in a basement illuminated by the glow of a CRT screen

What WoW player uses some junk old CRT to play?

It's difficult to say, but it certainly sounds like you are being taken advantage of. It may well not be sexism per se, but the fact that you are willing to bend to their will and do all the non-job-related tasks people are asking you to do might have something to do with the increasing amount of stupid tasks people are asking you to do.

That said, I rather suspect that if you raise concerns of sexism, that crap will back way off. Mostly due to no one wanting to get sued.

Seriously though, I dislike patent squatting.

These folks delay technology advancement and don't actually produce anything themselves.

I hope microsoft wins this. Of course, they will, because there's no one on earth they can't buy if they try hard enough.

And that's why a request for a waiver isn't just a formality, dispensed with in a few minutes. The FCC needs to determine that there isn't a risk to the public or to other established users of the frequencies in the specific case requested by the requestor. Lots of waiver requests are for experimental uses (the Amateur Radio community does so from time to time), but those typically designate small groups of stations and locations. As this is a portable commercial product, I suspect it was a lot harder to decide on.

I have put just a bit more thought into this problem and come up with some even more dismaying (to me) personal (of course) opinions which I will now share (making them public, ho ho.) The most sensible way to solve this problem is with technology, in the RSS feed. Craigslist should have a bit more metadata about location; the user could optionally use a google map widget (or similar... but you don't want to run your own mapserver if you can avoid it) to select a geolocation, with as much resolution as they like. Contact info would be outlawed in the description field, and the contact info fields would be the only data not presented via RSS, driving the page views that Craigslist obviously craves. Preventing programmatic insertion of Craigslist listings continues to be the best anti-spam mechanism, although it can never be fully effective. Besides, they do have a flagging system, which is obviously at least partially effective.

Anyway, the part of all this that makes me sad is that trying to keep the crap in your neighborhood is not just a denial of reality, but also an attempt to prevent trickle-down! What the world needs is more homogeneity of wealth, and trying to keep people trapped in their own neighborhood by dissuading broad search only promotes ghettoization. I don't want the shit in some 1950s double-wide in Clear Lake that should have been taken to the dump a long time ago, I want the stuff from Marin that someone is selling because they've bought some new high-concept crap, and it's well worth it for me to travel to get it. Further, it introduces more quality items to my depressed neighborhood, encouraging the replacement of outdated garbage. (I don't think everything newer is better; I got both my current vehicles via Craigslist ads, and both are over 20 years old. But there's a lot of old shit in this town that keeps showing up at yard sales instead of being decently destroyed.)

It's easy to say "just don't spend the money" when you haven't played the game. I've been a casual player of the game since April, and I must say, this is the definition of bait-and-switch. The business model of cheapening everything, but forcing players to buy them, is a horrible one to go buy. Given it's accessibility and cartoony environment, this game attracts many younger kids who find paying for items online a huge hurdle. Also, to suggest that they weren't making money before is simply wrong. I had mentioned this in another response here on /., but I'll say it again. In the actual forum post, Ben Cousins has clearly stated that it's not an issue with money but rather with a sustainable business model. Also not mentioned here was a previous interview where he had stated that only 5% of players would need purchase clothing items for them to turn a profit. As a player, I can tell you they clearly were not in the negative. Most likely, some corporate heads at EA called DICE and said "Hey, we're losing money from our other shitty games, so you need to pick up the slack". To do what they did is not illegal, but it sure as hell is professionally unethical. It's a great game, but doesn't have enough to offer to keep it's fan base. Trust me, the fans aren't going to just swallow this one.

I have a pair of older mechanical typewriters. I don't use them to write (which I do professionally, albeit technically). I could see using them for pre-printed forms not available in PDF, but they're there mostly because I like the idea of having them more than they are useful (free/cheap garage sale fare). I might bring one with when I move; but I haven't ever even changed the ribbon in either of them.

I write mostly on the computer, but have written stories and drafts on paper even recently. Hell, if it's a line or two or an idea, I'll SMS it (with an old crappy cell phone, not iPhone/Blackberry/etc.) to my e-mail address. It's just a matter of what is available at the time. Words are words, regardless of how they are put in the particular order you put them in.

Also, if it's a long doc, I'll print it out and edit it by hand by scribbling on the page, then make the changes in the electronic file.

That being said, I like reading from paper, not an LCD screen, but I have been eyeing an e-book reader for a while now; too bad they all seem to have pesky DRM. It's just a matter of which one is the least evil.

>That said, I'd buy one of Burroughs's typewriters.

I would agree. And his stash of magazines he used for his cut-ups, too. :-)

Personally, I like

and then

Meanwhile,

How exactly did a youthful da Vinci figure out what an ova and sperm look like? If Leonardo da Vinci (as a child) could sketch sperm and ova over 100 years before a crude microscope was invented and almost 200 years before Hooke and Leeuwenhoek, then that alone would be an astonishingly significant discovery. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Leonardo would build a microscope, discover cell biology, and not bother to write something up about it as an adult. He was, after all, interested in pretty much everything. The more reasonable conclusion is that Edith Sherwood is willing to interpret images very "liberally" (meaning here, without much evidence), without making even simple checks for logical consistency. This is a single example, but the carelessness calls the rest into question. (As you have already indicated)

Simple, really. Because property rights allow individuals to move up in the world. Take Africa, for example. They are VERY RICH in natural resources; but there's no property rights. So the farmer who could setup irrigation on his field and feed his/her family won't do it, beacuse as soon as he spends all the time and effort to do that, someone will come and take that away from him/her by force.

There is poverty in Africa because it lacks good property rights.

"Rights" to basic food, shelter, job, and health care create AN ONEROUS RESPONSIBILITY ON PRODUCTIVE MEMBERS OF SOCIETY AND ALLOW UNPRODUCTIVE PEOPLE TO LEACH OFF SOCIETY.
Property is sacred because it's the fruit of human labor. It must be protected in order to encourage productive people to produce. I guess they don't cover that in communist-sponsored leftist schools.

Food, shelter, jobs and health care are noble goals indeed, but are best left to CHARITY, to which you are free to contribute. But do NOT use FORCE to force people to GIVE UP the fruits of their labor to others any more than is necessary to protect property rights. Strong property rights enable everyone to succeed, and allow you the CHOICE to contribute to charity.

Because the group of individuals known as a government can't protect your "right" to health-care, basic food, shelter or a job without taking those things from other individuals under threat of imprisonment if they don't cough up. So a "right" to food means someone else has to grow it on their land and hand it over, either being paid with money that been taken from *other* productive members of the village or point blank stolen and handed over to the person asserting their "right". Some right ey?

The right to "basic food" means the right to take something that someone else has put a lot of effort in, what or who gives *you* that right just by virtue of being born? And what if ther people growing their food stop growing it and demand their rights too? Property rights are the core of all rights, without being "allowed" to own any singular item or piece of land how can one be at all free? Given the track record of societies that don't recognise property rights but *do* recognise the "right" to strike, housing, healthcare and food *cough*Eastern Bloc*cough* there's an extremely strong historical argument for the basis of what the libertarians are saying.

I'm not even nearly a "lie-bertarian" and even I understand that....

Its just a box, as bland as the next guys.

Now, real honest to god typewriter has character, every one is unique.

See: TFA.

This is insane. What reasonable person would assume that a box left at a parking agency was a weapon of mass destruction? What terrorist bombs a minor college parking station?

Goddamn.

Well yeah. A program and procedure designed to keep the weaponry usable successfully keeps them usable.

Glad to hear that guys. Way to go. Good work telling everyone that fixing things fixes them.