You know, this is why I still read Slashdot. For one out of every 100 opinions, someone will step up with an obscure but useful bit of knowledge or experience.

Ridley Scott is a great visual director, but the quality of his movies relies heavily on the quality of the scripts he chooses, and a lot of the time he chooses some awful scripts.

As I recall, that movie spent 1:20 taking place in a far-off, remote part of the galaxy, and then in the last ten minutes they flew to planet Earth.

Joss Whedon did that movie? My tentative respect for him just dropped a few notches.

There are some very valid arguments for why the current level of security isn't worth its cost. My issue with the current hubbub is that's it's mainly centered on people's irrational aversion to having a TSA employee 'touch our junk' or see an anonymous, faceless image of our naked body. On one hand I'm happy that it's finally persuaded people to consider whether any amount of increased security is worth any amount of invaded privacy; on the other, I think it's more about our Victorian prudishness than any rational considerations.

80% of the people who are screaming bloody murder about these scans would be perfectly happy if the checks were much more invasive and much less beneficial but didn't involve simulated nudity.

Hackers 2, Sony 0

Sony is playing defense only. Of course they don't score any points. On the other hand, they've limited the Hackers team to two points in five years, which is pretty impressive actually.

I think the "door close" buttons cause the crosswalk lights to change, and the "walk" buttons cause the elevator doors to close.

For all of you complaining about how Shuttleworth is trying to kill the network transparency of X... This doesn't affect your X programs, which are always going to be able to run over the network due to the design of X. There's no reason why a desktop machine running Wayland wouldn't be able to run X programs. The only effect of this is to allow building GUI programs specifically for Wayland.

And seeing as those apps are specifically designed to use advanced features like 3D and compositing--why would you expect them to run reasonably over the network? Do you tunnel glxgears or TuxRacer over a WAN?

If a developer is writing an app which would usefully run over a network, they can write it using X and everybody is happy. If they need the more advanced stuff of Wayland, then network transparency probably doesn't make sense anyway

Yes, Apple locks down their stuff. You want to know why people don't care too much? Because Apple locks stuff down the right way, for the right reasons. They're not too intrusive, they don't overreach, they make sure 95% of their users will never even notice the lock-in, and they make sure it provides benefit to the users as well as to themselves and their partners.

Most people just want to share songs with a few close friends and family--and Apple's AAC protection allowed that. Most people just want to download reliable, trustworthy apps to their phones-- and Apple's mobile app store lets them do that. Both of these things bring revenue to Apple, but they also bring better content to users, by allowing music companies and app developers to get their money and thereby giving them incentives to produce more and better content.

Music, movie and television studios think that allowing users to do anything with their media will be the end of the world. Free-software evangelists thing being unable to do everything with their media will be the end of the world. Apple recognizes that for most people, it's good enough to be able to do the common things.

The term for freeing an iPhone is "jailbreaking", but here's the question: is it a jail if the user never notices the walls?

As a random comment... I played a lot of Hero's Quest (later renamed Quest for Glory) on my PC with its crappy little speaker. It had a great soundtrack--I can still remember the main theme. One day my uncle installed it on his PC which was hooked up to his keyboard via MIDI. When the game started up and it played that same music through the keyboard, my first reaction was: that's not how it sounds. I was so used to the tinny PC bleeps and bloops...

I live in a major city in a state near yours. Homicides are becoming more common.

That doesn't mean a whole lot if nearly everything you're unhappy about in D is better in C++. Frequently that's the case.

If you have any rolls of Kodachrome sitting around not yet exposed, better expose them before sending them to Dwayne's before December 10, 2010.

The best passwords I've used are non-dictionary but pronounceable words. The simplest way to generate one is to alternate consonants and vowels, for example 'lasopedi'. It's easy to remember because your brain can store it as a word, not as a random series of letters. You can add uppercase letters, symbols, or numbers if you want it more complex, like 'lasoPedi2!', which is still pretty easy to remember.

The apostrophe was not there as a contraction. It was there for exactly the reason Dave Barry was making fun of: frequently people insert an apostrophe when they add an S to the end of a word because they're not sure of the rules involved and seem to think it's better to err on the side of the apostrophe.

I think what you've just proven is that a moderate amount of learning is a dangerous thing.