This is the number one question asked on Ask-Slashdot. In my recollection, I believe this is at least the 7th time I've seen it. The answers are always unsatisfying. Such is life.

You can't go wrong with four simultaneous 24-hour days. It's all right there on the website!

I was under the impression that no one plays this game. The cities are so tiny that the game gets boring after about 2 hours of playtime. Support for the game has ended. And everyone went back to playing the previous Sim City game, or Cities XL.

Do you guys do zero review or investigation before throwing up fear-mongering bullshit? If you haven't read TFA yet, don't even bother.

God. I seriously miss the PBS before this. I guess I'm in the minority, but I'd love it if more of my tax dollars went to them once again so they didn't have to pull that shit anymore.

Cuban cigars are indeed good. And in the 60s, they were pretty solidly the best. However, the embargo lasted so long, and cigar interest has had big enough explosions in the past 20 years or so that the other countries, and indeed the Cuban manufacturers themselves have figured out how to make cigars that are every bit as good in nearby regions. It'll be great whenever they finally return to the US, but it won't quite be the massive cigar-renaissance in the US that some people expect.

Again, this wording adds restrictions to any such collections that may occur. It does not grant permission to do them.

Arg, link fail. I intended to link to the text of H.R. 4681 so you can read section 309 yourself.

Thanks for providing this, AC. I don't know what Mr. Amash is talking about. Section 309 doesn't grant any blessing of Executive Order 12333, or any other mechanism of collection. It just states that if any collection takes place without a court order, then it must be disposed of within 5 years with a few very-specific exceptions. The sky is not falling people. Do your research before you freak out based on alarmist stuff like this.

Here's the important part: "That type of collection is currently allowed under an executive order that dates back to former President Reagan, but the new stamp of approval from Congress was troubling, Amash said."

In other words, the only issue he has with this bill is that it acknowledges an Executive Order is in place. It doesn't even particularly bless it. Nothing is changing other than a slightly-less tacet approval of an order that has been around for decades. It's not a terribly long bill, check it out yourself

It seems like all of these articles trying to dig up dirt and spread controversy about Wikipedia come from wikipediocracy.com. It also seems like they are a very small group. All mentions of wikipediocracy in this comment section prior to this submission (under my default filter settings; forgive my laziness) are from two users, and one of them, the primary one, is the article submitter. I just have major trouble buying anything from a source whose entire mission is to criticize Wikipedia. That kinda just screams bias. This content is always coming out of wikipediocracy. I can't recall the last article posted to Slashdot critical of Wikipedia that didn't include a link from them. It feels like they are just trying to use the visibility of getting their submissions posted to Slashdot to build controversy. It isn't hard to write up a summary and get it accepted by Slashdot just by knowing to write a summary in the accepted style. People don't click the links often because it isn't very interesting, they just note "wow, people sure sound upset at Wikipedia" and don't notice that it's always this small group of people....

Did this poll get made because of the random recent XKCD comic, or has something happened related to the whole singularity idea to make it show up in the zeitgeist?

I don't know very much about comic books. With the exception of my parents' Mad Magazines and silver age Superman comics, I never got into them. Transmet has been one of very few exceptions. By about volume 3, I was rather terrified that this might get horribly adapted into a movie. I just couldn't imagine any way the story could be decently converted into a 90-120 minute format. The animated series adaptation idea, on the other hand, rather intrigued me. I was bummed to see it fall through; the animation looked quite promising (I seem to recall Chris Prynoski/Titmouse Inc. was somehow involved, but can't find confirmation on that). I realize nothing is currently in production, but is there any chance of another attempt at such an adaptation in the future?

It'd have to be a bare minimum of 3 unless someone was foolish enough to shrink it. I've got all the graphic novelizations, and they take up many inches of shelf-space.

Nope. Look into CALEA.