Do yourself a huge favor and go with Civ IV not V. Civ V is really dumbed down, and I found IV (or even III) to be the best version, especially if you get the Beyond the Sword + Warlords extensions.

God yes. There needs to be an auto-disable for videos. Sure, I can understand that you might want them to be displayed one time, but every time I start the damned game?

With a lot of games you CAN get around this, either by just deleting all the video files, or some (eg Valve) games take start-up parameters like 'novid'. I just wish there were at least a simple option in every damned game to do this.

Just think what heinous acts of child abuse could go on behind those curtains. Perhaps the honourable member would leave his curtains open at all times or stand with those who commit child rape behind them.

No. If they can offer more money/better conditions than I can, they deserve the workers. You don't OWN your employees, they're yours until a better offer comes along. Employees don't owe their employer anything outside of fulfilling their contract.

There is no such thing as "Stealing" employees any more than there is "stealing" customers - offer me a better deal and I will move. It's as simple as that - market forces.

Agreed, you hit it much better than I did. Thanks.

It's GOT to be illegal. Companies must compete (in terms of wages, working conditions, other benefits) for workers in order to have a working system. Otherwise, you sign up for Google and they can treat you however they like, they know none of the other companies will take you off their hands, so why pay you more?

Amusingly enough, when I loaded /. today there was a banner ad across the top of the homepage (at work, so can't install ABP here).

"I'll give you a hint it's the one that costs 33 times less........."

You were educated online, weren't you?

Actually, it does effect pirates. But perhaps it doesn't affect them...

(Effect as a verb means to bring about, or cause)

I take your point - they certainly convey information in a less clear fashion than simply saying X times. I would say that the 100% does represent a 'whole' here, and I believe that the over 100 statement is being used for dramatic effect. Usually a percentage is smaller than 100, so when going above it makes a big impact in the reader's mind. In this context it is because one might have expected Google's contribution to be lower this time around due to increased Chrome usage, so Mozilla might only receive 10% of previous amounts. The larger number catches your attention more if you're just skim-reading.

All that said, however, this is goddamned Slashdot, so we can handle a little math! Just give us the straight numbers (three times, or 300 million vs 100 million etc) and journalistic attention grabbers like this aren't so necessary.

It happens to us all at times :)

Yes it is. 50% of 100 million is 50 million, 100% of 100 million is 100 million, and 300% of 100 million is 300 million. "Of" in this context means multiplied by.

Perhaps you're confused by "300% of" as opposed to "increased 300%"? - it's a 200% increase, or 300% of the original value.

and funding cuts left, right and center. It's a great time to have tenure, but an awful time to be coming out of grad school/post doc. The last stat I heard (a year out of date by now) was that the conversion rate of 1st postdoc -> faculty position was 1 in 4.

That's all well and good. But how? Does any public figure have to register firstnamelastname.TLD for 8 or 9 TLDs? What about Ilastname.TLD? Or just lastname.TLD? lastname-profession.TLD, titlelastname.tld? It's a ridiculous number, all costing a bunch of money.

I know .xxx was considered a blackmail move by many here - no-one wants a .xxx version of their .com. This all makes me wonder why we still persist with TLDs at all - since .net/.org etc are all redirecting to .com (in most cases) why don't we just drop the system, and have http://slashdot/ be the address? I admit a great deal of ignorance in this area - can someone give a good justification for why we still have them?

I totally agree on the line calls - I'd also have it run on off-side calls if the tech could support it (it should be able to, TV replays seem to have no trouble recreating the field positions as the ball is played, and the ref only stops play when he takes note of the linesman, who could be replaced/aided by a computer indicator). Faking injuries and deliberate time-wasting are both supposed to be penalized, but largely go unpunished because it's hard to prove. I'd love to see the accuracy improvements that cricket has enjoyed brought into football (OK, soccer for Americans) and you're right that a lot of the excuses for why they aren't seem rather weak on closer inspection.