after you're done listening to the files (and delete the files).

I don't see any issues with using ripped CDs as long as you still own the original but, just like you can't read a book after you've given it away, you shouldn't listen to an audiobook after you've given it away.

This is the same as people who buy CDs (new or used) and then sell them to a used CD store after ripping the tracks.