Is this a case? Can someone drop the name or a link to the docket so I can follow it? (Typed in total sincerity. No sarcasm here.)

This reminds me of my mechanic's old Snap-On MODIS II OBD2 diagnostics machine. The thing is literally a handheld computer (heavy and bulky) except instead of a keyboard and mouse it has 6 buttons. When you plug it in, it takes 5-10 minutes to boot up Windows 98, then eventually the front end software starts up. It's a terrible hack of a machine.

I'm the future, and this is crazy,
so here's my number, call me maybe...

That sounds terriffic. This whole thing started when I was a minor. Guess who's going to be paying for it for the rest of his life even though he had no say in the matter? It's kind of really fucked up.

Even then, the market will show that it prefers a well advertized heap of shit over a buggy piece of software with more supposed features.

My high school instructor told us that when he was in high school electronics, the kids would toss a charged capacator at you if they saw you trying to sneak in after the bell rang. Either you try your best to catch it, or you let it drop and the professor turns around from the chalk board and notices you walking in.

I'm going to be competing in my first official Super Smash Bros Melee tournament (ie. paid entry, prizes) in a couple of days and have been soaking in many videos of professional tournament games over the past couple weeks. It's truly amazing to me to see the strategies and techniques that the pros employ. It takes a LOT of practice to be able to exploit a character's specific intricacies in order to optimize your offensive and defensive game. It practically gets down to the point of playing mind games with your opponent. Always being able to predict their next move (not always possible with a good opponent), or at least knowing what options they have available to them at each split second is essential. (Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... - a good example of professional players pushing technique to the limits)

I don't think I've ever sat in front of the computer and sucked down video after video of historic baseball footage... ore ever will.

There is nothing socialist at all about a law making it mandatory to give our money to private insurance companies.

From my perspective it was mostly about finding consensus. It was a great opportunity to talk to completely random people from a variety of demographics about the issues we care about as individuals, which are different for each person (as opposed to issues the media wants to push, or use as a distraction). A lot of people made a point about what our demands were, or what our direction was. The truth is, it was never about demands, and our only universal goal really was to reach out to our fellow citizens and establish that if you are worried about the direction our nation is heading in, you are not alone! I think our biggest problem as a nation is apathy. The government can kill American citizens with drone strikes, covertly archive all our personal communication, take natural resources and allow corrupt monopolies to form around them, waste trillions of dollars, preserve crooked business institutions, incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, and flat out lie to it's people, and we just shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh well..." The Occupy Movement was one of our biggest opportunities in a while to get together and affirm that we do care, and that if things head south, the people do have the power to change things. I think that was our greatest accomplishment. As far as government policy goes, I don't think the movement changed all too much, but if you look back, the womens' suffrage and civil rights movement didn't reach their goals overnight either. People have been fighting for gay marraige for years. These things take a long time. One day, the government will behave and listen to it's people again, but it won't happen overnight.

Another thing I noticed is that the camp also served as a training ground for the next generation of activists. A lot of the young people came out to participate (possibly because of the Anonymous affiliation) who had never participated in political activism in person before. If you are not familiar with the environment of a political protest that the local and federal institutions dread, you can find yourself in serious trouble very quick. First of all, where there are crowds, there are thieves. On top of that there are hundreds of cops that will not lift a finger for you if you are in need of help. There are spies, undercovers and sometimes agent provocateurs. People get very connected to their cause and are willing to make extreme choices, sometimes en-masse. You need to be aware of the groupthink, and look out for potential problems, because riots or stampedes can occur almost spontaneously. All it takes is an idiot cop to start pepper spraying (or in NY, for the police to pull out the orange mass-arrest nets) or a riot squad to start shoving a large crowd of people, or some idiot to attack the cops and give them an excuse for an all out brawl. I think a lot of people joined in thinking it would be all fun and games, and came out ready to handle themselves in the next political uprising.

Funny how the propaganda machine skews things. I bet you never visited a camp and actually talked to the people... naa. You probably just listened to a bunch of phony reporters on TV talking shit, combined with cherry-picked sound bites. I spent two weeks sleeping on the sidewalk of Manhattan starting on September 17th, while working full time over in Jersey. I'll be the first to tell you, there was a share of people who are a little bit loony, but you'll find them at any protest. On the other hand, I've never met so many people who were in touch with what is going on in our country and in our world. Compared to the average American slob who does nothing but work, shop, and watch TV, these people actually saw the world for what it was, were disgusted, and were willing to make sacrifices to get out and find concensus among their fellow citizens and discuss the real problems our society faces and try to improve things. If you think that is counter-productive, I hope you like what you get for sitting on your ass and doing nothing until election day when you get to choose which lying bastard you want to get blamed for all the bad things that happen to you while the real crooks get away with murder behind the veil.

If apple expects to shake down other companies (especially for trivially obvious patents), then they actually do deserve it when the same thing happens to them.

I would let my former roommate's two year old play super tux kart on my laptop to entertain her. Even though she didn't quite grasp the concept of steering, it always put a glowing smile on her face.

While this is most likely true, I would say that the company's mission statement certainly still does have an impact on the customer through it's implementation.

I have been thinking about this for months now. If I were to build a decentralized social network, I would construct it as a peer to peer network, where your account information is mirrored by enough peers to be accessable around the clock. Public key encryption would be used to protect account details that are only visible to friends, that way people can mirror your private info without being able to read it. This design would make it difficult to sensor, difficult for big brother to sift through, and spare people from needing to run a dedicated server for their account. Unfortunately, I have a lot of reading (about encryption) to do if I were to persue this project, but if anyone is interested, we can toss some ideas around here.

And it's really funny when the bookworm at HQ goes to look up the law that the cop is so sure exists, but can't seem to find it, while you're out on the side of the road and you have all sorts of apparently damning paraphernalia laid out on the trunk of your car. Cops hate it when you know more about the law then they do.