Unless you include a huge "donation" check in your letter . . . your "representation" won't even receive your letter. The secretary will just toss it in the trash.

Nah, it'll get aggregated by subject matter. In the month-end statistics it'll just be another check for "concerned about border security", prompting the lawmaker to introduce a bill to *require* searches of all laptops. Mission accomplished.

(An exception is astronomy, where amateurs continue to play important roles. Of course, astronomy doesn't involve chemicals or other (currently) 'scary stuff.')

You just wait. Someday an amateur astronomer is going to discover an asteroid that will hit the earth and kill us all. Then you'll see how scary amateur astronomy really is! We can only be safe by prohibiting these dangerous amateurs and leaving the field to the responsible professionals.

I'm also an author of one of these games. No one asked me my permission either. Of course they didn't have to, I'm not the copyright holder. The company I worked for at the time is. I doubt they asked them either, though.

But good for Archive.org! I'm glad to see an easy way to get this collection. I'm downloading it and will be seeding it. And when I get around to overhauling my MAME cabinet I'll be using it as my source of ROMs.

Now, the people hoarding incandescent bulbs are a bit more puzzling.

Don't you know, man? The electronics in any CFL or LED bulb produce unnatural beat frequencies against high-end audio equipment. If you're going to spend all that money on the really *good* audio equipment, (tube amp, wooden knobs, cables made of pre-WWII oxygen-depleted copper) you can't ruin it with harsh electronic light. You *need* an incandescent in the room.

Why not actually buy the books, use calibre to convert them to some other format, and read them in the (non-spying) reader of your choice?

No, it's not useless. That was my point, though I was being somewhat flip in making it. It's not giving me eyestrain. In fact it's alleviating it. The pixels aren't used to make things *smaller*, they're used to make things *sharper* while keeping them the same size. I have the same number of rows and columns in my text editor, they're just less blurry. The same number of icons on my desktop, only they're sharper and more well-defined. Kind of the difference between reading an illustrated article in a high-quality glossy magazine versus the same text and pictures in a daily newspaper.

I went from an older laptop with a 15" 1440x900 display to this one with a 15" 2880x1800 display. I didn't notice a lot of difference. Marginally clearer, I thought, but no big deal. Certainly not worth the extra money, good thing my company was paying. But then after a few weeks I went back and looked at the old machine. Good gravy, the 1440x900 display looked *awful* after getting used to four times the pixels! I hadn't made major changes to my desktop layout, my editor, my browser, or anything else. The same physical size elements, just with more pixels. It was rather surprising how it didn't make much difference going from low-res to high-res, but going back was a *huge* difference.

So yeah, more pixels is better, at least when the screen is only 18" from my face. On the other hand I keep my TV, clear across the room, at 720 instead of 1080. Why? I'm nearsighted, I can't tell the difference at that range, and running at the lower resolution lets my aging and somewhat underpowered HTPC function better. I can't say that more pixels is better in all situations for everyone, but for me anyway I'll take all the pixels you can give me in a laptop display.

640x480 should be enough for anyone...

As I sit here typing this on my 15" 2880x1800 MacBook I can honestly say that more is better, baby. It's a shame that Windows really blows chunks scaling its display. I just set up Win7 in a BootCamp partition and it looks like Bill Gates did everything in his power to say, "Make this look like ass on Apple hardware." A lot of Mac apps initially looked like that when the Retina displays first came out, so I imagine Windows apps are going to stay at this same half-assed level until hi-dpi displays are commonly available.

Pffft...I'm naked right now! j/k...or am i? ;)

You are. But what you're wearing is actually worse. Seriously, some bodies are just *not* suited to the leather-and-latex scene.

And any 2nd year engineering student could figure out that by putting a slot in the glass and a void behind it you're reducing the structural integrity of an already thin, brittle material. But before that happened a 3rd year industrial design student would slap it down because the little rubber nub would destroy the sleek minimalist look that Apple prizes so much.

Then how about social stigma and/or embarrassment associated with opting out? "All right-thinking moral upstanding citizens want the filter in place, but we value your freedoms. If you're the sort of immoral, depraved pervert who likes that sort of thing, feel free to just ring us up and tell us specifically that you want to access all that horrid stuff."

As to conspiracy theories, there doesn't need to be a conspiracy for there to be a chilling effect if people *believe* there's one. "I'm not going to opt-out, because I don't want to end up on some government list of paedos and terrorists." It doesn't matter whether or not the government is actually keeping a list so long as people suspect that they are. The net effect on freedom is the same either way.

That means USA voted for it. It also means countries that you would not normally associate with a right to privacy voted for it. Basically it was watered down enough that no one opposed it.

My guess is that the magic word is "unlawful". Sure, the US opposes unlawful surveillance. That's why we've made it perfectly legal for the government to poke it's nose into anywhere, at any time. No unlawful surveillance here, nope!

Tautology cat is tautological.

"I think my computer has a virus."

"What makes you think that, Dad?"

"Well, it's been running slow lately. And once a website popped up a notice saying it had detected a virus on my machine."

"... It did?"

"Yeah. I downloaded and ran the program it suggested but it seems even worse now."

"You're right, Dad. Your computer has a virus. Better take it to the repair guy."

True story. I love my parents, but they're three hours away by car, I gave up on Windows years ago, and there's no way I can talk them through a de-lousing session over the phone. ("Open the control panel. Go to the start menu... No, the one in the lower-left. Now click on it. LEFT click. Press the button on the left side of the mouse, Dad...") Computer repair shops still exist, or in the worst case they can take it to the Geek Squad who at the very least can re-image the damned thing.

http://xkcd.com/171/

True, which is why you should include that reason in your cover letter. I applied for a job that was specifically looking for an experienced C programmer. I'd had a 2-day C class through my previous employer, but I'd never actually used it for anything. But I wanted that job. I sent them my resume along with a letter explaining why my experience was relevant despite not having used the language. The weekend before the interview I sat down with my copy of K&R and taught myself enough to write a print driver. I took that and code samples in other languages along with me, and was completely honest about my experience level -- and emphasized that languages are fundamentally similar, that I knew others and could learn this one. I got the job.

I'm a fairly intelligent individual and I'd be absolutely sure to take anything they reported about my genetic profile with a grain of salt.

Me, until I see evidence to the contrary I'm going to assume that this test is every bit as accurate as calling Miss Cleo. No more, no less. At least her commercials had to have a "For entertainment purposes only" disclaimer at the bottom. IMHO, unless 23andMe are going to stick that phrase on the boxes I'm all in favor of the FDA requiring that they demonstrate accuracy. (And yes, I wish the FDA did that with herbal supplements and other snake oil. Or at least make manufacturers prove that the contents of the pill match the label on the box.)