They're not talking about that joke, they're talking about this joke.

This isn't so much about banning each of the drugs from use or use in combination. This is the FDA forbidding the sale of these two in combination because no one bothered to check (with them) if it was safe. The FDA doesn't give a shit what you do with the stuff you buy after you buy it. Their job is just to make sure that the stuff on the shelf labeled for human consumption is safe for human consumption. If you buy eggs and let them sit out for 2 weeks on the counter the FDA doesn't give a shit if that made you sick and they don't give a shit if you mix a red bull and vodka. They just don't want you mixing them, bottling them up, and then offering it for sale without checking to make sure that its safe and proving to them that its safe.

Now on the other hand if you do decide you REALLY want to sell that. You can jump through their hoops performing studies to demonstrate how your specific caffeinated alcoholic drink is safe. If they then approve it based on those studies then you are all good for selling it.
Their beef, as it stands right now, is that on one bothered to check with them first before just mixing stuff and putting it up for sale. This isn't some OMG WE MUST BAN THIS ITS KILLING OUR CHILDREN HALP DEA! This is just the FDA saying "hey you broke the rules, the very well known and publicly available rules that helps us ensure that stuff sitting on the shelf for sale won't kill you."

Because we can accurately predict which technologies will be useful in the future right?
And we can also get the entire planet to focus all of our problem solving skills into a few subset of problems?
Even if we could who gets to decide which problems we focus on?
Whats important to you is not important to me, so why should I follow your priorities?
If it is a waste of technology then its Sony blowing money on nothing, does that bother you? We have this concept of personal property where I come from, not sure about you, but if someone wants to take something they own and do something stupid with it as long as its not hurting someone else its ok (opportunity cost not included).

You're acting like innovation doesn't exist, as if this technology will stay in the exact same form as when it was originally invented. The world sure would suck if you were best friends with the guy who invented the first transistor. "Its useless! Its too big, too costly to make, takes way to much power and is too inefficient to do anything of real use! We should go back to working on flying cars, thats a real problem in the world today!"

Wouldn't those shitty little devices that broad cast your iPod over public radio waves so you can listen to it in your car fall into the same category? Unless something changed recently they weren't banned. I think they just sucked hard (low quality music), and were replaced by other technologies. They might even sell them if you looked for it. Yup they still exist.

Almost all anti-virus programs do not play well together. Nortan will yell at macafee while they're both yelling about AVG and all three of them will yell about combofix. Virus/Test is actually an industry wide standard string that if found will set off any anti-virus. In order for each of them to know what it is they have to have it stored someplace... which is one of the reasons why they'll yell and scream about eachother.

I went to a school about your size, just more recently. My graduating class was somewhere in the mid 700's. There was more than 2 levels of math and science. Granted there was only two with the same name, AP calc 2 and calc 2, or AP calc 1 and calc 1 etc. but not everyone even made it to calc1. By 12th grade students were spread out into any of the following math classes: Algebra 2, Algebra 2 AP, Pre-Calculus, Calc 1, AP Calc 1, Calc 2, or AP Calc2. Thats 7 different "senior" levels of math in a single highschool. If you're goal is just to graduate then Algebra 2 is where you finished. Depending on your academic ability and how far you really wanted to go you could be as much as 7 "levels" ahead of that by the time graduation rolled around. Thats not to say that you'd have to take the other 6 to make it to AP Calc2. The highest "path" you could take would look something like Alg 2AP -> Calc1 AP -> Calc2AP. But in order to do that you'd need to start Alg 1 in 7th grade (Alg1 in middle school was split into two years taking 7th and 8th grade to complete allowing you to go straight into geometry/trig your freshmen year in highschool, again this was optional and a "level" above what most 7th and 8th graders take, as well as 8th graders who took the first part of alg1 in order to breeze through it freshmen year). There was also summer school if you wanted to get ahead although that option wasn't very popular. Most kids I knew also jumped around different levels taking Alg 2 and Calc1 before taking AP Calc2 or say they took AP Calc 1 but not AP Calc2. It was surprisingly close to college where you're just told to take classes in these categories and this is how many years of these classes you had to take and certain classes require other classes to already have been taken or to be taken at the same time. Science and Math crossed paths like that a lot.

Science was pretty much the same but you could further specialize ending in a physics or chemistry path or a more basic level of both if you wanted and basic levels of each were required before graduation.

English had less options but still ended up with 4 different levels you could end up taking your senior year, one of those being a "college" level course taught by a professor that drove in from a community college 3 days a week. We didn't have anything called "social studies" past elementary. We had geography, poly sci-ish classes (not called that but the name escapes me and the subject was basically the same), history etc. They each had 3-4 levels you could end up with your senior year as well and again you could sort of 'specialize' in your favorite.

This is ~5 years ago in a public school in Texas. The district currently has 6 or 7 highschools all about the same size with the same curriculum. I think its 7 now, they keep building more and I dont live in the area anymore and my parents rarely talk to me about it. Also just like to point out that you calling into question someone elses experience, given he did say "most", as atypical is kind of funny seeing as how you only really have on view point to look from as well and it is admittedly ~20 years old if not closer to 30.

Moral of the story is things change, and public education across the US varies WILDLY in terms of quality and choices available.
Also just remembered that for each of those AP classes there was a "Pre-AP" version. So make that 3 sublevels for each level.

My old laptop had svideo out. My old TV had svideo in. I'm surprised its taken this long for people to realize they can hook their computer up to their TV to watch whatever they want.

1. DVI? Nearly (if not every) HD tv has one. If you don't have that then your tv should at least have s-video. Of course if somehow your computer doesn't even have s-video there are vga to svideo cables. They're like $5.
2. My grandparents don't even own only a single computer. Even if you do you could build another one for pretty cheap who's only function is to have 5TB of space and play HD videos. They sell computer cases for this exact purpose.
3. Can't really respond to this one because I'm not quite sure how your computer can't go 2h without error messages, programs crashing, the video card turning off (while playing a video) or screen savers coming on (again while playing a video).
4. Again if your internet connection goes down every 2h or so then agreed, this option isn't for you. In my experience however, when something happens that makes my DSL shit out, the cable shits out too. The times that each one of those goes out on their own due to some other problem, they dont last long and are very infrequent. They also seem to go out at about the same frequency which is almost never.
5. See point 2.
6. The remote controls your TV. It has nothing to do with which device your TV is receiving input from. If you're talking about being able to tell your computer from your couch which episode you wish to watch then that problem has been solved for a long long time. Computers have been taking wireless input for years, through mouses, keyboards, presentation clickers, TV remotes, wii controllers etc.

And for your final statement, I think the point the parent was trying to make was exactly what you said. It'll be a box and you'll buy from someplace else which you just plug your TV into. It'll be like a ps3 or xbox360 or tivo or a (newer) mac (let the foaming of the fan boy mouths begin), just a fancy box with PC parts inside. Or in other words, a PC.