I'm just waiting for Obama to claim victory over this "historically powerful" storm. Heh.

Even Irene didn't want to deal with Snookie. God knows I wouldn't.

Only because of overvalued properties in the Northeast. Son, that was nothing. Let a real hurricane roll through town, and you'll be missing buildings. Good thing for you stuck up jerks in the Northeast that you almost never get a real hurricane. I doubt you'd be able to handle a storm with 130+ mph winds and storm surges topping 25 feet. Hell, it's a good thing Ivan weakened considerably when it did hit us finally. It was up to a very strong Cat 4 (160+ mph winds) when it was coming into the gulf.

It's hilarious watching people from the Northeast react to Hurricanes, even one as wimpy as Irene. I remember after Ivan, we had no power for two weeks. TWO WEEKS. And guess what, somehow, we survived. Shocking, I know. I laughed hardest when CNN was trying to be critical of the cellular providers regarding possibly flooding of cell phone networks after the storm. Anyone who's lived through hurricanes in an area like Florida will tell you that the first thing that you should prepare for is to be on your own a minimum of 3-5 days after a storm, and to be prepared for no power, no clean water (which means you have to boil it to use it), and probably very delayed emergency services for the first few days (power is restored to places like Hospitals and Emergency Services first, because you know, they need it more than the average person does).

It wasn't much of a storm. people from Vermont just don't know how to respond to a Hurricane. It was barely a Category 1. Let a 3-4 roll through, and then come back and try to tell me Irene was a bad storm. I've slept through worse.

Irene was a fucking joke. I have lived in Pensacola, FL for over 10 years. We've seen some fucking real storms (Ivan, Dennis, etc.). This was barely hanging on as a Category 1. Hell, I slept through Dennis and that was a Category 3 when it made landfall (about 125mph sustained winds, Irene barely managed to sustain 100mph winds). I was laughing my ass off at the coverage by CNN. You'd have thought it was Katrina, Andrews, and the 2012 apocalypse all rolled into one that was bearing down on the East Coast, the way CNN was blowing it waaaaay out of proportion. deal with a 3-5 category storm, then tell me you've dealt with a hurricane.

These navy ships actually have pretty piss poor internet connections, despite the technology. My brother-in-law is a SAR pilot for the Navy, and the boat he was on had internet that was capable of slow connections for email and some browsing. No way in hell it would support internet gaming such as Diablo 3. Most of the technology is reserved for war fighting, you make it seem like they are on a floating internet cafe. Hell, their phone connection is even pretty piss poor, dropping, echoing, and with severe delays sometimes (as much as a few seconds sometimes).

Most of the screen shots I've seen of Notch programming show him with some sort of Macbook.

Of course they can get away with this. As a private company, they are entitled to set their own policies on what they will/won't let their customers buy using their services. There is nothing legally that can prevent them from doing so.

I don't know...perhaps TSA should be put in charge of sewage waste management. They are so full of shit, it's probably an appropriate assignment.

I'll take my chances. Rather that than subject myself and my family to such ridiculous searches.

I'll walk

One of many reasons I would much rather travel by car/bus/train than airplane.

I did misread, but it's still a ripoff. They get a 30% commission, not charged 30%. That's 30% of the sale price, which is fixed by the publishers. Apple charges them a 30% fee on the sale price of the book. They are taking a loss after costs. This comes directly from the posting on their site:

The key point here is that all sellers now get a 30% commission and Apple now wants a 30% fee, which is all of our gross margin and then some.

The "middlemen" are the publishers giving access to sellers to sell the books. It's a typical scheme in the vein of the oil companies. All of the big boys get together and agree on fixed pricing.