I was under the impression that all digital photos have gone through some kind of post production even before they come out of the camera they are manipulated to achieve various qualities.

Are you sure this is wrong? My rooted Fire no longer is able to stream from Amazon video.

It has an addictive quality, I think it is related to the timers. You get to click on things and earn certain bonuses or items necessary to go click on other things. There are limits to these bonuses based on time, they replenish at a certain rate that is slower than you wish it was. You could opt to spend cash to get the items, and that's where they make money, or you can wait until they replenish automatically. The element of waiting/reward cycle is I think where the addictive pattern is centered, but it is easy to shake off when something new comes around to fill the time you used to spend moving your mouse around clicking on things. The difference in game over time is actually very little if anything, in order to make room for both the money spending players, and the non money spending players, other wise the players who spent money would totally dominate. As a result the games never really materially advance, there are just more things to click with different pictures on them. Ultimately it is extremely boring.

Zynga has product that people can walk away with in the blink of an eye. After spending how many hours clicking mindlessly on games that do not materially change no matter how long you click on them, you are just a couple of days away from breaking the habit and moving on to the next click fest, or better yet, opening a book and reading something that actually is not brain numbing. Or doing gaming that is actually fun. Games are entertainment, Zynga games aren't entertaining, they depend solely on the addictive nature of the click-reward, it is a real force to be sure, but ultimately the little mini click fest games fail for lack of actual entertainment value.

I don't get this at all, especially with programs like Calibre, Amazon makes it as easy as possible to get documents into your Kindle using the Personal Documents feature it is a piece of cake! I have never met a document format I could not easily get onto my Kindle device. True, if you want things that are DRM'ed you have to jump through some hoops but that would be no different on any device.

Now when work calls me at 3AM because a mainframe job failed I will have to say "Please reboot the mainframe and call me back again if it still fails!" Then I can go back to sleep.

There are several other possibilities, I tend to favor the simulation hypothesis, if for no other reason that it has a certain postmodern aesthetic to it I appreciate.

I think he decided it would be better to seize the moment to call out the ways in which the failed responses by those in power to 9/11 polarized and deepened our isolation and fear. To me the song speaks of awaking from a dream with a memory so vivid it could not be erased, of living in a changed world where deep emotions and thoughts are dominating our minds but cannot be adequately shared or communicated. Of being entranced by bright messages of distraction and conveniently packaged interpretations of what is true and what is a lie. The themes symbolize not only the shock of waking up to the reality of terrorism as a possibility in America, but the rapid polarization which came about by the opportunism and packaging of that fear by those in power. They point out the failure of our leadership to use those same emotions to build unity and strength in our highest ideals of freedom and liberty. Instead they took advantage of those fears and weakened and scattered us like those who were confounded after the building of the Tower of Babel. Paul Simon as a veritable symbol of idealism and of New York City, in essence the High Priest of New York, wielded his power and his song became a kind of public excorsism through speaking and naming of the truth of those symbols.

How long before they finally crack down on all those Anonymous users posting on Slashdot

Same here. IE7 is the only browser we can use and Slashdot is completely unusable

Sounds like you've never sat on a jury. I have and I've never before sat in a room with such a group of uninformed, uninterested, and poorly educated people. The attorneys dismiss anyone they can if they think they care at all about the issues more than they care about getting home as quickly as possible with as little inconvience to themselves as possible. Yes, I know, this could be applied to me, but I ended up being dismissed after the evidence in the trial I sat through. I was an "alternate" selected just to make sure there were 12 people left standing by the time the deliberations began.

Trey and Matt could move the show to HBO, that will show Comedy Central. If that doesn't work, hell they could probably move it to the Playboy Channel and people would sign up. If we can pay for naked people maybe if we pay enough someday we can hear words and watch cartoons without censorship.

A Micky Mouse suit would have been better. Then everytime you see Micky Mouse you'd have to try to figure out if it was really Muhammad under there or not.

They may not have the source code anymore if it's that old. Modern mainframes have continued to evolve and a recompile might be necessary. It's actually not that hard to believe that the source code might be missing, in that era the source code was usually punched out on cards which had to be physically maintained in boxes which could easily be lost.

Get a white noise generator. I have an ancient one that sits in the corner of my office. It helps drown out the background chit chat and definitely helps me focus my attention without distraction. No one notices that is is on but if I ever turn it off you suddenly become aware of just how noisy everyone is, you can hear every sniffle and word spoken and you realize just how distracting that really is. Maybe stage such a demo, have your noise generator running for a couple of weeks, then one day when your boss is in your cube, just reach over casually and turn it off. When he suddenly becomes aware of all the distracting chit chat pouring in, point out how much more productive you have been since you got the white noise generator and how it serves the same purpose for you music used to do when it was allowed. It might open his mind a little. Or not. But the main thing is you can concentrate.