I firmly believe that you prefer what you're accustomed to hearing in the first place. Most kids today have grown up hearing nothing better than highly-compressed FM or low-bitrate MP3 music. They don't know anything better, and given the option of hearing better music, perhaps even uncompressed, with a much larger dynamic range and noise floor, they'll gravitate to what their ears and brain have been trained to appreciate.

This certainly holds true at my office. My wife is a doctoral audiologist who prescribes and dispenses hearing instruments. A good number of patients who have worn hearing aids for many years prefer the older analog technology to the modern digital. Some of them certainly have become accustomed to the distortion and peak clipping that happens when analog hearing aids are pushed too far.

At one time, there *was* a price difference, but no longer. Digital is no more expensive, in fact it is becoming more difficult and expensive to have old equipment serviced.

I have never understood that for years, you have been able to create a folder with a space at the end of its name in a script. Try, just try, to delete that folder.. You can't create it in explorer, you can't delete it in explorer.. in fact, the only way to fix that I have found, is hope to god its a long file name, drop to a command prompt, and delete it with "Del folder~1"

This type of bug goes back before that. Under CP/M, the console command processor converts all commands to upper case, so ERA filespec will not delete a file with lower case characters in its name. On the other hand, MS-BASIC does not upper case any filenames used in OPEN statments, etc. So the easiest way to remove such a file is to get back into BASIC and KILL it.

I think MS-DOS is smart enough to fix this at the OS level.

Some CP/M comands create a space filled filename + extension if you omit a filename. But a *. wildcard will work there.

In a similar vein there are exploits that involve using "special" characters that look like normal characters, but aren't.

Is there a business case for reviewing advertisements (and the associated mobile code whether it be FLASH, etc.) for a 21st century "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval"? After all, the NYT and others are just one virus (or porn advertisement) away from a PR nightmare.

IMO the mass media don't care as long as it brings in revenue. You should see the crap that gets advertised on local TV here, particularly late at night. Various make money fast schemes and "natural male enhancement".

Local newspapes are somewhat different. Well we STILL have a local paper, unlike two neighboring cities that don't. If I found something objectionable in the newspaper's ads, I would write a letter to the editor - and it would most likely be printed. As an advertiser in that same paper I could express my displeasure to the representative who handles my account OR withdraw my ads from the paper altogether. If I felt particularly steamed, I could drive downtown and in a few minutes walk into the offices of the newspaper and express my opinion.

This is a small city. The editor and publisher are personally resopnsible for the contents of the newspaper.

Soon they will also be people who only remember when Fermat's Last Theorem was a solved problem, not one of the great mysteries told to young kids interested in mathematics.

The problem might be solved, but there still is a lingering mystery. Did Fermat have a proof by elementary methods? Does such a proof exist? But I suppose that since there is A proof, the impetus to find another one is mostly gone.

ftc.gov? Nobody goes to those sites...

I do. It's the home of the National Do Not Call Registry. www.donotcall.gov.

Also notice that registrations there no longer expire every 5 years!

For me, the point is moot. I'm barely interested in watching TV as it is. By the time this issue is settled, there will not be any content on TV worth watching, let alone recording.

I don't own any DVDs. I have not bought a music CD in at least 8 years.

BFD.

Geocities had a lot of content. A huge amount of useful information. Especially the pre-Yahoo stuff.

Yes. For example websites devoted to the internals of GW-Basic. I don't write new programs in it, but I still convert old programs written in it. Also, the early versions of G77 for Windows are there plus documentation plus collections of compiled libraries.

A bigger bite is for those of us whose ISPs were the baby Bells. I still have an old web page that is essentially prodigy. 15 MB limit, one level, browser based updating and file creation, but it's ad free and still there. More recent customers found their personal web pages are hosted on Geocities, complete with their icky ad overlays.

Yahoo managed to crap up the e-mail side too, when they migrated their customers to "Yahoo mail". I pay for e-mail as part of my internet access. If I want to read e-mail on the web, it comes with ads.

So I'm not entirely sorry that Geocities is going away. And as bad as AT&T and Yahoo are, both are far better than the local cable company.

me + ear wax == suspected terrorist?

No, it's another way of banning rock music. Loud music damages the cochlea and interferes with TEOAE's.
Musician == terrorist!

I'm waiting for my wife to spew coffee out of her nose when I tell her about this. She's a doctoral audiologist. :-).

There are things far worse than worrying about possible security threats from "courseware".

1. getting it to work in the first place can be a real big problem. A few years ago, a friend was taking online courses using WebCT. He was unable to get any of it to work. Instead, he commuted to campus and used the computers there.

2. IMO a lot of courseware is crapware. Somehow in the education market it is acceptable to subject students to software that would be higher quality if it was malware! Well, what did you expect? Look at how students are gouged on textbooks.

There was a "personality" test I had to take when I was a clerk for Radio Shack back in college... I remember the manager showed me the "results" and it basically said, "This person is either a very good person, or understood this test enough to give the answers we hoped for."

The purpose of the test is to select those who will put with bullshit as part of the hiring process. On my list for automatic DQ of employer are:

Most types of "H.R." B.S.

Resume in Word document.

Provide salary history.

Clueless (is there any other type of?) recruiter.

Buzzword laden job description.

No identification of who or what the business is.

Since I run my own business I can say

1. I probably don't want to work for you anyway.
2. Fuck you!

Surprise, surprise! People who may already exhibit signs of anger or aggression may be drawn to such games. The games don't cause the anger or aggression. Such people may also be at greater risk for showing increased anger or aggression.

That's from a psychologist. Why can't the lawmakers figure it out?

Because we have the best legislators money can buy!