He rides outside when the weather is good and uses an indoor solution when the weather is bad, and you say he's likely a danger when he rides outside again? Seems a bit extreme. People don't forget balance and handling when they get outside again; neck problems kept me off bikes for ~10 years and I was able to hop right back into it without a problem.

If you're so tightly wound that a wiggle out of the guy next to you would cause a problem, then you're the danger, not him.

Gah. I had the opportunity to visit Vienna, Austria for work last summer, and my chip-and-signature cards were useless for automated kiosks. Fortunately a friend had lent me a few euros before I left, so I was able to use cash to purchase U-Bahn fare. Thanks to reading Slashdot comments, I knew about this problem and asked before the trip, and the credit card company (the one contracted by my employer for our company cards) said, "Errr, what? We have European travelers all the time and you're the first to ask!" But the same damn company has issued a chip-and-signature (personal) card to me for years. Yearrgghhh.

Austria seemed to be more of a cash operation anyway. I got a few odd looks when I pulled out the card, and I quickly realized cash was the norm. I even ran into one place that refused the card. The people were awesomely friendly, though. Austria is definitely on the list for a second visit.

I'm with you. I bought a Macbook Pro in 2009 because I didn't like any of the Linux laptop offerings, and I didn't want another Windows machine. I figured if I didn't like OS X, I could run Linux on it. Well, here we are over 5 years later and I'm still running OS X it. It's pretty nice, and I still have the command line.

That said, I'm typing this on a Kubuntu 14.04 desktop, and it's pretty nice too. My one gripe is that it seems a bit flaky compared to my prior Slackware installs - weird things like the login box showing on different monitors when I boot up (today it was on the second monitor; yesterday it was on the primary). Things like that make me a bit nervous, but aside from those it does work well. I just wish I'd installed Kubuntu 64 bit instead of 32 bit...I'm not sure why I did that, probably because of issues I had with libraries under Slackware64. (I still use Slackware on my server, but it's due for a software upgrade...I haven't decided what route to go with it.)

My experience with the WRT54G v1.1 was ten years of trouble free use. I replaced it only because I wanted a faster network (I move large files around frequently). In fact, I still have my WRT54G, and I needed to come up with a way to get internet access for one device to multiple devices at a show we run, so I installed dd-wrt or openwrt on it and had it connecting to two wireless networks (one with net access and our private one). Even when I was running a live video stream through that connection, the WRT54G performed perfectly. I wish my newer Netgear router was as reliable as my WRT54G was; it requires a power cycle every few weeks.

I'd often say, "That was the best episode of Quantum Leap ever!", after seeing the week's episode. There were a few clunkers or whatever, but for the most part...wow. Such a great show. I wish the DVDs had the original music though. :(

Why did you cite a New Jersey webpage for a question about California's laws?

Your dot matrix suggestion made me think of another printer: Daisy wheels. I don't think they lasted long, but...what a racket when they were running! I'm not even sure how to describe it - very fast, irregular (because of spaces) banging.

Shit - that totally did it! It's now about 2 seconds to display a picture! MUCH better. THANK YOU AC!

You know, I'm seeing that in Safari on my MB Pro. I have a home-brew photo database with a web front end, and for picture #1 I might type a caption like, "skater types on slashdot", then for the second picture which happens to be of me, I'll type in "skater". Then it fills in the "...types on slashdot" and I have to fight with it to keep that part away. I thought it was because my computer is running slowly and I was typing quickly, but it sounds exactly like what you're seeing.

I had exactly the opposite problem with Android - getting music on to my S3 was a nightmare; after wasting many hours fighting with it, I finally had to buy software to sync over the air, and that never worked all that well. I never could get my Macbook Pro or my Linux desktop to recognize my Android phone when I plugged it in, even with the Android drivers for OS X that are available. When the iPhone 6 came out, I preordered one and was able to load songs on to it with just a couple clicks and some time to sync, no problem. Maybe iTunes for Windows is bad, but it always seems to work fine for me under OS X.

I just tried Ubuntu on my MB Pro 5,5 yesterday. It wouldn't come out of resume (after a minute or so of screwing around, it would lock up to the point where I could see my desktop background and a useable mouse cursor, but nothing else happened). I haven't had time to search for a potential solution to that issue.

I was Linux trying because I've been having major slowness issues since Mavericks when displaying pictures. There are lots of proposed solutions in the Apple forums, but none seem to work for me; it's still slow. I know it's a 5 year old computer, but I wasn't having an issue under Mountain Lion! The delay started when I upgraded to Mavericks. And, frankly, a Core 2 Duo processor ought to be able to render a picture within a few seconds; it can take 20-30 seconds in Preview or LilyView (an app I downloaded when this problem first appeared). I checked; it's definitely processor bound; I was hoping perhaps a flash drive upgrade would help, but it's the processor that spikes, not I/O. From what I read, the issue is that Mavericks went fully 64 bit and the old 64 bit processors really suffered from the change... maybe trying to encourage me to buy a new one? You know, I still have a Mountain Lion disc around...

I was testing Linux on it because I was hoping it'd be faster, but unfortunately Linux wasn't working all that well on my MBP, and RAW files and Linux are still a bit of a beast. I could probably work around the latter, but the former was kind of a PITA.

I hate to buy a new one because they're damn expensive, and my old one should be working fine. Rendering 16 megapixel pictures is not one of the things that's driving processor design these days.

I replaced my Macbook Pro's battery at 4 years old, though it still would give me an hour or two of life (down from the initial 6 hours). Since the laptop was still working well, I spent the $100 and put a new battery in a year or so ago; so now I get 5 or 6 hours of life out of it again. At this point my biggest issue is that the processor is slow, so rendering pictures and videos can take a while. It's probably time for me to upgrade.

I don't recall noticing lens flares in either movie. But that might be because I went to be entertained for two hours or whatever, not to nitpick the movies apart because they don't match my exact definition of what Star Trek should or shouldn't be.

We had a debate in a "Current Events" class in high school about violent lyrics. As a heavy metal fan, this was important to me. Unfortunately, at the time, I wasn't very familiar with the words to "Suicide Solution", and one of my classmates had transcribed only one verse, showing how it was "advocating suicide". (To keep this semi-relevant, I'll also add that he said the lyrics were hard to understand and took him a while to discern.) I told him he was taking it out of context, but unfortunately I couldn't remember the full context of the song. He just shrugged as though context didn't matter, when, in fact, "Suicide Solution" is probably something everyone should listen to and think about. I wanted to kick myself when I remembered the theme of the song.

The debate accomplished nothing other than teaching me that I need to be as familiar as I can with the music I love, because people have a lot of misconceptions about it. I still get very strange looks when I say I listen to metal. I've even gotten my wife into some of it - I catch her singing Ozzy songs now and then, things she never listened to before she met me, and she's gone with me to Rush and Queensryche concerts. :) Of course, in recent years, "Crazy Train" and Judas Priest's "Electric Eye" intro have appeared in minivan commercials, so it's apparently not quite as bad as it supposedly once was.

I've got a Samsung S3 with a broken screen sitting at home. I was getting out of our truck with my hands full, and my phone fell. I think it actually broke when it hit the running board. My fault, and these things happen. I have a new screen to put on it, but I haven't gotten a heat gun yet to remove the old one. I didn't know how easy they were to replace until I was at a car dealer, and the financing guy saw the broken phone and showed me the kit to replace the screen, and says he does it all the time for friends and family. (He happened to have one in his office because a coworker had broken her phone.)