If demand is below the price set by the seller, the buyer will acquire the item through alternate channels where available.

Piracy dropped like a stone when cheap downloads became available. If you want to kill it off entirely, stop charging the same price for media that are new and media that are 20 years old.

Yea. The thing I loved about the books was this sense of awakening. Shit hits the fan, the world is falling into darkness, and all these people, forgotten, fallen in glory, old and weakened by time, they all stand up, shake off the cobwebs and ride out to death and glory. Theoden is one of the exemplars of that, lost in depression and despair, and he gets up and rides out like a king, and once he makes that decision, he never turns aside...There is always the sense that he's thinking about it, but every time he chooses the noble course.

Aragorn the same...How much of the second movie has him pulling this emo "I don't know if I'm worthy" crap? They play him like he's 25, but, chronologically, he's almost 100. He knows damn well what's expected of him, and while he kicks himself for bad decisions, he doesn't falter in his course.

I'd forgotten about the bit with Faramir...Blocked it out, because, you're right, they totally screwed him. Same with Eomer: changed from a noble hero who'll do the honorable thing even if it lands him in jail, to some spoiled princeling who absconds with the army and leaves his nation to be destroyed.

I try to pretend in my head that the whole second movie is about Gollum. Otherwise I have to come to terms with Eomer wandering off with the entire army, Treebeard who somehow misses that half his forest is gone until the hobbits point it out, and Théoden's excellent King Lear impersonation while beneath him the entire population of Rohan cradles their children...repeatedly.

Well, since they're imprisoned in the home of the forest elves for a good while, that's not much of a stretch, even.

Except frodo wasn't born until Bilbo was 88 years old...Some 30 years after he came *back* from his adventures.

Given the amount of rewriting he did the first time around, nothing would surprise me.

Well, they're having to split the shortest book into two movies, so I'm guessing they're going to let him do all the slow-motion he wants.

Actually he was totally stoked to do a dragon, and had this massive and interesting workup...Love him or hate him, he's one of the most original creature guys out there. He'd have done a badass Smaug...And the fricking spiders? Holy shit.

I'm still pissed that they dumped Del Toro. The only thing I thought was decent about the first three was Gollum. Oh well.

I got 1.5mb/s, then I decided to upgrade for 13 bucks a month more for "up to" 3mb/s. Needless to say post-upgrade speed was identical to pre-upgrade speed. They blamed this on my old DSL modem, so I bought a new one. No change. Then they started telling me I needed to rewire my house, so I ran a new phone line from the new phone box that I had them install. No change. That was pretty much it for me. Fuckers probably didn't even have the right DSLAM in the neighborhood to support 3mb/s.

I'd been lazy about getting rid of them (I was an old bellsouth customer), but their attitude over the lack of an upgrade that they gave me pissed me off to no end. Switched to cable (Cox) It's not great, but, wtf, the speed is hilariously better: 15mb/s down and "3"mb/s up. The three is in quotations because my upload speed hovers around 8mb/s.

Just finished wiring up my cable YESTERDAY motherfuckers!

No reason to complain about the caps though: their internet is so goddamn slow you'd have to download 24/7 for the whole month to hit 150gb.

I am so tired of people saying, "Well you have to have math because you have to have logic." Logic is separate from math, and math is largely concerned with inductive logic...You know, the kind you never use in CS? In all the math I've had in my life, the only kind that had deductive proofs of the sort that resemble programming logic, was 10th grade geometry. I started CS via Cognitive Science, which is largely Philosophy. I had more, and more relevant, logic courses in Philosophy than in CS or math, and it gave me a huge edge in programming over my math-centric peers.

I've been in the field for 15 years, and I've never used a single thing from advanced math. I used some pre-calculus once, to figure out how much air conditioner I needed for a server room. I had to take 3 semesters of physics too. What the hell was that about? At the same time, I only had a single course in network theory, and it was obscenely general, with LANs mashed up together with the sort of latency issues you'd only run into if you were networking satellites.

I agree as far as teaching theory...That's all I was ever taught, and it's served me well. But advanced math isn't useful for the vast majority of CS majors.

It's funny: I'm normally a Perl guy, but I use Php for web stuff. I keep trying to do web stuff with Python, but it takes longer than I think it should...Probably just need more practice using it that way.

Probably from the USPS? They make it freely available on their website. Zip codes are surprisingly narrow.

If you look at mine, the local T1 provider is ranked "equal" to AT&T, and the local Cable Co (which is the best (non-business) option) isn't listed at all. And AT&T is only listed as a "Wireless" provider, which isn't true. And Verizon's Wireless is reported at 3-6mbps, which it's not, since we're still in the mobile dark ages.

And AT&T is completely full of shit. They claim to offer "up to" 3mbs, but you never get more than 1.5. Doesn't matter where in town.

If I wanted to read the press releases from all of these companies, I could do that myself.

Shrug. I use php because I don't do a lot of web development, and what I do isn't high security. I used to do it all in Java, but it took 10 times as long to deploy simple services, they needed more infrastructure, and they were harder for other people to maintain. Mind you, those poor idiots who use php for anything OTHER than web code...I don't have anything good to say about them. But for quick database driven webapps, it shines.

Ignoring a decent tool because it's easy to use is foolish.