Your post reminds me of this Seanbaby quote: [quote]You're only allowed to bring three ounces of liquid on a plane. Kind of. You might have a four-ounce bottle of toothpaste that's almost empty, but airport security guards are so stupid they're not allowed to do that kind of math. This is a problem, but I have an idea. Since we don't have enough money to hire dentists to inspect everyone's toothpaste, we should put a chimpanzee at each checkpoint. Then, every passenger gets to select two items from their bags to carry into battle against the chimp. This will not only quickly identify each commuter's two best weapons, but if they choose toothpaste, hold on, there's something up with this guy's toothpaste.[/quote] It's all so ridiculous... All of this is designed, essentially, to prevent "another 9/11". But another 9/11 was already impossible on 9/11/01, as proven by the fact that the fourth plane did not hit its target. Once ordinary people realized what was going on, they were essentially willing to die rather than allow another plane to get used as a missile. It takes a clever idea to succeed in terror, and those clever ideas tend to only work once.

Most terrorists are pretty stupid. But in the rare cases when they are clever, we're going to be too busy inspecting the shoes of elderly travelers to notice that something is up.

>>ad blocker can't do anything about those

They do though. By blocking the ads, they speed up the page load time, which helps you to get through all 17 pages (to read a 200 word article) in a shorter time. Plus, the lack of distracting flashing objects also reduces the total time required to read the article.

>>Please don't think I'm being egotistical

You didn't sound that way to me. I appreciated your honesty, and I congratulate you on finding something that works for you. I'm in a pretty similar boat - I'm 38 and just starting to feel like I really need to change my diet. Your story was inspirational to me, so thanks.

Did you read TFA? It's intent is clearly to be humorous, not analytical. Perhaps posting it here was inappropriate, but the article itself is harmless, and certainly not trying to masquerade as journalism.

Your post is another worthless piece of what passes for a 5 point "informative" comment these days.

>> I think a LOT of this has to do with so many of today's kids not KNOWING what good sound reproduction CAN sound like.

Ah.... kids these days, with their myfaces and their spacebooks!

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I do think it's a bit odd that your anecdote tends to disprove your assertion. You didn't require any special training to know that the high end stereo sounded good. So shouldn't today's kids be similarly able to discern quality?

I think that a good number of people really do have a poor innate ability to discern more accurate sound reproduction. Another group has that ability, if they develop it, and a third type can tell the difference without any previous exposure.

>>Either that says what it says or it doesn't.

The article does not explicitly state how many hours were spent, so I suppose we're both making assumptions. It's possible that they really did spend an inordinate amount of time on it. But I just didn't get that sense from the article. Yes, months passed without resolution, but the sense I got was that Collins and wife had done little more than make a few phone calls. It just didn't seem like a huge deal to me. >>All I was suggesting was that the guy is wasting too much of his life complaining about (1) something that he can't change and (2) something that probably isn't worth the trouble of bothering with anyway. But he can change it. That's why I found your post so puzzling. Yeah, it's going to end up taking months for it to happen, but now that he's gotten some press on it, I expect that the issue will land on the desk of someone who can fix it. >>You do seem to be taking this very personally. No, like I said, I'm curious about what motivated you to post what you did, but it seems like you've got no insight for me there. I have nothing against you.

I did read TFA. So you've made another incorrect assumption, in the form of a snotty accusation. Once again - animosity. Did you mommy just not hug you enough, or what?

TFA said nothing to indicate that he spent a significant portion of his time on this over the months the dispute lasted, which is what "spending months" means. If I spend 15 minutes a day brushing my teeth over the last 30 years, did I just spend 30 years brushing my teeth? Obviously not. So why exaggerate things? Why distort the facts? What axe are you grinding here? It's clear that this story set off some feelings of rage or inadequacy in you, and I'm just curious to know more about that. I find your impotent flailing to be fascinating. Why do you do what you do, Mr. Troll?

What makes you think that he didn't do all of the things you said? Even if he had his music up on a dozen sites, it still makes sense for him to want access to MySpace's rather large audience.

And saying that he was "spending months" on this is equally silly. His wife made a few phone calls. I think they probably took a few minutes out of their battle against MySpace to go to the bathroom and tend to other business.

And characterizing him as "wining"... why? I just don't get it. Why the animosity? I really have no idea what motivates a person to make a senseless and mean-spirited post like yours.

Speaking of Orwellian, you're a fascist. No one is rioting. That's a lie that you just made up. I've read several accounts of what has been going on, and I find nothing about damage or what I would call a "riot". What the protesters are accused of is "unlawful assembly", but I've also found nothing about what makes the gathering unlawful. So that makes you a fascist who hates our constitution and our freedoms, in my book.

It doesn't matter what they think they are accomplishing. They have a first amendment right to protest, and shooting them with pain cannons seems to fly in the face of that right. If someone breaks a window, obviously that person should be arrested, but you can't arrest people for crimes that you think they might be about to commit when there is no evidence that any crime is imminent. And you can't take away the first amendment rights of most of the crowd just because it might contain a few trouble-makers.

As to what they might be trying to accomplish, you don't seem to have thought about it too hard. It doesn't take much research to learn that the nature of the G20 organization is undemocratic. How does a country get represented in these talks? It's by invitation only. Poor countries are not welcome at these talks. Neither are poor people.

This meeting is simply the rich people who run the world getting together outside of the formal bounds of government to decide how the world will be run in order to protect their interests. The world's poor people will not be represented.

I think that might have something to do with why people are protesting. So what do you suppose that you were accomplishing with your slanderous tales of "riots" and "punks"? Besides being a fascist, I mean.

"It seems Firefox is going more and more to the way of grandma-understands-too."

My grandmother was a grandmother, you insensitive clod! Why shouldn't she understand too? Just because she began life as a humble nerf-herder does not mean that people don't want her money, and she spends a lot on qvc.com, if she can figure out how to get to it. There's a lot more grandmas in the world than /. readers.

What it really comes down to is this: if this is truly a more "intuitive" UI, then it will be used all over. If not, it will die out. It seems a bit early to tell for certain, although I'm sure a bunch of MS useability folks disagree.

I trust that the good people of the mozilla foundation will include a way to switch to the "classic" UI for those of us who hate change.

>>When has Google sued or threatened to sue anyone over patent violations?

They haven't... yet. But Google hasn't been around long, either. Most 10 year olds have never driven a car. Doesn't mean they won't ever do so.

The road to evil has many steps. Each of them seems unfortunate, but necessary and minor. And then one day you look up and you are smack dab in the middle of Eviltown, USA.

Have you learned nothing from the Star Wars PT? ;)

First off, I think you meant to say that my point was moot, not mute. I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just pointing that out so that some future jerkwad doesn't take you to task over it.

As to the funding issue, there's a huge difference between congress voting to start a war, and congress voting to fund a war. Once the war has begun, if congress votes not to fund it, then the opposition says that they are abandoning our troops, leaving them to die without adequate supplies. Nearly any politician will vote to continue funding so as not to look unpatriotic. But if the was has not yet started, then voting against it makes that same politician look like a champion of peace.

As to the timing of the vote to authorize military action in Iraq, please note that I said "essentially after the fact". I think that this is valid, because Bush moved thousands of troops to places like Kuwait and Qatar at least 2 months before congress voted, making it clear that he was going in no matter what congress said. Also, there were CIA special forces teams inside Iraq as early as July 02. So in many ways, the war had started, although the full scale invasion had not yet begun.

I would argue that the constitution didn't fail so much as it was simply ignored. The constitution says that only congress can declare war. Everyone seems to be pretty much in agreement on the fact that our military adventures in Iraq are a war. Yet congress did not declare it. Congress "authorized" it, essentially after the fact.

The intent of the founding fathers is pretty clear - no one man has the power to start a war. And yet for the last 50 years or so, this part of the constitution has been flagrantly ignored. Can you imagine if Bush had been required to get congress to pass a declaration of war? It's possible that we would not have attacked Iraq at all.

My point in saying all this is that I do believe that Bush and his administration deserve sole blame for the Iraq war. Whatever figure you choose to believe as to the cost of the war, it was certainly expensive. What with the near collapse of our economy, and other issues like global warming, we'd be a lot better off if we were somewhere close to a trillion less in the hole financially. If we had spent some or all of that money developing new greener energy technologies, things would look a lot better right now. But we spent it on a big murderous camping trip in the desert.

You raise some interesting points here, my anonymous cowardly friend, and your logic is sound enough. But I think you are wrong.

I'm speaking as one of those introverted, video-game-playing depressed people. I identify very much with your comments. But, I don't think you've linked introversion and depression closely enough. The way you word things, it sounds like introverts and extroverts are equally likely to get depressed. I just don't think that's the case. I have no science or numbers to back that up, but since your assertions are anecdotal as well, I guess I'm on firm enough ground.

I'm not saying that extroverts don't get sad. They do. But they are so involved in the lives of others that they have far less time to sit and ponder how fucked up life is. And it's not all vapid nightclubbers who are extroverts. Extroverts could be at a church group, smoking crack with their crackhead buddies, or maybe just getting crazy with their LARP friends. The point is that they are not so self-centered. They don't sit in their batcave brooding for 4 or 5 hours a night. They are emotionally involved with and invested in the lives of at least a few other people.

When you do that, you realize that your problems are not the center of the world. When you have a large circle of friends, you have perspective. There's always some triumph or tragedy going on. The cyclical nature of the univers is far more readily apparent. And because you give a shit about these people, it all [i]matters[/i]. Life does not seem to meaningless... existential crisis averted.,

In short, AC, no one cares about you. You are a spoiled rich kid. Care about something other than yourself.