Runescape is like that too, at least in their TOS it states that blocking their ads is a bannable offense. My old computer froze for several seconds every time a new flash banner ad loaded, and the ads rotated every few minutes, so I blocked them anyway.

They later wrote a script to display a scrolling marquee if the ads failed to load, suggesting that you might be blocking ads, although not phoning home or anything. I adblocked that too.

And no, my Slashdot username is not the same as my Runescape username.

Whoa, there. I don't know about you, but I have mitochondria, thank you very much!

More people will need this than you might think. Let's look at each piece of your claim:

• Real-time: Graphical user interfaces must respond instantly to the user's commands. Newer systems have added window entry/exit effects to clarify the relationship among various items on the screen.
• High-def: PC GUIs have met the definition of high-definition video since the 1990s, when XGA resolution (1024x768px) became common.
• Geometry: I'll admit that most office and web applications currently use much simpler geometry than a typical Xbox 360-class 3D game. But as IE 9 becomes popular, SVG and <canvas> will finally become viable, and even font rasterization will move to the GPU.

From what I have read, the major issue with antibiotic resistant pathogens is less about the number of people who receive the antibiotics and more about those people not finishing the course of antibiotics that they have been given which allows the resistant strains to become naturally selected and more likely to be transmitted. If everyone finished the course of drugs that they were given, even if antibiotics were somewhat over-prescribed, we would not have quite the issue with resistant strains that we have today.

Obviously, prescribing less of the drugs also would tend to help with the numbers of people who fail to finish their courses, but that may be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I agree that overreacting to the doctor is probably not the wisest course, even if the system appears jaded. Having said that, a second opinion is something that you should not hesitate to obtain if you suspect a real problem. You know your child and if they can't yet communicate, you are probably the person who is most likely to understand their level of discomfort and illness. Just make sure that if you find a doctor that does agree with you, that you actually finish the course of drugs that you have been given.

Not if you convince "proper graphics card" to see it all as a CPU integrated in their graphics card.

I don't think it'd be very hard right now to convince an alienware buyer to uy a computer that's essentially a graphics card with all the rest integrated around it. Except, maybe, the hard drive. And even there you could argue "it has a SSD for you to install one or two games at a time. You can buy a standard HD for the rest."

The only thing to leave outside would have to be the mouse (some elite pro killer razer) and the keyboard (a pro ergonomic strafer pro elite pro fatal1ty). And the headset.

For anyone that doesn't know what he's talking about: Desktop Tower Defense

Warning: Prepare to spend a lot of hours there if you've never played before

I think we're a long way from DRM free video from major content houses, and HTML5 would require all video to be DRM free. Not that I don't think we'll get there eventually, but we're definitely not there yet.

A couple off the top of my head:

When I only have a couple of minutes (elevator, bathroom, waiting in line) and want to check my RSS reader it's great that it's already up to date and I don't need to spend one or more of those minutes updating all of my feeds.

When I'm listening to pandora and I get a phone call it's nice to not have to go back to my home screen, click pandora and wait for it to start up again before I can listen to music after ending the call.

When I'm logged in to IM I don't necessarily want to be looking at it the whole time.

And many more. Push can 'solve' some of these, but requires lots of infrastructure and reliability from your app vendor, and isn't necessary if your apps are allowed to run in the background. Sure, it requires your app writer to not suck at writing a persistent task, but at least it's an *option*. If it's a problem for you, and battery life is at a premium, don't install the apps, or shut them down when you're done.

When I use my phone I'm never doing it for long periods of time, only minute or two intervals, and if I have to start and update an app in that time it's not nearly as useful.

My BlackBerry 9700 easily survives two days on a charge.

I think the Vista name was beyond repair and they needed to move past it with or without the features to go with it. It very well could have been Vista SPx, but then it would still be 'Vista' in the "Mac vs PC" ads. It's like Phillip Morris becoming Altruia or whatever they renamed themselves to.

It's interesting that his proposed solution to this is to have KDE/Gnome switch to sqlite, which would basically be the start of a windows registry for linux.