Oh right, another little thing.

Why not? Why can't everyone be happy, or at least content and unafraid of what tomorrow is going to bring? Why do you think fear, suffering, anguish and unhappiness is necessary?

In the western world, we have the capital, technology and manpower to let literally every single human being on the earth live a comfortable life. Maybe not one in outright luxury, but at least decently-fed, clothed, housed and safe. But instead we insist on concentrating this enormous wealth in the hands of a very small group of people who have grown so jaded that they can't even appreciate the lives of insane luxury they lead, so they just want more more more.

Why is suffering necessary, when we have the means to end it?

You "HURF DURF FREEEEEDOM!" types are so cute when you get agitated :-)

A fully free market cannot work unless people act rationally. As long as people do not act rationally 100% of the time, there will be a need for rules and regulations, otherwise it turns into "dog eat dog" very quickly.

The very core principle of libertarianism is "every man for himself", which quickly becomes "fuck you, got mine". So yes, it is perfectly in line with the libertarian mindset to sell blatantly overpriced goods by false advertising, to naive people who don't know any better.

The most insane idea (which is held by Ron Paul, among others), is that we should abolish all regulations on pollution and environmental controls. If people downstream get sick, they can just sue, right? Because no environmental effect was ever subtle and long-term, right? Increased cancer risk for generations would never happen, right?

Once you enter the real world where you can't just do what you want nilly-willy without caring about consequences, we can have an enlightened and fruitful discussion. Until then, feel free to wallow in your fantasy of a world where grown-ups can't tell you what to do, and you can eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.

Oh wow, I certainly struck a randroid nerve there, didn't I?

The spirit of the free market is that every player is 100% informed and rational, and will therefore make the best possible decisions to their own benefit. Because everyone is 100% informed and rational, everyone acts in their own best interest, and everyone is happy.

To everyone living in the real world, it is blatantly obvious that this will never work in real life. No one is 100% informed and everyone acts irrationally to a certain degree. Marketers know this, and they exploit the hell out of it, including to sell $10 cables for 1000 times more than they're worth.

I don't live in the US, so I don't vote in your corrupt two-party system. I vote in my own country's fucked up system, thank you very much.

And yes, I am in fact a marxist. You should read up on what that means. I recommend starting with Thomas Piketty's brilliant book "Capital in the 21st century".

Because the cable that came with it is gray. Good point, though :-)

Speakers, listening room and good quality recordings are by far the most important parts. Everything else is irrelevant as long as it meets some very basic performance parameters, which basically everything these days does. It's literally a question of differences that can only be measured on very sensitive measuring equipment, and is completely inaudible to the human ear, even under ideal conditions.

Ironically, it is often exotically-constructed expensive audiophile products that fail to adhere to basic performance parameters, such as Ayre's idiotic no-feedback amplifiers.

With speakers, there are definite diminishing returns once you get beyond a couple thousand dollars for 99,9% of use cases. For recordings, well-mastered CD-quality audio is all you'll ever need (or surround mixes of equivalent quality, of course). But when it comes to acoustic treatment of the listening room, there is a hell of a lot you can do. Acoustics are so hard to get completely right.

Yes, and the profit margin is gigantic.

Welcome to wet dream of any Free Market libertarian.

I would buy brightly-colored cables. It makes it a lot easier to keep tabs on which patch cables go to specific devices. Yellow is the NAS, orange is the printer, gray is the Xbox, blue is the PC and white (because it goes along the baseboards) is the router. Very convenient.

The only benefits CST trackballs have is that they are reasonably rugged, and that it is impossible to remove the ball itself without disassembling the casing. Both are obvious benefits when it comes to users with limited motor skills.

In every other case, they're completely inferior in ergonomics. Because of the bearings, they are very much biased towards X and Y movements, diagonal movements tend to wander and feel stiffer than straight up/down or left/right. Completely inferior to a trackball with "floating" ruby bearing, like what Logitech and Kensington use.

I've been using a Kensington Slimblade trackball for a while, and I honestly consider it one of the best pointing devices ever made. The scroll function takes a little while to get used to, but it's probably the best implementation of a scroll "wheel" on any trackball.

Out of the box on Linux, the top left button is middle click and the top right is "back". I switch these and add a nice acceleration curve with a custom XInput config. It allows minute movements while retaining the ability to flick right across my 2560x1440 monitor in one finger movement.

The config is as follows:
/usr/bin/xinput set-ptr-feedback "Kensington Kensington Slimblade Trackball" 0 18 10 &
/usr/bin/xinput --set-prop "Kensington Kensington Slimblade Trackball" "Device Accel Profile" 2 &
/usr/bin/xinput --set-prop "Kensington Kensington Slimblade Trackball" "Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration" 3 &
/usr/bin/xinput set-button-map "Kensington Kensington Slimblade Trackball" 1 8 3 4 5 6 7 2 9 10 11 12

The first line sets the acceleration curve, the second sets polynomial acceleration, the third adds deceleration at low speeds and the fourth remaps the buttons. All of the possible tweaks are detailed here: http://www.x.org/wiki/Developm...

I am continually annoyed that Windows does not let me set per-device acceleration settings, when it is relatively easy on *nix systems with a bit of tweaking.

It took a hell of a long time for USB keyboards to be actually usable on x86 PCs. For the longest time, BIOS configuration and boot loader interaction was impossible, since the keyboard wouldn't be initialized until you hit the actual OS. Keyboards with built-in USB hubs were the worst.

I'm mostly into kettlebells and olympic lifting myself, but I'll definitely second the statement that the first couple of months are absolutely amazing. Your endorphin levels will be through the roof, it feels so good.

I've been branching out into trying some yoga/mobility classes as well. That shit is tough.

The surfing, jiu-jitsu fighting, globetrotting etc. founder of my martial arts/crossfit club is a geek. The scoring system we use for competitions is something he cooked up in an afternoon. We also have an MMA fighter who's a banker and a surprisingly large amount of our members are university students. Psychology, medicine, and a couple of law students too.

In fact, may people in Germany are classified as "working poor", since even their full-time job is not enough to earn them a living wage, they have to receive welfare payments as well.

People get bent totally out of line about the alleged violence against women, which literally only exists in the game because you can be violent against anyone, the game itself doesn't discriminate at all. At one point you can save a woman from baby boomer cultist cannibals as one character, while as another character you can kidnap people and deliver them to said cannibals. But never any single women, it's always either a couple or a man. Rockstar knew what lines couldn't be crossed, and they stayed within them.

On the other hand, there is a horribly graphic torture scene including teeth-pulling, electric shock and threats of being burned alive. But apparently that wasn't enough to get the game banned, completely untrue allegations had to be made up instead.

I work for a Danish IPTV provider, and we do the same thing. Everything is recorded and kept for at least 7 days, so our customers can watch whenever they want. It's proven to be extremely popular.