I have mod points, and it's just not worth the trouble to move all these worthless 0's down to -1's. Can't you all please just not bother to type such crap?

Anon, you have put that very well, though harshly. When I first heard someone say "giff format," I knew right away what they meant, and that they were simply saying it wrong.

I'm late to this discussion, has the correct of pronunciation of GIF been agreed on yet? The soft g is clearly correct. I will never use the hard 'g' version, and, never use either version as a verb. That's just dumb.

Pardon my pedantry, but the curve made by a hanging powerline is a catenary, which is a beautiful curve and worthy of its own study!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caternary
Otherwise I agree with your comments in this thread completely.

I wouldn't bet money on the native software advantage always being significant. Just compare what a browser tab can load and run now with five years ago, or say 15 years ago over dialup.

I'm too lazy to look up a reference, but the american summer school break has nothing to do with working in the fields; it was created more by the common practice of fleeing the summer heat in the east coast cities.

I just keep using seamonkey, so am basically still using netscape 3.05 or so. I actually bought it, still have the t-shirt.

Nope, whether you enjoy the night or whatever, our species is simply not nocturnal. That's simply a matter of choice. No one is a "morning person" or a "night person," we're all genetically conditioned to sleep at night and move around during the day. That said, I also love the wee hours of the morning, but get up well before sunrise because early morning is the greatest, too. Then I eat a huge meal around noon and sleep for a few hours, because I'm a carnivore by default.

Well, opinions differ. I watched that last transit on a cheapo telescope with a sun filter and would rank it very high as an astronomical experience. The perfect circle of venus moving across the sun, the speed of movement, just knowing what you were looking at was happening RIGHT NOW, blew me away. But I paid nothing, it was visible where I live. I wouldn't travel halfway across the world for a total eclipse, probably wouldn't do so to see another transit of venus, either. So, it's pretty cool, if you can watch it from your backyard.

Of course, as far as she's concerned, having to hit more than one button to turn on her computer is just strange and a little silly. She might very reasonably think, "That's stupid, is there some OTHER time you'd want the computer on, but the monitor off? Or the monitor on but not the computer?" This would be (to her) like having to turn your television on, and then make sure you turned on the screen. And, remembered to turn on the speakers, too.

There's nothing unreasonable about her reaction, in fact, having all these separate power buttons is the real loser idea. Most of us here just take it for granted when it is really pretty stupid.