Nicely said!

Replying to undo accidental moderation. This is a great post.

Ironically, Verizon sold off their North Carolina services to a Connecticut based company (Frontier).

Those were the days! I still have links in my bookmarks to his "Troll Zoo".

You can pass over ads in printed media or online. On TV or radio it eats up your time.

Nah, I'm pushing 50 :) School decades ago.

Hey man, he saved one whole byte doing that.

So I've been in meetings all day, then finally get home and I saw this story on /.'s feed. I thought, "ah, it'll be good for some immature homo jokes"

Thank you, /., you did not disappoint. I'm crying from laughing so hard at the from the inane, puerile jokes that I seek out at times likes these.
If you don't like that, well fuck you, too.

That's not quite backed up by history. He was pretty darn fast for the first three books, but then it all kind of fell apart. Personally I would say that the first three are very equivalent in terms of quality and I (again, IMHO) continue to enjoy them over several rereads. I have not had any inclination to reread Feast or Dance, though I've had other people tell me that reading them back-to-back was more fulfilling than with a six year gap! My introduction to the series was through the Daenerys chapters from AGOT published as a Novella in Asimov's. I've been reading the other books as soon as they came out, so my perspective is perhaps different from someone who got their first read through in in larger chunks.

Book 1 (AGOT) -- 1996
Book 2 (ACOS) -- 1998 (2 yr)
Book 3 (ASOS) -- 2000 (2 yr)
Book 4 (AFFC) -- 2005 (5 yr)
Book 5 (ADWD) -- 2011 (6yr)
Book 6 (TWOW) -- ?? (at least 5yr)

I definitely agree that he's killed off most of his interesting and fun characters, introduced a bunch of boring plotlines ("I am Darkstar--and I am of the night--and I'm mysterious and cool!"), and written himself into an awkward place!

It's been years since I read the entire Dune series as a teenager (I've subsequently reread the first several times), but I remember enjoying God Emperor more than any book other than Dune. I can't say I remember much about it, but given your post, I'm inclined to go back and reread the rest.

That's pretty much exactly what Jordan did.

So that was at least five years ago. I'm not a big fan of the macabre speculation around his health and calculating the odds of his dying vs finishing the series first, but what does seem clear is that he has either written himsef into a wall and doesn't know where to go or he's just bored with writing the books. Can't say I blame him on either side. If I could build a turret on my house, buy a customized Tesla, and fly around the world to meet legions of fans, I would probably be doing that instead too!

I've read other articles that discuss a similar modification that causes mosquito offspring to be almost entirely male. This has two huge advantages. First, male mosquitos don't bite. Second, after several generations, there is a greatly reduced female population which causes the overall population of mosquitos to crash.

Mosquitos aren't a keystone species in any ecosystem where they live. They aren't the only (or even primary) insect that pollinates a certain plant (e.g., honeybees and almonds). They aren't the only food source for other species. They're just kind of...there...and a huge nuisance for people! If they disappear, other insects will easily whatever small void they leave--at least that's the theory!

I say eradicate the damn things! And get rid of ticks next!

I don't understand the point of your post at all? Yes, other nations have games that are similar to Chess (and that are genetically related to Chess--think 4th cousins twice removed) but that are not Chess and are not even called Chess!

Chess != Shogi != Shatranj != etc...

I was expecting this to be about slashdot.

PGP/GPG is much easier to use these days than it was in the 90's. Plugins exist for many mail clients that do the heavy lifting in the background.

Friends and family are surely tired of my tinfoil hat, they just do not seem to care about their privacy. Many say the "I have nothing to hide" line.