I'm a bad beta tester. I only played the beta a couple of times -- my friends and I got a few keys at Comic-Con. Perhaps they've improved things in the past couple of months that have elapsed since I abandoned the game, but I have to concur that the chat system was terribly restrictive. At the time I played, I couldn't even say people's names, like "how are you today, Nancy?" The word "wife" was banned, so I had to refer to my friend's significant other as "girl friend" (a concatenated girlfriend was also too naughty). We couldn't even complain that "This chat sucks." We entertained ourselves briefly by speaking like cavemen, which really was about the only language you could speak. For a massively multiplayer online game, it felt like we were robbed of one of the primary features of a purportedly social game.

Perhaps it's gotten better, though. I know for a while, even question marks weren't legal.

Wow, I was pretty pleased with myself when I was going to mention the hapless residents who lived on Butt Hole Road, but you've definitely stolen any thunder I might have had.

I'm sure that the situations vary, but at least in Bend, Oregon where I biked for a while, the sensors seem to be calibrated carefully enough to detect the metal in your bike. The DMV does recommend that you step off and lean it low to the ground to bring more metal closer to the sensors.

That being said, I've never trusted those things to work for a cyclist. I usually transform into a pedestrian at that point and hit a crosswalk button instead.

In answer to your question, the problem they are trying to solve is the fact that most forum threads in the WoW deteriorate into petty insults and gainsaying before the end of the first page of posts. Or at least, that's the published reason for doing this.

I sympathize with Blizzard's desire to want to make the forums a more constructive and friendly environment, but I can certainly envision scenarios where players carry their RPG rage into real life. I also noted that a few women wrote in response to the new post, and they were disturbed that their gender might become an issue.

The new system also seems to allow people to rate posts, and I wish Blizzard had first taken this step of moderating before it went whole hog and published the poster's identity.

I worked at a video store when I was in high school, and every once and a while some customer would lose a copy of their new release. When we finally caught up to them, a month or two down the road, we would inform them that they owed us $90 for the actual video. Sometimes we'd be selling the same movies on our shelves for $35, since we had since bought more to sell to customers at a reasonable price point. The copy *they* lost was the $90 "new release" video, however. The logical arguments that ensued from this disparity were ugly, I tell you!

B-but, you'll never get to see The Wizard of Oz the way it was intended to be unless you watch it in its original Blu-Ray format!

I actually really liked Tron 2.0. It had its issues, like the fact that you broke your neck if you fell more than 7 feet, an odd weapon balance, and some annoying Super Mario Bros. jumping sequences. However, the aesthetics were gorgeous, the gameplay was fun, and the character customization was interesting.

Beyond the environment, I'm sure many folks would argue it wasn't a spectacular game, but it didn't suck. :)

They do support native PDF, but the text doesn't scale as it does in some of the other formats. If you have a 10-page PDF file you want to look at, you are forced to view each page in its entirety on your teensy Kindle screen. I was really disappointed to discover this. You can get somewhat larger text by rotating the reader, but it feels awkward and I found it still too small for my taste.

.AMZ and Mobi files were designed to be viewed by readers. PDFs were designed to be viewed/printed page-by-page, so technically it's more difficult to shoehorn the format into a reader. Still, the Kindle implementation of PDFs seems rather lazy and even deceiving. I love my Kindle, but I roll my eyes whenever I see Kindle bragging about "native PDF support."

I haven't watched any of his commentary except for the last 30 seconds of part 6 of this video (it was pointed out in another blog), but he directly addresses the lightsaber battle on the molten planet, with a hilarious quote from Lucas at the end.

If you haven't watched that bit yet, check it out -- the irony behind Lucas' words is beyond farcical.

Well put.

There are times when it's interesting to see the reaction of the populace, but I'm looking for insightful commentary, not trite catch phrases and indignant attempts at cleverness. To make things worse, most of the newscasts that use social media as part of their show will pose their question and pick two respondents as follows:

Do you agree with Proposition 782?

• Obammunism392: No, it stinks!
• QTinTexas_97: Yes, it's what America needs!

I appreciate that news outlets want to show all sides of the debate, but typically they display two polarized responses, which basically cancel out any sort of rational discourse. It seems to be there only so that you can agree with A/B and shout "Damn right!" at your TV.

I'm red-green colorblind, and for the most part, I don't have much of a problem distinguishing between the red and green. There are some times, however, where I have to think a bit harder to discern the two colors -- I'm not sure if it's the lights themselves or the ambient lighting (bright sunlight hitting the signal, cloudy weather, what have you), but from time to time the colors look awfully similar. In those situations I don't think about the alignment of the lights (i.e. if the top one is lit I should assume it's red) -- I either look "harder" or observe the other drivers. The alignment of the lights rarely play a part in my discernment of the signals.

I'd certainly appreciate green lights with more blue in them. I've noticed "bluish" green lights before, but I always figured it was just a given manufacturer that made the lights a bit more blue. In traffic intersections where mistakes can cost lives, I'd much rather rely on color than alignment. I know that if alignment were the only queue, I'd adapt, but there's something more primitive, direct and powerful about using color.

I felt that looked a bit constraining as well. It would be nice of them to provide two modes -- one where the applications are all aligned in the track as demonstrated in the video, and one where you unlock the interface to organize/clutter your applications as you see fit. I've performed plenty of tasks where I've stacked a window on top, or kept a calculator tucked down into a corner. If this kind of interface catches on, the creators would be wise to allow for user-designed add-ons that allow for the expansion of the base interface.

Well, that's a bit more tricky than you'd think -- they'd have to adjust the rate based upon the speed of the processor as well. It wouldn't be fair for a quad-core user to pay the same rate as a dual-core! Something's got to be done!