sounds great - although, i can hear the customes complaining 'i cant find internet explorer'! i love the alternative browsers , but cant help feel the 'average consumer' doesn't really care that much? i have actually installed firefox on family members computers, and couldnt really answer ( with info that they found useful ) what the difference was... my family dont really care to much about usability compliance and security ( well - until theyre shot down themselves with it! )

> Of course, we lived with a couple of decades of terrorist
> attacks ourselves long before Terrorism was the new bogeyman.

The UK only *thinks* they have terrorism problems. (The US too, for that matter.)

Spend a few months living in Israel, and you'll find out how it really is.

I'm not saying shooting the laptop was necessarily justified or the right thing to do. I don't know enough of the details of the situation to say that. But I will say that there are some security measures that Israel absolutely *has* to take, that would be viewed as unacceptably harsh in places with relatively low levels of terrorist violence. Israel really has very little choice in the matter. They're basically living in a war zone, all the time.

Did I mention that the entire middle-east is officially not on my "places to be sure to visit" list? Call me a wuss if you want, but I prefer to live in an area where the word "terrorist" generally calls to mind news stories from several years ago and several hours' drive away. Small-town USA is good. Our town doesn't make the news much, and we *like* it that way.

First impressions can be damning.

I recently picked up S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on Steam when it was on sale for just $5. I'd been wanting to play that game for a while, but had been avoiding it because of how buggy it was.

This impression - that the game was terribly buggy - came from leaks and early reviews. I had been given the impression that the game was borderline-unplayable. And while I did run into a few issues, that is no longer the case. I had a great time playing through that game.

If I had known that the game was genuinely playable I probably would have paid more than $5 for it.

Of course, as the article mentioned, Stardock is one of those companies that actual DO offer a refund; at least for customers that have trouble running their software.

Quote from their FAQ page

Why are you bashing U2? Because you probably weren't born when they WERE the club scene. Learn your music history dude. If you want to bash the "boy bands" and pop stars, thats fine, but not bands who worked their asses off to become the biggest act on the planet.

Or are you one of those cool kids who likes an act until it becomes popular, then you call them a sellout? If you like artists that are unknown, fine, thats your choice. But just because an artist sells a lot of records doesn't mean they aren't worthy of my listening.

I've seen the small club venues. I've seen the unknown acts. Sorry, but 90% of them suck. Can't play, can't sing. Every now and then, I see some real talent sneak through. I saw John Mayer in 2001 when he opened for Glen Phillips. I saw Dave Mathews when they were hitting the local bars in Virginia in 1993. I saw U2 when they played before 5,000 fans in 1983.

Big assumption. We basically have two no-names calling each other doodie-heads. Who knows who is right or wrong? If contracts were signed, then let them battle it out in court. Blog posts and PR releases have no legal weight.

One thing that I've definitely noted in searching the B&N ebook store is a complete and total lack of any computer/technical books. Here is a search for "programming" in B&N's ebook store, where I should see something about Perl, Java, Python, etc., but instead it's Glenn Beck???:

http://books.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store=EBOOK&WRD=programming&box=programming&pos=-1

I can't be the only one on slashdot with shelves containing hundreds of pounds of technical reference material... I've been thinking about getting an e-reader to replace the mountain of paper with something that I can slip in my laptop bag and take with me, and I was leaning towards the nook. However, B&N's complete lack of technical tomes in ebook form means that I'll probably go the kindle route since Amazon has a plethora of books from O'Reilly, Wrox, Apress, etc.

I know the e-readers are definitely marketed outside the bounds of us gadget loving nerds, but I would have to imagine that there is at least a significant percentage of us that either have and e-reader or are looking to buy one. I can't believe that B&N seems to be dropping the ball on this market segment. I know it's early in the life of the nook, or the B&N app for the iphone, but it really feels like B&N is missing out by leaving us high and dry.

"extraterrestrial threats. Intergalactic pirates trying to steal our music."

Carl Sagan TOLD them that sending a gold record into space would cause copyright trouble, but no....

I glanced at the article but didn't spot it. 2? 3? 4? Also is there really any benefit to having more than 2 cores inside a machine?

I knew it was really over when I was walking through the Hard Rock Casino (*gag*) and saw a big crowd of people looking at something, and there was Paris Hilton in a shop

Well, you may think about it that way, but maybe that's part of the reason some people go? My friend went to Vegas a couple weeks ago on honeymoon and quite literally bumped into Carrot Top in some museum. I'm no fan, he's no fan, but he got an autograph out of it anyway and it sure must have been interesting to actually run into someone with a household name.

My friend said he really enjoyed it there, but he said the key was to stay away from the strip. Rent a car and drive around, basically do anything but gamble. I plan on visiting Vegas some day, but I for one have no intention of handing my money over to someone simply for the sake of handing it over, the most faithful and accurate definition of gambling.

What I find most telling about these stories, is that in just about 2 years since Apple has entered the smartphone market, they have become the product to beat, the benchmark against which all others are measured. How did it happen that sophisticated, tech savvy and powerful companies like Microsoft, Nokia, Sony and RIM have such a hard time coming up with an answer, and only Google seems to be going somewhere?

I don't have all the answers, but one thing that seems clear is that Apple totally focusses on the user experience. I once made the error in 2000 to buy a PocketPC instead of a Palm based on the hardware specs. I learned then that a 16Mhz machine can be a better choice then a 200 Mhz one, if the first has been properly designed.

I've been using Nokia phones in the past, as they seem to understand the same lesson, I'm a little puzzled why they and the other established forces in the market have such a hard time formulating an answer to the iPhone. But then the seem thing seems to be happening in the MP3 player market.

What does Apple do that makes them so dominant in these markets so quickly, that the other players seem to fail to do? Even I've been converted recently, having bought a Macbook a year ago, and an iPhone last week, after having had a good experience with my iPod for years. Somehow other products in the same price range just don't measure up. (I did quite an extensive comparison with my alternative OS being Linux).

How does Apple become the measuring stick and the product to beat so quicky, even Microsoft usually needs half a decade and Billions and often they don't really succeed if it's outside the direct Windows sphere of control. (WinCE/Mobile/Phone, Xbox?)

In the first stage of evolution (under 20,000 generations) a random mutation had a higher chance of being fatal. The E.Coli they used were already pretty specialized for general survival. They probably didn't fish this E.Coli out of hot springs or out of glacial ice. They then put the bacteria into an environment that they probably haven't encountered before, with no way out. A culling happens, where the ones that cannot handle the citric acid die off. So now we have a batch of reproducing survivors that can handle citric acid, at the very least.

At this point, they're general survivors with citric acid resistance. A random mutation is more likely here than at any other time to lead to disaster, but if it somehow leads to an advantage in terms of survival fitness, then that bacteria will show up more and more. Basically, you're only seeing the 'right' answers. Like a test that filters out applicants on a per-question basis (you get one wrong, you're out) for the first half of the test.

In the second stage of evolution, random mutations are less likely to lead to disaster, as you now have a citric acid friendly strain of E.Coli, and while you might remove one wing of its E.Coli adaptation, there are still others in place. This is the second part of the test, which is graded based on the most popular answer that people select.

Congratulations! You've just described the process of evolution.

I have no problem with people who's faith doesn't collide with science, but:

The problem is, why chose _that_ particular hypothesis, if there is no ground to sustain it? On the other hand, we have respected scientist calling for hipothesis like the future changing the present, so it's doesn't t

That's one thing I like in the Dalai Lama:

So, let's first make mars and then the whole solar system our dumpster of overconsumption, right?

I agree with the GP's thinking, in that moderating the lifestyle on earth to sustainable levels, and developing renewable energy sources from sun and nature should be humanity's priorities over showing national muscles in the space.