That's true to a degree. Heroes need to be challenged on par with their abilities. Superman will never be meaningfully threatened by anything, and Thor's opponents will always ancient, magical beings since anyone from Iron Man's rogues gallery would be instant toast against him.
But there had never been a movie like the Avengers before, and I'd like to put forth that Captain America 2 made a wonderful pivot to being as much an espionage thriller as a super hero movie.

Cap is very much a squad level leader. He knows what's going on in the moment and how to direct others to greatest good. He spent years in combat and he literally never tires, so he's always on the front line. In the Avengers movie, he took charge of keeping civilians safe and made sure each of the others was doing the most good.

And before it's asked, Hawkeye was acting as a spotter for Iron Man and the ground team and the Widow ultimately went on a stealth mission after helping Cap at first. No one was useless.

They're completely different continuities separated by an unfortunately short period of time. I think the Raimi movies are vastly better and more watchable and that Andrew Garfield was the worst possible choice they could've made, but I suspect some of that is generational.

Spidey should be the journeyman hero. He does have great powers. He's much stronger and faster than Captain America, and possessed of the same courage and sense of responsibility. He doesn't have experience or skills at first. He never properly learns to fight, but if you follow his journey long enough, he becomes the guy who has seen absolutely everything and not only that, had to DEAL with absolutely everything because whatever it is Spidey is doing isn't big enough to get Avengers out of the mansion, or because the Fantastic Four is out of town, or because it's two blocks out of Hell's Kitchen and Daredevil doesn't care.

Regarding who was doing what where during the Captain America movies:

Thor was battling giants in the rest of the Nine Realms during the first Captain America movie and he was presumably restoring order to them, or perhaps helping to clean up London, during the second. No one on Earth, with the possible exception of Jane Foster, has a way to directly contact Thor.
During Winter Soldier, which only took place over the course of a few days, Cap was essentially a fugitive. Stark had recently destroyed his armor collection and in any case he's primarily a resident of the West Coast who has an antagonistic relationship with his dad's favorite fossil. Hawkeye clearly wasn't in town and I doubt anyone would've wanted the Hulk that close to the US Capitol or Pentagon, even given the circumstances.

A bigger question in my mind relates to the current of the MCU with regard of the impact Hydra and AIM have clearly had on US and worldwide political, intelligence and military operations. Two US Senators were revealed to be working for Hydra and the sitting Vice President was working for AIM. A Hydra associate murdered another US Senator in season 2 of Agents of SHIELD and Hydra is also responsible for destroying SHIELD's 40+ story HQ *and* dropping three (presumably multi-billion dollar) aircraft carrier-size vehicles into the Potomac. I am thinking that the USA of the Marvel Cinematic Universe should be making the response to 9/11 look like another fine afternoon in Mayberry in comparison.

I want to see Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He's part of the living world created by Marvel comics, and the Daily Bugle needs to be part of the skyline, even if it's just background.

Spider-Man is also too much a tentpole character to live in the ensemble world that has been created in the Marvel Universe. I don't want it to become all Spidey all the time (as Fox has done with Wolverine in the X-Men movies). We don't even need an origin because it's been done. Just ground him in the world, establish that Cap and Iron Man are in that same world, that Nick Fury is keeping his eye on Spidey's exploits, and have him off to his own super-powered adventures.

In five years, if Sony actually manages to not fuck it up this time, bring him back as the guy who has seen twice as much of everything as Captain America, a science bro on par with Banner and Stark.

That would be just fine.

Well, it could be. That's not necessarily a good idea.

I did work under someone once who thought the future of web hosting would be to store all data in compressed blobs in databases. He had read somewhere that databases were faster than filesystems, and some other nonsense that made it sound like a good idea. Luckily, he never tried to implement it.

I wouldn't read too much into the eel's behavior. There are too many variables that we can't confirm. They could have faced towards you out of coincidence; movement near you; your movement; changes in the sign; etc, etc, etc...

I think it's interesting that your flash set off the sensor. If you don't mind me asking, where is the aquarium?

I've noticed other odd things in the right conditions. Like there is a state park near here that has an underwater viewing area. My prescription sunglasses are polarized, so when I've gone into the tank, I could see distortions in some of the windows. Without the polarization, you can't see it.

I've only worn them in there because it's bright just outside. I wore them into the darker area because I need glasses to see, and it was still bright enough to not be stumbling around in the dark. Most people take off their sunglasses in there.

AMD doesn't have a CPU with that level of performance with appropriate TDP.

The powershell stuff installs the Chocolatey.org software repository on a client. It's also entirely readable as pseudocode.

Once it's installed, it's like have ports or apt, but on a Windows machine.

I can and have donated directly to web sites or content publishers whom I choose to support. I don't owe anyone else anything, least of all the opportunity to partake of their malware vectors.

Run this command from the named Administrator account:
@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin

Add this to the machine startup script or acceptable alternative of your choosing.
choco install flashplayeractivex
choco install flashplayerplugin

Flash is now less retarded.

Also, the site for direct download of Flash installers is: http://www.adobe.com/products/...
And the sad thing is I typed that shit out from memory because it is etched in my brain at this point.

I never really thought about them being any different. I always thought of them as being the same.

It looks like Suzuki and Honda have both ATVs and UTVs. I found on another site the major difference is the seating arrangement (side-by-side for UTV). The UTV can have seatbelts, and have motorcycle type controls rather than golfcart/car type controls.

I've always thought about it by engine and general style. Well, I learned something today. :)

What I said before about seeing them still applies. When I lived in a rural area, I saw people riding ATVs on the road, but they would also get pulled over if a cop saw them. I got pulled over a few times riding a street/trail bike, even though it had all the required equipment, license plate, and I had (and have) a motorcycle endorsement. Because of the gearing, it had lots of torque, but maxed out at 60mph.

It looks like they plan to do the cooler thing, the printed body on a performance rolling chassis. It'll probably be looking at them again in a few years.

The problem is, it looks like they're trying to sell it as a car, when it's really just another glorified golfcarts.

It's funny that you mentioned Florida, since that's where I am at the moment. I'm only quoting parts of the laws, so this doesn't become a huge message. You can follow the links to read the rest of the statute and other relevant statutes if you want.

Golf carts can only drive on roads in certain communities and only in certain circumstances.
See Florida Statute 316.212

316.212 Operation of golf carts on certain roadways.â"The operation of a golf cart upon the public roads or streets of this state is prohibited except as provided herein:

The "Local Motors" vehicles would appear to be classified in Florida as LSV (Low Speed Vehicles). They're covered by Florida Statute 316.2122

316.2122 Operation of a low-speed vehicle or mini truck on certain roadways.â"The operation of a low-speed vehicle as defined in s. 320.01 or a mini truck as defined in s. 320.01 on any road is authorized with the following restrictions:
(1)âfA low-speed vehicle or mini truck may be operated only on streets where the posted speed limit is 35 miles per hour or less. This does not prohibit a low-speed vehicle or mini truck from crossing a road or street at an intersection where the road or street has a posted speed limit of more than 35 miles per hour.
[snip]

The UTV is classified here as an ATV (All Terrain Vehicle), and covered by Florida Statute 316.2074.

316.2074(5) Except as provided in this section, an all-terrain vehicle may not be operated upon the public roads, streets, or highways of this state, except as otherwise permitted by the managing state or federal agency.

That's not to say people don't drive them on the road. I've seen them do it. They're breaking the law, and if the police are so inclined, they will be more than happy to give you a stack of tickets.

I've seen both golfcarts and various designs of ATVs used in a lot of places. A agree, they are popular for both industry and off-road applications. But with them implying it's a car it's a problem.

Honestly, it wouldn't be safe to drive any real distance in most metro areas in Florida, if it is accepted for road use as a LSV.

For example, I can't think of any routes that you could safely use to get from downtown Tampa to downtown St. Petersburg. You can't cross any of the bridges in that car, because they don't go fast enough. It would be virtually impossible to even find a route where you wouldn't be under the speed limit and significantly under the average speed.

Even downtown St. Petersburg to downtown Clearwater would be risky at best.

Ya, but golf carts aren't so hot driving across town. I'd think it would be a rather limited market that would want to pay over $8,000 for a golf cart that you can't carry golf clubs in. Generally, I'd assume Slashdot readers don't fall into that niche. $8K on a gaming machine, maybe. $8K to leave your house? No way. :)