"Thirteen" and "thirty" only sound the same in Strane.

I grew up in an area of the South where the w-/wh- distinction is preserved by many people (including me). College friends from the Northeast found it bizarre.

Miss Clarke is quite attractive, but if it's boobs you want, Natalie Dormer has her beat.

You know what I mean.

This is probably one of the few fora left where you have a substantial portion of users who remember the early days, outside of The Service of Which We Speak Not. The one that predated Google Groups.

Sad to see one of the last vestiges of the Old Web die.

Oh, who am I kidding? The modern version kicks the old one's ass seven ways to Sunday. I've been an Internet user for over twenty years. Yahoo was amazing at the time, but Moore's Law reigns supreme, and thank FSM for that. akebono.stanford.edu, anyone?

I like CM as much as the next Android fan, but I'm also capable of using Odin or RSD Lite to fix a phone that won't boot if it goes wrong, and CM certainly has variable support for specific models. The thing is, CM users will put up with the odd quirk here or there to get what they want, and if they really need the camera, or Bluetooth, or whatever to work, they'll just go back to a rooted stock image. Manufacturers don't have that luxury.

I've certainly noticed that many aircraft continue to be used for freight long after passenger airlines have moved on to more efficient vehicles. Why is fuel consumption so much less important in freight operations?

It was hellaciously slow, though.

So is Apple getting a cut of every merchant fee? That's the part I haven't figured out yet.

Internationally, this is true. Unless they've replaced the whole domestic fleet's seating in the past year, though, not the case there.

Interestingly, when you fly in first class, almost nobody reclines their seat.

It's a lot more than $10, but you're right.

I only fly first class for this reason. Interestingly, my experience has been that people in first class almost never recline their seats at all, and when they do so, they only go back a little.

Well, crap. Posting to undo accidental redundant mod. This is insightful.

There's a straightforward solution for this, a la the English football league balancings: if you keep winning, you get bumped up, and if you keep losing, you get bumped down. Requires an Xbox Live-style central matching mechanism, but it does make griefing less rewarding.

You just have to have a way to keep players at different levels from even seeing each other.