+2 asshole would be a fantastic moderation option.

So he's Netflix-homeless?

I wouldn't be so sure about that. For one, our justice system is supposed to protect the rights of all, including the minority position. Whether it's gay people getting harassed, black people being discriminated against, or copyright holders finding their works distributed, justice is supposed to apply equally.

No, I'm not trying to equate all those situations (geez, racism, gay-bashing, copying music aren't all the same), just saying that there are situations where the justice system does not represent the "Will of the majority." And it shouldn't, because sometimes the majority is indifferent to rights of a minority, even when the majority enjoys those rights.

That being said, in every similar situation I tried to think of, the justice systems found ways to screw over the minority regardless. Laws that were unconstitutional, refusal to prosecute members of the majority who committed crimes against the minority, biased juries unwilling to follow the law. Justice sure ain't perfect.

Yes, and that system only works because the cost is spread out among a few hundred million drivers. Shift all those costs to some dozen auto manufacturers and your entry-level crappy car will cost $70k or more. The problem with the situation is that in our legal system, the cost of an individual lawsuit is proportionate to the means of the organization being sued. You can sue another driver for the cost of a car. If you're suing a car manufacturer for a serious accident, they'll get dinged with far more than the cost of the car in the form of punitive damages. That is simply not scalable would require some restructuring of how those lawsuits work.

You are certainly the trolliest of the trolls from Russia, I'll give you that.

x == y means x is equal to y.
x === y means x is REALLY equal to y. Like, a lot more equal.

I don't think that's an unrealistic expectation. It's just unrealistic that you're going to have it all NOW.

I think the aspiring nerd has a higher chance of achieving his dreams than the average football player or actor or... well, most professions with people who dream big.

The grandparents' argument is basically that nerds only pirate things, which means he never entered a Fry's or Best Buy before everyone started buying everything online.

Strangely I came to like the laugh track from Married With Children partly because the actors were aware of it and eventually played to it well.

I was puzzled by the Big Bang Theory at first, until I finally realized.. "oh yeah. This is what the popular crowd thinks nerds are like." It's all the ugly stereotypes and only-half-truths inserted into the sitcom format. The sitcom format helps a little, but it doesn't save the show from the fact it was made by a bunch of people who were never nerds, didn't understand them, and developed characters and dialogue hampered by those issues.

For the elderly it's not just chronic pain/disability, it's a degenerative condition for which there is no cure. I feel that under various circumstances, life really isn't worth living and existence is pointless. Constant pain, an inability to move, and the knowledge that there will never be any improvement. Eventually they get to that point. I think the kids who choose suicide aren't able to see the future. They see themselves as the terminally ill patient, not because they have some illness, but because they just can't conceive that there will be a time when they will be without the mental pain, the trauma, even the physical bullying. Maybe they do buy into the BS about being worthless.

Probably the darkest point of my life was when I was touring college campuses during high school, and I had a particularly unhelpful campus tour guide who told our group of high schoolers that we should "enjoy high school while we can, years later we'll look back at it as the best point of our lives." What a stupid thing to say to high schoolers. I suppose if you aren't studying and you're on the varsity team and you're the homecoming king that could be true, but most students' lives are not so rosy. I was dumb enough to believe it, because I couldn't see the future. I lost it that day, having an emotional break-down, though I managed not to let much of it show physically. "Really? High school is terrible. This is the best it will ever get? It will only be worse in the future?" Yeah, that guy should never again guide high schoolers.

While I don't think the Big Bang Theory is funny at all, it's possible it might appeal to young geeks and have a positive influence. Older geeks might think it's continuation of mocking, but my general suspicion is that for a young geek "in trouble," seeing geeks as the main characters of a sitcom that follow sitcom rules could only a positive. The reasons are: 1) It's on national TV. Yes, you too could "make it." 2) Sitcom characters have to be relatable. Therefore, a lot of TV viewers are relating to the geek characters. 3) The main cast of a sitcom has to be 'winners' somehow, otherwise the program won't work as a comedy. It won't work for anything, really. It'll just be damned depressing. Even the main Bundys from my favorite sitcom when a teen, Married With Children, followed these rules. They were losers and they almost never came out ahead. Yet you could still identify with them, otherwise the show would have crashed and burned.

I was born on American soil, which makes me as pure-blooded "native" as anyone else in the US.

That's also the strategy that Netflix offered to Comcast, to let Comcast proxy Netflix data. Comcast refused, because they want the Netflix problem. It's to their benefit that the "problem" exists, and they don't want a clever technological solution to the issue as Netflix competes with Comcast's own services. They just want Netflix to pay them cash instead.

> Bose targets the more mature ignorant quality-seeking crowd,

Well. That's the crowd they target. The parent poster didn't say they offer great products, just that that's the group they want to go after. :-)

Hey man, you don't need to be an audiophile to know that much of the rest of the speaker industry is better than Bose. We're not talking sloppy tubes or gold-plated ding-dongs or weird vinyl artifacts. These are observations from pretty much every industry or review magazine, observations that are easily objectively measured. If speakers are on the low end of accurate sound reproduction, there's really not that much preference about it.