>>She simply dislikes the notion that the gov't could turn off her AC

Wow, I didn't realize that the California government had bought out Pacific Gas and Electric. Where'd they get the money for that?

I don't have the power to fire anyone. At least torture is fun.

This is not what you asked for, but it is an article summarizing the results of a number of studies (with references) plus the article writer's own personal experience.

Here is a different study that looked at the differences between complex interruptions and simple interruptions during the execution of a complex task. Bear in mind that the "complex task" was nowhere near as complex as various programming tasks can be. They found a complex task interrupted by a simple task generally cost about 4 minutes to get back into the task, and a complex task interrupted by another complex task took close to 8 minutes to get back into the task. An interesting affect they noted, however, was that when a complex task was interrupted by another complex task, when the person went back to the main task they made fewer errors for a time. That was not the case for a simple interruption.

and words shift in meaning all the time. the way they spoke in 1960, 1910, 1860... the meanings of words you use today as they were in 1960, 1910, 1860... its completely fluid and outside of anyone's control

so why do you fucking care so much about a fucking word?

"hacking" has evolved to have different meanings. big fucking deal

for whatever bizarre reason, you have a huge attachment to the meaning of "hacking"

whatever, drama queen. get a life

Congratulations! You've just committed the well known (though still often used) fallacy known as "Poisoning the Well".

Just because the National Post is a dirt-bag organization (I have no idea if they are or aren't, just making a point) does not have any bearing on the validity of their statements.

It does not mean you can dismiss their statements out of hand, it simply means you need to approach their "facts" with a healthy dose of skepticism. The less trustworthy they are, the bigger your dose. ;)

This same fallacy is often committed on Slashdot with regards to Fox News. In other forums this happens with CNN and MS-NBC or the BBC, or just about any newspaper or news magazine or news organization. Having a bias does not invalidate the arguments at all, and merely claiming that they have a bias does not invalidate any of their arguments either. It is disingenuous to dismiss an argument out of hand for no reason other than the source of the argument.

If I had mod points, I'd have a hard time deciding whether to mod you Funny or Insightful! I agree 100%.

I work on cars sometimes as a hobby, but I'm sure I'd soon come to hate it if I had to do it for a living. It can be fun when you don't care if it's still not running at the end of the day, and you can come back to it tomorrow, or next weekend, or whenever.

But when you HAVE to do it, and QUICKLY, because the user/driver is complaining because they can't work/get to work until you get their email/starter fixed, and there are 10 more frustrated people in line behind them, it can eventually become somewhat of a drag. And you start to REALLY question why software/car companies have to make such simple things so damn much work to fix! (Seriously, though, why do they? I'd think car manufacturers, at least, could save some money on warranty work by designing cars to be more serviceable. Dell IMO does quite a good job with this.)

I got my pass, and my photo pass with Mr. Nimoy and Brent Spiner. :)

Telling the truth is not libel. Giving the vendor advanced notice about announcing a vulnerability is not blackmail or extortion (in fact, its a public service). Furthermore, libel is not a criminal matter. Please reply with rationality, and not kneejerk-fear in the future.

He's especially suspicious because he's dead.

And have you seen the relative difference in quality for Nintendo DS and Sony PSP games versus the ones for the phones?

When I was a kid my parents would not buy me any game or toy that featured an element of violence. No GI Joe, no shoot-em-up video games, etc.

What I got was stuff like Legos, and the freedom to build all kinds of stuff in garage using my Dad's tools and scraps of wood, and we learned to program in BASIC on the computer. Its not surprising that I made all kinds of guns, missile-toting spaceships, and shooting games, etc etc, but at least I had to get creative to do it. Somewhere along the way I learned to enjoy the process more than the outcome.

Once I had my own earning power I was free to buy whatever I wanted (and it was at 16 when I already had a job making 3x any of my peers doing computer work at a local company).

This is testing just one part of the site (streaming video in NZ no less!), so you can't make wild generalizations based on those numbers if you expect any accuracy at all. You're not even going to get a 'rough' estimation.

For example, viewmorepics.myspace.com might do X req/s duting peak and home.myspace.com, www.myspace.com or music.myspace.com might do something wildly different because they have completely different traffic patterns.

No, the scarcity comes from one entity buying all available resources and hording them. That's artificial.

The capitol of Venezuela also happens to have the highest per capita murder rate in the world. They just seem to be following the rest of the world...if you cant blame someone blame video games and anyone who doesnt want to be one of those statistics knows not to blame Chavez's regime.

That completely depends on your needs. This user wants to do what he wants with his phone, not what the manufacturer graciously allows him to do (otherwise, why get a smartphone?). Because of that, Android is an infinitely better choice than iPhone. The UI is about equal (although less pretty), and while people may bemoan the lack of apps, 95% of the apps I've seen on the iPhone are useless. Thus, for my requirements (and yes, I know the mainstream user base doesn't share them. I don't care, as they are not me), Android is light-years ahead of the iPhone.