Touché.

QuickTime, H.264, WMV, all work fine without flash. Why is flash necessary for online video, exactly?

But this is a no-brainer. Seriously, the only people who think having Flash installed *at all* is a good idea are people who have no brains, namely Adobe and a handful of lazy web developers. Flash is just, exactly, precisely, no-doubt-about-it as retarded as Steve Jobs said ... only I've been saying it since a long time ago, he's just got a bigger platform than I do to evangelize against that steaming pile of crap that is Flash.

and live in a place without Daylight Saving Time, which is one of the most ridiculous ideas in human history. ELIMINATE DST!

Why is this even here, exactly? Oh, that's right. Because the six Adobe fanbois, all of whom stalk /., are trying to stir up something from nothing. Flash Player doesn't ship by default on any OS that I have installed on any of the computers in my house, and I like it that way. If I need it, I'll go get it myself.

Not everyone.

<-- admits to being an Apple fanboy. I've hated Flash from the outset; nothing against Adobe /per se/, just that from "GO!" Flash was a memory hog, still leaks even today, and was a major security backdoor through which an otherwise fairly secure web browsing experience could be hijacked, and rather easily.

Apple's recent changes to drive lock-in, such as through the App Store, don't sit well with me, but I'll wait and see what the outcome is. Flash is a miserable piece of crap, and always has been. Forgive me for continually despising it, but I do loathe it so.

Wait, so ... Flash is buggy, and a security risk?!? WHO FREAKING KNEW?!? (oh, that's right. Steve Jobs did. Thank God.)

The middle ground is to return patents to what they are supposed to cover: inventions of physical machines. Copyright and trademarks cover things like Process and Software, and they are the appropriate places to protect them.

and eliminate Software Patents entirely.

Just because Buckner can't properly field a grounder doesn't mean the message isn't good ...

"Many companies see the on-call issue as analogous to a fire fighter's job. Most of the time, a fire fighter is off-duty but on call, hanging around the firehouse, cooking, sleeping, or whatever. What that person really gets paid for is the relatively small, but crucial, amount of time he spends walking into a burning building with an ax." Maybe where that lawyer lives, firefighters spend most of their time in the firehouse cooking, sleeping, or whatever, and not getting paid for it. Most of the engine companies I work with spend 3-4 hours per 24 h shift drilling, and run EMS calls in addition to fire, pest (snake/spider/wild animal) relocation, and public assist calls, many of them averaging a total of 10-12 calls per shift (all calls included). They also get paid for the full 24, not a sub-set of it. There is no reason to say that someone who has an on-call status is off the clock just because they are not actively working every second of their on-call time. If you expect someone to be at your beck-and-call 24 hours, you must compensate them for that. Now, if they are at home, with an "oh-shit" pager/cell phone, you can probably compensate them for far less than their normal wage. As an example, I have a friend who works full time as a paramedic with us, and part-time as a blood recovery tech for a local hospital. Certain days he is on 24 hour on-call status as a recovery tech, and gets paid like $1.50/hour on call. If he gets called in to the OR for a job, then he gets his full hourly wage from the time the page goes out until he leaves the hospital again, after which the pay goes back to the lower wage. He can't drink alcohol, he can't leave the city, he can't really plan any long events, and though he does do things like attend his son's various sport events, he could be torn away from them without warning. The compensation, even at a quite low wage, is recognition that although you are not working, you are also not really free to do anything you wish since your employer or client could recall you without warning. I believe that any employer who thinks that on-call is just like being off-duty should probably come out here to a fire station of my choosing. That thinking will change toot-sweet.