Yes, our elections revolve around two people taking turns talking about position X, where they are really pro-X while the other guy is anti-X (or generally "soft on X"). When the election finishes, they basically do the same thing and fail because all they've been thinking about what they think is cool, instead of realistic ways to do it (realistic solutions are a synonym for "soft on X"). Then there's a simple rule: If you voted for him, he did absolutely nothing wrong and in fact Jesus himself said his actions were perfect, and if you didn't vote for him, he's intentionally destroying everything because he's literally Satan.

In Firefox, you can see the current memory usage of a page by going to about:memory. I'd argue that peak memory isn't that interesting, since using a huge amount for a tiny amount of time is unimportant; it's the sustained high usage which is annoying.

Uh what? I can't even figure out what you're claiming they took out.

For anyone who's actually interested, the Memshrink Blog is a fascinating account of how a team of developers have been reducing Firefox's memory usage. Interestingly, Firefox's memory usage has never been particularly bad (it just seems to be because web pages are so much more complicated), but addons have had horrible memory problems for a long time (and unfortunately, that's pretty hard to detect).

Firefox and Chrome have pretty much identical performance on the desktop. Recent updates have made Firefox's memory usage much better, and despite loud opinions, it was never actually bad. My guess is that most of the people complaining about Firefox's performance are the idiots who refuse to update after Firefox 3 ("Web browsing takes more memory now, it must be Firefox's fault, not the fact that the web is more complicated now!").

Oh look, government workers aren't magically less corrupt than everyone else..

You're missing the point. Obviously there are configurations that won't work, but then it should just fail. Failure to run on one machine/OS should not prevent you from playing on another machine/OS.

Yes, you should just stay quiet like a good victim. It's not like Blizzard has ever made this mistake before.

Playing a game in a weird configuration has several acceptable outcomes:

* The game doesn't work
* The game refuses to start (although this would be stupid)
* The creator of the game publically states that they will ban anyone who attempts to use the configuration in question (something which Blizzard has never done, despite the claims of people who don't understand what "support" means).

What the trolls/fanboys are claiming is that this is acceptable:

* Stopping people from ever playing the game they paid for again, for using a configuration which has always worked (and which the creators of the game have *never* even suggested is not allowed, only unsupported).

No, but you should be pissed if you attempt to play it on your BeOS machine and your account is permanently banned (ie: you can't play it on any machine).

It also says:

* 1024x768 minimum resolution
* 1 GB RAM (XP), 1.5 GB (Vista/7)

Should I be permanently banned if I try to run the game on a machine with less than a gig of memory, or if I accidentally use a low screen resolution? Or would it make more sense to inform me that the game isn't supported on that configuration and I should upgrade my machine?

There's a difference between "not supported" and "not allowed". What I'm saying is that if Blizzard didn't want people to use Linux, then they could just clearly say that, and that banning people is pretty much the worst way to handle that situation.

By your argument, they could ban people for attempting to play the game on a machine that's too slow or doesn't have enough memory (it's unsupported!).

So Blizzard could:

1. Pop up a message when Linux users try to log in informing them that Linux is now completely blocked because one of the largest game companies in the world can't be bothered with some minor software.
2. Offer a refund to Linux users and apologize for wasting their time (remember, "no one plays games on Linux", so this shouldn't shouldn't cost them anything).

But you think it's better for their business to take option 3..

3. Ban legitimate users of your game and refuse to refund their money, making sure they never play anything of yours in the future.

I have the same experience with meetings -- people meet, talk about something important, then it never gets documented. This is a separate problem though -- you need to consciously try to document things.

I've found that what works for me is to write READMEs or other documentation as requested, but save it in a standard place, then attach it to the email. The person who asked the question gets the answer they wanted, and the next person can find it again if I get hit by a bus.

If your boss can't leave you alone and let you work, then you have more serious problems than too many meetings.

* Check email when you're bored or on a schedule
* If you find that IM is distracting you, either don't sign in or leave notifications off. Log in whenever someone notifies you by email that they need to talk in real-time.

This way you still have interruptions (like meetings would cause), but they're much smaller.