STTNG: Wesley Crusher. Q was a bit silly mostly.
Voyager: Nelix. Janeway was super captain, over compensating a bit for female role. Over usage of the holodeck bit.
DS9: Nog/Jake. Sisko's over acting. The whole wormhole aliens religious arc.
Enterprise: Was a bit actiony for a show about exploration. Lacked some depth.

Honorable mention: Both doctors on Voyager and Enterprise, seemed to start off rocky but sort of grew on you over time.
All of them with perhaps the exception of Enterprise seemed to require 1) a comic relief person, and 2) some youth for younger viewers I guess. By Enterprise I guess they figured we're all grown up now and don't require it anymore. Even when younger I found the two aspects annoying.
Also STTNG had a few episodes where there writers basically phoned it in and ran re-runs.

All that said, I've watched all the episodes several times over each, and would welcome another Star Trek. There is not enough science fiction big production tv shows out there anymore. The last really being BSG which was years ago now.

Agreed.

When trying to decide between the iPhone and the Galaxy, those were deciding factors. Now, there is nothing really. Now if the battery length and changing time is accurate, then the replaceable battery may not be an issue. However we all know that they all lie about those sorts of things. So while the battery life in my current Galaxy sucks (really my only gripe), it was largely mitigated by the fact that I can just buy a cheap battery and changer and always have a backup that I can quickly pop in if I really need to...

No SD slot? Lame. Not everyone used it, but for those that did (and I did) it was a selling feature. If you are going to use a more powerful processor, what is the point if you have no capacity (mine has a bit of an issue loading my large 64GB SD when full of a lot of files). Seems Samsung is pandering to the whole Apple mantra of upselling services like iCloud, or whatever service that the Samsung will use. Which will eat your bandwidth, etc... Along with using the silly pricing model of changing more for cheap memory.

Anyway disappointing. I'll probably wait and see what else is out there...

Seems like a pretty easy case to make.

1) Oracle is one of the largest, most effective, powerful, and most used database systems on the planet.

The decision process went probably something like this: "We're trying to build the largest health care database system on the planet, and we're using Oracle database technology, seems it might be a good idea to have them actually build then thing rather than some random contractors". Which was probably just lazy on the part of management, or an ass saving move, as the intention was always to throw Oracle under the bus should things go sideways. Also lets be clear, with these uber larger projects, success rate is not so great, just ask how that all worked out for the UK and their NHS health care database... or NY and their payment system, or Ontario and their Healthcare system, or.... (all of which were done using private contractors).

Anyway as someone who has sat in on design meetings for proposed systems by the Oracle development arm, I can tell you that it would be an expensive and bad idea. They are a software company. They sell software. They want to sell you as much software as they can. They have bought a number of other companies technology, and "integrated" them (shoehorned), and would like to use everything they have to solve problems you don't know you have.

Anyway I doubt either side is blameless really.

Religion is largely based on the idea of an afterlife (generally a nicer place). However AI is likely for all intents and purposes immortal and as such likely unconcerned about such things.

Seems like if it is a constant, that it would increase linearly as the blackhole grows in size, allowing more surface area (is that even a correct term to use in such a case?) to gobble up additional stuff. Of course that could become exponential if the growth rate is such.

1) Anyone that uses synthetic benchmarks like Cinebench deserve whatever they get. These things have been rigged since the ATI VS nVIDIA days, and ATI doesn't even exist anymore. Not to mention they don't really prove anything.

2) Using real world software tests, particularly in gaming, Intel has been blowing AMD out of the water since just after the Athelon64 days. The only places that AMD has has success commercially or in performance has been in A) The server market, and B) the very low end market, the later you wouldn't bother or care about benchmarks anyway. Yes it could be that a lot of software is optimized for Intel, but then again, if one is faster than the other because of the lack of optimization then it is a moot point anyway. AMD is better in some unique situations than Intel, but out of say 20 software tests, it might excel at 2 of them, so it is pretty specific software.

So stop drinking your own fan boy coolaid. I for one would welcome a more competitive AMD CPU, as Intel has been driving prices up due to a lack of real competition. The buying of ATI by AMD was supposed to re-invent AMD and harold in a level of integration of video and cpu. The only thing that has really happened is that integrated video has gotten slightly better. and AMD has a video card division now...

You forgot politics and politicians...

All the stuff above aside, the basic fact is that the Conservatives united the right (Alliance/Reform, PC), and moved towards center (or at least perceived to by some people). The center left is shared by two other parties that basically just cannibalize each others votes... So baring some crazy thing, it is no surprise that the Conservatives have a distinct advantage and won, simple numbers. The PQ is not a federal party. Their only significant impact recently was loosing so badly and catapulting the NDP to prominence for the first time ever really.

Of course anytime the topic of "coalition" was mentioned, all three were quick to throw it down, like being called a communist in the US.
The Conservatives hate the idea because they would lose.
The Liberals hate the idea because they want all the power.
The NDP hate the idea because their party would likely be absorbed and a bunch of politicians would be out of a job...

Also change is hard. The reason we still have a stupid voting system and ridings is that it give advantage to the Cons/Libs, which most people vote for, so there is very little impetus for change (i.e. why would I want to change a system that elects the party I like?), which breeds apathy, which means less people vote... etc...

"...size of coastal population and national plastic production. According to the estimate..."

Sounds like a pretty mickey mouse statistic to come up with an "estimate". More like a wild guess that is barely based on anything relevant...

You can die from drinking (not breathing) too much water. It is called hyponatremia and can lead to "water intoxication", and it can kill you in extreme cases.

There was an example a few years ago where a radio station had a contest among a few contestants on who could drink the most water, and the winner would get an Xbox I believe. A woman died as a result.

Anyway, it wouldn't be millions however, and Alcohol is certainly more dangerous. Anyway they don't call it in"toxic"ation for nothing...

It's a balance however, there is that narrow band of where if you go beyond it, your "effectiveness" may start to diminish...

"...the waste heat from the generator would cause the liquids around it to boil..."

Because there is nothing like studying marine life by boiling it... My only question is will they equip the submersible with a garlic butter sauce or not, because without it, I don't see it being a worthwhile endeavor.

700$ Million was to fight solar patents in court. 100$ Million was to eventually Licence the technology from Samsung. 50$ Million was the actual cost of construction.

In fact, as anyone that lives in the country that has owned cats might tell you, the shoe is sometimes on the other foot in that cats are just as likely to get eaten by a predator bird...

LOL! I have heard this argument before. The Cats killing more birds statistic is an urban one, i.e. most of the birds they are killing are of the urban variety, like pigeons (rats of the sky), and other "pest" birds. Those big solar towers are not located in urban areas, but rather the countryside. What birds they may or may not be killing are of the more important variety...

Not that I say that it is significant, or that I am against this sort of power generation (personally I think it is fascinating), only that the cats kill more birds than solar towers, while "technically" true in volume, is a bit misleading and BS insofar as an accurate comparison goes... The same goes for window strikes really, that is an urban issue, and the type of birds are not going to be the same.

I use VLC when I have to, because even with all the tweaking and technical magic I do, I cannot get Windows MP to reliably play all video formats, and/or reliably display all subs. I have gotten to the point that I can get MP to handle 90% of things, but there are still 10% of things that I have to boot up VLC.

Why use MP? Only one reason: Media Center uses MP. That's it. If I had a media center, and here's the important part, that I could use with a standard windows remote, that wasn't Windows and was't MP, I would do it in a heartbeat. While I have to do all sorts of trickery to get MP to work with anything, VLC just works, without a lot of fooling around.

So the ONE feature they could have added to VLC that would made a huge difference (and I am sure for a lot of others) it would be to add a Media Center interface and remote support. I have tried a number of third party VLC addons and skins that pretend to do the same, but unfortunately they all suck, and they all seem to be half done. Currently I can use my remote a little bit with VLC, but it is limited to play/stop and volume, that is it. I can't browse my library of videos, I have to physically walk over to my computer and click with a mouse to start the thing.

Anyway if they are looking to take over market share, that would be the way to do it. Frankly I am amazed they haven't yet.