I have to disagree vehemently. It vastly depends on the speed that you are traveling with on your bike. As soon as you aproach the upper 20s (km/h, European here) it is way too dangerous to be traveling on the side walk. Here in Germany we have dedicated bike lanes which unfortunately mostly run on the side walk, meaning that pedestrians often do not look up to check if a bike is coming. More dangerously though are the cars taking right turns, because even if they bother to look you will be right in their blind spot. Add to this cars coming out of driveways or sidestreets, only bothering to stop and look once they reach the actual street and you get quite a dangerous mix. Whenever it is allowed thus, I always ride on the street and counting the number of close calls or accidents I had it is a lot safer. Basically the only danger when riding on the street are butthurt drivers who make it a point to overtake you with a 10cm gap even if the opposite lane has no traffic, because you are supposedly occupying 'their' street.

So true and almost poetic :)

There is a nice blog of a family living pretty much the same way you do: http://almostfearless.com/ I have been following it for some years and I'm really enjoying it. I am still quite young, but people like you or they are who make me think I might actually have kids one day ;)

Who says we humans are the point of this hypothetical simulation? Meaning, the tree could very well still make it sound because it is useful for the simulation.

C'mon that was obviously a joke... How cranky can one be?

Maybe the pictures you saw were of saltwater fish? It says it's the first freshwater fish that they recorded.

While this is a very nice reply, the problem is that the majority of the population will not be able to formulate it clearly and concise like you did and/or will simply conform social norms and accept the blocking.

Well, actually it's quite embarrassing that they're only doing this now...

I did not debate that, it's also quite obvious, that it is good for Microsoft - in a variety of ways - , otherwise they wouldn't be paying $$ for it ;)

Even if that is the case (which it isn't in my opinion), why would you complain if your customers pay to improve your product? This is obviously good for "the internet" (whatever that is).

You do realize that the glitches that you complain about are due to VLC avoiding patented, closed source solutions? In this light they are actually doing awesome work!

For me teenagers includes eighteen and nineteen ;)