God Almighty, I thought that damn thing was gone forever.

The people who were investigating these anomalies were able to do so because The Daily Kos made sure that the crosstabs of all the poll data were made available when each poll was published.

So I *do* give them credit, because they made sure that the information behind the information being presented was available for people review in order to determine its accuracy. It sort of sounds like... I don't know... providing the source code along with the application and letting the users submit bug reports and patches.

Sure it's a bad thing. But that's a separate matter: someone who understands the "bad thing" enough to help people who DON'T understand it is still doing something of value...

I like KDE 4.4 (which is what I'm using now) -- I like it a lot -- but I'm right there with you about the bad taste in my mouth. The way they handled 4.0 was stupid and they deserved all the crap they got for it and more.

4.4 is a completely different beast and I mostly love the featureset. However, based on my experience with 4.0 I'm a little afraid of 5.0.

Well I should clarify -- Palm doesn't directly support the apps as in provide technical support for or fixes as a result of the homebrew community, but it *does* acknowledge them and has stated that homebrew apps are permitted on the platform. Hopefully HP keeps that going.

There are a lot of homebrew applications that modify the UI and various aspects of apps. I have an addon that does exactly what you say, though only for text messages.

While Palm doesn't directly support those apps it doesn't try to brick your phone when it finds them either.

WebOS is a fantastic OS from a user perspective -- the card metaphor for multitasking is very intuitive and the whole design of the interface is easy and elegant and *fun*. It would be a perfect fit for that tablet thing HP is working on.

I have a Pre and despite a few issues with battery life and a wish for a larger screen I think it's a great phone. Most information about the phone is provided by members of the computer press who are too lazy and entranced by their iphones to bother giving the matter any serious thought.

It hurt my brain.

I mean, *really* hurt my brain.

In its day the C64 had absolutely the most sophisticated (and integrated) sound capability of any personal computer on the market. While IBM PCs were wrestling with sound cards with IRQs in order to get very basic sound capability, the C64 integrated sound components were sophisticated enough to synthesize speech. Very obviously synthesized speech, mind you, but it was an incredible feat for its time.

... that StarOffice was a wildly popular office suite in Germany in the 90s (before Sun bought the code), I'm surprised the percentage isn't higher.

Science Fiction (and to a lesser extent, fantasy) seems to be hell-bent on being seen as "respectable" and I just don't understand why. Do roving gangs of literature professors give speculative fiction authors wedgies, swirlies, and shove them into lockers? Is it no longer OK to like stories about space rockets, laser beams and aliens?

... if you're a full-time employee. I found it a little difficult to work there as a contractor. The people I worked with were great, but there was friction because they were pretty much all expecting to be lifers and I considered it a short-term gig. The culture there (at least, when I was there around 2000) was very uncomfortable with the "mercenary" mindset of "do job, get paid, leave."

A netbook that requires internet access in order for it to function in any useful manner? What's the point of a netbook if you can't use it to type up a quick memo/article when you're flying coach on a 4 hour flight? Gah. I am not a fan.

... is that the company named the application after a computer that went berserk and started killing people in order to preserve the mission objective.

I'm not sure I want to listen to my house singing "Daisy, Daisy" in an ever-decreasing key as the corpses of friends & family float listlessly in space. I think people would probably stop coming to my parties after that.

Suggested company motto: "We're 7000 releases away from full-blown psychosis!"

... go ahead and spoil my payday!