My best friend has a Taurus SHO. He's had to update his SYNC system twice: once for a map/GPS update and once to update the firmware so it supported some additional Bluetooth profiles. Neither time did he have to do anything with this "fuse" you speak of.

-1: Missing the Obvious

Disregarding anything else, do you deny the much increased difficulty of overturning legislation once passed? Even if the current form of this is full of caveats, it's still getting the discussion going in the right direction.

Also, when calling one's idea stupid, you should make sure people know your arms are crossed and you're sticking your tongue out in a fit of pique.

You don't think they've come up with delayed launch mechanisms so they can vacate the area hours or days in advance?

Eradicated? To whom, exactly, do you attribute the claim of eradicating any of those? I'm interested to hear where you were going with this.

Frankly, I'll take the current internet with all its warts and diseases over some centralized, walled-garden approach that will STILL suffer from the same things, just in a different mechanic. The bottom line is how you decide what to trust in any system.

I'd submit that the problem isn't that the internet is the Wild Wild West, it's that it is the Wild Wild West without any sheriffs or cowboys. No, I'm not talking about regulation of the internet; I'm talking about people who break laws (fraud, theft, etc.) being found and prosecuted regardless of what tool (postal system, telephones or internet) they used to do it.

My friends and family have pretty much all been avid gamers since the Atari days. What in the 7th level of hell does that have to do with anything other than gaming?

While I wouldn't vote for a Democrat on general principle, I fail to see how her playing WoW is a detriment. I'd go further and suggest that it gives her a feel for how normal people tend to use the internet and means she's probably more in touch than the average government denizen.

She figured out how to launch Firefox, go to favorites and pick her Disney princess flash game and play it, then when she was done she would close Firefox and shut down the PC. I'm not sure why this sort of hyperbole masquerading as "fact-finding" rates a slashdot post as it would appear young kids have been using Windows operating systems for years. Probably just like they've been figuring out how to use Mac OS for years. Probably just like they figure out how to unlock Mom's Android/iPhone and call random people or play games on it. Probably just like they figured out how to turn on Dad's TI calculator and delete his stored functions for this week's exams.

Nothing to see here but FUD from the other direction.

The list when I 'downgraded' from FF (actually, Palemoon 15.2):

BBComposer
Download Statusbar
Fireform
Flashblock
Greasemonkey
IE View Lite
iMacros
ImageBlock
Memory Restart
TabMix Plus

A couple of these have other variants that will work around but several of those are dealbreakers.

The world is a big, mean, scary place full of ill-intentioned people who will take advantage of the uneducated and the less-vigilant.

s/people/governments/ig

Question: do you think it is easier to defend yourself against hateful onslaught by ill-intentioned individuals or against governments that will take away your life, liberty and property just because you aren't toeing the party line? Follow-up: what do you suppose are some of the best ways to defend against tyranny? /popcorn

It's all tied together. Society's rejection of morality and ethics leads to this. Atheism leads to this. The culture of consent and contraception, leads to this.

Since when has religion had much to do with morality? It's about peer influence.

You do realize that pointing out a fallacy of generalization (atheists are amoral) by committing another fallacy of generalization (theists are amoral) doesn't really help the point you're trying to make, right? Try simply pointing out holes in others' arguments and leave it at that. When you ascribe general motivations to individuals you obviously do not know or understand based on the vision others like you present in the media/intertubes, you end up exhibiting the weak-minded, peer-influenced, dogmatic thinking[sic] you seem to be complaining about in others.

I'd suspect your counter-argument of being psychological projection but that would just be *cough* ad hominem *cough* as I don't know you or what values you hold dear. *hint*

Been a sprint customer since the late 90s. Started with a Palm Pre, upgraded to an EVO 4G (WiMax) and am now on a Galaxy S3 LTE.

The WiMax coverage for the EVO was primarily in the larger areas as people have said but I knew that before I bought the damned phone; I'd have felt silly buying a "high speed data" phone without researching whether the product was designed to work in my area. ;) WiMax, where it was available, was always very fast and connections were reliable enough that I never noticed anything untoward.

My S3 has much more limited coverage (which I knew) but is even faster in-zone. I primarily use 3G but I'll admit to not being the type that uses my phone as an entertainment console, so the occasional surfing I do to look things up while shopping or browsing weather radar or news while out and about works like a champ so far.

So far, I can't complain about Sprint. I haven't had any trouble with them jacking my rates or failing to grandfather in the All Everything All The Time plan I've had since 2002 or so. Based on my experience, I suspect this is mostly due to being both cognizant of realistic expectations for coverage and vigilant about letting the sales reps not screw up my paperwork.

Giving up my mod points in here just to say THANK YOU! That max_viewers tip isn't one I've found anywhere else and considering my browsing habits, this made a huge difference. /salute

I didn't ask for a completely different UI. I actually LIKE Win7 as is. It's (so far) rock solid stable. My ATI and NVidia drivers Just Work(tm). The apps for the most part all use a familiar menu/hotkey structure so all those little keyboard shortcuts still work without me having to learn new ones (we won't talk about Office 2010's changes to that.../grumble). On the off chance I download an app that does crash or I experience a beta video driver crash, everything recovers at least well enough to allow me to close my work normally and reboot at my leisure. I don't have performance issues after weeks of uptime. I don't have app compatibility issues. I don't have any complaints about being able to find stuff. My desktop and start menu work the same way they've worked for most of the last 10 years.

WHY? Why would you think Metro is something I'd want on my desktop? I partly understand re: tablets but my desktop??? It's bad enough that I'm considering going out to buy another few copies of Win7 just in case family wants to upgrade older PCs (or have me build new ones) expressly so that when Win7 disappears from shelves, we won't be forced onto it.

Then again, if the linux nerds could get their heads out of their asses (I'm looking at you, Ubuntu Unity/Gnome3 idiots), and more game developers start supporting it, I might just start migrating everything to linux.

Example: someone sustains an injury to an arm or leg such that amputation is the only way to save their life. How do all the nuances of directly or by omission of action harming a human get resolved to the satisfaction of the robot? How much explanation does an experienced medical expert need to give a robot to "convince" the robot that the course of action the surgeon is going to take is correct? How do the personal choices of the injured human enter into the decision process?

Seems easy until you start applying them to actual humans. ;)

When the majority of the entrants are from one country, is it a surprise the majority of the winners are from the same?

With the presumption that you're not being a pedantic jackass and we're only talking about the top 5-10, what does the number of beer contestants have to do with anything?