I had Prey installed on my son's laptop, which was stolen along with a bunch of other things. After I told Prey it was stolen, we got a geolocation hit in a nearby town with the name of the hotel in the WiFi. The local police went out at midnight and collected it all for us. We drove over in the morning and brought them brownies.

Sure, people lose some mental faculty as they age, but in my estimation it's far more likely because of physical degradation of the brain than a hand-waving concept like "degradation of psyche". Stop the physical degradation of the brain, and the mind will remain fresh.

Hooray for vacations and retirements.

Sometimes I run defrag and delete my temp folders when weird issues show up. It seems to work enough times that I keep doing it. I can't tell if that's a fact-based decision or just superstition.

I recently had a great experience with police. We had a break-in, and all the laptops were stolen. Fortunately we had Prey on one of them, and it tracked the thieves to a hotel in a nearby town. The local police investigated and recovered almost everything. We drove over the next day and brought them brownies.

The reason we interpret this as an advertisement is that Slashdot hasn't been doing videos or product reviews or video product reviews. Or maybe you have. But I haven't seen them and I've been here for fifteen years. There is no context for having established any sort of "we do slashdot videos now" and/or "we do video product reviews now". All we get is a giant spammy sounding blurb with what looks like a commercial that could have been produced directly to put on the front of the product's website.

I don't see how anyone could have not seen our skepticism and reactions coming a mile away when we were given no context for it.

I thought it was a joke, too. I had to read through the comments and make sure I wasn't missing something in the blurb or something somewhere that explained this was an early April Fools thing where Slashdot was having a go at us. I guess that, now that Taco is gone, they decided to roll out flat-out advertising. Full blown commercials and everything (even though I have the little "no ads" option selected on Slashdot's interface).

Slashdot has become less a part of my life in the last few years. Not because of other sites. Mostly because of itself. And because I don't need it much anymore. They're doing a really good job of convincing me that I don't need to be here at *all* anymore.

Observation: Insurance rates are currently set at a level that the market and competitive pressure will bear, without this additional information.

Prediction: Early adopters will see some benefit in lowered insurance costs, but once most people are enrolled, insurance rates will creep back up to previous levels (that being the established level that the market will bear). Insurance companies will create additional rules that will facilitate a greater rate of insurance claim denial based up the new information, and will see greater profits arise due to this. Consumers overall will see no benefit in the long run.

The question everyone is probably asking themselves is "what countries is this censored in?".

I don't think I have used a stamp since the 90s and I could get by just fine if the USPS just made a monthly visit to my house, instead of daily. All they do is bring me crap I have to pay to dispose of (and it all DOES go into the trash on my way back from the mail box).