Even if it is technically illegal, and I don't know whether it is or not, who is going to arrest them?

Do police have a tendency to be held accountable for their abuse of power in your jurisdiction?

I have nothing to hide, and if this helps catch bad guys, it's still a tremendous invasion of privacy and morally wrong under just about any definition of "moral" you want to use (aside from the "moral = whatever the hell I say it is" definition that seems to be increasingly more prevalent).

If I spend my spare time doing the most boring, non-threatening things imaginable, that is nobody's business but my own. If I spend my spare time doing unusual or asinine things, that's still nobody's business but my own. If I spend my spare time hurting other people and committing crimes that result in damage... then hey, maybe it's time to look into what I'm doing, not before.

I took an english class in college on the "rhetoric of intimidation". that is, how to write in order to intimidate. Not surprisingly, example #1 was the IRS. the professor had spent years studying with them and working with them. One of her favorite stories was when she learned that the majority of the time, an audit occurred because the IRS's records on you didn't match, and rather than figure it out they audit you to make you figure it out.

My best friend works with a lot of self-employed people. One of them had several (3 or 4) years in a row where his tax refund would have been miniscule, something like $10 or $20 in the black, so he didn't even bother sending in the forms. He figured he'd just let the government keep the money. The IRS responded by sending him a bill for roughly $10,000 owed, because they figured that was a nice round number to make up.

I'm sure everybody here has anecdotes like this. That "1%" of bad eggs you talk about must have been terribly terribly busy.

"how is your business doing this year?"

"not good. we're still in the red for at least the next quarter, how about you?"

"doin ok, just went into the dark based on retail sales thanksgiving weekend."

"pardon me... you what?"

"went into the dark. we're totally in the dark now, unless the accountant screwed up the books again."

"ooooooookkk...."

I've just started learning C# and kinda like it so far.

Does that count?

Sony kept their plans to fuck the consumer hidden until they executed them.

Microsoft laid out their plans to fuck the consumer right from the very start.

I'm not sure I understand how that makes MS better than Sony? If you believe that a "reversal" today means they've changed their long term plans for the console's ecosystem at the drop of a had... well I've got a bridge to sell ya.

I'll let you in on a little tip. Just like with political parties, thinking one side is completely full of self-serving shit doesn't mean the other side is any better at all.

and these aliens had thunderbolt hammer that were really nuclear weapons, and they flew around in vimanas which were really flying ships from a floating castle mothership, in order to interbreed with earth's primitive dwellers by taking human form.

I love Ancient Aliens. one of the best shows on TV. Watching them come up with their wild pseudoscience theories is like watching a monkey discover how a cigarette lighter works.

You don't have to tell me. I used to lug my 21" trinitron CRT to lan parties. My first LCD, a 17" NEC, was so I could bring that instead.

What what it's worth, my UPS says turning on my 28" LCD raises the load 75-80w, so these things can be power hungry too.

your tv is 4 years old.
GP's tv is 8 years old.

that's the difference right there. modern plasmas have pushed the threshold for permanent burn-in times to something like 18-20 continuous hours.

image retention of video game static images happens after just a few minutes on my 3 year old plasma, but the screen wiper (or just watching regular tv) cleans that off in a minute or two... but I've got an LCD monitor that does the same thing. image retention isn't burn-in.

hell you can burn-in a CRT if you try. nobody ever complained about that being a downfall of the technology.

New models come out when intel releases a new processor architecture.

the rest I agree with you about though.

The Latitude series of laptops has, as of the E6x20/6x30 series, turned into a very high quality laptop. I'm not too thrilled with 16x9 ratio screens (previous latitudes had 16x10), but everything else is great.

And they aren't cheap either.

I stopped playing Diablo 2 after a half dozen or so complete runs through the highest act/difficulty combo my character could complete failed to drop any upgrades for my character. no futher progression. lots of time wasted.

I stopped playing Diablo 3 after I beat the game on the highest difficulty, using gear I bought off the AH with gold dropped in-game and from items I myself sold on the AH. not a single real dollar spent. reasonable playing time. fairly enjoyable.

Then I went and played other games. you know there are other quality games out there? seriously there are!

The AH was a solid addition and I'd miss it if I still played the game.

You're postulating that we evolved from tree dwellers to civilization because of religion? There's so many things wrong with that I'm not even sure where to start.

Along those lines, the last surviving civil war veterans died in the mid-1950s. I'm pretty sure that some people alive today talked to those people.

I'm sure a doubter could say "what if the interviewers are lying about what the civil war veterans said"... but then how can you believe the civil war veterans? how could you believe anybody? taken to the extreme, how can you even trust yourself when the human brain's visual, aural, and even memory components can all be tricked?

Guns of the South (pretty much that exact concept, only it's ak-47s and the american civil war) was a pretty fascinating novel. a bit dry, but then it was written by a history professor.