Well, that sorta works for Douglas Adams.

Okay, tested it, it's only about 4 seconds to fire up. I can most definitely live with that.

Umm.. that's not what black humor is. Black humor isn't about black people; it's about satirizing the morbid: suffering, pain, death, disease, violence, et al. a sort of self-deprecating look at humanity and our vulnerabilities.

Sound like a lead-in to Minority Report.

The herd/fad/trend mindset. You've got the huge crowds that follow Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, etc.. Look at the yo-yo'ing that studies on coffee/caffeine do. I stopped listening to all these random flip flopping studies. Just common sense and moderation are pretty good guides to healthy living, too much of anything is bound to be bad.

Ah. Thanks. Well, considering we had a 32" CRT that my wife had on 16/7 before (goes on first thing in the morning, off last thing at night) this is probably still a power savings.
I'll try disabling it, I'm curious now to see how long it takes.

Maybe they've made some recent improvements, but I've never seen one I liked. Grainy or blocky picture. *shrug* What counts is if you're happy with it.

About .5 seconds or less. Seriously. I was pleasantly surprised. Instant On is an option in the settings that can be enabled/disabled, though I've not done any research into why anyone would want that disabled.

:-) I'm not using a wired connection currently, just wireless.. so I use the router's MAC filter, I don't broadcast my SSID, and it's of course encrypted. It's just as effective. None of my neighbors are stupid enough to run open wireless APs, otherwise I'd be concerned it might just join their network. Hmm. Now I have to see if I can just shut the wireless off completely, just in case.

Sadly, anymore,regarding "smart" vs regular, your choices get much narrower if you want a larger set, especially one that is 4K UltraHD. Everything is going "SmartTV". Eventually you'll have no choice. I just finally bought a new only TV 3 weeks ago, after using a CRT all these years (my wife is a freakin' luddite): a Samsung 50" UHD model. Just my luck.
Believe me, I was not hyped on the "smart" aspect (my BluRay player can already do all that anyway), but I was set on getting a Samsung, as I'm not really happy with the pictures I've seen from Vizios, and Sony was more expensive. A friend told me his LG did not last long, and the Samsung was on sale for the Superbowl. Their picture quality is really good, so I nabbed it. It acts like a normal TV, and powers on instantly, at least.
On the plus side, I don't use the voice control feature, in fact it can be shut it off in the system menu, which I had already done, but of course I don't know if that actually shuts the mic off entirely or just disables the commands feature.
In any case, it's easy enough for me to simply disconnect the TV from the Internet (I use a MAC filter), and just use my BluRay player for streaming.

Sony and Sharp are like day and night. Sony rules the video market for best picture quality, but I think Sharp is garbage, as is Hitachi (for video).

Or UltraEdit, but it's not free.

Who said anything about condemning them? And I enjoy a lot of the raunchy stuff on TV, Family Guy would not have been possible in the '70s or even '80s. '70s television sucked big time.
I merely made the observation that things are not as conservative as they once were. It's not the '50s anymore.

I'm sure it was incoherent to you, my earlier point was as well. I have no problem with someone with a difference of opinion, but you were nothing but derisive, and backed up *none* of your "facts" with a valid source.
But I agree, there's no point in us taking this any further.

I'm the one who feels too strongly? You're the one that took four paragraphs in response to my three sentences, to expound on how obviously more enlightened and superior you are. I guess you schooled me.

Let me tell you, I'm so glad that your academic aptitude has allowed you to be so incredibly perceptive as to notice that "nobody gives a shit" about there being no white players on an NBA team. No shit. That was the fucking point, Sherlock. Do you need a gold star or something? Would that make you jump up and down and clap like a seal?
My whole point is how stupid it is for the politically correct to push people into fields that they don't care about, or nitpick about some perceived "imbalance", when it suits their personal agenda.

But you've outed yourself as someone with a childlike propensity to over-anxiously deliver social justice, and obvious the SJW tag hit a nerve. If the shoe fits, wear it.
How many times did you just label me "ignorant" and my observations "nonsense" and suggest I need an "education", you obnoxious, insufferable twaddling self-righteous douchebag?
Oh, and regarding the NBA teams, you've outdone yourself. Congratulations, you're also a closet racist. Besides the fact that you completely missed the point, the fact that blacks were in fact banned from teams decades ago has fuck all to do with the team lineups of today. You're right on one count -no one cares. I certainly don't give a shit, I don't even like basketball. But your reasoning for why you think no one cares reveals your own ignorance and racism. If you truly believed in racial equality, then you'd want the pendulum to hang in the middle. Swinging it from one extreme end all the way to the opposite end is not equality, as there would still exist a disparity; and yet you believe that this is why it is the way it is, and why it should be.
Historical banning is not why NBA teams are mostly black (hello, Baseball ring a bell? they were banned from that too), it's because white people simply don't gravitate towards playing it as much. It's no big deal.
Back to our original subject, it's the same reason there are fewer women are in IT, they're not being discouraged from it, they just don't really find it that interesting as compared to males, and trying to force them into it, citing some kind of bias is at work, is stupid. This is the politically correct agenda I mentioned. I work in IT, my boss is female. She certainly wasn't discouraged from working in IT. And she's a good boss. But she chose to work in IT, she wasn't pushed into it because of some bullshit perceived injustice.

Go educate yourself before you start smugly handing down that tripe to others from your lofty pulpit. But don't rush, I think you'll need several years at least.

Because politically correct agendas. That is all. Notice that no one gets all SJW about the lack of white players on pro basketball teams, or whine that there are "too many" women teaching elementary (K through 6th grade) school and not enough men.