You could always just completely go around security: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40611473/ns/us_news-l...

All the security they're working on is just to make people feel safe... The underwear bomber had ingested the bomb, which is why it ended up in his underwear; the security measures implemented in this don't make any changes to the actual security - or, if anything, decrease actual security since those body-scanned are not sent through metal detectors which would detect anything in body cavities.

Obviously I disagree with their views, but at the same time I really wish christians were as passionate about their beliefs...

Text yesterday morning: "The server is down!" ... Right as my first class of the semester is starting!

They hadn't cleared their cache. ;)

This is a test comment!

i NEEED one!

I'm considering a new MBP right now... I'm basically waiting on my current 15" MBP to go south before I do (and am maintaining good backups in the meantime!). I took a pretty good look at everything that's out right now and decided that there's no point in going to the current-generation MBP 15's, and the 17's are simply too large/unwieldy to be useful in the field (I'm a professional photographer, and often shoot tethered or am working in confined quarters in a closet at a wedding, etc).

The current 15" generation has very little improved over the previous generation of 15" MBP's. The performance improved minimally or decreased minimally in some areas. The screen got a little brighter, and there's now the aluminum unibody, which means more costly repairs when your keyboard and/or trackpad wear out. Battery life improved slightly. Ram didn't increase significantly.

I also didn't like the feeling of the new trackpads... The early ones had some issues with the trackpad breaking quickly, and while it's mostly resolved, there are still some issues with it breaking in the first few weeks of ownership. That wouldn't be a big deal if it weren't for the unibody; the unibody design requires you to ship the whole thing back, rather than being able to just get one yourself for the price of shipping, and use an external mouse temporarily.

It looks like Apple has recently been following a pattern of feature release, aesthetic release, which is similar to what a lot of bigger companies have been doing to keep revenue up. The last was an aesthetic release. The next will most likely be a feature release.

According to http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ the next release of MBP 15's will be in approximately June, so I'm just going to hold out as long as I can. If my current laptop goes south before that, I'm going to go for a refurbished last-generation model and save $500, then dump the rest into an internal RAID hack (requires dumping your optical drive, but worth it), and an external monitor.

MBP displays calibrate fairly well if you just use the right calibration tools. I work with one of the Eye One Display 2's. Works great, and allows you to track the drift of your LCD over time. If you do calibrate, always make sure you warm up your display first, and then calibrate it on the center of your screen. Oftentimes if you're working in mixed lighting (daylight, incandescent), the color cast on your screen can become noticeable, but will not affect brightness. When I'm doing color-corrected work, I also keep a greyscale black-to-white window open (or use it for a background) so I can see any variation since I last calibrated, and make sure I'm hitting midtones, highlights in the intended ranges. Not that that reflects on my out-of-date website!