As anyone who's watched the most famous recent use of Twitch will realize, this should result in epic loltrolling and griefing of the development process.

That or else the development process will be sufficiently insulated from the rabble that this announcement boils down to just marketing.

People should not start trotting out a 'variable constant' hypothesis because some ratio of elements is wrong in ore.

Nonetheless:

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'

-- Isaac Asimov

- A passenger is able to spot and point out driving hazards
- A passenger is another set of eyes
- A passenger is able to recognize when traffic is challenging and stop talking.

Written like someone who's never driven with small children. Who are, technically passengers, but generally more distracting than texting while tuning the radio and eating fast food (and doing makeup, if you're that sort).

"Shut UP and keep your hands TO YOURSELF! Do NOT make me REACH BACK THERE AND SMACK YOU! So HELP ME GOD!"

At least, right now.

Oh, you don't think it would devolve into a crude bidding war, with direct marketing shitbags upping the rate they're willing to pay to outbid the rate you're willing to pay to not be junk-mailed?

If you think you can outbid an entire industry whose survival depends on delivering your ass to the advertisers, you're crazier than the average Slashdotter.

[NO CARRIER]

There's your problem. You flashed your firewall with the firmware package for a mid-90s Hayes-compatible telephone modem. I hope you have a spare; that firewall is hung up good.

How 'bout it's a major problem because the company won't honor its warranty and support contract until you slavishly install every update?

The good news, though, is that after this update you'll probably have a better reason to open a ticket than the piddly-ass one you had before.

Maybe the inhabitants of those other planets aren't ravening imperialist douchebags. In that case, I'm liking our odds.

Consider Jack Handey's observation:

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it.

--Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

In the immortal words of the Prophet, "You must be new here".

Just wait until the story gets reposted here. And again, a couple of days later.

After all, this sin't madness, it's Slashdot. Dupes of old news are not an option. They're standard equipment.

Once upon a time, in a Slashdot epoch of heroes and myths and CowboyNeal and editors who would actually edit, you could work with the editor that accepted your submission and get an update to TFS.

Alas, the time of the Gods is gone, and all we have is Beta and today's "editors".

But I still find myself wishing for heroes, as foolish as it seems.

In theory, true.

Just like a good manager can manage anything.

In practice, however, a lobbyist is much more valuable if he or she has cultivated contacts and inside access to a particular regulatory bureaucracy. They guy pestering the Assistant Deputy Undersecretary in the lobby is vastly less effective, and commands much less money, than the guy who can dial the private phone number of the department head's own secretary and schedule a couple hours with his immediate successor in the job of department head.

And that's where the conflict of interest lives: a person gained access and personal trust in the context of public service. He cashes in on that asset, originally conferred for the benefit of the public, for his own personal benefit (bigtime lobbying contracts) and the benefit of his private clients (in the regulated field). Plus, you know, regulatory capture.

Proof-positive that Darwin was right. Natural selection yielded a subset of the species with strong survival characteristics, while winnowing out the weak.

Yeah, even today, I'm terribly surprised and disappointed if any of my Amiga floppies fail while I'm reading them. I suppose I should hurry up and copy them onto a hard drive as image files before something I care about dies.

i have a mint amiga 600!

Poser! They never made the Amiga in any color than dead-fish beige! (Except for the CDTV and CD32, which were "A/V component charcoal".)

Hell, does any computer come in a primary color, other than overaggressive "compensating for something" red on certain gaming-grade systems?

And yes, I'm joking, and I know you don't mean color when you say "mint".

I'm just trying to forestall the inevitable "whoosh" here. Even if it kills the joke.

Of course you could still hammer nails with it, but can you plug it in and *type* on it?

If it's one of the classic Model "M"s, you could type by hammering nails with it, if you're skilled enough to strike the nailhead with the specific keys you want.

Nowadays. Feh. I have given up on decent keyboards. I will settle for less violently sucky ones. And have to look pretty far afield to fine one.

but what I want is less lag. Really.

My lag in server-based games runs in the teens of milliseconds, but I would like to push that below 10ms. My own reactions aren't getting any faster, so a bit less wire delay would be a nice compensation. (Ok, not much compensation, since human response times are easily an order of magnitude slower than that, but still...)