I agree with most everything here, except for two points.

First off, car renting is not an insanity. I do own a car, which I take obsessively good care of. In situations where I don't want the mileage, wear and tear, and fuel expenses of my "not-so-fuel-efficient" Mustang GT, I will opt to rent a car. I did it not too long ago for a 350 mile drive (one way) and I'll be renting another car again when I fly for a business trip.

Secondly, renting a house isn't a stupid idea. I've done the "American Dream" routine of home ownership and, after my experience, I will never buy another house again. To sum up my experience in a concise manner, I bought a house back in 2007. Countrywide (now Bank of America) approved me based on my credit score and all that crap for a loan amount of up to $250,000. Not wanting to over-extend myself and preferring to err on the side of responsible home buying, I purchased a home for $155,000 on a fixed rate 35 year loan. The first year or so was good. Then property values started dropping fast. Light speed fast. Before long, the same floor plan I had purchased was going for $74,000 but I kept making my house payment. Then our glorious leaders in government started throwing around this ludicrous notion of "too big to fail". Bank executives ran to Washington DC with hands out and spewing fear mongering prophecies of another "Great Depression" if they didn't receive billions and billions of dollars of government (a.k.a. taxpayer) money. Banks then sat on the money they received, refusing to modify anyone's loan, and foreclosures went through the roof. After all, when you've already been given a shit ton of money as a reward for royally screwing the economy, billions more on top of that in taxpayer funded "insurance" against your garbage loans and toxic assets, why not simply repossess all the homes and profit twofold when the economy improves and you can sell them off at a premium again? Profit!

            I approached Bank of America right around the time similar homes to mine were going for $60,000 and asked for a modification and, over the next year and a half, sent reams of paperwork in for the modification process. I learned all about banks and their new "bait and switch" philosophy fast. Most people have already heard about what happens during the modification process, but basically you send in paperwork and the bank conveniently loses it. If you call about your modification, you get told everything's awesome and they'll let you know soon. Then they tell you a week later that they didn't receive some or all of your paperwork. Or it got lost. Or their dog ate it. And it goes in circles. Even sending paperwork via UPS and FedEx, with delivery confirmation, does no good. About six months into this fiasco, I gave up. I stopped paying the mortgage payment and instead put the money into savings for the next year and I let the bank foreclose on the place. They sold it at public auction for $54,000 when last I heard about it. And, because the state I live in is what's considered a "single action" state where Bank of America only gets one action against a homeowner (e.g. foreclosure), they can't collect the difference.

              So that about sums up my home buying experience and why I think renting isn't an insanity. I've heard all the tirades about how letting them foreclose was a bad idea, that I should have held onto a worthless property and hope I broke even in 20+ years IF the housing market ever recovered, and I can honestly say I just don't care. If what was supposed to happen in a "free market" economy actually did happen, and banks were allowed to fail regardless of their size, and our leaders didn't buy into the fear mongering and sent the banks packing to clean up the mess they created, then I'd have been more inclined to stay in the place. As it stands now, I've adopted a new mantra. If I can't afford to buy it outright in cash, I won't buy it at all. I'll be clearing my financial house of all debt and will no longer take out a loan for anything, nor will I consider using credit cards. I'm just not interested in playing the loan/credit game anymore because I've learned that the only winners are the people who are receiving your inflated monthly payments. It's better, in my mind, to rent a place and let someone else enjoy the fun of a failing housing market, "too big to fail" financial institutions, etc..

How the ridiculous notion of obscure, irrelevant questions became accepted as an additional layer of security is beyond me. In the extremely rare circumstance that I find a site that let's me at least formulate my own questions and responses, I'll usually play along. But I flat out refuse to have any involvement with any organization that requires a selection of questions from a predefined list. For example, when the servicing company in charge of my student loan account opted to force every user to answer five of "The Usual Questions", before allowing me to log in and make payments, I contacted them and politely asked that they remove the requirement from my account as I didn't think their mandatory questions made my account any more secure. They refused, so I simply cancelled my online account and informed them that they would receive all future payments by mail. Now they get a check, mailed out via my bank's online bill pay system, that they have to process.

Speaking of my bank, they actually haven't fallen into the same rut of foisting security questions on their account holders. Instead, they've got SMS verification that simply sends my phone a text message with a one time use access code. Much more convenient and secure than asking me what my neighbor's best friend's twice removed cousin's dog's favorite brand of dog food was when I was in third grade.

I'm all for transparency in government and holding people in power responsible, but there's an entire world of governments out there that should have their actions (or lack thereof, depending on the issue) scrutinized by the public, not just America. Where's the WikiLeaks coverage of China's human rights issues? How about the Cambodian government's failure to address the problem of child sex workers? Is WikiLeaks covering that? Is WikiLeaks going to at any point in the near future shed some light on the Mexican government's involvement with the drug cartels?

WikiLeaks isn't this bastion of idealistic free speech that you're making it out to be. Perhaps, in days gone past, it used to be. All it is now is little more than just another anti-American soapbox for Assange to rally his cadre of basement dwelling, teenage criminals around.

I don't think we should be confusing these script kiddies who are running around DDoS'ing anyone that doesn't support WikiLeaks with titles such as "activists", "vigilantes", or "rebels with a cause". Nothing could be further from the truth, which is that these little shits are little more than cyber-criminals, deserving of only the harshest punishment possible to the fullest extent possible under applicable laws. Their modus operandi of "Support WikiLeaks or we'll DDoS you back to the stone age" isn't any different than Islamic extremists and their "Embrace Islam or we'll kill you" mantra, and is equally devoid of logic, ethics, and morality. You don't win people over to your way of thinking through hostility and intimidation. And, as most people of the world probably aren't clamoring to get to their nearest mosque in a hasty attempt to convert to Islam before their house gets blown up, I sincerely doubt anyone with an ounce of intellect and a shred of decency is going to immediately fall into step and support WikiLeaks for fear of losing their Internet connection. All these script kiddies are doing is making themselves look like a collective bunch of jackasses, especially when they decide to attack organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Why on earth would someone willingly download any film that was made by Uwe Boll? Every movie he's ever produced is a steaming pile of badly written, poorly directed, underfunded shit. To quote a line from Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, Far Cry is a "disgusting cinematic suppository" and I'm really rather surprised that someone would waste their bandwidth on it. Let's be realistic here, "2 girls 1 cup" could claim a significantly greater level of entertainment value and artistic expression than any film that Uwe Boll has ever made (or ever will make for that matter).

While I concur with this statement, the downside is that businesses like Facebook will often weigh the risk of getting fined versus how much they'll make selling all that information to advertising vultures. If the face value of the fine is less than the total profits made from selling private information to the highest bidders and the profit margin is big enough, I think the obvious result occurs. Facebook sells the information, Mark Zuckerberg pockets even more money, and they pay off the fine with whatever change was left over.

I love how the rabid EVE fanbois tout the game as being this ultra-hardcore experience that's "not a intended for pussies".

I've played this game before, starting back during the original client days (when you could fit heavy missile launchers on a Kestrel). I've tried picking it up again a few times as the game has developed and every time I've returned hoping to find some redeeming aspect of the game. And I've always been disappointed. EVE was, is, and probably always will be a perpetual grind-fest that is completely and utterly devoid of any entertaining content. Unless, of course, your idea of entertaining content is spending the first 3 months of your game life learning your "learning skills" and parking in front of a Veldspar asteroid in 1.0 space to mine the cheapest, most worthless mineral in the game to scrape together enough cash to buy the next skill or stupid looking ship.

The only reason EVE Online's death penalty has any meaning is because every step you take forward in the game is an agonizing, soul draining, punishing experience. Getting killed and losing that expensive cargo, implant, or those skill points that you went through five keyboards, three mice, one monitor, and a trip to the ER for a concussion received from bashing your head into your desk in frustration to get isn't "hardcore". EVE is little more than a 3D accelerated spreadsheet program (EVE = Excel with Visual Effects). The first poster for this story was right in saying that nothing of value was lost.

To answer the question, yes I want my president to be 100% truthful. In fact, I want all of our government officials on every level from the po-dunk-ville town council to the White House to be 100% truthful. That's the point of being a public servant. When did we arrive at the conclusion that it was acceptable for a public office to be held by someone who couldn't be completely honest? When did a statistical percentage rate of breaking promises versus keeping promises become the rule by which the worth of a politician is measured?

So you conclude that because Obama has kept 90% of his campaign promises and 80% of his statements, he's a remarkable president. I contend otherwise. He's lied 20% of the time and broken 10% of his promises according to the statistics you provided. The fact that the percentage of lies and dishonesty is greater than 0% makes him a dishonest liar and a bad president. That assessment would apply to him regardless of his party and would apply to anyone else that could have been president instead of him, regardless of their party affiliations.

Your conclusion regarding Obama's presidency serves only to reinforce the obvious fact that our 2 party system is completely and utterly broken. Obama is just the lesser of the available evils that we had to pick from. I say this because I believe in a system that's black and white. You are either honest or you aren't and settling somewhere between to the two extremes, closer to one side or the other, doesn't make you anything more or less in my mind than someone who is either an honest and forthright individual or an untrustworthy liar. Call it foolish idealism if you want, but which is more ridiculous? The belief in the possibility that someone could hold political office as a 100% trustworthy and honest person with significant success, or that honesty and integrity are acceptable in smaller portions to begin with.

Your assessment is incorrect. You're implying a second option where none exists. Unless the terms of hiring Terry Childs consisted of a complete transfer of ownership of the entire network from the City of San Francisco to Terry Childs himself, he had zero right to withhold any account credentials, both during his employment tenure and after his job was terminated. He also had no right to go through their network and booby trap the systems so only he could gain administrative access to them, rendering the entire system useless to anyone who might be filling his position in the future.

I work in IT for a mid-sized business involved in healthcare. Security is my top priority as it relates to our network and infrastructure and I stringently control who has access to what. However, if the person who signs my paycheck comes to me and informs me of a shift in my responsibilities away from the network or is terminating my position and demands that I hand over security credentials so the person coming in after me can do the job, I'll hand it over. I'll ask politely to be given a written request to cover my own ass before turning any information over, a reasonable request that any employer would probably willingly fulfill, be they government or not. But I don't have the right to go out of my way to sabotage the infrastructure to prevent future IT administrators from doing their job, even if I'm being terminated.

While the debate over subsidies for these "hybrid" cars is riveting, I wonder if anyone has considered the total environmental impact of the manufacturing processes used to make these hybrid cars. I was watching a Top Gear re-run on NetFlix (Series 11: Episode 1) where they asserted that more environmental damage is done in the manufacturing of a Prius than you would actually save by driving it. And to boot, they even had a BMW M3 with a 4.0L V8 follow a Prius around the Top Gear test track. The BMW M3 with it's 4.0L V8 averaged better fuel economy than the Prius. Wikipedia lists a brief overview on the topic here.

            While I can't say I can fully validate Top Gear's findings, I tend to lean toward the possibility that they're correct in asserting that the Prius is little more than a statement maker about "going green". I have an '09 Mustang GT with a 4.6L V8 and a manual transmission. I fill up with premium fuel only. If I don't drive it like a douche and instead just drive normally, I get decent MPG for what the car is. My dashboard computer currently reads 18.7mpg average after burning off half a tank.

            I say no subsidies at all, across the board, for any hybrid vehicle. If there is a significant environmental impact caused by manufacturing the car or the parts to assemble it, then the government is only subsidizing the illusion of being environmentally responsible.

There is definitely a place in hell reserved for those who foist mandatory, intrusive advertising on others. It's a place where they'll get to implement any kind of forced-viewing advertisement they want...but there won't ever be any audience to watch it.

Not really sure where you're getting your facts from on what Dell preloads onto their computers, but I work for a small software developer as the senior sysadmin and we buy nothing but Dell machines. I've unboxed and setup about 20 Dell Dimension, Precision, OptiPlex, Vostro and XPS desktops and about a dozen Vostro and Latitude laptops so far and the only thing I've found on there is Google Desktop and Adobe Acrobat Reader for third party products. I've never unboxed a new Dell, server or workstation, that had Norton/Mcafee crap or any other trialware or crippleware for that matter.

Perhaps you're confusing Dell with Sony Vaio machines, which are preloaded with so much useless garbage (including SQL Server Express for Sony's own branded junkware to database with) that the machine barely has any horsepower left over to run Solitaire.

Realistically, I expect Apple to take ownership of the problem without watering it down with irrelevant information on problems that competitor products have, as Apple has thus far done. If I bought an iPhone 4 and was experiencing the problem, I wouldn't really care about hearing how holding a Blackberry a certain way makes it lose reception. The simplest way to keep your customers happy (and maybe impress some more into buying your product) in times like this is to keep it simple. Recognize the problem and take ownership, even if the real issue lies somewhere down the supply chain of parts used to make your final product. Be honest and forthright about what your plans are to address the problem and follow through appropriately. Anything else outside of that, including highlighting defects that your competitors products have, is completely irrelevant.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the concept of selling unfinished games has already been put into practice. That collective group of shitwizards over at EA Games has been churning out unfinished games for a long time, charging full price for them as well as charging for DLC.