From TFB:

According to Recode, Sony is using hundreds of computers in Asia to execute a denial of service attack on sites where its pilfered data is available

So it's legal when Sony does it? How, exactly?

Stoned drivers have become an increasing concern since Washington voters legalized recreational use of marijuana

Right! Because that was the day people started smoking and driving! Nobody ever did it before legalization!

Oh man where do they find these people? Too damn funny.

Ah, I see. So the "costs spiraling out of control" part that you guys said would happen immediately and didn't has merely been postponed. I get it.

Because just as soon as the ACA passed, that's when hospitals started to be miserable places to be. Thanks Obama.

Oh, and it's spelled "succinctly". Why is spell check like kryptonite to Tea Partiers?

"I'm not good at my job, it's too hard! Make it easier for me!"

Every body up there gets us closer to the day when we regard space travel as normal and natural. We're not going to make it off this planet and out into space by sitting here and waiting for another cold war. Nor should we.

I think it's short sighted and dismissive to look at the Virgin crash as a death for tourism's sake. It is another death by another brave pioneer in the quest to reach the stars. I don't care who is footing the bill and what their reasons are.

Ah, hubris! One of my favorite old-timey sins.

You are of course correct. The signal must become analog at some point to make it into your head, and we have had the capability to capture analog signals since the dawn of the television age. You can crack open LCD panels and intercept signals for a more modern high tech version of this concept, of course.

But you are forgetting the other side of the equation. When when someone makes that statement - "THIS CANNOT EVER BE PIRATED" - you are throwing down the gauntlet. And invariably some bored teenager will say "oh really is that so?" and make them eat their words. Usually by the following Saturday. Yes you can do an analog capture but by the time you warm up your soldering gun some kid in the Netherlands will have already got the torrent up.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch a Blu-Ray movie on my Linux box.

They can put them in the room that used to hold all of Hotmail's servers. Plenty of space there.

I MUST OWN THEM ALL HRRRGRRBLLL DIGITAL HOARDING

*ahem*

Sorry about that. I tend to get a little foamy when I digitally hoard. Anyways, counter to your point it's fun (for me, YMMV of course) to have as many as you can get. Sometimes I'll fire up MAME and simply pick out old games at random. Some I remember, some I never have seen before. It's like being an archaeologist in your own past. I'll do the same thing with C64 archives and Amiga archives (look for Amiga Tosec). Scores of Atari 2600 games. All the video discs for Daphne (the videodisc game emulator). Dragon's Lair, anyone?

It's a wish come true for younger-me. I used to mow lawns just to save up and get an Atari cartridge. Now I can download Stella and inside of ten minutes have ALL of them. Fun! And yes, someday I will make a MAME cabinet. Oh yes. It will be glorious.

So basically TL;DR it's really fun to poke around with. And really, with the price of storage these days you can store the entire library of an entire genre on a few blu ray discs. A 3 Tb hard drive is about $100 at NewEgg. Why not have them?

Who made Microsoft the fucking internet police anyway?

My six year old son spends a lot of time on this learning-to-code site. I think his kindergarten teacher introduced him to it. It's probably the best thing I've ever seen for teaching kids coding.

Click on a starter project. Click the green flag to run the program. Click "See Inside" to look at the code in their editor. It's visual, easy to read, and quite elegant.

It really is a completely fantastic site. Brilliantly done.

scratch.mit.edu

Google.

I'm 100% serious. I learned C# that way and wound up writing the application code for a product that sells for about 5 million a year.

Here is your task, since you're interested in making games. Make a game of pong in C#. Use Google to look up how to do it. Start with a hello world program. Then make a program with a form. Then figure out how to paint to it. Keep going.

At the end of the pong game you'll know enough to be dangerous. Good luck!

The other Microsoft story, on the exact same page as Bill Gates telling you not to pursue money at all costs, and instead focus on making the world a better place?

Chinese Gov't Reveals Microsoft's Secret List of Android-Killer Patents

Right. We acquired all these patents to crush competition and make the phone market a monoculture. To make the world a better place.

Download this.

I have heard a rumor that there may be comics available on Bittorrent in this format.