When I take roughness data for my polymer boards, it is a boring process. Basically I set up the machine, then it runs for about a minute, then I look at the data, write it down and do it again. So the question becomes what do I do with those 60 seconds. Right now I spend it walking over to the computer in the clean room and reading articles. Usually those articles are about games, but sometimes they are technical journals and sometimes they are about technology in general. I just read an article from Ars Technica about new movie disc formats and it poses a good question that gets overlooked in many venues. It has to do with people cracking these new video formats, and the statement goes like this:

I read someone somewhere commenting on the US-Mexico border fence that was being debated a while back, and this person said, "a 10 foot wall will just create a market for 12 foot ladders." This is a pretty good way of phrasing the point that many problems that we might try to solve with technology are really economic problems. People don't use P2P because they're immoral . . . they use P2P because content is either too expensive, or because . . . they can't enjoy it the way they want.

It does at times seem that we suffer from miscategorizing problems often. Cops Plus is a company that sells 12' ladders. They are a bit expensive, but the quick deploy feature might make them work. Start buying stock now gentlement.