Running a site like this is often a thankless job. Thanks for sticking in there so long, and for setting up and maintaining what has become one of the most well-known sites on the internet.

You don't have time to dig around and find the root cause. You need it to work. Now.

On reflection, this is a good analogy for modern society in general.

Ah, there's your problem. You needed one of these Killer NICs http://www.bigfootnetworks.com/killer-xeno-pro/ to offset the lag of the rootkit.

Heeeeeeey Aqualung....

It's the fact that they use SQLite to store so much data. Putting the firefox profile on anything but a local hard drive causes it to become completely unresponsive on a regular basis. I haven't seen any plans by Mozilla to fix this yet, but this completely kills Firefox in any work environment with roaming profiles.

As a professor I had once said, "depression existed before 1950 - they called it alcoholism."

So given the disruptive effect on the cell data network this would have, would it be more apt to call it a Grendel cluster?

"...and there's many many others, but they haven't been discoooooovered" summarizes that nicely. :)

Texas is another haven, with no personal income tax.

And some of the highest property taxes in the nation. The government always gets theirs, somehow.

should be available by 2010 according to this morning news.

From Bloomberg's article on this (here):

GM has offered its own caution about the risk associated with the Volt. The model "has not yet proven to be commercially viable," according to a regulatory filing last week. The technology required to power the car may not be developed in time for its planned 2010 debut, the automaker said.

Might be available next year - might not be commercially viable - not done developing the technology yet... Ah, good old GM.

Regarding pause issue : many reports show it linked to the places.sqlite file - see this thread on page 3 and look for the compactor tool they mention. Seems as though the "Awesomebar" is not without its issues.

OEM PCs with a recovery partition spring to mind here...

FDCPA only applies to third-party agencies, IIRC. If they're a third-party agency, take the parent's advice (but send the "do not contact me by phone" request by certified mail with return receipt). If they're first-party, set your ringtone to "silent" for that number because they are going to blast you with calls.

Disclaimer : I work for a third-party collection agency.