Don't know man, humanity's changing and more and more people are waking up with new and strange powers. Take me, for example... A couple of weeks ago I discovered I have the power to look through solid windows!

While you're at it, check out some stuff by Shpongle (doesn't tell a story, but the songs have inter-song and intra-song variation and flow into each other nicely so that it's hard to tell where one song ends and the next begins) or Ayreon (space opera, rock opera; can particularly recommend "Into The Electric Castle").

You mean overestimating, for sure! ;)

Probably works quite well for pop music and other styles that settle into "the meat of the thing" during that timeframe. But some of the electronic stuff I listen to is a bit too complex or evolves too slowly to be sampled in a mere 30 seconds, regardless whether it comes from the front, the end or the middle. I'd rather they allowed me to choose between either listening to part of the song in high quality, or the complete song in lower quality. Or even better, like on the radio in the old days: the entire song, with a radio jingle at the beginning and/or end.

And that's allowing for the industry's view that previews should be mutilated in a futile attempt to curb piracy.

Because the soccer mom who needs to drive her kids and their friends to practice, the farmer who needs to pick up a ton of supplies in town and drives on unpaved roads a lot of the time, or the courier who needs to distribute a bunch of parcels are all equally well served with a Ford Fiesta...

Who could possibly have a need for a Volkswagen Touran, Toyota Hilux or Citroën Berlingo other than to better connect to the road and fully experience the joy of driving? These cars are simply *made* for pleasure!

On the other hand, it's the only concurrent DB I would consider to be a perfect match for PHP. ;)

Not all tunnels have only one entry and exit point. I already missed an exit in the tunnels under Brussels on a couple of occasions. And even if all tunnels were simple one-pipe affairs... What if you need to make a turn shortly after the tunnel, and your GPS takes too long to get a fix so it still has you at the tunnel's entrance when you blissfully sail past your turn?

I'm not saying we couldn't cope without these improvements, as indeed in the past we managed to do just fine without GPS. But there's room for useful improvement nonetheless.

As amusing as that little stark raving mad streetcorner lunatic act was, I believe it has more to do with big companies running their own mail servers instead of relying on third-party providers. It's easy for the IRS to request emails from an ISP since it's not in the ISP's interest to antagonize them by protecting a $50/mo customer's privacy. It's quite different if the company you're sending an email access request to is the very same company you're investigating.

Don't want the IRS to read your mails? Do as I did for years: run your own IMAP server at home and have all your mails forwarded to it. I did it for technical reasons, but it's equally applicable to this situation. Of course, that only works for as long as they don't decide they should also have access to mails in transit. I'd suggest using encryption, but good luck getting all your contacts to adopt it...

Which is great, but your average Joe doesn't know about that; most still run "Linksys" or whatever as their ESSIDs. Heck, I didn't know about the _nomap tag. Sure makes your ESSID look ugly, btw. Anyway, two flaws: requires uncommon knowledge, it's opt-out instead of opt-in.

That being said: I fail to see the problem, but haven't given it much thought either. As far as I'm concerned, you bought a device that you know broadcasts radio waves to do its thing. You know radio waves don't stop at the boundaries of your house/garden. Therefore, you know it's already known by your neighbours. What's the problem if some info about it, that can't be used to identify you in any way, ends up in a database that helps cellphones get their geographic position without turning on the GPS chip?

Still, if Google got in trouble over this, the same should apply to anyone else doing the same thing. Otherwise, you're just unfairly targetting certain companies while giving others a free pass.

From the summary:

So yes, it's voluntary for the person collecting and uploading this data, just as it was a voluntary decision on Google's part. It is however not at all voluntary for the people who own the AP's whose data are being collected.

Wake on lan? Wake by BIOS clock (scheduled)?

No, what places like the Symphony need is to get off this stupid idea that kids/teens belong in the opera house. Teens rebel against the older generation, rejecting everything they stand for, and that's a normal and natural phase in their development. Some kids/teens may genuinely be into classical though, and that's fine. Just don't try to push your notion of culture onto the ones who show no interest. Classical music is an acquired taste, not a forcefed one: don't be the Jehova's Witnesses of music.

I used to play the piano as a teenager, yet even then I never really got into the whole classical music thing. But I've matured, learned to appreciate somewhat better audio equipment and the subtleties it exposes in the source material. Classical became a lot more enjoyable since I'm not playing it over shitty cans/buds anymore. I guess being exposed to more classical-ish music in the scores of many great movies, during pivotal and emotionally gripping scenes, has also helped in that regard. I see similar tendencies among some of my friends. So yes, as people mature they tend to broaden their cultural horizons. The opera house will always have an audience; it will always be an older crowd.

That's great, and I definitely applaud artists who try to make classical more accessible by making it more contemporary. But don't expect this to draw the crowds to the opera house anytime soon. There's a huge difference between having a symphonic orchestra accompany you on a contemporary work, and three hours of Mozart.

Yes, they do.

Absolutely! :D

True, at work I usually have more pressing matters to worry about than keeping track of some generic office mug...