The apocalypse isn't "because of humans", it was a part of the plan from the beginning.

my criteria would be everything you said plus:
* Copyright term reduced to 14 years renewable once
* DMCA and all IP legislation passed after the DMCA completely repealed
* Related industries cease all lobbying activity and fire most of their legal staff


Until those 3 conditions are met my conscience just won't accept paying money into the movie industry.

Why would the organizers of this study even tell the patients which group they're in? Hell, you probably shouldn't even tell the patients they're part of a study. Just pick 100 random suitable hospital patients; pray for half of them; don't pray for the other half.

If you want it, it's yours. Go find it! I left all my filez on That Server!

And so, nerds from all over the world, chasing their dreams, head for the internet! So begins the great age of copyright infringement!

It's not just an "every other version" thing. Versions of windows that introduce huge changes generally come with a side serving of massive incompatibility and instability. Versions of windows that make subtle refinements and UI changes generally have good compatibility and stability. Win 8 is introducing a huge change to the way Windows works, so we can assume that it will generally suck. Windows 9 will look a lot like win8 but will be refined and work well.

I wish. Tried playing the "Myst" series lately? A virtual machine running Win95 is pretty much the only way.

My home PC, my desk at work, the 2 lab computers that I use regularly, and 1-2 other random lab computers in a typical day. Add 1 more if my phone counts.

The fact that they exist does not imply that they have sufficient business. If you're the type of person who opens a brick & mortar business based on a product that is clearly nothing more than a passing fad, are you really doing the market research beforehand to guarantee that your market is large enough? Probably not.

The computer is nothing more than a tool that lets me play games, use the internet, and get work done. Any effort spent on the computer itself is wasted effort. I'll run linux when you can point me at a distro that is the same or less effort as a windows 7 install, will support all of my hardware with similar confidence as windows 7, and will run whatever games I feel like playing.

And I'm not paying $2500 for a $1200 computer so apple can fuck off.

So to communicate instantaneously over any distance I just need to use photons with wavelength greater than or equal to the communication distance? Cool.

Actually, I meant this to be a snarky response but, given that high wavelength = low energy I could see a situation where this is true but for any significant distance the photon energy is so small that they can't actually be detected on the far end. Cool!