The evolution of the English language is a fascinating thing.

...and came to the conclusion that I was dealing with a couple of cranks in Mssrs. Manjoo and Dvorak (not that the latter comes as any surprise).

Manjoo's piece attempted to 'prove' that Windows 7 was a better operating system based on one feature (Taskbar/Aero Views vs. Exposé) and provided a rather subjective critiqué even for that. I'd have liked to have learned more from him about why Windows 7 supposedly beats out Snow Leopard. Nonetheless, his first paragraph (with regards to crapware and the like) tells me what I've always known about the Windows experience: The more things change, the more they unfortunately remain the same.

As for Dvorak's piece, "cheap Microsoft vodka" paints a funny picture, but droning on about how he never gets any more press kits from Microsoft (is it really any wonder, knowing Dvorak?) doesn't tell me anything about Windows 7.

...just wasn't profitable enough.

That's a shame, because my fiancée and I have really enjoyed Hulu, as it's allowed us to watch our favorite shows (those that Hulu carries, anyway) on our own schedules, and with short commercial breaks, and no banner ads across the lower quarter or third of the screen. It's proven to be kind of an ideal version of television. (We've never had on-demand or DVR, just expanded basic cable, so take that with as many grains of salt as you wish.)

Speaking for myself, the continual, intrusive advertising that plagues television today has done much to drive me away from it, but Hulu has succeeded in bringing me back. I really don't mind that much when the ads are at most a minute long (sometimes as short as 10-15 seconds), and only one at a time.

Meanwhile, we're taking a wait-and-see approach to what happens next. There's no telling what Hulu will charge, but if it's reasonable (define that how you will) and serves to, say, buy CBS's participation, it could still be a worthy thing.

I'll grant you they'll give you the report form paperwork. If they're actually there. I swear, where I lived after college, one of my roommates actually came home when a thief was in the house stealing the TV. He struggled with the guy, who got away, went down the street to the police station, and there was no one in the entry hall, no one answered the buzzer, no phone to call in, nothing.

He only found them when he went around the corner to the coffee shop to get his nerve back, around people. They took his report, but it was pretty embarassing all around.

I also think your dad was were lucky. I strongly suspect that a real thief will take the money _and_ the credit cards, and throw it in the trash. They've little to risk by doing so, and much to avoid by getting it out of circulation. It's the casual thief, the "Oooohhhh, look, a wallet! With cash!" person who'll leave it to be found. Credit cards are potentially as valuable as cash: professional or semi-professional thieves can do quite a lot of damage with them.

"GPS should never replace maps and mapreading skills"

Why not?

Because when 2012 comes, only those of us with map-reading skills will be able to find the good stuff. I'll be navigating my way to gun shops and twinkie factories, while you get lost in the lingerie department at Walmart.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but Mac OS X has an application called "Keychain Access." Keychains store private keys, certificates, and arbitrary notes securely. I use one to store my passwords to all my e-mail and web accounts. They're encrypted using Triple DES.

Not only that, but it can generate passwords for you. Tell it how many characters you want, and whether the password should be memorable (comprised of dictionary words and a short string of numbers), letters and numbers, numbers only, something called "FIPS-181 compliant," or random. You can choose from the ones it generates from a pop-up menu, and if you don't like any of them, it can generate some more. Whatever password you choose, there's a gauge that tells you how strong it is.

I have to use it occasionally to look up a password to an infrequently visited web page. Entering my user password (that is, the one for my account on my computer) will unlock any one that is stored on the keychain.

Is it easy to use? Kind of, sort of; it takes a few seconds and more than a few mouse clicks to retrieve a password. Safari (perhaps Firefox as well, but I don't know) can be configured to remember your login information for a given page, and though it stores this information in the login keychain, the problem with Safari's implementation is that it works for some pages and not others, and doesn't require you to provide your user password--not exactly the most secure arrangement.

No one's ever compromised this scheme, as far as I know. Yet. Meanwhile, it works pretty well for me.

I work at a company where every developer moved to Vista two years ago (to help ensure our product ran fine on it, for starters). I've never seen a crash or heard of a crash from anyone.

I think your friends are using really bad or buggy drivers, or have really marginal hardware. It's proably something other than Windows that is crashing, because Vista is rock-solid stable for all I can see, far more so than XP ever was. About the only thing that makes it crash are really buggy drivers, or really bad (failing) hardware.

I see and hear people blaming Vista a lot of things that have nothing to do with Vista... just recently I heard someone bitching that they hated Vista because they couldn't print. I took a look, and it turned out to be the printer driver, not Vista at all. After insalling the correct driver, everything worked fine.

I think Vista is getting a lot of completely undeserved crap.

There is no spoon.

The sheer hubris of this announcement made me wonder: When did M. Night Shyamalan start making computers?

New London County State's Attorney Michael Regan: "I have no regrets. Things took a course that was unplanned," Regan said. "For some reason, this case caught the media's attention."

Translation: "I didn't have a case after all."