Netflix is one of the few companies I actually use where I feel like they do care about making the customer happy, and they will keep features they don't necessarily like that the home user has come to depend on.

See: the fall-out from spinning off the streaming services, multi-user profiles on one paid account, etc.

A+++++ would order SAMs for revolution again.

Most people who point the finger at the separatists aren't saying they took down a civilian air liner intentionally. They don't have "anything to gain" from this because the results weren't their intention.

They did have something to gain from shooting down a Ukrainian military plane, though.

Wow. Just... wow.
This really isn't a good day for you, is it AC?

Perhaps you need a bit more training in propaganda techniques -- doesn't seem like the first class took very well.

Not necessarily. If you have a college education, for instance, you're "overqualified" and won't get the job because your new employer will suspect you'll be there only for the very short term.

These days pretty much the opposite is the problem. Almost no one knows their city councilmen. They might know who the mayor is, but if they bother to vote, they'll look at all the names of people running for council, for school board, and not know a single one or who to turn to.

Meanwhile, they'll definitely know who the President is, who their US Senator is, and usually who their Governor is.

So they cross the border, grab a bunch of cash, and go back.
Hell, that's worse than immigrating and staying.

I'm a social person. I rather like the way I communicate through the Internet with a lot of different people in different areas of the world, none of which would find much use from a 1994-era Internet. I'd rather not just be chatting with a bunch of techies.

On the other hand, I do remember those days, and the overall level of discussion was usually more mature before the Endless September. And newsgroups were the bomb (pre-spam). Fuck website forums, Slashdot not withstanding. >_>

Most people I know have rejected the old commercial TV format and use DVRs to skip the commercials. Advertisers have countered by creating commercials that still attract the attention when fast-forwarded, especially movies which put black bars at the top and bottom of the screen with text with the movie title, release, and a twitter hashtag. I'm totally fine with that.

There are a number of sites I'd like to blacklist which have "sponsored links" from my newspaper's website, from cracked, etc. Some are terribly written, some (like answers.com) have adopted an unbelievably annoying, advertising-heavy slide-show design. Click on something like "10 Actors who didn't deserve their Academy Award" and you'll find you have to click 30 times, because each topic gets three slides.. the first a picture and the next two with text (usually just a sentence or two) overlaid over that picture. The slide is, naturally, surrounded by ads, and clicking "next slide" reloads the page with the ads (fortunately quickly from what I've seen).

I have seen this design practice explode in popularity over the last few months. Of course, all the users hate it, and the comments sections have plenty of people complaining about the shitty format. But it does let the website owners claim they delivered lots of ads to the reader!

Also, if "you pay when you click" takes off, look for malware that hijacks browsers and simulates clicks to become prevalent.

You would still get ads.
See, you get ads because most people are willing to put up with ads, not because content would be impossible without them. Remember when you just had ABC/CBS/NBC (and maybe FOX) and then cable came around? Oh, we were do dizzy with the promise.. we would subscribe to cable, that would pay for the content, and we could do without advertising, like those Brits and PBS watchers did!

Except that's not what happened. We paid for cable AND we got the ads. Because we were willing to.

I will always use flashblock. I don't use any sort of Adblocking other than that. For websites that complain "please don't block my ads!" I respond "Then don't use flash ads." It's as simple as that.

Wow, bizarre. I would have laughed at that, but I just saw that for the first time tonight trying to create an account on avsforums. At first I thought "Oh, capcha embedded in a video flash, that's probably a good way to foil spambots... wait. Wait, that's just an ad, the capcha is in plain text just below."

Ugh.

Please don't tease.

Hey now, I'd like to ride shirtless in the warm weather on the back of a horse. Who wouldn't?

I am pretty gay, though.