Had one with a 2400 baud modem, traded a bunch of stuff to get one a friend bought as state surplus when he got a Mac. Used to drive around with it and a generator in my car(what a geek). During college my folks gave it away to goodwill when I was away for a few weeks with it at home. It was 1991 and I could still have upgraded it to a useful machine with a new mobo and maybe a small CRT.

The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend. The ANC was active in Zambia and twice brutaly beat my uncle and aunt for being white, they lost two pregnancies that way. His crime? Being a white volunteer doctor in the early to mid 80's. Just look up ANC, necklace, kerosene, and tires and decide if that brutal terrorism against other blacks is OK just because it also fights Aparthid in neighboring countries. This is like saying domestic police terror is OK in the US to fight Arab terror.

While I agree that a well place hammer strike would probably shatter the silicon RFID chip and packaging I am curious why this is almost universally considered the magic "stealth" way to knock out a RFID device. A strike strong enough to break the chip would likely also leave a telltale mark or dent even if you were to use some sort of mask over the oyster card or passport(try lightly hitting a notebook cover with a hammer). Microwaving seems to be the best method remembering that the microcircuits only need a few milliseconds to burn, lets say a second (if that is enough time to energize the magnetron caps) in your microwave oven where the burning would not show on the outside. Failing that popping it a few times with the piezo sparker from a butane lighter or propane BBQ grille might do the trick and leave only microscopic burn holes. The posts I see all over the net declaring "sure" methods for stealth destruction of RFID tags by hammer etc should be accompanied with links to experimental results showing both destruction of the RFID device and high quality macro shots of the known location of the RFID chip and antenna. This video is one of the best involving RFID experimentation.

BTW trading oyster cards would likely give useful social interaction data if the proper filters were in place, especially if combined with mobile phone location and credit card usage data, any unique tracking can have trend filters applied unless there is a truly random shuffling involved.

For the true tinfoil hat crowd especially in the US where incoming calls are not free a one way pager and a mobile phone and all RFID devices inside a RF blocking foil lined case or belt pouch would be the ideal way to be always available in the modern world but untrackable unless you want to be seen. As always though tinfoil hats must remember that a dark object shows up well against a light background, no electronic trail is a very suspicious activity to investigators.

For those of us too poor to get these earbuds here is what I do. The wires inside almost all earbuds are color varnish insulated multi strand wire. When they are bent or crushed too many times they short out. The only way to fix this is to hunt down the short and snip it out. Since this almost always happens right at the entry to the earbud and rarely at the jack (that breaks from yanking it) you just match both wires and resolder to the internal speakers.

Being a strong cycling evangelist it seems that while it might make a few drivers more aware of cyclists when driving, it would also discourage them from switching to "one of those dangerous bicycles". One less car or SUV is one less that can mow me down so I would rather encourage a conversion.

To amplify what I had said, why do we need a special police class who is allowed to bear arms over us. At least Americans can claim to have an equal protection clause in their constitution which I admire, but even they do not seem to care about that part of their primary document of rule in many cases. How does choosing a particular line of employment make one person more worthy of self and collective protection than another?

Why is this really a problem, let him have his gun in the airport. Even better idea is to give a discount to air travelers who wish to carry a firearm on their person to reward their protection of the aircraft. Do we forget that on 9-11 people with only pocket knives fought back and saved the Whitehouse or other target from massive destruction. This security theater only makes us all less safe, how many of us have to die before we demand our freedoms back?

How do you like that spin?

If only this was a repellant machine for X

let X=rednecks, blacks, jews, catholics, muslims, the group you hate

I guess it is OK in Amerika to hate "those damn kids"

#44, how does intelligent design in any way involve Jesus? Isn't he just a son of your God? He wasn't there when this all took place, leave him out of this.

Here is my question, and it mostly shows a position of ignorance, I am not a biologist.
How does a major enugh mutation to be considered evolution not leave the animal sterile like a mule? I seem to remember this mule-ness was part of genetic error control. I also seem to remember all mutations being recessive, where do dominant traits come from then?