Ever played Asteroids? If you haven't played it on the original arcade machine, chances are you're missing out on a large part of the experience because it runs on a vector monitor. Those beautiful glowing bullets simply don't show up on raster hardware in close to the same way. Same can be said for Star Wars - the sit-down vector monitor game was incredible.

I'm speaking as someone who has an arcade cabinet running MAME, and who regularly uses emulators on a Mac as well. I'm not perfectionist for a lot of the standard stuff, but I do appreciate that in some cases there are material differences to the real thing.

End goal: change the constitution. We need a start. It's easy to see how hard this will be and to give up early, but some of us feel the imperative to fight for it. We can change things. The vast will of the masses (corporation political donations are not equivalent to the free speech we enjoy as individuals) needs to be strategically gathered. Critical mass could take decades, as with things like gay marriage.

Spammers or hackers could get your IP turned off. But I'd do it anyway to be helpful.

Thanks. I understand and appreciate where you are coming from.

As a founder of the EFF, I do stand up for the small consumers vs. the wealthy and powerful. There is no perfect solution.

When you make the rules, you are right when you're wrong.

I've got a couple of Comcast DVRs instead of cable boxes... with a Cable box, you should be able to power off when not in use, but with a DVR, this could be a bit trickier... I suppose it could do some smart scheduling where it turns itself off unless actively recording shows - keep a sub-section with scheduling info running so it knows to spin up a few minutes before recording a show...

Still, I should think that DVR boxes on a per-box basis would be a bigger issue than regular cable boxes.

As for most electricity in the home? For me, the electric tumble drier and the electric oven/range (some day, I hope to replace with gas) would get second billing, then my computers / server.

Dear Microsoft,

Dear gods, please catch a ride on the clue train. Businesses don't want Windows 8 - the retraining necessary is just too costly, and all the cool features involving touch are useless for the cube farm drones.

So just stop your stupid shit, realize the Windows 7 is your nex XP, make sure that Windows 9 undoes a lot of the silly bullshit, and maybe you won't completely jump the shark.

Um also while I (fail to) have your attention - the Ribbon is still stupid. Stop wasting my screen real estate and go back to proper menus. // yeah I know it's a pipe dream, but I needed to rant and rage.

I'm with you 100%.

I am one of those "resisters" who still buys DVDs and only recently even started considering Blu-Rays.

I like Netflix enough, but for instance, they took the original Cosmos out of their lineup just before the series reboot - no warning, just FOOM... "HEY! I was WATCHING THAT"

I was also catching up on season 7.2 of Dr. Who ... Concast had them free OnDemand just around the time of the big seacon finale..to get folks caught up.

Except when I convinced my partner that it was ok to watch again because Amy Pond was gond (she HATED her so much she stopped watching) ... and we decided to have a Dr.Who catchup marathon... And it was gone.

The only way my DVDs disappear is if I'm stupid and loan them to friends (never again)... Yeah, I risk losing them physically, but that's why I stick with DVD - because I can easily make backup ISOs in a reasonable time and can store my whole collection in case of disaster. (Yeah, drive space is cheap, but Blu-Ray takes up SO MUCH more space)

Anyway, agreed... unless my physical DVDs are lost/stolen/damaged, I can watch/rewatch whenever I want without worrying whether some lawsuit /dispute over rights caused some jerkbag publisher to remove the stream.

Smart for who? Not for the employee.

Unless flying regularly is clearly stated in your contract (and I mean regularly, not 'you may be asked to travel from time to time'), the company is inconveniencing you over and above your normal duties, and causing actual discomfort in the case of many economy flights. You ask for decent standards or refuse.

I'm astonished to see so many people defend this. For flights of two or three hours, fine. For anything longer - absolutely not.

Cheers,
Ian

I came out on the music reward scale at 32, well below their mean of 50. However, I spent fifteen years learning to play, I write for myself and have also published an album.

I don't use music as wallpaper, which is very much what the questions seemed geared around. Also questions like "Music calms me (agree 1-5)" - well, which music? Some of it very much does not calm me, and some quite definitely does.

Not sure that data collected by the questionairre wil be useful in drawing the right conclusions.

I took a $10,000 a year paycut when I left my previous employer to come to work for my current company... because I felt that I'd be much happier/have a better quality of work-life (old job was starting to destroy my soul / passion for programming)

they wanted to hire me at my previous salary, but it was just not possible under their budgets/etc.

I took the job anyway because I felt their culture and my work quality of life would jsut be a great match.

Now, a couple years later, I've more than made up the difference in pay (proved my worth and the $$$ got found) and am just stupidly happy with this job.

It's actually true that the worst days at my current job are still better than most of the best days for the last 3 years of my previous one.

Basically, I've tried to always value happiness more than pure financial gain, and I've reaped the rewards of "love what you do for a living and you'll never ~work~ another day in your life".

Good Luck

I have three words to explain why these companies avoid cities: Quality of Life

Many of my friends work in and around Washington DC, and I hear horror stories about commute times and traffic jams. I moved down here from nowheresville Western MA where my commute was 20 minutes when there was no traffic and maybe 4o to an hour if there was and that sucked... but friends of mine down here? they're regularly looking at 2 hours + and anyone who wants to live close enough to only have an hour? yeah well, half a million might buy you a postage stamp to live on....

I telecommute today (live in VA and still work for a company in MA) and I tell you my quality of life is tenfold better not having to deal with commuting to/from the office and all the stress it caused. and yes, I know my piddly 20-60 minute commute is nothing compared to what a lot of folks put up with.

Big Cities are more hassle than they're worth for the most part

So, when the FCC re-rules ISPs as Common Carriers, the real good news is that means that 6 strikes rules and other copyright stuff is out the window... after all, a big part of common carrier status is taht you are exempt from having any responsibility for controlling the content you're carrying - so you can't be sued by a copyright owner because user susy q used your infrastructure to share/copy movie x.

(Ok, so I bet they still WILL do crap like that because they're so far in bed with copyright owners... HHHMMM COMCAST/NBC? but it would be nice to stop them having their cake and eating it too... one can dream)

I really am happy that the FCC and the Obama administration "get it" - the Internet has become vital to our economy and a free, fair, open Internet is key to innovation and continued growth. If the 'net were allowed to become an expensive toll road, it would only feed the pockets of the already wealthy whilst simultaneously raising the barrier to entry for anything new/innovative.

Well, indeed, with the way things are today, you may have a point. /looks nervously over shoulder

They do have test servers, but I'm talking about just researching the bot issue - looking up web sites that discussed technical information that maybe WOW would consider "cheat sites" -

Warcraft wasn't using VAC obviously, but I was trying to give an example of researching information that may be on sites that if you looked at my DNS, you might assume I was cheating - In other words: DNS doesn't in and of itself tell the actual story.