From the very article you link to:

I am extremely sceptical about all these doomsday scenario media reports.

If you do not know something for sure, "follow the money" is always good advise. For example, why would someone who makes his money on the stock market give free advise to the rest of the world by warning them about an imminent market collapse? It makes no sense. If I knew (or were sure about) such an event, I would put my money into short options and become mega-rich.

But, of course, if you expect the opposite, such a press statement can lead a critical mass of people to disinvest, temporarily lowering prices, convincing others that you are right and the crash has begun, so they do the same, and then you buy at the low point.

The same with all the "super-rich are investing in getaways" bullshit. It's a really great tool to convince the wannabe-super-rich (aka the simply rich) to follow (or believe they are following), because that's what they do. In all layers of society, people tend to emulate the next-higher-up from their own status, because that is where they want to be.

Maybe I'm overly cynical or just blind, but thinking about not only what is being said, but also who is saying it and why seems to me to be a good idea.

Could be, as I rent and don't buy, I don't drive cars older than a few years.

I know the Toyotas and Hondas are famous for their reliability. My first car was a used Honda and it had almost no signs of being used before.

That said, old Mercedes cars are also legendarily reliable. My GF wants to buy a used SLK for exactly that reason - they are cute and almost as good as new, for a fraction the price.

Well, I had an IBM PC-1, and yes and no respectively.

Clearing CMOS settings is still done with a jumper. I do wish that all flash BIOS devices had a write protect jumper, though, and it would cost little to add them.

I sure do, but any time I go visit a new contract or even just go on vacation, I shave it. It's not an attachment or an affectation, I just don't measure my value by the cleanliness of my neck. It's not my fault I was born hairier than the average bear.

But hey, thanks for recognizing how great I am. I could use the publicity.

Typecasting. They play the villain role so frequently, it's impossible to see them any other way.

Only the top ten or so even get space.

Here's another way to handle it. Whenever they appear on television, block out x% of their face and words based on their campaign contributions. Whoever gets least comes through at 100%, whoever gets most is just a wall of ads, and everyone else falls somewhere in-between

No, no it isn't. Just having non-transferable activation codes was that. This is a stupid and ham-handed attempt both to fight actual crimes and to dissuade people from seeking bargains.

Next time, consult a five year old.

Well, no. The license is something you enter into after you make the payment, hence the assertion that shrinkwrap licenses should not have any weight: you're not getting anything for them, you already got it. This online activation bullshit is a way around that: You're getting online activation.

I'm not sure they will do that. I think the majority of the gaming press will flame them for doing this (and rightly so, you don't punish people who are trying to be your customers, even if they are seeking bargains) and I think the majority of customers will feel however they are told to feel. And I think most of the rest of them will be pissed off because they won't have been able to play the game they paid for.

There's often legitimate discounts on games, so there's no valid reason to penalize customers for seeking discount prices. Likely some of those users made their purchases in ill faith, but I'd bet they were in the minority.

There's nothing more ironic than someone who has the luxury of having time to complain about someone complaining spending that time complaining about them.

Yes, I realize what this post entails. But I was just sitting here and noticed that instead of curing cancer or solving world hunger, you chose to spend your time trying to make someone feel bad about complaining by complaining about them, and thought maybe you could use a bit o' perspective.

Leftists including myself bring up Cuba's health care system to show that even a country which is totally busted politically and economically can manage a national health care system which provides outcomes as good as what we have now (which ain't that great, but bear with this argument) for pennies on the dollar. It's not that we should go commie, it's that even the commies can manage health care. Here in the allegedly greatest nation in the world, the only magnificent part of our health care system is the size of the bill.

Right now, any dickwad in America is free to put up a website advocating abolishment of the American government. And indeed, many of them have. Further, there is in fact a completely legal process for elimination of the constitution; you could pass an Amendment replacing it with another document. Nothing prevents anyone from starting a political party on this basis. I bet if I were less lazy I could find some really batshit crazy examples right now, but I equally bet that some people out there in Slashdot-land already know of some. I hope they will help out and link them here.

It must have been before recorded history. We have documented examples of such behavior for as long as we have documents.

Well, duh, they did it to verify that the people did give the "expected" answer most of the time. There are lots of scientific studies showing that something the "everyone knows" isn't actually true, so such beliefs are often worth actually testing. In this case, a number for what fraction of the people haven't a clue about DNA is interesting and potentially useful. It does put a lot of other such surveys in an "interesting" light.