Avira AntiVir Personal is free, detects at a much higher rate than Security Essentials (99.1 vs 97.2 percent, I believe, based on data from av-comparatives.org), and definitely is more lightweight also.

Yes, clearly the problem here is Harry Potter rather than lousy parenting. If your child wants something that's both impractical and could hurt the ecosystem, a responsible parent says, "No, I'm sorry, but you just can't have that." Real children are a lot more reasonable than Veruca Salt, and those who aren't can be disciplined until they learn to be. And really, hasn't anyone thought of the comparison with baby alligators?

Yes, clearly the problem is Harry Potter rather than lousy parenting. If a child wants something that's both impractical and could be damaging to the ecosystem, a responsible parent says, "I'm sorry, but you can't have that." Real children are a lot more reasonable than Veruca Salt. And seriously, I'm amazed no one has made the comparison with baby alligators yet.

I'm amazed to be the first saying this, but clearly the problem here is not Harry Potter, it's parents who aren't willing or able to tell their children "no". An owl is not a pet.

I knew someone would go there. Are you Beavis or Butthead?

I wrote a paper in 9th grade (13 years ago) about the effects of rising dioxin levels on human fertility statistics. If it's indeed true that human male fertility has been falling steadily since the 1930s, dioxins are most likely the reason. Because they are estrogenic and can cross the placenta, they can cause numerous other birth defects as well, including undescended testes, hypogonadism, micropenis, hermaphroditism, other intersex conditions, and gender identity disorders (if a male fetus' brain or body - but not both - develops in a typically female way because of the presence of dioxin). In mice, it produced male mice who would assume the typically female position with other males, and who were infertile.

The continued presence of dioxins in the environment may well lead to the extinction of the human race, not now or even in 50 years, but whenever the concentration in our tissue (which increases with successive generations) is high enough that none of us are fertile anymore. Of course, by then we'll probably be able to create new people via in-vitro or cloning.

If a tattoo (or piercing or other body-mod) is an expression of your religion - particularly one that your religion or cultural group required of you - then it is likely protected under the First Amendment and employment non-discrimination laws. While this is pretty rare, I know it's traditional for Maori to get tattoos (even facial tattoos) as part of a cultural tradition, and I know of at least one Native American ceremony (the Sun Dance) that involves piercing. I'm sure there are other. If you're wiccan, and the head of your circle or coven tells you it's important for your spiritual development to get a particular tattoo, that might even be enough... as might a Celtic-looking tattoo if you're Irish and trying to display your cultural pride. Asking you not to display such devotional tattoos / piercings at work would be akin to asking an Orthodox Jew not to wear fringes, or asking a Sikh to take off his turban - in other words, very illegal. Especially if your company doesn't have a well-stated anti-tattoo policy.

If your tattoo was just for shits and giggles, though, it's your own fault for not getting it in an area that's easily covered with clothing. And if companies can now refuse to hire tobacco smokers - or medicinal marijuana smokers in states in which such things are legal - then I'm sure recreational tattoos are no different.

I bet this is a case of the superintendent or someone on the school board being a rabid Mac-head, and like all rabid Mac-heads, trying to convince as many people as possible to join the "one true way" by whatever means necessary.

And let me be clear, I have a Mac and an iPhone. I like them both quite a bit. But seriously, some of you Mac cultists creep me the hell out.

I should have clarified. I'm a freelance support guy. My clients are home users who don't know much about computers, not corporate people.

It's because of familiarity, I'm pretty sure. I've had clients absolutely refuse to use anything else, even IE8, because it "felt" (in other words, looked) different from what they were used to. My solution to this is usually one of the Firefox themes that makes Firefox look like IE. The IE6 one is pretty flawless.

But... isn't using IE6 in a corporate environment the equivalent of saying, "Yes, please infect my computers with malware without warning!"? That's not even to touch matters of compatibility... Doesn't security mean anything? And wouldn't most IE6 web apps work in IE8 under its compatibility mode... or am I being overly optimistic about said compatibility mode?

This is not news. I did a report on the effect of dioxins on human children in my high school Civics class... in 1996.

Ubuntu's stock kernel has been tickless for several releases now.

I'm surprised no one seems to have mentioned a solution I tried - get yourself an under-desk mini stepper or bike, along with a non-rolling chair, and you can pedal or step away while you sit at your desk. Even if you're only doing it very slowly, doing it for hours will certainly help you lose weight, and probably get you in better shape than you're in now.

Okay, so I know it's not actually meatspace, but I've had pretty good luck with OkCupid for meeting both friends and people for dating. It's free, it's geek-friendly, and the matching system works pretty well. Plus the questions are interesting, as are some of the tests.