I pick forums that have a level of moderation that suits my needs. In the past I tended toward more laissez-faire moderated places and just ignored what I didn't like, but as I've grown older for a handful of subjects I've needed forums that are little tighter. That's the great thing about freedom: you can pick what suits you, and get away from everywhere else.

The problem I see is that if Gnome doesn't defend their trademark, one day Groupon may come around and sue Gnome for their pre-existing non-infringing use of the same name for a different product - and there's a chance they could win. If I understand correctly, going on the record now trying to defend the trademark reduces the possibility that Groupon could win if they were to turn the tables and sue Gnome in a few years.

That's one of the best reasons ever for eliminating copyright - let the differing visions compete on their merits, rather than on what is "official" according to the copyright holder.

I loved the Thrawn trilogy, but at some point I realized they could never be movies because they were just too long. Which is a shame - I would sit through them with joy, but the general public wouldn't. Back in the day, everybody I knew thought that the Thrawn trilogy was 7, 8, and 9.

I don't know if today's grown Star Wars fans will ever be happy. Nowadays it's popular to blast even Return of the Jedi. I think the sophisticated fans feel that only IV and V, or even only V, were any good.

My memory is that when TPM came out, everybody on Slashdot posted that they loved it for about a day - and then suddenly the hate came in. I never figured it out. Suddenly it wasn't cool to like TPM, so everybody hated on it.

In that case I'd say he was both. He was made a pioneer by his intentions. He wouldn't be the first pioneer to be abused and mistreated, just as he is not the first pioneer to give his life trying to get humanity to the next frontier.

May we mourn the loss of this brave pioneer and honor his or her legacy. I think this is a perfectly appropriate time to quote these words:

You wouldn't believe how destructive it is when a philandering spouse wants to maintain a secret second life and uses this to guilt you into not checking up on them.

Well, you shouldn't strive for it, because it's your mate that has to strive for it. The feeling of trust is a feeling that is created by the mate's actions. You check up on them to see what they are doing, and if they are behaving in a trustworthy manner, eventually you feel trust.

One of Harley's major premises is that as a psychologist, it's easier to change behavior than feelings. The change in feelings comes after your spouse changes behavior (which sometimes comes after you yourself change behavior - for example, by starting to check up on them).

Well, he goes on to say that trust is still irrational, and to insist that it is not trust that makes a marriage successful. Since a big part of his work is about motivation, he's very careful to word things such that people don't feel like they "ought to" trust. In fact, trying to make a spouse feel like they "ought to" trust and that something is wrong with them if they do not is a common tactic for spouses in an affair who do not want to be discovered.

"Widely considered" is an interesting standard of expertise to use about relationships, since the vast majority of relationships and marriages fail. In fact the vast majority of people who get counseling report that it didn't help them.

Dr. Willard Harley is the author of His Needs, Her Needs, one of the few relationship books that was indicated by a study to actually be successful, and he has actually applied statistics and science to measure the success of his approach to marital counseling. His approach is successful in saving relationships and restoring the feeling of romantic love (or creating it if it did not previously exist).

Harley stands outside of mainstream advice on a number of issues, but as I just said, mainstream advice hasn't been demonstrated to be particularly helpful. Dr. Harley's opinion on trust is that you should not trust each other in a relationship but that instead you should invite each other to check up on each other to whatever extent you choose. In his words, snoop until snooping is boring because you've snooped enough that you know you won't find anything. When you get to that point, you'll feel trust, rather than forcing yourself to feel it irrationally (i.e., without evidence, or in contrast to what the evidence actually says).

I took a graduate neural networks class in 2002 and did my implementation in Perl using PDL. The professor desperately pushed matlab on everybody but left us free to choose our own implementation language, and I chose Perl. I felt I understood neural networks pretty well at the end of the project. Twelve years on all I remember are the basic concepts at a high level.

But it's been well known for more than ten years that you ought not to call system or execute external programs from a CGI program. That's just a bad idea. This exploit is one proof as to why.

Congratulations; you've just given the religious right all the authority they need to regulate abortion out of existence.

How do we tag misuses of the expression "begging the question" in the article summary? I tagged this story as "notbeggingthequestion," but if there's another tag out there people are using, I'd like to be aware of it.

Notice that the guy who said it is an advertising guy. That's his whole worldview. That's the way he thinks it is and the way he thinks it should be. Meanwhile for the rest of us, we have lots of alternatives. Paid sites, community-supported sites, ad-blocked sites, sites run by people who love what they are running a site about.

Basically this is a little advertiser wanting us to support clubbing a big advertiser, Google. He'd like us to get mad at his competition. What he wouldn't like is for us to start noticing just how much what he is advocating is in his self-interest.

I recommend we all switch to ad-block and screw them all. If some sites die or have to switch funding models, works great for me.

You don't have to be "cynical" to expect the government to act in the government's own best interest. The idea that one piece of government will keep another piece in check rather than colluding together to expand power is an unrealistic pipe dream. Honestly we've had over two hundred years of real world experimental evidence demonstrating that checks and balances DON'T WORK. They never did, and never will. The only realistic check on government power is secession.