Is it a bad thing that I read the description and realized I'm basically the opposite of all of those things?

Fuck it, there's probably nothing to this study anyway. Scientists don't know what the fuck they're talking abbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

When I told people that the space shuttles still had stuff like floppy drives and basically were equipped with computers from the 70s-80s, there were very confused. Why isn't NASA running the latest hardware?

It rings true for governments and business alike - reliability and stability are important, and "good enough" is king. There's a pretty decently big local hardware store (7-8 figures of business yearly) that STILL uses the custom cash register and inventory software that they ordered in the 80s. Why? "It works, and unlike Windows PoS our software doesn't really crash or fuck up."

Easy way to put it - if you play the "incoming message" sound from AIM, most people would recognize it. That's significant cultural impact.

Government can't steal the $10,000 in twenties that you have buried in a watertight container under your uncle's barn.

You can't exactly print out Bitcoins and stash them somewhere, now can you?

Cash is the ultimate form of privacy.

It honestly depends on what it's going to be used for. If the end-user is getting their start in video or audio editing, I'd instantly recommend a Mac solely on the software that is only available on Mac. Garageband is fantastic to learn and really easy to pick up, and it's easy to move up to the more professional products when the time comes.

My efforts searching for a Windows equivalent that's as easy to use as Garageband (for my aspiring musician friends) has proven difficult. (Any suggestions would be appreciated.)

What boggles my mind is the missed opportunity at iOs/Android apps.

Have one unit as the "DM". Other people in the same area/LAN can be flagged as players. DM can see everything, players can only see relevant combat data and their own character sheets. You could literally replace all of the paper with a well-written iPad/Android suite and they'd make boatloads of money doing it.

Unfortunately WotC seems content to just re-release the game every five years and clean up on the sourcebooks. It's vile.

As an explanation for the sheer depth there is in 3.5, did you know there's something on the order of 700+ classes and prestige classes in that edition? And that's just in the official sourcebooks.

3.5 is pretty much the standard in my gaming circles, but Pathfinder (a.k.a. 3.75) is gaining traction. People really like what Paizo has done with the rules and the setting.

I think this represents an interesting dichotomy for geeks.

For instance, you might have the whole "going to dinner parties with the wife" thing in order to maintain a social norm. Meanwhile, you'd rather be in your garage tinkering with a Raspberry Pi or Arduino or something in your garage and making an anti-squirrel turret for your backyard.

As I'm getting older I'm realizing more and more that the hobbies I find intellectually satisfying are rarely something that can be plugged into a social component. As good (and intelligent) as my friends are, most of them wouldn't want to spend an afternoon learning something interesting in Perl or building a robot for the fuck of it. We go out for drinks or to a diner or something like that. I'm finding that I have to divorce "intellectually stimulating" from "social interaction" more and more every day.

No wonder we spend all of our time in the basement. It's the only place we can get any of the really interesting shit done, and almost no one wants to join us.

Well, how about experiments conducted in a low-gravity environment?

How about telescopes and other such sensors that are capable of things we'd never be able to do on the Earth?

How about because fuck it, it's there, which is one of the most important driving factors in humanity?

Why did we climb Everest? Because it's the tallest mountain. Why does man try to skydive from ever-increased heights? Because we've never skydived from that high before. Why does the Heart Attack Grill make a Quadruple Bypass burger? Because honestly, a good cheeseburger has more calories in it than a month of your salary.

('< ~Hello, beautiful!

Wakka wakka!