People said I was crazy stockpiling Uranium in my basement, but who's laughing now?

But I feel somehow disappointed.

As gay marriage becomes more and more prevalent expect to see this trend continue.

Because as every Linux geek knows "LinuxFest" is a synonym for "SausageFest".

The downside to Digital Delivery is that for most devices this gives the hardware manufacturer a "lock" on distribution to completely control price (witness Apple, although they've been smart about it and not gouged). There is no longer any competition (except between H/W manufacturers) they can set the price on stuff and there is no competition among content producers or used markets, or retailers, anymore, once established, the manufacturer can completely dictate retail prices to the developers.

So, the cynical side of me suspects that system providers will simply use the lack of physical media to boost profit margins and pocket the difference rather than significantly dropping the "standard" price for goods once consumers are locked in. I would imagine the millions of copies that console games sell allow a significant economy of scale for manufacturers.

You'll also probably see more of this trend where the initial game is half complete/low content and then you buy the rest of it in bits and pieces via DLC, too. We'll see if they drop the price in that scenario, so far the track record has not been good.

I agree about development costs going up for developers.

It seems that if the manufacturers are eliminating manufacturing and distribution costs for the publishers, that just leaves marketing as their only really useful function (assuming they are decoupled from the "studio").

Moblin will likely fail because, it's a goofy name, the market doesn't want yet another OS, and Apple seems to be the only company in the entire gizmoverse that can make a decent UI.

At least Android has some street cred for being "Google".

I'm not embarrassed that I take the occasional shit, but I still close the door when I do it. It's okay to want privacy, even in a perfect society. I want personal privacy anytime I don't want matters on public display. And people have a right to it, IMHO.

The desire for privacy is not, in general, about the belief that other people are prejudiced or accuracy of social meanings attached to identities, etc. If I have a brain tumor, I want it to be a private matter because it is not a public matter and I want to manage it in a private way. I'd like my social security number to remain private.There are lots of legitimate reasons to want privacy; it does not boil down to some essential 'root cause'. A Utopia would include privacy, it would simply not be violated. ;)

I think by trying to overgeneralize privacy concerns as being "about" some systemic societal flaw and trying to boil it down to some simple maxim, you've done the issue and yourself a disservice. What you're saying may apply to things like sexual orientation but I think that is just one piece of the overall puzzle.

I think the money should be returned to the faithful movie fans in the form of popcorn discounts.

$3 billion buys almost 100 medium sized servings of popcorn at my local theater.

Parodies are considered "fair use" of a work from a copyright standpoint. This legal protection has given consumers a rich bounty of derivative humor including "Spaceballs", "MAD Magazine", and Weird Al Yankovick's entire body of work.

Those people you call "bottom-feeding welfare leaches of a long-deceased author" are responsible for making sure that the author's legacy and work maintain their original integrity and artistic vision. You know, stuff like that tastefully done Rankin and Bass musical cartoon version of the Hobbit that makes me want to claw my own eyes out with a spork that they green-lighted when I was a kid (a period in my life when thankfully my parents had the good sense to keep the sporks locked away safely in a cabinet).
 

The first rule of Hiding Club is no one talks about Hiding Club.

But, on the internet, no one knows (for sure) that you're Cisco!

I'm concerned the implications of this study may adversely affect the success of the high fat diet book I am currently authoring.

After reading the article I think the kery thing this research has proven is that being a great computer scientist does not necessarily guarantee you'll be an even passable philosopher or psychologist.

What I want to know is: How many Scientists are baffled by stupid parenting questions?

> The need for contact with other people has driven some nomads to start working with others in public places and at strangers' homes. I could see this need someday becoming so great that eventually these folks may be driven to the point where they form functional groups with like minded colleagues and commune in a central location. Out of sheer desperation for human contact, of course. I think "office" would be a catchy name for one of these communal locations. > at strangers' homes. This part is ironic because in fact, yesterday morning a stranger burst into our house while I had opened the door to get the paper, he sat down in our breakfast nook, plugged in his computer into the nearest outlet, and went straight to work saying nary a word. Poor bastard.