I was born in '84. Thus, I was into Legos through the late 80s and early 90s.

I never got anything that didn't have detailed instructions. In fact, it's only in recent years that I've learned that Legos were ever sold as anything other than kits for particular models. And I was rather surprised by that.

I'd build the thing according to the instructions, play with it a while, then tear it apart and go wild.

If kids are just building the things and then never taking them apart and doing their own thing... that says more about the kids of today than the legos of today. What different does it make if it's some generic Lego Spaceship or if it's a Lego Star Wars X-Wing? Both sets come with detailed instructions and custom molded pieces.

Much ado about nothing.

I'd love to. Which banks in the US offer this?

I haven't found any.

TD Bank, my current bank, has the following password requirements:

6-32 characters, no spaces, alphanumeric + the following symbols only: [list of characters removed because /. thought it was spam; it was a fairly short list, though. Didn't even include an asterisk]

Additionally, back when I signed up for online banking with them, I filled in a bunch of garbage for the security questions because security questions are just an attack vector, and I don't forget my passwords (I highly recommend KeePass for managing passwords, it's amazing).

Anyways, a few years ago I went to log in and was prompted to answer a security question. Wtf? I had to call customer service to get my security questions reset. Now, if they don't recognize the device, or every so often, in addition to password you need to answer a security question.

This means that I'm forced to either give real answers that I'll remember (and that anyone else could figure out to hijack my account), bogus answers that I can try to memorize, or garbage that I write down and hang onto.

I also recall, around 10 years ago, I was using Bank of America and they had a limit of either 12 or 16 characters on your passwords.

Of course, my email, web hosting, and even my fucking World of Warcraft use actual two-factor authentication, with phone apps that generate codes that are only good for around 30 seconds, and outside of a man-in-the-middle attack they're practically bulletproof. Why the fuck can't my online banking be as secure as them?

The point? I assume you're talking about the fact that there were a large number of players in the server concurrently?

That may be the point, but it's only half the headline. The rest of the headline emphasizes that the devs are independent (you know, as opposed to professional), and they did this in their spare time (so they aren't getting paid for it).

Remove those elements from the headline, and I have no problem. But as it is, the headline is emphasizing them as if it's some amazing, unheard of feat that PC gamers would create a mod for a game. And I'm calling bullshit on that.

Wow, indie devs making mods in their spare time? Holy crap! That would be revolutionary two decades ago!

Sit around, kids, and let me tell you a story about when PC games were expected to be modded, had rich and diverse communities devoted to all the mods, and all of this with the approval and support of the people that made the game!

Of course, back then, there was no concept of "DLC", and an FPS intended for online play with only a handful of maps was dead before it even got started. Games shipped with lots of content, and the game developers would churn out and release new content, for free, in addition to all the stuff the hobbyists made.

Games today, with entirely too few exceptions, are shitty console ports designed to be closed ecosystems so the publishers can charge you for piddly bits of content and you need to be a god damn hacker to even install mods, never mind make them.

I can actually empathize with you on the region locking front. My favorite series, the Shadows of the Apt series by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is 10 books long, but only the first 4 are released in the US. In order to buy the others, I need to register a UK address in my Amazon profile, switch my Kindle to the UK, and pay the exchange rate since the UK POS uses pounds.

Region locking sucks.

A book is not just a collection of words. A book is a specific medium. For example, if I take a bunch of pictures, bind them together, and add on a front and back cover, I've got a book with no words in it.

Feel free to cite something that's not obscure or achaic. I tried to look it up in the OED, as you suggest, but their website requires a subscription.

Ugh, how'd that get clipped off?

Was saying that neither ebooks nor scrolls are books.

Neither ebooks nor

book/book/
Noun:
A written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers.

For such a short, throwaway, trollish comment, that single word has a whole story invested in it.

Let's see. You dislike me badmouthing books, implying that you enjoy them. That you like books so much as to take offense to someone badmouthing them implies to me that you enjoy reading fiction. At least, in my experience, everyone I've ever known who's uttered anything along the lines of, "I love the smell of books!" had a particular fondness for fiction.

And yet, if someone reads a lot of fiction, you'd expect that person to have a well-developed and active imagination. You, on the other hand, seem to have a stunted imagination, posting an insult whose creativity lies somewhere between what I'd expect from a tween on Xbox Live and a German accountant with mild Asperger's expressing frustration under his breath at the bar when someone new starts chatting up the lady he's been eyeing for weeks trying to get the bravery to go talk to.

You're a mystery, AC, and you intrigue me.

I was precise. Books are the medium I was describing, and specifying 'printed' would be kind of redundant unless you were worried about the distinction between printed books and those produced somehow else, such as being hand-written.

I know I'm in the minority here--particularly on Slashdot, I'm sure--but I absolutely hate books.

Before getting my kindle, I read only while in high school and college, and only during class. After graduating, I read almost nothing. Since getting my kindle, I read on my commutes, and even take out time to read when I'm at home and could be on the Internet or playing a game.

Books are bulky. It's a pain to keep your place. The feel of the paper in paperback books gives me goosebumps. I find the smell of books unpleasant. You have to hold the books open, making reading one-handed challenging (a necessity on subways, and also helpful for reading in bed). Holding books open is particularly annoying at the start and end of the book, when the two halves are quite lopsided.

Like I said, I know I'm in the minority, but as far as I'm concerned books are almost singularly unsuitable as a medium for recreational reading.

How often does this really happen in gaming? I mainly do MMOs and FPSes, which AFAIK are the most keyboard-intensive types of games, and I have a hard time figuring out how you'd hit more than 6 at a time.

I can really only think of the following "sustained" keypresses:

1. Movement forward/backward
2. Strafing
3. Turning
4. Crouching or Jumping (if jump height is tied to how long the key is held)
5. Display info (e.g. scoreboard)

Everything else you would do is a momentary keypress, which assuming you're doing all 5 of the above simultaneously, maxes you out at 6 keys. I'm not aware of any MMOs where you'd hold down a key to attack, and although that does happen in FPSes, you'd be using a mouse button, not the keyboard.

I'm genuinely curious, how would you end up hitting more than 6 keys at once? Maybe flight sims?

I've got two of the Das Ultimate keyboards, one at work and one at home. I love them.

Using the blue cherry switches. They're really not all that loud at all, despite the company selling earplugs for your coworkers. :)

Venn diagrams do not show proportion (what I assume you mean by amounts)!

If you draw a Venn diagram with a tiny little overlap, or a huge overlap, in order to make some point, [b]you are doing it wrong[/b].

Now it's one thing to do this for comedic effect, but I see this all the time when people are trying to be serious and it makes me stabby.

Venn diagrams are a way of visualizing overlaps in sets; the ONLY thing that matters is what region an element is placed, not how big that region is.

A Venn diagram is a precise tool which displays particular information with no ambiguity, and trying to shoehorn proportions into it just makes it muddy. Plus, humans are fucking terrible at telling how much larger one roughly circular area is than another; make those areas slightly different shapes, and it's even less helpful.