I'm a Canadian Army Reservist, so easily more than 25. Probably close to 50. They really do give you a ton of stuff...

I agree. I can't really comprehend the sheer hatred of Lucas by some members of the SW Fandom. I liked Original Trilogy. I liked the Prequel Trilogy. I didn't like the Prequel Trilogy as much as the Originals (although I do like RotS more than RotJ), but I still like both. As do most people I talk to who would count as "people who like Star Wars", if not "SW Fans". They just don't go on the Internet and post incoherent rage filled rants.

I was 11 when I saw The Phantom Menace in theaters. I liked Jar-Jar then (although these days I'm sort of embarrassed to admit it), as did most of my mildly nerdy 11 year old friends. I know many people (kids and parents of kids, mostly) who still like Jar-Jar. It's not like Lucas thought "You know who I hate? MY FANS!" and decided to do everything possible to make them hate Ep. I-III. A lot of the stuff that people don't like about Ep. I in particular (pod races, and such) I remember really liking when I was a kid, getting my parents to buy me toy pod racers, and spending hours playing the N64 pod racing game with my friends. While 11 years later, I no longer like Jar-Jar and think he was a mistake, I can see where Lucas was coming from. I'm fairly confident he was trying to recreate his success with making C3PO and R2D2 as comic relief characters. Actually, to be honest, I'm not really sure if I'd dislike Jar-Jar so much if I hadn't have ended up learning how much other people hated him.

Also, with the exception of the Greedo shooting thing, I really like the Special Editions. They came out a year after I saw VHS versions of the original movies, let us see the movies in theaters, made my brother and I buy a ton of Star Wars toys (which we still have), and hyped us up for Ep. I. They seemed to have served their purpose. I didn't even learn about the Greedo thing (and hence never cared) until like three years ago.

Either way, I agree with you on pretty much every count. Plus, from a sheer monetary point of view, my brother, me, and my friends were made to like Star Wars because of the Special Editions and the prequel trilogy. We bought toys, video games, other mechandise. Many of us still buy Star Wars stuff. (KotoR, Force Unleashed, Lego Star Wars, Thrawn Trilogy). I'm hesitant to call myself a Star Wars fan, if only because my view of a fan of anything (SW, Star Trek, Comics, Transformers, Fallout) is someone who goes on message boards and complains about every single change and rants about how much they hate every aspect of what they are a fan of. Hence, I try not to ever call myself a fan of something. Just "someone who enjoys X".

Oh, and I'm fully expecting some AC to call me worse than Hitler or something because I liked Jar-Jar when I was a kid. And bought Ewok toys when the Special Editions came out.

Heh, I've been running Windows 7 64 bit on my MacBook Pro for just over a year now, having downloaded the first public beta out of curiosity. IIRC, it took just a minor amount of tweaking to the get Vista drivers to work for Windows 7 beta.

On that note, I'm mildly dismayed to find Win7 ending up good enough to be used as my primary operating system, which as happened mostly because the DirectX World of Warcraft seems to run better than the OpenGL one for me. That and a few other programs. I feel dirty having OS X end up as my third most used OS on this computer. (Triple booting Ubuntu 9.10, Win7-64, OS X 10.6).

There are still large areas of North America stuck with either stone-age Dial-Up (in 20-freakin'-10) or slow expensive satellite. Like mine (I cry myself to sleep over my 1200ms latency) This is absolutely a no-go there. Obviously.

Now, in better places, I'm sort of out of the loop. Whenever I've spent time in cities, either visiting my brother in Ottawa or living in London (Ontario, not the good one) for a few months at a time, it's been my experience that even connections that are supposed to get up to 1MB/sec would be lucky to get that in practice, especially at peak times. Furthermore, the sheer amount of lagspikes, connection hiccups, or general time when the interrnet craps out for no apparent reason makes it seem like you'd be dealing with one frustration after another. The number of times I see people get DC'd on World of Warcraft seems to back up my theory that staying connected, and maintaining a constant connection at 5KB/s or so (for WoW) is difficult enough, doing the same for a (whopping?) 1/MB/s while keeping latency under 100ms would be hellish.

So is my experience with the Internet indicative of the general population, or have I just had the misfortune of having terrible service? Can people really keep 1MB/s sustained, without lag hiccups, DCs, lost packets, etc, while keeping under 100ms?

Over the top use of words and phrases likes that not only makes you look panicked and ridiculous, but weakens it for when a case might actually be applicable. I assume you are probably referring to the corporate state idea, but even then, a simple ruling is just a ruling. IBM does not yet appoint the president, Microsoft does not have a veto on laws. One must wait until time has actually passed to see if your zealous "END OF AMERICA" prediction actually happens. My guess: it won't. Corporations will spend more money during elections, maybe (or possibly not, we'll see) but your country will pretty much remain the same.

Reminds me of when Stephen Harper was elected in my country four years ago. Some people made up mock tombstones with "Canada 1867-2006". Four years later, despite what one may think of him, Canada certainly did not end in 2006, and that stuff just served to make the creators look like political chicken littles.

It all makes sense now...

Bureaucracy KILLED the Martians!

Lol, you really don't know the man, and are reading way too much into that.

I don't like him, but I don't hate him. We just have pretty much nothing to do with each other. He has a few families already, from his first four wives.

Not considering someone "family" doesn't mean we hate each other. For the most part, we get along just fine, if not very often. He just bugs me often with many of his attitudes and opinions.

Either way, you read way too much into that. I didn't mean that comment as a negative, just a fact. :)

No, my grandfather died and the man I'm referring to is the man my grandmother married afterword. I'm not going to deny I'm likely biased against him, if you're a TV tropes reader, he's basically a personal Replacement Scrappy of mine. I really liked my grandfather and aren't a huge fan of the man in question. I wasn't trying to show any disrespect for him, I like some of what he does, but that just seemed a natural thing to call him. He doesn't consider me a grandson (and he's made that clear) and I don't consider him a grandfather.

What do you think I should call my grandmother's second husband, if not my grandmother's husband? I'm honestly curious.

Also, that's hardly the only situation where the husband of my grandmother wouldn't be my grandfather. Divorce, affairs, polygamy, whatever. :)

Interesting. I was under the impression that helmets were unequivocally a necessary safety measure. I'll look into that.

Are you one of those people who refuse to wear a seatbelt?

Ignoring the rest of your comment, which may have some elements of truth, but is primarily over the top in my view, I found this bugged me specifically.

My mother, when she was around 10 years old or so, had a friend that died after crashing his bike, and hitting his head on a pole. An injury which would most likely would not have been fatal had he been wearing a helmet. This would have been in the '70s, so I have no clue how common bike helmets were then, but the point still remains.

Do you honestly think the extremely minor inconvenience of wearing a helmet outweighs the significantly reduced chance of serious injury, brain damage and death?

I agree in part to some aspects of some of your other points, (I overall disagree with the tone, but don't really have enough knowledge of the subjects to write anything) but that one about the bike helmet just outright seemed silly.

This reminds me of some comments I've seen old people make. That things were better in the '50s because people didn't have "these problems" with mental health, minorities and whatnot. And how they act as if homosexuality was something invented in the '80s or '90s to shock and offend them. Forgetting or course that many of the mental health problems existed but were classified as demonic possession or something stupid, and people were generally less likely to seek assistance because of both societal disapproval, and lack of knowledge on their part. Also, obviously, so called "problems" like homosexuality have existed forever, it's only in recent decades that society has become tolerant enough that some people are no longer hiding it.

I didn't read the article and am in no way commenting on it. The writeup and headline just reminded me of my grandmother's husband.

Aye. I have about 4 passwords depending on how much I care about the thing in question. Frankly, if someone hacks my /. account, I'll be more amused than angry. My bank account, OTOH...

That said, I have had my WoW account hacked, because I made the mistake of logging on my brother's computer once, and he is a nub who downloaded a keylogger off MSN Messenger. That was the last time I do that.

It'd probably be a good thing if they require the authenticators, less grief all around. Even smart people (my brother's in a mechanical engineering program, so he doesn't have down syndrome, to my knowledge) can do stupid things and get their accounts hacked.

I think you missed my point completely.