....your intruder is a deaf guy!

I, too, spend years living in a pretty rough neighborhood. (Two houses down from me, someone ran an old Chevy through the middle of a guy's living room on purpose, because he wasn't happy with the drugs they sold him. A few houses down the street, the other direction, I heard a single gunshot -- and found out the next day the guy had an argument with his wife and decided to make sure he had the last word, using his shotgun.)

In 6 years there, though? I never had anyone break in once. (Some teenagers did steal my lawnmower that was sitting on the back porch, but I heard later that was going on all over town as a group of kids figured out they could make some quick money reselling the engines to repair shops.) I solved that by chaining up its replacement with a bike chain to the railing going up my back porch steps.

The whole time, I was known as the "computer guy" in the neighborhood and had expensive systems set up at home. So why wasn't I ever targeted?

I didn't waste time or money on an alarm system. (Heck, my next-door neighbor had ADT and he was still burglarized twice.) The biggest thing that helped in my case was making good friends with my neighbors on both sides of my place and letting them know if I was going to be gone for any length of time. Most burglaries really are "inside jobs", at least in the sense that the burglar knows something about the situation. If they get the idea that someone's usually home at your place, they'll choose a different target. (Most thieves aren't thrilled about the idea of having to commit armed robberies instead. They'd rather not up the ante quite that high.....) Additionally, if they get the idea your neighbors actually watch out for you -- they'll go elsewhere. Ideally, they want a place where they can park a vehicle and load it up with your stuff, and nobody will notice or care.

I agree that some cameras can't hurt though. If you're into computers anyway, surely you can rig up a few wi-fi webcams with night vision to watch over your vehicle in your driveway and so forth, and automate it so it only records when it sees motion. Cheap insurance. Probably also helps if you have a loud, barking dog -- but I didn't even do that.

I had a collection of somewhere slightly over 250-260 commercial music CDs (about half of which I sold off last year o various online web-sites who bought used CDs).

The sites doing the buying were extremely picky (to the point where they'd refuse to pay for a disc, even if it was the exact album they said they wanted, if its ISBN number didn't match the exact one they were after), and I was billed for replacement jewel cases in several instances, simply because the ones I provided with the CDs had small cracks in them.

Not a single disc I sold them was refused or returned for failure to play or for skipping though.

Meanwhile, I've had absolutely no issues playing any of the remaining discs in my collection. (I had to re-rip many of them just a few months ago, when I discovered a lot of the MP3 rips I made years earlier had some issues.)

What I can say, though, is, I've been very good about always putting my CDs back in the jewel cases whenever I finished playing one, and they all sit in a big, revolving CD storage tower in the house. I have to wonder if some of these complaints of "edge rot" and "bronzing" of the media and so forth are with discs people left sitting in hot cars in the summer, didn't put back in the cases often, etc. ?

Why did a company like LucasArts license their IP to EA instead of to a more respectable company with better labor and business practices?

I believe Maxis sold its IP for the Sim titles to EA long before EA developed the bad reputation it has today, so that's kind of understandable. But surely, there are cases where holders of IP that's desirable to obtain for video games could sell to a more ethical business.

To be honest, the case cited is the very reason I haven't given Blizzard any of my money for its more recent titles.

I know I'm just one guy who the company doesn't even notice. But the fact the company took issue with the BNetD thing and fought over it in court sent a clear signal to me that I better send my hard-earned dollars elsewhere when choosing computer game purchases for entertainment.

It simply doesn't seem like a good value proposition to pay the asking price for these games that require central servers to function, AND to know the company doesn't believe in letting 3rd. parties build or host alternate options.

I would have really liked to play Diablo 3 or Starcraft II, especially because as a Mac OS X user, my gaming options are pretty limited to begin with. But I'm not a "hard core gamer" anyway. I'm too old for that and have too many other demands on my free time. I just want to know that if I pay $40-50 for a game, I can keep it around and play it whenever I like -- even if that's a number of years after it was purchased, and won't find it's become unusable because the manufacturer decided it was time to kill it off.

as one more example? I work in I.T. as a computer support analyst. What does that title really mean? In my situation, it means I'm the only computer guy in the office, both for our office (where all of the finance people reside, as well as H.R., the company president, and another floor of "creative" folks who work directly with our clients), and for a second office in another city nearby. (That office has only about 10 employees, and a couple of them generally work from home, so they don't need a lot of attention. But it's my job to run down there when something does go wrong or needs upgrading/changing.)

Our company has several other offices around the country, and we have two more I.T. guys who generally do what I do. All of us work together as a team to handle incoming trouble tickets for any of the offices, but it makes the most sense for us to do the vast majority of the support for the offices we're located in or close to.

When you factor in that our little group also does all the support for an additional 100 or so people who work freelance for us on random projects (they all get their own company email accounts and so forth), I'd say we're actually stretched pretty darn thin. Things would quickly deteriorate if any one of us was cut out of the picture. (We know this by watching what happens when someone leaves on vacation for a week or two.)

Despite that? I can assure you that all of us "waste some time" on the internet, posting silly things on Facebook, reading the latest tech. news and so on. At any given time, one of us is probably coming in an hour late or taking an extra long lunch here or there, too. You know what though? We are ALSO dedicated to getting things done correctly and in a timely manner. There's so much stress and "I need this yesterday!" that comes in random bursts, you can't reasonably expect a person to handle that without compensating with some downtime or laziness mixed in. As long as nobody tries to micro-manage us - it all comes together pretty well for us. When we come in late, it's because we have a pretty good grip on the ebb and flow of the I.T. issues at hand and feel confident it's a time window where we don't have to be sitting in front of a desk to keep things going. We're also known to take tickets and fix issues on a Saturday or Sunday night, even though none of us are officially "on call" -- simply because one of us may not have anything better to do at that moment in time. We'd rather knock an issue out than have it hanging over our heads on Monday, sometimes. We also may NOT take those tickets, because we have family lives and want to get away from work sometimes. It's more productive than I think we'd be if we were micro-managed and someone was actually ordered to be "on call" on weekends to take those incoming tickets, etc.

Personally, I have to go with New Hope, Episode IV. That's the one that started it all for me, when I saw it in a movie theater with my family back in '77 and it was a life changing event for me. I wound up collecting nearly every action figure and play-set Kenner released, and made new friends over a shared interest in those toys and the movies.

I think what bothers me the most about the prequels, as I look back on it now, is how much detailed CGI was stuffed into them. Episode IV, by comparison, was so simplistic yet creative. Using the desert as the backdrop worked perfectly for Tatooine, without needing a bunch of rendered, computerized imagery and actors/actresses super-imposed over the top of all of it. To me, no matter how "cool" they make new Star Wars movies look with the latest technology, it'll always be something you look at and kind of expect, given the budget, the fan base of the franchise, etc. It's far more amazing to me to re-watch that first episode from 1977 and see how well most of it still holds up today, with only the relatively limited tools at their disposal back then.

It constantly irritates me when I see people installing all sorts of junk simply because they can't be bothered to READ what's on the screen, right in front of them. Thanks to the proliferation of "free" software for Windows (as opposed to true freeware), the installation programs often ask you if you'd like to ALSO install one of several other questionable toolbars, add-ons or other utilities, with an "opt in" default for each prompt. Really, there's no secret here.... It tells you right on the screen what it wants to install, and you simply de-select a check-mark to skip it. But people blow right through those prompts, clicking as fast as they can find the button, and then wonder where the "Super Cool MegaSearch" toolbar came from that keeps popping up ad banners while they surf the web.

Interesting that just today, I also read this article:

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

It claims that a full 1/3rd. of the warming in the 1990's, on record, was actually due to water vapor in the air, vs. CO2 emissions and the like. Yes, it's not saying this is cause to deny the phenomenon, but it shows how we're still really in the early stages of understanding the details..... The statements of fact about exactly what's happening are largely premature.

I mean, up till now, auto makers have offered push-button keyless start as a premium option you had to pay extra for. My Hyundai Genesis Coupe, for example, had push-button start -- but it was a GT version of the car. The base models still had standard ignition keys.

Personally, I like the keyless start functionality, but I highly doubt it will prove any more reliable than ignition keys in the long run. These systems rely on the battery operated transponders on people's keyfobs, and IMO, those are the weak spot. A metal key is relatively hard to damage. If you manage to drop it in the toilet or sink or the swimming pool, it's going to be just fine. The transponders, not so much.

Of course, with the insane prices the dealers started asking for replacement keys with the digital computer security chips embedded in them, I guess people might be happy to see those disappear?

As a Maryland resident, I can tell you the politics out here lean very heavily towards copy-catting all the legislation Washington D.C. can come up with. A good chunk of Maryland consists of areas with a very different political feel, but those tend to be the parts of the state that "don't matter" as far as wielding influence that shapes the state legislation.

Montgomery County, for example, sits next to the D.C. area, and may as well serve as an extension of D.C. (Maryland actually sold some of its land to form the District of Columbia in the first place.) Most of Maryland's wealthy and influential live someplace in Montgomery County. Rockville, MD is a big part of Montgomery County, along with Bethesda, Potomac and Chevy Chase.

The area is VERY litigious as well. Everyone's quick to call a lawyer if they feel they've been wronged with anything from a public school's decision to fights over perceived workplace wrongs. So yes, given this climate, it's no surprise at all that Maryland would be really big on such garbage as the "non compete clauses".

Sciath, I agree with your first statement completely. Thanks to human nature and people who refuse to use reason and logic to make smart decisions, we'll always have people who do anything they want, even when doing so negatively impacts those around them.

I consider myself libertarian (at least in the small "l" sense .. as I'm no fan of some of the folks who've run on the official Libertarian party platform). But as some have said, getting a room full of libertarians to agree on anything is like herding cats. There are a pretty wide range of beliefs that fall under the broad libertarian heading. I'd say it ranges from people who are a pretty good fit for what the Constitution Party believes in, minus the religious bias it tends to mix in with it, all the way to those who are just splitting hairs over small details with the anarchists.

Some anarchists, in fact, insist that libertarianism is just a stepping stone on the road to the conclusion that anarchy is the best solution.

Personally, I don't take issue with having a unique identifier on motor vehicles. I agree that in case of "hit and run" accidents and the like, you need something more descriptive than a guess at the make and model of a car, plus a rough idea of its paint color, in order to have any hope of locating the perpetrator. It does disturb me how license plate reader technology allows FAR too much ability to track the whereabouts of drivers though. (Slashdot, I believe, recently covered this -- discussing how car repo folks now drive around with the OCR readers and scan in plates as they travel around areas likely to have cars where owners were behind on payments. Then, they turn around and resell the databases of collected info to other places like insurance companies for extra profit.)

All in all? I think one can be libertarian and still support a govt. operated justice system and police force, which offers protection from those who wish to violate your individual rights and freedoms. I'm not sure a war against license plates is too high on my list of priorities of issues to take up ... but I'm just pointing out why SOME people might think so.

I know when I worked in I.T. for a medium-size company (not a start-up, mind you - but a long established place that only fully embraced computer technology relatively late in its existence), the staff were all 20 and 30-somethings, with interests in things like going clubbing, attending big concerts, partying late into the night ... the usual for the demographic.

At that time, I was a 30-something myself, at the tail end of any interest in that social scene. But interestingly, they hired a Java developer who was in his early 50's, and amazingly, he fit right into the group. The 20-something developers quickly learned to respect his years of experience they lacked, and he found a middle ground with the socializing that worked well. (Basically, he'd attend most of the Friday happy hours, but make sure to leave fairly early. By making an appearance, he got known as "part of the group" and got a chance to chat with his peers about programming-related issues and non work-related stuff. Especially after a few drinks, people usually didn't even notice or remember what time he left. If it was ever brought up, people would quickly forgive it as, "Hey... he's 50 years old. It's cool as hell he hangs out with us at all!")

Even now, as a 40-something, at my current job? I'm one of the older employees in the company, except for upper management and the owners. I'm probably a bit left out of the socializing, truth be told. (I get half-heartedly invited to some of the after-work gatherings, but I'm sure it's more because they feel pressure not to leave anyone out than because they really want me to go.) But the culture is slowly evolving.... Some of the younger folks are getting married and starting families, and you can feel the shift in priorities with them. I'm even noticing the upper management starting to attend the after work events less than they used to, which I think is an acknowledgement of a cultural divide starting to happen .... "Older folks doing one thing, while the younger ones do another -- but all working as a team during business hours."

Bottom line? If you really like the rest of the job, go for it! Maybe put in a token effort to socialize ... tell the family that *sometimes* you're going to skip dinner. But find a good balance. If they care at all about what they actually do there, they'll keep you for your skills, regardless.

Not everyone would agree with your statement.
American citizens supposedly have a Constitutional right to free and unimpeded travel around the nation -- yet enforcing all sorts of restrictions and legislation on the operation of a motor vehicle to get around results in the exact opposite effect.

When cars were first invented, nobody had license plates. New York was the first state to require one in 1901, and back then, you were allowed to make your own plate with your initials on it ... It wasn't government issued at all.

I'd agree that public roads require the collection of money for their maintenance -- but there are plenty of means to do that, including taxes on gasoline and the sales tax on the vehicle's initial purchase.

And lastly, no, I fail to see any irony at all in this? A libertarian-leaning individual would very likely be in favor of the government allowing the creation of corporations and supporting patents and copyrights. That amounts to protection for one's ideas, to ensure a profit can be made from them. License plates allow tracking one's whereabouts. Plus they enforce the concept that even though you paid taxes to purchase the car that YOU own, and you constantly pay MORE taxes for fuel to use the vehicle, to go through toll-booths on roads and more ... you still have no right to drive it on one of those roads you paid for. It's only a PRIVILEGE the government will grant you for a limited time, as long as you place their unique identifier on the front and back of your car and jump through their hoops every couple years to keep it current.

I'm almost positive you'd find psychopathic tendencies in very many of our corporate leaders today. Some of those traits happen to work out really well for you, if you're controlling a very large company.

If you want to talk about drugged out, psycho CEOs who likely even murdered people -- how about a close look at John McAfee?

Steve Jobs' violent outbursts were typically in the form of throwing tantrums and occasionally throwing a gadget across the room. Again, this is surprisingly commonplace in upper management of corporations.

(Not long ago, I read where Steve Ballmer threw a loud, raging fit in a board meeting when he couldn't get his way on the whole Nokia cellphone merger thing. That's one of the events that eventually led to Microsoft getting a new CEO.)