For any AI to substantially compete in the arena of killing humans, they must first overtake the leader in that arena -- humanity.

You, like many others, cite a poor shopping experience as a reason not to visit Best Buy and/or other big box electronics retailers. So here's a question... assuming Best Buy were to ratchet up the shopping experience by explicitly retraining sales staff and store managers to no longer be so pushy, to instead be fonts of information, there to aid customers and not to push any specific merchandise or foist things off on the uninformed, would you then consider it a positive place to go? Would you actively seek them out?

Restated, is the sole reason people no longer desire to go to Best Buy due to the poor shopping experience or is that just the most glaring issue among many?

All they have to do is make one. One really good one.

I have a question then....

Doctors... could you perhaps ask your billing office to do a statistical analysis on how much you actually ended up getting paid for various procedures? Then compare that to time lost negotiating with insurance companies? Now you have the actual amount you made net of collections efforts, ignoring efforts to collect from non-paying patients of course. So would you be willing to charge that amount to those who don't have insurance? Or who, for example, use an insurance company who actually pays quickly and on time with minimal fuss?

Put another way, it seems likely that if working with the current insurance companies is so onerous, doctors would have started to work around them instead of continuing to work with them. There must be some positive benefit to working with the insurance companies or you would have found a better way?

For the patient, there is no better way currently. The costs are typically too high to be able to assume the entire burden yourself so you are forced to pay even if only to get the in-network contracted rates. It really seems like if anything is going to change it is either going to have to be through the doctors.

Half of us do anyway.

I think the point is that the King User (i.e. CTO), if they become an Apple user, will dictate that the IT shop *will* support Apple products.

Granted, the guy who set the wifi up in the first place likely wasn't pursuing the loftiest of goals, but I'd rather see the trolls rooted out and exposed for who and what they are when they reside within positions of power within our government institutions. So troll on I say.

Quite right. I think we can all agree that the industrialization of the northern states vs. the agricultural base of the southern states, which has typically been linked with the ongoing use of slave labor, had absolutely zero effect on the north's ability to continue to produce war materiel for a protracted period of time.

After doing some reading, I see a lot of mention about pulling out battle mats for 4E. I saw some software that folks use for virtual tabletops and then realized that there must be a lot more dependence on line of sight, proximity and general physical location than previously. Stuff that back in 1E, you'd just toss in a situational modifier for on the fly and roll with it. Interesting...

I think because GURPS never got the advertising budget TSR gave its baby back in the day. The market for tabletop RPG is already pretty small. TSR, I think, established itself as *the* brand early on and has held the lead until recently at least.

And as for why WotC/Hasbro would go this route now, I suspect it's because they're looking around at the various games using the OGL rules for things outside of standard European, medieval swords and sorcery settings and wanting to consolidate that player base back into their welcoming arms.

Also because, hey, more money.

1ed AD&D gamer here from long ago. Never picked up anything more recent than the old Unearthed Arcana book and its peers. I keep hearing that combat in 4ed is very long. Can you explain why that is? I mean, it seems simple enough to me. Round 1, figure out order, declare action, resolve. Repeat until combat concludes. What changed from this pattern?

God .. er.. Old Glory Insurance help us if the robots quit thinking the way we want them to.

Seems like an effective method of dispatching terrorists. But how do we coax them INTO the vacuum?

I think it's still indicative of the problem GP mentions. The more code you are trying to pull in, the larger the footprint during the build process. You don't see a 'Hello world' program requiring a 3GB+ build footprint do you? No, because it's not doing enough to warrant that. Likewise, Firefox apparently *is* trying to do a lot. More than it used to at any rate.

I actually remember an ad that would air AGES ago about not driving while distracted. That's right, just opposed to allowing yourself to be distracted. It was a radio ad and in it, it described a young woman who ended up rear ending someone because they were too busy fiddling with the radio knob. Another one where someone dropped their cassette in the floorboard and reached down to fish it up again.

I see no practical difference between having a conversation with someone sitting next to me in the passenger seat vs having an earpiece in and having a conversation over my phone or even through one of those cab-audible bluetooth arrangements. And there may be some who oppose having any conversation in the car whatsoever but then that brings up parent's point about bored drivers. Bored drivers are dangerous drivers too. The fact is, driving is dangerous. Quit nannying me and let's just teach the concept of personal responsibility.