Chrome has at least one deal-killer bug for me: under certain circumstances it works very poorly on google websites.

Knowing what I do about their technology, my guess is the problem happens when overzealous corporate firewalls block SPDY requests, but it could be something else --- I don't know the cause, but the effect is that anything that hits a google page, or anything that loads google ads or google analytics (i.e., most of the internet) hangs indefinitely in Chrome.

That has kept me from making Chrome my "only" browser. But I also like firebug in firefox, and some things, like the Charles plugin work much better in FF... so what happens for me is, I have two or three browsers open at once constantly, and compartmentalize things...

• Firefox - dev browser. Loads my in-progress web apps, plugged into all the debugging tools I use.
• Chrome - documentation browser. I load docs related to dev in chrome, and also gmail if I'm on a network where google apps aren't hanging
• Opera - casual / non-work-related browser. Opera is kind of a sucky browser compared to other options. By using it for non-work-related activity, I can ensure that I don't enjoy screwing around all day.

There is theoretically other room for Safari or IE, for testing or debugging browser specific problems, but since I have tons of tabs and windows open of each browser, using different browsers simplifies the alt-tab switching between modes of working.

And... because I have multiple browsers installed and switch between them, this is a flexible plan. New browser comes along? I'll give it a shot. Get tired of some bug in a browser? pop up another one.

That said, for a while now Chrome has been the "browser upgrade" I put on my friends and family's computers for a while now. If Firefox is better though, that will change.

The name of the company is Microsoft. Microcomputer Software. The old way of looking at computing is desktop computers. It worked very well for them when desktop computers worked, because that was the company. The new (and most likely, long-term future) way of looking at computing is the Internet. Microsoft never really got the Internet. IE only became significant years late, and only because of the desktop OS monopoly. Bing probably won't.

I'm guessing what GP intended to say is 400,000 is the population Foxconn employs in Shenzen... that is, 10 out of 400k Foxconn employees have committed suicide in the past year, vs 45 out of 400,000 Americans.

There are other factors, like age, that come into play here, but if the facts are fairly even, this is a non-story. I've worked at an American company with 3,000 employees, and one of them committed suicide in 4 years I worked there... If I'm doing the math right, that is the equivalent of 33 suicides per 400,000 employees per year. Napkin-math says it's a non-story.

I disagree... you're assigning malicious intent to some unnamed entity and judging its motives. I think a much simpler explanation is the two-party system is simply emergent behavior from the U.S.'s winner-take-all system of electing representativess. In governments where the leaders are selected differently, you have different results.

If you're using WEP, they don't have to knock on your door and ask, they can just crack it.

I hate to say it, but this is why it's never going to change. As the advertising industry has known for years, and as Coca-Cola bases its business model on, changing the minds of the masses is simply a matter of spending enough money.

As long as people consume entertainment that they don't pay for (such as television, radio, and most websites for that matter) people are going to consume advertising, opening a portion of their minds to the highest bidder. As long as people freely offer their minds to the highest bidder in exchange for a sitcom, phony partisan "news" report or video of a cat falling off a TV, the ones with the most money (read: the establishment) is going to have the most influence the masses.

The only thing that might change that is if people start starving or otherwise feeling primal physical discomfort as a result of the establishment / status quo keeping on doing what they're doing. That's a possibility, but not one that I hope for.

Have you looked at politics any time in the past half-century? In established democracies, freedom is considered dangerous, and most regulations are established with a clear goal of limiting freedom in the name of safety, conformity, or reduced liability.

Now they just have an XBox.

Speaking of explosions that wipe out cities ... I'm surprised summary nor posts I've seen so far have noted the potential for a weapon. Anything that stores energy in a compact form has the potential to release a lot of energy all at once. (Or if it was somehow impossible for the energy to get out so fast, this could be a useful military power source, for powering lasers or other high-energy destructive applications)

I don't know ... I do believe that good books have exceedingly clean plots, but there are some writers (think Philip K Dick) whose masterworks are engineered to lead to hanging questions. Was Deckard a replicant? Or in Total Recall, was he a big hero or just stuck in a cascading delusion?

I enjoyed GP's explanation. It makes as much sense as anything I've seen so far, though it could be the result of mental gymnastics.

Shell shortcuts work, and the sandwich joke is in there, too...

guest@xkcd:/$ make me a sandwich

What? Make it yourself.

guest@xkcd:/$ sudo !!

sudo make me a sandwich

Okay.

You know, this isn't really a response to you, but while reading your post it occurred to me that any company *can* make a network that sits on top of the internet, to which all those rules apply. If Microsoft wants to create a Microsoft network of some kind, they can implement any restriction they want ... maybe the licensed, approved-user-only model will be compelling. With the XBox, MS already controls a platform pretty well, and ... well, to tell the truth, XBoxLive or whatever the network is that you play games on is a MS only network that MS controls the hardware and the access to. So if MS really believes in it, why not require a license to access the MS Xbox internet?

Man, a license for the internet ... the stupidity, it burns.

Children are not property, but they are a responsibility, and there's a law so old and deep that it isn't explicitly written in law books (that I know of ... IANAL): If you are responsible to provide for something, you control it.

• This is why, in the office, some people are greedy to take on more responsibility -- more responsibility means more power.
• It's why a case can be made for even late-term abortion of otherwise viable fetuses -- if it's inside your body and totally dependent on you, you have a right to make even the most extreme choices about it.
• It's why "taxation without representation" is a big enough deal to revolt over -- if you're responsible for paying for something, you have a right to have a say in what is done with that.
• It's why the old-fashioned single-income family where the husband is the provider and the wife "doesn't have to work" while it appears to be the woman "winning" and making the man her servant, is not something feminists aspire to -- because if the husband is financally responsible for the wife, he has a lot more power in the relationship than she.
• And it's why people are wary of government healthcare, or schooling, or ... heck, there are some people wary of anything the government is responsible for -- it's because if the government is responsible for it, the government controls it.

And when you're raising a kid, you are responsible for that child. If it doesn't get fed, you're legally liable. If the child doesn't get disciplined, you could face penalties yourself because you're responsible. If your child doesn't get a quality education, you may not have any judicial penalty, but the blame does fall to you, because if you're responsible for a kid, you control it.

As the kid grows up, he'll take on more responsibilities for himself -- if he reaches the point that he's fully responsible for himself (working to earn his own keep, paying his own bills) then guess what? You may still be his parent, but you are de facto not in control of your child. If he's responsible for himself, he's in control and can make his own choices. He may choose to follow your rules and respect you, but unless he depends on you for something, he can also choose not to.

This is the main reason I am strongly peeved when I hear a government official claiming responsibility for something, saying we, the government, need to fix education, or need to fix healthcare, or to create jobs. If the government is responsible for whether or not I have a job, then the government gains a lot more control over my life -- what type of job is available to me, what type of salary I can expect... if it's unrealistic to think the government can control that, then it's equally unrealistic to think the government can or should be responsible for it. (Maybe if I was unemployed I would feel differently.)

I know a lot of people use the term "evolutionary" as a synonym for "gradual" or "slow" but when I think of evolution, I think of the specific process of mutations and reproduction by which a population changes over time. Unless there's something new about galaxies I've never heard of, I don't understand why the term "evolutionary" is the best word to describe the development of the early universe. (Or anything at astronomical scales that I can think of.)