I use lynx because my workplace blocks most websites that I like to peruse through the day. (They don't block Slashdot, though, which is why I'm here so often.) I need SSH for my job so they reluctantly opened a hole for it, and I then SSH out to my linux shell, start up lynx and browse the news.

I can't even list all the problems at work that I've magically fixed with perl.

Yes, I'm stubborn, yes, I'm regressive. But the old tools give me more power than the newfangled stuff, because the new stuff is often simplified to the point of uselessness or locked down by bureaucracy. There is magic in things that are old and wild.

The problem might not be wear and tear, it might be ice forming somewhere in the wheel system. Normal ice can be evaporated away by heating up the instrument, but when I say 'ice', I mean deposits of some material -- vaporized rubber, outgassing paint, or even neutron spalling. All of those could add friction to the system, can't be easily removed, and may have nothing to do with the bearings.

They might be, but it wouldn't matter. The friction is probably due to ice forming on the reaction wheel or its axle. Ice will eventually clog up even a mag-lev system. Space is just a difficult place to keep mechanisms working.

In TFA: [Tesla] has plans to build its first showroom in the state next year.

In North Carolina they've got nothing, just a web presence. No overhead. Whether that means they're competing unfairly or not is for the capitalists and their lawyers to work out.

They're selling their cars over the internet. There is no sales force, there are no vendors. The entire nationwide sales operation could be run by one guy with a php script. (But hopefully they have a bit more than that.) Welcome to the future.

(\ Brohoof back at ya.

Yes, it's a silly fandom for a kid's show. But it's an amazing community unlike any I've seen on the internet -- and I've seen a lot. The creativity and generosity of this fandom is off the charts, and that's the kind of crowd with whom I'm proud to associate.

Yes, I'm that Remus Shepherd. Keep it quiet, though -- I'm more likely to be driven out with pitchforks than welcomed.

But is it personal challenge, or group challenge?

It sounds to me as if all the classes and gameplay have been dumbed down to appeal to casual players, but the challenge has been ratcheted up for raid content. That's great for people who enjoy group dynamics, but that's a small percentage of players. Most players want to play the game, not play gamer personalities against each other trying to make them work as a team. If the game insults the players' intelligence, no amount of interpersonal complexity will salvage their experience.

Let me make an analogy -- it's like a ping-pong match played against a wall with a 24-man team. For the leader that might be an exciting test of his skill in managing a group, but for the players it's just hitting a ball against a wall.

They are not opposites.

Grind means being forced to do repetitive tasks over and over. Catering to casuals means allowing tasks to be completed easily and in a short time. Put them together -- as games tend to do, these days -- and you get dumb content that you must repeat.

Grindy, not casual friendly: 'Get 100 macguffins. You can find one at the bottom of each high level dungeon.'
Not grindy, casual friendly: 'Solve this puzzle to receive a one-time buff.'
Grindy and casual friendly: 'Kill 10 spiders and bring their legs back to me.'

To appeal to the lowest common denominator, MMOs have become focused on quests like 'kill 10 spiders'. That's about all the new content has, anymore.

I never played WoW, but I'm a refugee from City of Heroes who tried and failed to get into Guild Wars 2. I can't find any community in-game. If I ask questions on broadcast chat I get snide answers. They tell me to join a guild, but I don't see any guilds advertising for members (and no way to check them out before joining. What happened to guild web pages?) My highest character is level 27 but the first dungeon is level 35, and there's nobody left in the newbie grounds. It's a terrible experience for a new player.

I wonder where MMOs are going from here. The WoW generation is stale. The next generation of auction-house-enhanced free-to-play MMOs have completely failed from my perspective as a non-PvP player. (Some, like EVE, attract PvPers. I don't understand the allure.) I wish I knew what the next generation -- like Wildstar and Elder Scrolls Online -- are planning to break out of the same old mold.

That begs the question: Can God dupe so much gold that even He couldn't lift it?

Yeah, but some of that is the John Carter problem. It was groundbreaking and fresh when it came out, but in the interim it has been copied so many times that now the original story feels trite and formulaic.

The John Carter books *invented* the space opera, the alien princess, the lightsaber, and arguably the superhero. Just because those concepts have been rehashed ad infinitum shouldn't diminish the earlier work. Ender's Game invented some literary concepts also -- young heroes fighting for their lives, the misfit hero, the special academy, a desperate future. It established the subgenre, and was groundbreaking when it appeared.

On a tangential thought, why can't we have both? This is the future. We should have a customizable, user-friendly government and economic structure.

Maybe Citizen A prefers free enterprise, so he opts for a capitalist citizenship. He works for a living, pays a low level of taxes and receives little help from the government. Citizen B prefers a socialist citizenship, so he receives a stipend and single-payer health care, and a large portion of his earnings are sucked away in taxes. Citizen C lives in a shed down by the river and prefers the anarchist option; he pays no taxes and expects nothing from the government, and is indeed excluded from any laws that affect only himself. He can't hurt other people, but he can drink and do drugs all he likes.

There is no reason, in today's information-rich society, why every citizen can't choose among several different legal and economic options, all of which combine to form the government system of their country. All it would take is a database and a form for citizens to choose their option.

These systems -- capitalism, socialism, communism, anarchism -- they are not each others' enemy. They are different options that are all superior in some way, and people should get their choice in the way they want to live.

Very well said.

I think the disconnect is that computer manufacturers like to lump their customers as either content creators or consumers, when in reality almost every computer user is both. Kids who play videogames eventually learn to code them, or to create their own animations. Grandparents who barely know how to turn the computer on will someday want to post pictures of their family. Mothers who mostly swap gossip and recipes will someday want to create posters for their bake sale. It's too easy to switch between consumption and creation to consider those activities as always separate.

I have yet to meet a computer user who does not create content of some sort, and I do not know anyone who uses a tablet exclusively. All the tablet owners I know also own a PC -- a laptop, at least. Users will not be satisfied with one or the other. And since there is no satisfying way to provide both tablet and PC experiences in one device, I wish manufacturers would stop trying.

The difference is that most companies have their users or employees sign EULAs or waivers to protect the company from its actions.

So the question becomes -- is Bitcoin mining covered in the E-Sports EULA? If so, no harm and no foul. It still stinks, but legally that should cover them.