I assume that by "we" you mean "cynics".

I do think it's news for nerds, but I'm more saddened by the death of Jay Lake this month, just before his 50th birthday.

... shut down its comments section.

Not sure what you're talking about, I always found Mario Kart Wii to be easy. How hard can the controls be, you mostly just use the wheel and occasionally activate a boost. Then again, I don't remember blue turtle shells so maybe I'm missing something.

Back to the point, as I said frustration leading to anger is not something which needs research, it's very easy to see on my 4 year old. To quote the BBC article about the research we're talking about "one recent study suggested that playing violent video games for long periods of time can hold back the "moral maturity" of teenagers." (To clarify, the BBC is talking about another research, not the one we're talking about, but it was in an article about that) Which goes back to what I said: one things which could be studied is how players of violent gamer deal with frustration compared to other players and non-players.

... is linked to insults, not abuse when growing up.

I won't repeat everything I posted elsewhere, but really, that's the stupidest research I've heard of in a long time. First of all, starting with calling a version of Half Life 2 where enemies evaporate "non-violent". So, if there's no blood it's not violence? If you just disintegrate people that's a non-violent game? That's such a basic problem with definitions that I feel that the researchers should be taken out and evaporated non-violently.

Then there's the conclusion. Sure, people can get angry when they are frustrated. You don't have to be a genius to know that. A more interesting question would be how well people deal with that frustration. Do players of violent game tend to have worse control of their temper in this respect than others? That would be more interesting than the stupid conclusions here.

(And I'd like to apologise to the researchers, I haven't read the research paper, just the articles on various sites, and it's possible that it's only the writers of these editorials who are jumping to conclusions. However I'm sure that the "non-violent Half life 2" is part of the original article, and as such I can believe that the rest of the stupidity also exists there.)

I don't know about trust. Bitcoin is a speculative market, and it will probably always be like that, because the characteristics of bitcoin make it a commodity and not money. I can't see it ever being used directly as money (i.e., without going through a "real" currency such as dollars).

If one side argues concept and the other argues implementation issues, they can easily both be right. Stross was wrong on several levels, but saying that he misses the point of the concept is the stupidest rebuttal one can make.

Right (and wrong, see below). This is a bad article by Network World, trying to frame this as crowdfunding, and bundling it with other crowdfunding news. It's possible that this is how IBM presented the subject to them, but I'd have liked a bit more critical thinking from the reporter.

The result is that most comments here make it clear that people didn't get what IBM did. To quote the relevant part of the article: "they were able to propose and fund projects designed to improve corporate culture and staff morale".

Where you're wrong is that it's not a survey or poll, because the suggestions come from the employees. That's where this scheme is better, because the company is saying "we're giving you a maximum of $50,000, what would you do with it?" rather than the higher ups providing the suggestions.

Googling for AMD dropping XP I found posts from October 2012 claiming the same thing: a driver came out with no XP support, end of the world is coming. I haven't been able to find anything official about AMD discontinuing XP support. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but I feel that a post will at least have a link to relevant proof. Linking to a beta driver as a form of proof just doesn't cut it IMO.

I haven't had problems with Windows for a long while (I'm on 7 now, but it was true for Vista too). It has the software I want and I'm used to using it.

I haven't tried Linux lately. When I did, it was a little bit of hell, closest in my experience to a beta of Vista. It didn't like my hardware, I had to edit text files to get it to work correctly on a second drive, installing a display driver was a bit of hell and killed the display, GUI programs silently failed, printing their errors only to a console, ...

That was maybe 3 years ago. I tried again later, and at least hardware-wise it was better, but the OS was still a little too rough. Perhaps these days the experience will be better, but I just don't have the time to waste on trying to get a non-Windows system to work just for the hell of it. Sure, I like alternative OS's, but I see no practical benefit for the switch and enough drawbacks.

Few people completely focus on driving. It's nearly impossible to drive for long periods and not think of anything else.

The phone conversation distraction is precisely why something like Siri would be a good alternative. Texting isn't immediate, so there's less pressure to respond immediately or someone who continuously hammers at your ears.

"Most of us writers aren't petty jerks who enjoy tearing other people down undeservedly."

Speak for yourself. :)

More seriously, consider your use of "undeservedly".

Writers are a lot more critical of writing than the average reading public. Any good writer has some experience with critiquing other work and getting her own work critiqued. Any good writer will have an eye for what she considers errors in the way sentences are strung, scenes are described, point of view, etc., etc. I've been in critique groups. A lot of writers slam things just because they would write them differently.

I said "any good writer" because these days it's easy to publish books without going through and editor, and this means people who think their writing is perfect and can't benefit from comments are out there, and they will likely slam other books with less of a rational basis.

Either way, writers aren't to be trusted when it comes to how enjoyable the book is to the less discerning non-writers.

The blockbuster games are fun. That's why people play them, and they make a gazillion dollars on the first day of sales. To claim that somehow indies know better flies in the face of reality. Sure occasionally some indies make a decent amount of money, but it still pales in comparison to what the AAA games make.

It's okay to claim that these big budget games are holding the art of games back, or that they don't always succeed in getting the formula perfect, but claiming they're not fun? Maybe they're not fun to a subset of people. But most indie games are not fun for a larger subset of people.

Donations can help to continue the development of a free project, which is why a lot of free projects ask for them. There's nothing bad in that, and occasionally if I use a free piece of software a lot I will pay its developer some money, because this kind of thing does encourage a developer to continue.

That's how I understand "economically sustainable". Dan Spalding wants to create more free books, but working on them at his own expense is not practical. Enough donations could help sustain this idea indefinitely.