I have heard this theory as well. One of the reasons I've seen is that organizations like Al Shabab, various warlords, etc, serve the functions of a state even if they don't have any diplomatic recognition as such. The tiny "central government", as well as presence of international organizations, are also "too much of a state" for some libertarians..

I think recognizing non-state actors as stepping in to fill the role of the state is important. But it's a pretty big jump to assume that in any way supports a libertarian viewpoint.

They still have a state, just not an elected government.

Just because there's no ministers, doesn't mean all the bureaucrats go on vacation for a year - though you might wish they would.

Read the paper. That was before they had the "reading AI" read anything. After it read the manual, their AI beat the game-provided AI 78% of the time.

Trekkers are more normal? I have never, ever heard the term used like that.

The real usage goes like this: Trekkies are hopeless Star Trek nerds. Trekkers are Star Trek nerds who are so hopeless, they're even hopeless nerds when it comes to discussing the terminology used to describe hopeless Star Trek nerds.

What if it's "Are you sure you want to cancel the current operation"?

Cancel/cancel, then?

For the NES, it's probably the sound. Emulators have gotten a lot better at this, but none of them have quite captured the sound of the old synthesizer chips.

For a system with a very distinct sound, like an NES or a C64, it can take a lot more away from the experience than you'd expect.

With the exception of Hyves, this is how it went in Canada (at least Ontario) as well.

AIM? The only people I know who use(d) it had strong connections to the USA.

For the benefit for those of us who live outside of Americatown, what is Algebra II? What year would you take it? The II suggest to me 10th grade, is this correct?

How many math courses are required to graduate in most US high schools now? Also, does USA actually have a national high school curriculum? In Canada referring to a course by name means very little once you cross provincial borders.

I'm not surprised they are losing this many users. Rather than stagnating and becoming irrelevant like Geocities and Livejournal, MySpace is actively alienating it's userbase.

They saw that people were moving to other platforms, and decided to engage in a poorly thought out redesign that took the features people actually used, and removed, broke, or hid them.

I haven't deleted my MySpace accounts, but as a musician until recently did have a worthwhile reason for logging in periodically to keep in touch with venues and other bands, and as a URL I could give out to showcase recordings and show dates. All that functionality is fubed now, as is the layout and design of my page.

I won't be back.

I don't think that really happens though, just that marketroids and executives, who are scared of the quality of their own product, think it does. I see plenty of iPhone games for $1 that I like, and plenty of games for free that I like too. But I'll happily shell out $40 for a game that gives me 40 more entertainment than an iPhone game, which thankfully most console or PC games do. Purely anecdotal of course, but most other games I know feel the same way.

Compare the occasional 15 minutes of diversion you get from Angry Birds, for $1, with the (just to pull a random example) 60 hours minimum you get from a run through of Fallout: New Vegas (with enough left over for a few more run-throughs) at $50, and I don't think the competition is in anyway unfair or that the price difference is out of whack.

The only legitimate I could see for a big game studio feeling threatened by $1 games was if they knew all along they weren't delivering $40 of value with their $40 games. And if that's the case it's hard to have much sympathy for them.

Why is this modded Redundant?

This is EXACTLY what would happen if the CRTC was disbanded. Just because the CRTC makes unpopular and poorly-reasoned decisions occasionally (ok, quite frequently) doesn't mean that there's no need for a regulator. The only reason we had unlimited-use packages from smaller ISPs at all was because the big telcos requires CRTC approval to abolish them.

Is that really something you want to do away with? Reform the CRTC, yes. Demand greater accountability and public oversight, absolutely. But disband? Hell no!

Did he actually do this? I've read a paper he wrote about this, but got the impression it was a proof of concept for hiding a backdoor in the compiler, not something that actually shipped.

If I'm wrong I'd be interested to read more.

It's easy not to have QA when your users aren't paying you.

Google's in the same boat - the websites aren't the product, the end users are. When your website is your product this crap won't fly.