Fail.
There have been numerous interviews with Hawking and other scientists, mathematicians, physicists, etc. that reference "god" as an unknown quantity in the face of stupendous data. Not to be confused with a deity. Einstein also wrote about "god" in this same reference, and he was a very well known atheist.

I wish I was a better student, and could make it through law school. I think I would love to practice the kind of law that you do. As it stands, I'm just an IT guy, and IT certifications are about as much structured schooling as I can make it through at one time. Ah, to stand up for the little guy. I salute you, sir.

I agree with this. If it weren't for my DVR, I would never have even known the new season of Sarah Connor had started. That has less to do with my viewing habits, and more to do with a crappy job of promoting the show.

Fox is generally on my shit list for this. I might have been the only person to arrange my schedule around so I could watch Drive (Nathon Fillion. Come ON!). They went on a break, and never came back. I gave serious thought to catching a plane so I could put a brick through the window of Fox corporate office. Sarah Connor Chronicles is one of the few shows on network TV that I watch. Dollhouse is on the list because it's Joss Whedon, and it's something the girlfriend and I can sit and watch together. Outside of that, though, it's all cable stuff, mostly Discovery channel stuff (Dirty Jobs FTW. Mike Rowe is my own personal Jesus (pronouncing that with a silent J makes it funnier given the subject matter)).

My point is, Fox has a hold on my household watching habits, and if it continues to take otherwise good shows and cancel them (or screw them over to the point where they get cancelled), then I'm sure I'm not the only person who will stop allowing themselves to be jerked around, and move exclusively over to cable, where the show schedulers tend not to be complete idiots.

I just realized how astroturf-y that sounded. My apologies. I think I need a bath now.

I googled some of these suggestions, and came out with another choice. When searching reviews for Avast and Antivir, it seems that a product called BitDefender tops the ratings whenever it is compared to these others. I didn't see anything negative on Google about it. Anyone tried it?

As you seem to be fairly experienced in such matters, what would you suggest as an alternative client for Windows systems? My old IT job used to run McAfee as part of their standard image, and I hated dealing with it. Norton always seemed like the lesser of those two evils, but in the last few years, their interface has gotten ridiculously huge, and now is filed in my mind as bloatware.

On my home machine, I just built a dual quad-core Xeon (I do a lot of recording/post production on the side from the day job), so while resources are not much of a concern (still seeing a bit of a bottleneck under heavy loads from my SATA HDs, should have sprung for the SSD. :) ), I'd still like to find a streamlined client that will do AV/spyware, with the automatic updates I've grown accustomed to in Norton/McAfee products. Suggestions?

I was reading about TorrentPrivacy last week, and it sounded nice, except the site gave me a heavy "fishy" vibe, and they charge a fee for their service.

I'm reading up on OneSwarm, but I don't know enough about the technology to know if this works the same way, or better than TP. Any thoughts?

Unless this place has a sniper with a tranq rifle sitting above the screen to take down self-absorbed jackasses talking during the movie, I don't think it will help. There's a nifty arts cinema that recently started playing about half mainstream stuff here in town. It's on the other side of town from me, but I'll go for the smaller theater size, better concession options (white chocolate popcorn FTW) and the ability to bring in drinks from the attached bar. However, that said, I still have a consistant track record of people kicking my seat, talking during the movie, or texting someone every 5 minutes, and holding the phone screen-out so I know when they have a text message before they do.

I just spent my tax rebate on about $2K worth of computer equipment, otherwise I'd be investing in home theater stuff. Which is more than likely what I'll be doing with my rebate next year. I have a nice shotgun room in my basement (about 10 feet by 30 feet) that will make for a perfect home theater. All I have to do is waterproof the basement (or water-resist, as I have been learning), throw up some drywall and carpet, and the rest is just the equipment I need to simulate a trip to the cinema. A nice projector and sound system, and my file server with all of the movies I might or might not have sits right on the other side of the wall. I think more people will be doing this in the future, as the combination of better/cheaper components mixes with the further proliferation of electronic compies of movies.

I couldn't agree more. The last 3 movies I've seen in a theater were without exception ruined by either other movie-goers, or another factor like idiotic theater staff or sticky floors. I LOVE movies, but I'm almost to the point of swearing off going to the cinema.

I might or might not pirate movies from time to time, but if I did, the vast majority of them would be movies I've seen before, usually in the theater. While I wouldn't be paying for these hypothetical movies, it is a matter of convenient acquisition of movies, so that I can access them anytime I want and watch them at my convenience.

I DO pay for a Netflix subscription. Which, when combined with my XBox, allows me to access a lot of movies at almost the same convenience factor of the ones sitting on my hard drive. This is an example of turning someone who might or might not have pilfered the occasional torrented movie into someone paying a fair price for a fair shake. Netflix does include a measure of DRM, essentially making it impossible (that I am aware of) to copy the streamed moves to disc- or if you can, it would equate to copying a song off the radio-post stream and all that. However, Netflix applies this DRM without making me feel like a criminal for trying to access my content in a normal manner.

This is the ONLY example of a major media outlet actually taking advantage of new technologies to expand their offerings. But I think that has a large part to do with the fact that Netflix IS the new technology. I'm sure Blockbuster would love to claim the part of the victim of new technology of they had a foot to stand on. From what I hear, they are circling the drain these days as a direct result of Netflix' market share.

They're called patents. If you make a nickel off everyone who uses your formula or proof, you're in the same boat as the rest of these cats.

As I understand it, TPB has long held that the website does not contain any copyrighted material, and that they don't distribute any copyrighted material. I guess what I'm getting is that the prosecution is trying to prove that pointing out the location of copyrighted material is a crime.

Given that corporate greed is a constant, (as evidenced by the US banks, who hoarde bailout money and spend it on sports stadium naming rights in the face of imminent economic collapse) I see this snowballing to the point where companies that manufacture software, like BitTorrent and Azureus will soon come under fire. They tried this with the gun industry, and have had mixed results for years. I think it's rediculous that you should be held accountable for someone potentially doing something illegal with the software you designed in good faith, and under the allowance of current law. It's an erosion of rights thorugh corporate lobbying that leads to this sort of behavior. As others have stated, artists won't see any extra income if bittorrent traffic in its entirety (not at stake in this trial, I know) comes to a halt. In fact,there is a good chance, I think, that the media companies pushing this witch hunt will find that even if they were somehow successful in completely ceasing all P2P trading of their content, they would not see any increase in revenue. To the contrary, the large population of people that hear about an artist via the medium will no longer have access to this method, and the proliferation of new music will slow down considerably, fueled only by expensive promoting methods. If the media companies want their 1970's revenues back, so be it. But I think they're also looking at 1970's revenue minus the adjustment for inflation.

Agreed. I bought some memory there a while back, through their in-store pickup option. I paid for it online, drove to the store, and had to wait 30 MINUTES for them to figure out how to process my order. Without exception, every time I went in to a Circuit City, I left disgusted and vowing to avoid shopping there again.

Incidentally, now that CC is closed, that mantle is being passed on to Fry's. The reps never know anything, assuming you can actually get one to help you, and they never have to part I'm looking for. It's either not stocked anymore, or they're always sold out of it. Sure it's fun to go in there and drool at the TVs, but I'm sticking to Newegg from now on.

#$%^. Not enough coffee. 3 meals/day * 5 people * 365 days/year * 3 years is 16,425 meals. Definitely drives my point home a bit further.