There's a couple webcomics I read where the "only traitors enable adblock" images are still less obnoxious than the actual ads, so I keep it enabled and just buy some of their swag instead.

Depends on the browser - IIRC on Chrome, it can't prevent ads from being downloaded, it can only prevent them from rendering. Or at least that was the case several years ago, maybe Chrome's added the APIs for it by now.

I have the opposite situation. I've been in the same job for 13 years now. In that time, I've taught myself and gotten training for many new technologies. Some of these got integrated with my workload and some didn't. Of course, we have a big library of applications that have been developed over the years (by myself and other developers) that are running on old code. It would be great to rewrite them from scratch using new technologies, but this would take more time than I have available so we maintain them and work new technologies into the mix in other ways - finding the right balance between the old "it still works fine" and the new "isn't this cool."

I grew up watching my father leave for work at 5am, come home at 6pm with a stack of work, do work at nights, and do more work on the weekends. His excuse was that his bosses saw him producing a certain level of output and he needed to keep it up. He's retired now. Do you know what all that extra work got him? Laid off when someone else with better connections wanted his job.

When I first started my job, I made it clear that I wasn't going to do this. I'm willing to remote in if there's a problem that can't wait until morning, but that's the exception, not the rule. I get into work at 8am, leave at 4:30pm, and stop thinking about work the minute I leave the doors. Granted, I love what I do - web development - so I'll often freelance or work on my own stuff on the side, but that's my choice. I'll also put that stuff on the side to teach my boys how to ride their bikes or to watch Doctor Who with them.

I enjoy my job, but part of what keeps me enjoying it is that I don't let it take over my life.

Is this just a problem in the PC version or can people do this in the tablet versions also? For example, if I loaded Minecraft - Pocket Edition on my son's Android tablet, could other people enter his "world" and interfere with things he made? Could they initiate chats with him (abusive or otherwise)? Can you choose to wall other people out and operate in your own "Minecraft World" and/or only allow approved people in? (For that last one, perhaps I could load up Minecraft and walk through something my son built, but Random Internet Stranger wouldn't be able to do the same.)

Ability to exercise lots of things, like planning.

This might be really good for my son. He's 11 and has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. One of the things he struggles with is executive function. Whereas you or I might see a task and immediately start breaking it down into subtasks, prerequisites, etc and organizing them, he struggles with this. This might help him out by giving him a task "Build a Fort in Minecraft" and making him think through the steps (e.g "build the foundation first, then the walls, etc.").

We've been considering getting our oldest son (11) into Minecraft. He currently loves playing Disney Infinity because he can build worlds and then use his favorite characters to navigate through those worlds. Of course, at $14 per character figure, this can get expensive fast. I can get Minecraft - Pocket Edition for $7 from Amazon's app store, load it on his tablet, and set him to building.

And regardless as to who got rid of DRM first, why would they go back when their competition (Google, Amazon) sells their music in DRM-free MP3 format? You can buy a song from Amazon's MP3 store and play it on any Apple device. Unless Apple plans on turning off MP3 support on their devices in favor of this new DRM format. (In which case, expect to see a mass uprising of Apple users whose legally purchased songs suddenly don't work on their iDevices.)

The dealers are scared because if this "directly selling to customers" thing takes off, they (the dealers) won't be needed anymore. It's the same reason that the RIAA ran scared from digital music. Middlemen don't like when efficiency makes them obsolete.

No, they need to come up with a triggering mechanism for grizzly paws. After all, don't we have a second amendment right to armed bears?

Granted, I might need to reread that section a bit.

Why would you think that they could not twist being treated like "normal" criminals as something special?

They can try and probably will. Think of it as attacking a heavily fortified bunker rather than open field; sure, it can be done, but it's a lot harder.

In the US, Muslim recruiting is prisons is very effective.

But this is only a problem if you buy Islamic State's claim of being a Caliphate and thus representing all Muslims. Otherwise we're just looking at criminals finding religion and straightening up, which is hardly a bad thing. And that again gets us into this being primarily a war between competing stories, rather than physical militaries.

Liars are gonna lie, nothing you do is going stop that.

Which is precisely why their story needs to be contradicted rather than confirmed at every turn.

Wars seldom end through peaceful negotiations. They end because one side completely and utterly destroys the other.

Well, no. A war most often ends in a negotiated truce. Otherwise most still-existing nations would have no lost ones in their history.

Then again, I can see you're working through some personal issues here, so I guess facts are of little importance. But perhaps you could choose some topic where you won't cause actual damage by venting?

In addition... small or local car dealerships should not complain about Tesla for killing their business model. They should look to those car mega-dealers that completely shit on their customerbase in order to make a dollar. No wonder so many people despise all car dealerships.

If a car maker would sell regular cars the way Tesla does, why couldn't they compete in a major way and dominate the younger generation demographic?

I suppose the barrier here is all the big auto makers are so set in their ways with and entrenched in regulatory capture that there is no incentive for them to change to a new "model".

When the announcement that cuts were coming I made a comment on /. about how everyone at Microsoft would be looking over their shoulder wondering whether their job would be cut.

Howling responses insisted that no, the only jobs being cut were going to be in Finland and tied to Nokia.

Now we find out that jobs are being cut in Washington, Silicon Valley, and Fargo. Hmmm, thats a long way from Finland.