As a tech support agent, this is a question I ask myself every day.

If a customer says, "My internet is broken," the very first thing I ask is "what error message do you see?" 9/10 times I can fix the issue based on the error message alone, without knowing anything else. But, if instead they throw some random words at me like "it says it doesn't work," then I ask them to reproduce the error. If they can't do that then it's time to shotgun troubleshoot, and I know it's going to be a long, painful phone call.

The people who act like reading error messages is unnecessary, bothersome, or uninformative are the same ones who for some reason lie about everything. "Reboot your computer please," (one second later...) "Ok it's rebooted." Sigh.

I wish error messages on computers were more like tv set top box errors. They stay on the screen, saying blandly, "Error 14" (for example) and so customers do tend to let us know what the error number is, because there's no way around that screen. I get the error message, look it up, and a few minutes later the issue is resolved. I say take the information about what's actually going on out of the hands of the user, since they don't care anyway, they just want it fixed. Any informed user who wants to know what "Error 14" is just needs to (gasp!) look it up on our website, and then they can fix it on their own if they so choose.

They're going to see the scary number, click "Ignore error", retry and tell you that there was some error... something about 'technical support'... If you ask them to retry and note the scary number, they won't understand the purpose. Even if they read it, they'll only remember that their "file system is damaged", thinking about buying a new computer. I'm serious, I had similar experiences. Your approach may be good for more advanced users (who had contact with 'security permissions' and 'file systems'), but I believe it's not worth the effort to maintain such messages.

Err, hence I said "That and disabling browser integration" in response to the OP's question.

There's no risk in disabling it. If you download a form that requires it Reader will prompt you and ask if you want to enable JavaScript for that particular PDF. If it's from a trusted source, go ahead and allow it. I've seen plenty of PDFs prompt for Javascript access and when denied seem to have no negative impact. Forms are about the only type I've seen that are impacted.

There is no science for this myth of global warming and just calling it a new name doesn't make it right either. There is no way to take the data and say what the Earth's normal temperature should be. The only climate change we have is called SEASONS and every year it can be different. There Earth drifts a little bit closer to the Sun, a lot of volcanic activity, massive forest fires all of these have happened in the past affecting the climate and the Earth did pretty well to recover. For all of you so called global warming "scientists" out there drinking the blue cool aid and getting 10 seconds of fame on some news shows you are idiots now and forever more.

Since when are corals plants?

I'm seeing the logic here as this: You didn't pay for our software, so we're not going to let you pay for our software. How exactly does that make sense?

Er. Sony haven't made such a promise, because they didn't build in the killswitch in the first place. They _can't_ remote delete off my PRS-505. Which is the way I'd rather have it.

I work for a large ISP, and for residential accounts, we don't particularly care if you're a "bandwidth hog," as long as you're not affecting other customers around you. If we see that one person is causing significant congestion, then that's a problem that we'll address (but only when it happens repeatedly and consistently). Most of the time the customer is either unaware, has an open router, or has a virus/worm/trojan.

Companies overselling is a very popular and acceptable thing too (for them). Airlines, hotels, and movie theaters often do this expecting no-shows and cancels. But i expect the percentage oversold is based on historical facts for that particular day the previous year. ISPs might have been able to oversell so much in the past but as more content moves from tv/phone/radio to the internet, the typical usage might be outstripping the previous years usage numbers. Just my thoughts..

Another point that people seem to be missing is that movies are intrinsically momre expensive and difficult to produce than music. While you might have an independent music act that is just as good as Britney Spears, we are a LONG way from independent movies that match the production quality/acting/special effects/etc. of Star Wars, 2012, etc. [Look at the credits for any movie to have at least an _idea_ of how much work goes into it].

For this reason, the democratization that threatens "big music" is very unlikely to threaten Hollywood. (The occasional independent movie that becomes a hit is unlikely to change the general trend).

No no - I was actually suggesting the opposite. Basically that the reason the researchers were moving their hands was because we are not used to moving objects with only our minds. Therefore, the physical motion was the "priming" that was needed in conjunction with the mental movement. Once we are more practiced at "using the force" to move things, the hand movements shouldn't be necessary. And it's at this point that a person in a vegetative state could use the technology. I wonder how difficult it would be to train someone in that state to use the apparatus?

Maybe they aren't overselling their bandwidth. Maybe they are selling their bandwidth fine and someone is going past what the ISP said they would offer to them and, as such, they limit the user.