Again, dude, you're talking to the wrong guy. I'm the one that gets the emails when you reply to me. You want to focus your ire up the thread a bit.

Actually, I'm reacting to someone who couldn't see an obvious implication. You should take up your beef with the however-many-greats grandparent post.

"It was Apple's idea!"

"Star Trek"

I think the idea is that making consumption illegal (not to mention highly stigmatized) increases the "barrier to entry." There are people who do not seek out CP, who would if it were legal (just like there are people who don't smoke weed, but would if it were legal).

Fewer people consuming means less money to be made. Less money means less incentive for production. This is of course assuming there is money to be made... I honestly don't know. It could be that the whole "CP system" runs on reputation or something, like the hacking scene, but either way the point remains the same: fewer eyeballs = less currency = less incentive for production.

Looking at it another way, consuming CP does indirectly cause CP to be produced, so people who download it are contributing to its creation. I'm not sure I entirely agree with this particular point being sufficient to make it illegal, but I'm also not a lawyer or a parent.

I actually disagree. I don't go reading at -1, but I see posts quite frequently that go against the "standard groupthink" and are modded up, e.g. things pointing out flaws with Apple/Linux and/or pointing out the positive bits about Microsoft/Windows.

Of course, half of those start, "I'll probably get modded down for this...", so maybe that's the keyphrase.

Really, the only groupthink I've seen is a bit more meta, in that everyone assumes that some subset of opinions will always be modded down, but that's not the case. In reality, there may be a bit more of a barrier (e.g. pro-Linux comments don't need to be quite as insightful to be modded as up), but well-thought out and presented points of view tend to rise to the top regardless of whether they fit the Slashdot "standardd groupthink" or not.

All this said, I'll probably be modded down for going against the groupthink that such conversations will never be modded up. ;)

Also, the 5-second rule applies to the *home button*. Background apps can not start within 5 seconds of pressing the home button (although this doesn't take effect if you're pressing the home button to wake the phone up. It does seem that Widget Locker ignores the home button if it's already running.

Here's what happens with my phone, which is running Widget Locker and the stock pattern unlock screen.

Normal behavior:
Wake phone -> Widget Locker -> Swipe to unlock -> Pattern unlock screen -> Input pattern -> Home screen

Testing the 5-second rule:
Unlocked, awakened phone -> Press home button -> Press end button to put phone to sleep -> Wake phone up. Pattern unlock screen is shown, not widget locker. Widget locker displaces pattern unlock screen once the 5 seconds have elapsed.

There's a TF2 map called Mario Kart which has a hidden portal (one of the warp pipes, of course) to the skybox. That's always fun. :)

It's a french company formerly known as Infogrames. They purchased Atari, sat on it for a while, realized "Nobody's ever heard of Infogrames," and changed their name.

That was, I believe, in the early 2000's. I worked for Atari briefly in 2003 and got the impression that the name change was fairly recent.

Oh my gosh! I was wrong! It was Earth, all along!

It occurs to me that my math was a bit faily there...

Maybe I'm missing something, but 8000x8000 doesn't seem like a terribly impressive resolution, especially stretched across a 71-foot dome (is that radius or diameter? No, I DRTFA, why do you ask?). Hell, my monitor at home's 2048x1152, so this 'amazing' projection system is the equivalent of 8 of my home monitors?

And nothing of value was lost.

Many people don't have a choice what they use at work. There are lots of places which lock down computers, either with actual permissions restrictions or simply with policies (e.g. "No installing your own software").

Speaking from my own limited experience, in college I used to help image the machines for the CS department every year. It was a small department and only 50-60 machines in 2 labs, but making and testing the image was a *huge* task that took us months (my boss was half time and I was a few hours a week).

One of the things we had to do was turn off auto-updating on everything, because we used Deep Freeze to lock the computers down. If we didn't turn off auto updating, then every time you rebooted the machines you'd get pestered to update every little self-important piece of code.

Now, this was just at a college where our primary concern was making sure that the computers were consistent and usable. In a corporate setting, you've got much greater security concerns (keep stuff from getting in AND getting out), greater responsibility (a simple screw up can cause millions of dollars in damage), and a much larger 'fleet' to maintain...

It's easy to understand why enterprise IT departments prefer less frequent releases and stricter policies.

Not the AC above, but I came here to say what he did...

While you're perfectly within your rights to use the word retarded like you do and, arguably, even correct,

1. It makes you sound juvenile (in that typically one pictures middle schoolers and high schoolers using words like 'gay' and 'retarded' as general pejoratives) and robs you of credibility.

2. It may be wiser to choose a term where the literal definition isn't completely at odds with the point you're trying to make.

Picture of a penis ejaculating. Just FYI. I will say, impressive timing on the shot.