I've never had a CFL fail. I've been replacing incandescents with CFLs whenever a bulb burns out. My oldest CFL is 7 years old and my newest is a little under 1 year old.

Many of us are still living! Just a bit dispersed here and there.

The only insurance that is required by law in any state I've lived in is liability, i.e. if I fuck up other people's shit or lives, I have some ability to see to it they are compensated. The only time I've been required to carry insurance that compensates for the damage to my car is if I financed it and I still owe money on it, and it's the (private) lender doing that, and understandably so.

Who's talking about a PC here? I'm talking about consoles.

XBox Live is a single service that integrates the entire online functionality of an XBox. Online gaming, chat, high scores, and all the rest.

would it need to have shipped as part of what was then the monopoly PC operating system, or would third party matchmaking frameworks count as well?

I have no idea what it would need to do. Tell you what; solve that problem and then I'll agree you're innovative as well.

That word is subjective, and people will spend days arguing over subjective definitions. Could you give a more objective criterion?

No. Can you can give an objective criterion for "innovation"?

And you needed an Xbox Live subscription and a copy of each game for each console to play Xbox Live.

You needed a single XBox live subscription. it worked for all games for all publishers. Did anyone else offer this? Was it integrated with the rest of the system?

Xbox Live came out in the fourth quarter of 2002. By that time, EverQuest had already been out for three and a half years. So I must be misunderstanding what you mean by "serious thing".

Everquest was niche. You need an Everquest subscription to play it. Ultima online needed another subscription. XBox Live simplified everything established and made it acccessible to casual gamers.

If you call At Ease "new".

Windows 8 looks just like At Ease. Can't tell the difference.

Nope, that was Kerry Clendinning in 1992. In System 7, Apple made each "desk accessory" run in its own process and stored them in separate files within the Apple Menu items folder instead of resources in the System file. By doing this, Apple turned the Mac's Apple menu into a rudimentary quick launch menu.

I can see how it similar, but you yourself say it's rudimentary. MS made the Star Menu part of the actual user experience.

Honestly, what company *does* innovate?

I think the problem is that they can't compete with the dedicated units. Garmins and Tomtoms are fairly cheap and fit nicely on the dashboard, and even they're losing market share (or redirecting their business) to built-in systems.

Well, they came up with the XBox, and established online gaming as a serious thing. The Zune HD was apparently really good, but nobody bought it. MS came up with a completely new UI. Everyone complained and bitched because they removed the "start" menu (which incidentally was another MS innovation).

So they do innovate, but slashdotters ignore it or hate them for it.

Not sure what you mean here. I just tried a route with Bing, clicked "view route based on traffic" and the route changed to avoid a jam.

Only if Google stop making their map crapper.

They still use the wrong colours for UK roads. Orange, orange and yellow-orange is not a good colour scheme.

The new map interace is slow. I can't just click a "from" and a "to". I have to find the place I want to go.

Some people mod humor as "insightful" because "funny" didn't/doesn't contribute positive karma to the recipient, whereas "insightful" does.

Lack of sport. There's no challenge, just like there's no challenge if you don't have to sort out your own proxy.

Totally agree -- (Members of) The Catholic Church created the first schools, hospitals, etc.

Your printer is shit!