Then there can be three sets of clowns pretending to have substantively different views while all favoring the expansion of government power.

Supergreen.

While you were busy 'reading articles', he was busy getting a low ID. BTW, UID 1 never read an article.

I love how tacking "internet" onto a law magically makes it different. Surely they could be even more redundant. Why not "The distribution of controlled substances intentionally accomplished while being a human" or "The distribution of controlled substances intentionally accomplished while intentionally using a computer on the internet while being a human"?

That could be a bomb, throw it in the garbage over there!

The malware authors need to create some sort of automated bartering program so that they can extract people's maximum willingness to pay. I'd definitely pay $22.88, but no way on $500.

I'd say nobody's ever served by having an angry outburst, but certainly those of us who have been enjoying adfree netflix viewing are bothered by the idea of ads being inserted. This is clearly a decrease in value and for many of us it may be enough to prompt us to look for alternatives.

I cannot comprehend this entitled attitude. on cable tv you see ads. in a magazine or newspaper you see ads. before movies you see ads. during movies you see ad placements. so it's not like Netflix is proposing a crazy new concept

I cannot comprehend this apathy about the ongoing invasion of every bit of space and time by attempts at mind control. ("Buy! Buy! Buy!")

Once upon a time you actually could pick up some magazines and see very few ads, or even none at all. There were not ads before movies. Product placement was inconspicuous or non-existent. There was even less ad time on broadcast TV -- one guy estimates that the time spent on commercials more than doubled since the 1950s.

Ads as we know them are memetic toxins. Anyone unconcerned about them is unconcerned about their own mind.

What you get from DVDs and paid movie services

As a manager, here are the two pieces of advice I'd pass on:

1. We don't use passive voice in our memos. College is wrong. I've been out of college for a long time, but I always want to write to the business writing prof I had and let him know. We stress active voice.

2. I picked this up from a Murawski course (which deals with active voice writing). It was, "Doing work is bringing your supervisor a solution, not problems." That is, me going to my boss and saying, "Hey, I've got a problem here," isn't doing work. The work is going to my boss and bringing him or her a solution to the problem. Now, sometimes you get stuck and need help, and that's fine, and I'm happy to help - but your goal as an employee should be to bring me proposed solutions to problems (or, better yet, just take care of it, if you can).

I'm sure the wife comment was made in jest. However, my wife - whom I love dearly and would not trade for anything - is not great at managing money, for a variety of reasons. She therefore manages to commit us to spending most of my paycheck, which, being in a very low-cost area, is probably comparable to the OP's. I have tried in vain to explain to her that a salary that's twice as much as most of our employed friends' (leaving aside the fact that many of them are unemployed) should go a lot further than it does, and would, if not for all the stupid iPad games and restaurant meals and expensive gifts and parties and the like. If it were up to me, I'd pay off our debts first, live frugally until then, save several YEARS' cushion, and *then* start being more willing to spend on things that are not true necessities. But, like me, not everyone is able to do that without causing serious difficulty in their marriages.

80-bit floats are not available on any platform other than x86

The 80-bit long double is also available on the 68881, 68882 coprocessors and later 68K family members that incorporate the FPU. The Itanium also supports the 80-bit format.

But yeah... those aren't particularly common these days.

And that has been Tesla's argument for the last ten years, yet they still lose about $9,000 on each car they make.

"On" each car, or "for" each car?

"On" makes it sound like their marginal costs are negative -- that, literally, producing one more car increases their losses by $9K. Were it "for" each car, then they're losing money only after fixed costs, R&D, etc. are taken into account.

That latter makes considerably more sense -- folks can legitimately decide to back a company investing in itself rather than taking out a profit; indeed, Amazon has done that for years.

Tried Parker Quink, or the Noodler's Bernanke series? Both are quick-drying.

I'm actually a right-handed overwriter (rare thing that is), so I feel at least some subset of your pain.

please enlighten us as to why the fountain pin and/or feathered quill is superior to the free pens I get from the bank?

Y'know, I actually don't mind giving this a serious answer.

You don't need pressure to write with a fountain pen -- at all. (The modern competitor is a rollerball, not a ballpoint; rollerballs don't give you amount of flexibility on nib grind or opportunities for flex and shading effects that you get with a fountain, but at least you're not forced to use tons of pressure). Allows different, more comfortable grips.

Also, they're refillable with water-based inks -- meaning that they're not disposable, and that you have a huge amount of choice in terms of color and properties of your ink. Want an ink that's still viscous in below-freezing weather? I've got a bottle on my desk! Want an ink that changes from yellow to red depending on how much you're putting down on the paper? That too! Want an ink that responds to ultraviolet and is completely waterproof you can mix in with other inks that are water-soluable, so you can see where writing that's been washed away used to be under a blacklight?

Lots of room for geekery. :)