... have you actually been a leatherworker since BC?

If your leather economy's really that bad, I feel sorry for your realm.

Granted, lower-level leather hasn't seemed to enjoy quite the same sort of inflation that other old-world mats have lately, but it's still pretty lucrative, and it's outright nuts in Outland.

A few weeks ago, I watched someone whisper my girlfriend claiming they were 40g from their mount and asking her to push some gold his way, which she didn't. I then watched him thank several other people, apparently for giving him money, out by the Org bank -- only to then start begging ME for gold, apparently now 50g from his mount.

When I confronted him about it, he quite candidly described to me how he'd made over 100g in the past hour alone.

As for characters just starting out ... WHY? I don't even remember being a new player and desperately needing money for repairs, skills, or mail, much less now on a new alt. You don't even have to go to any great effort. Do your quests, vendor your trash, you're golden. If you run a bit short, you can certainly do without until you catch up, which likely won't take you more than a quest or two. Anyone who says otherwise is either inexcusably lazy or insufferably stupid, to be quite honest.

Way to work in the obscure Ron Perlman reference.

Reading comprehension. It's standalone. Even by looking at it, most bay drives don't have feet.

The microwave method is only a good idea if you like filling your house with toxic fumes and slowly damaging the magnetron.

I'd be pretty certain this is intended more for mobile applications -- watches, phones, PMP/PVPs, etc. Also, it probably really would help with instrument panels as opposed to bezelling it, where you're often trying to cram a lot of parts into a small amount of space these days. (Would be fantastic for motorcycles.) I can really see the military jumping all over this one.

I honestly think it'll look a lot better worn.

I agree, though ... without track information, the usefulness factor might be a little thin. Granted, unless I'm scrolling through podcasts, I usually have my iPod on shuffle and just mindlessly hit the next button to skip through tracks -- but I can do that through my pocket, and the only thing that would draw me to a watch interface IS track info, especially if I'm having to physically attach extra crap to my iPod. (Bluetooth-enabled iPhone watch, anyone? Caller ID on your wrist FTW.)

Exactly. If Apple was going to drop the ball on the mobile phone end with crippled phone features and a lock into a provider with questionable voice service and the worst data network in the country, I wish they would have just forgotten about telephony and just released a Wi-Fi PDA.

And called it the Newton.

Right ... because Microsoft totally doesn't develop for OS X, and doesn't probably have more Macs on site in Redmond than the entire rest of Washington. I don't think they're gonna bat an eyelash when their graphic designers use Macs like the rest of the illustrators in the free world. MS is nothing if not pragmatic.

I'm not sure if I could say the same for Apple, even though they've been a major Windows developer for years. Not to mention the fact that MS's apps on OS X often surpass their Windows counterparts, while Apple's Windows apps tend to be a bit on the unnecessarily clunky side.

Except for the fact that half of their board aren't Fins, and a majority of their research and manufacturing are done outside Finland. Where a company's physically headquartered doesn't really count for much these days.

Okay, so there's no vibrato or proper legato phrasing. And Giant Steps was probably the poorest choice of composition, since it's a piece that's naturally going to sound horrible in static half-step notes. But it's a note-for-note rendition otherwise, and it's pretty impressive. Woodwinds are difficult enough for humans; give the robots some time to get the hang of it.