Aha! The real reason why <> has been deprecated in favour of !=

I think a technical debunking of her claims of being hacked is ideal Slashdot material.

We don't have enough information yet. to properly analyse those claims. What I've seen written so far has been sensationalised and technically incoherent. That's reason enough to dismiss it, but not reason enough to consider it proven false.

Easy. I only have two sources: A DVD player and a Bluray player. Each uses toslink optical to the receiver, and component video to the receiver. Then from the receiver to the projector there's one long component cable.

The receiver I have understands Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby ProLogic and DTS Neo 6. Enough for my needs.

The curtain is about to close on my current receiver.. I will soon need HDMI because the MPAA cowed the manufacturers into taking hi-rez component video out of the picture. Any new sources I buy / build will likley lack component out. Thank you MPAA for forcing an unwanted upgrade. The Panasonic XR-55 I use is a freakish thing possesed of a most sweet sound. The encouraging thing is that anything made in the last 10 or so years will sound just as good.. it's not like the dark ages of the 70's 80's and 90;s.. back then you wanted good sound, you used tubes. After the invention of the digital "amp," great sound is within everyone's reach.

You just need the speakers to let all that good sound out... and that's where the horns come in.

Problem with this is, most people I know won't make the commitment that it takes to make a nice home cinema. Not a fancy one -- just a technically accomplished one.

What does it take?

0. Absolute light control. No windows, no shutters, no blinds, no light.
1. Black ceiling and front wall
2. Dark-ish side and back walls -- the room should have as little light reflection as possible.
3. A fixed screen of half the height of viewing distance, placed high up coupled with chairs with a good deal of gangsta lean. (so if you sit 8-9 ft away from the screen, the screen should be 4 ft tall, which works to about 7 ft wide. This is what I have.)
4. 3 IDENTICAL channels up front -- not two big "mains" and a ridiculously tiny "center." You need three of the same speaker up front
5. Surrounds identical to the front (or at least from the same family)
6. Properly calibrate all that mess.
7. Shelving to store physical media and display figures, models, whatever.
8. Lighting with a remote dimmer to light all those toys and things -- narrow spots, for the most part. That means low-voltage MR16 heads, and that means more $ and more commitment.
Still think the avg. homeowner can do all that?

I did, It took me 3 months of after-work labor just to paint and wire and carpet. All my audio gear is 10+ years old, some of it sourced from Craigslist. None of it is what people would cal hi-end. But it all works, and I can throw a better picture than a badly-ran theater. I'm particularly proud of my audio, which uses horn speakers, letting me get outrageous fidelity and almost unlimited headroom. Bring on the ka-boom. .

But none of my friends will do it, none of my coworkers will. All they want is a stupid TV with speakers haphazardly strewn about. To them that's good enough. And I bet you 90% of people think the same way.

It takes commitment and a certain degree of crazy to make a proper home cinema.

Muvico.

Cinemark.

Regal (some)

And now I will call one out by name, because it is especially deserving of shame: Frank' Theaters, you have to go. You're a grindhouse. All your theaters are grindhouses. Shrivel and die already. Mountains of dust on the aperture plate. Head-to-tail scratches on the print. I saw an employee go from one room to another with an entire print draped like a bandolier, without clamps. Good thing digital has rendered the incompetent projectionist obsolete (and sadly put many a good projectionist out of biz.)

Don't have any decent ones around you? Get in your car, catch a bus, whatever -- and go to a decent moviehouse.

I drive 20 miles to go to Muvico. And I do it without complaint.

If wound daily, my daily wear watch (handwind only, no auto) takes 8 turns to wind. Less than 20 seconds.

My other watch is automatic, it winds itself. If I have to wind it due to not wearing it, like, during the weekend, then I hand-wind it about 10 turns.. again less than 20 seconds.

I never understood humanity's aversion to winding a watch. it's a no-brainer, something that is second-nature and takes very little time. Even if one has a battery of 5 watches, winding all of them in the morning takes less than two minutes.

After a constant barrage of post-wikileaks / snowden sensationalist coverage, I think The Public has been conditioned to outrage at any hint of Gov't maleficence.

Then again, the good old USA has developed instant outrage over anything, over everything, ever since Facetwit came into being.

In any case, the Gov't earned it. Bad Gov't, BAD! *THWACK*

So in short, all of Creation was created by P-Funk, and documented in The Mothership Connection?

Now *that* I can groove to!

Enough electricity to run 37 bowling alleys.

Adiane: "Are you humans that stupid?"

Yoko: "Unfortunately... yes, yes we are."

Attenborough: "Who cares! Fire!

Our fine species, in a nutshell.

My solution is to not make up nonsensical claims in the first place.

It's not much of a solution, but it's mine.

No. More people are employed now than ever before, but most definitely not in the same jobs.

Automation is fundamentally incompatible with some magic fairy version of capitalism where no jobs are eliminated but everyone has a better standard of living. But for those of us living in the real world, there's no incompatibility. Automation improves efficiency and so reduces cost. Yes, it shifts jobs, and yes, that causes social problems, and no, I don't have a solution for that, and nor does anyone else. But writing nonsense about it doesn't change what is real.

Why? You'd have the gov't spend money to overbuild or be able to scale a website for the one time every few years it gets overloaded? Seems like a waste of money to me. It does just fine 99.9999999% of the time.

The other issue was that all the news articles said things like, "X Million Hondas Recalled!" As a Honda Accord owner, I clicked on the article and looked, only to discover it was for rather old Accords (nothing newer than like 2003; ours is a 2012). Others probably went to safercar.gov instead, only to find it didn't apply. (That headline should have been in the favorite clickbait poll. "X Million Cars from 1998-2003 recalled!" would have been better, but...fewer clicks!)

I know of one near DC where the speed limit is 55 mph and there are traffic lights (it's actually a very well-known road - Pennsylvania Avenue - but the Maryland portion of it). However, during rush hour, the traffic rarely moves as fast as 55 mph, at least inside the beltway, I suspect because of volume and people are conditioned to think "traffic lights = max speed is 45 mph" or something like that. The latter theory is based on seeing people doing 45 mph with a clear stretch of road in front of them, and the next light quite a ways away.