So.... how are you fixed for firewood and natural gas?

Pretty well, thanks! I have four cords cut split and seasoned (In a typical winter I'll go through 2-3), and another two I could tap in a pinch if we have a really bad winter.

I couldn't keep the fridge going (good thing winter provides its own cold), but I have enough solar/battery capacity to keep the house lit up with efficient LEDs indefinitely, and to run an energy-efficient tablet on the off chance we have some tattered remains of a communication infrastructure to connect to (or just to while away the hours reading the entirety of Project Gutenberg). And perfect time of year, crop-wise, I'll spend the next few months canning anyway.

You?

I don't see the name become generic at any point soon

You should re-read TFS, then. This entire topic centers on exactly that - "iPad" has become a generic term for any tablet, just as iPod has become a generic for any portable music player.

And I have just one thought on that: "Ha, ha!"


/ As long as they don't have ultra-high-tech proprietary rounded corners. That would just go too far.

The big reveal images have already been negotiated with some major media outlet.

I have no problem with that, as long as not a single penny of public funding went into this project, nor did they find this thing on public lands.

Oh, look: "it has been funded with 180.000 euros by the Prefecture of Central Macedonia, the Ministry of Macedonia and Thace and the Ministry of Culture". Yeah, NatGeo and NBC can fuck right off, 'kay? I might give the BBC or PBS a pass on access for doing a legitimately scholarly documentary, but not exclusive rights to the imagery.

We all own our history. The fact that the government paid you to dig some of it up makes you a glorified landscaper, not some sort of artist with "rights" to pictures of the rocks you found.

You ignored what I said.

Oh, wow did I misread that! Sorry, my bad.

Clearly we disagree, rather than agreeing. Ah well, I probably would have responded with the same thing, just intro'd slightly differently. ;)

In the processing of waiting for a new card. Even if I'm not liable, I don't want my bank footing the bill for criminal purchases made by someone.

This. Everyone seems all panicked about this (along with Shaws, a regional supermarket chain) - But why care? I shop regularly at both stores, use only plastic, and... I will lose exactly zero dollars even in the worst-case scenario.

I know people who currently refuse to shop at TJ Maxx because of that breach a decade ago. Yet, such people never seem to have a good answer for how much it cost them personally (correct answer: nothing). And I fully expect the same people to start using Lowes exclusively (because at least they only screw their own employees with poor security, amiright?).

Guess what, folks - It just doesn't matter. If you report any fraudulent charges within a reasonable time after getting your statement, you have no liability, with the bank, the merchant, and the insurance company getting to argue over which of them foots the bill. Debit cards have somewhat worse terms (you front any money stolen, and start sharing the liability if it takes you too long to notice any problems), but even with them, you still have one full statement cycle to notice any fraudulent charges.

Much ado about nothing.

"Produces nothing"? YAAFM. Providing a highly sought after service is not producing nothing.

Careful with throwing around those "FM" tags - Because yes actually, providing a service very much does not mean they "produce" anything. Getty stands in the middle of real work, between producing photos and producing creatives, adding nothing but fees as their value-add proposition.

In the case of Getty, they provide a service in many ways inferior to GIS or BIS, which kinda counts as the whole reason we have this topic in the first place - MS's cute little slideshow widget worked better than Getty, thereby completely shutting Getty out of the picture.

Free hint - Grandma ain't gonna license your stupid stock photo anyway, she'll just use the watermarked sample. Same goes for that class of Marketing 101 students. Anyone actually interested in paying for stock photos, OTOH, already understands the difference between freely available vs licensed content, and damned well won't risk their job "accidentally" ripping off random photographers.

This has nothing to do with copyrights, and everything to do with buggy whips.

Too many companies continue to take their product, fiddle / fuck with it for the sake of change (keeping UI designers in a job I suspect) and then antagonise their users. Google maps is a prime example, the new google maps is AWFUL compared to the existing one, lacking several key features. Please, stop fiddling and changing things.

I agree with you completely (in particular about the new god-awful Google Maps interface, hell, it makes Beta almost look like a role-model of useability by comparison), but I think you, and the FP, and TFA, and countless others complaining about this issue may have missed the glaringly obvious solution...

"There's an app for that". Goes by the name of "any modern browser", just enable its version of click-to-play (or for slightly older browsers - Lookin' at you, no-Chrome-before-Honeycomb, just run your favorite version of noscript/flashblock/etc.)

You don't need to give every website you visit its own little chunk of your phone just because it asks for one. "Have you tried our app yet?" - No. No, I haven't, and won't until your marketing department stops treating my phone as just one more way to track me (ie, never).

and thus you are not guilty of a crime!

...Which will really make your next of kin feel better about the whole situation.

No mistake, I agree with you, but they call what you describe "suicide by cop", and legal vs illegal won't really much matter when they squeegee your remains off the pavement.

no, thats a question for ICP, in 2009...

Thus making it...

(puts on sunglasses)

... A "Moot" question!

YEEEAAAAAHHHHH!

Maybe people should just sleep 8 hours a night like they're supposed to.

We don't naturally sleep 8 hours a night. We naturally sleep for two blocks of 3-4 hours per day, which the lifestyle requirements of the modern world have forced to occur in a more-or-less continuous 7-8 hour block.

Pre-industrially, those two blocks would have an hour or two of waking time between them; modern research (mostly military) has found that splitting them apart further allows people to go with as little as 4-5 hours of sleep per 24 hour period with only minimal impact on performance.

It's my pet theory that this is the mechanism by which we get so many libertarians.

Strange, you just keep tossing out random completely off-topic straw-man attacks against Libertarians... And in a context where they would agree with you completely.

Libertarians hate big-government, and in general consider the patriot act nothing short of an abomination. Bringing up your personal demons at every opportunity really doesn't look any better than the morons who blame Obama for everything.

With a bit of luck, the person running Steam AU will see time in court.

Congrats, that $10 down the drain plus a few hours of time spend arguing just turned into a day of lost work to testify. You really showed them! Attaboy!


If you don't like the law of the land, fuck off back to America.

In principle, I agree with you. Honestly, I fucking hate corporations thinking they can get away with anything, and I hate even more that they usually do simply because of the cost of fighting them even when in the right. But you have a practical issue to consider here as well - Do you want to play Day Z? Hawken? Starbound? Zero Gear? Shattered Horizon? Anything on this list? Then you need to use Steam. And at the risk of commiting a 3rd party tu quoque, do you consider Sony any better? Microsoft? Ubisoft?

If you want what the devil has, you get to deal with the devil, like it or not.

That fucker on the island almost wiped out DC. The most terrifying moment in human history was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I have to presume you meant "almost wiped out civilization", because the erasure of DC could only serve to improve both the effectiveness of the US government, and the human gene pool as a whole. ;)

I mean, how'd you feel if Russia took over Mexico?

About the same way we'd feel when they tried to put nukes in Cuba?

But at least that one went well...

The 'impossible' is just something that hasn't been done yet.

Quoting a work of fiction doesn't make your point unless your point applies only within that world.

Unless, of course, you think we can solve global warming by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow (or perhaps Gandalf can just not let any IR photons pass, if you prefer fantasy solutions over scifi ones).