And the necessity of thinking that we're living in a VR world is? I've read about hypotheses from reputable scientists that the universe is actually a massive simulation running on some unimaginably immense computer, so Elon Musk's musings at least have predecessors. But again, what is the necessity of thinking this? What question is otherwise unanswered except by imagining that this scenario is actually true? It's an interesting thought, but I think "The Matrix" was there first.

Doesn't look like a UFO to me, intelligent or otherwise. As the earth's surface moves beneath the ISS structures in the foreground, the "UFO" remains static in the video. Occam's Razor, anyone?

I guess I'm in cahoots with those darned censors, then. And since I'm the one who is the intended target of the content, I feel I have the freedom to avoid looking at said content. And if that content insists on me looking at it, I have the right to deny that intrusion into my field of vision. The right of the website operator to derive income from imposed content clashes with my right to look at what I want to look at, and only what I want to look at. I don't see any particularly obvious solution to this except ad blocking software. There's very little in the way of ad-sponsored content that I find valuable enough to subject myself to ads for products and services I have no desire to use. If I want something, I will search for it. I do not click through on ads placed on websites I visit - that's one thing ad operators can count on. In that respect, I am not a set of eyeballs they will get any return on. Their wares are dead to me.

In today's work environment, this sort of thing is expected, I guess. Is anyone pushing back against it? Has anyone threatened lawsuit? This needs to be publicized - widely - so that maybe the bank will have second thoughts. Still and all, it sucks big time.

Got it installed this morning. Not radically different from build 10166 in appearance, but there is now an EULA to agree to, as well as Express Settings to click on - you can change them later - that seem to give Microsoft a lot of information about your use of the PC so they can "get to know you." As time permits, I plan on beating on this version a LOT. One thing that has been done was to install Classic Shell as a Start Menu replacement. So far, that seems to be working just fine. I expect to see more changes as time passes, since this will apparently never be quite ready to have a fork stuck in it.

Something about this study sounds vaguely phony to me - 130,000 consumers at a national convenience store chain, and 13 per cent would persistently buy doomed products... Something about that 13 thing...

In the world of health foods, natural diets, and alternative nutrition, there are scads of scientific studies cited that demonstrate the "possible" value of this or that nutrient, supplement, or other non-mainstream dietary item. All these things "may" have "possible" benefit for some group of users. This is the way the public sees scientific studies of health and fitness, and Adams is absolutely right in calling science on it. Even given that science is always conditional, always likely to contradict earlier "truth," there is far too much reportage that just veers from extreme to extreme in the realm of nutrition. There are far too many studies that aren't carefully designed, or are studying to a predisposed result, or are just shams for some corporate agenda. The good ones are likely to be mis-reported by one or more popularisers, or have significant factors ignored in the media, or in some other way be distorted when made public. Even when the science is excellent, the reportage is likely to be horrendous. The bottom line for me, at least, is that I'll eat what I want, do the exercise that I want, and try to avoid the things that seem too nutty to be valid. That's not very scientific, I guess, but it beats being led around by the nose by competing studies and experts.

I'll begin by saying IANAL. That out of the way, in the Blogger Terms of Service, Section 3, there's explicit language giving Google the right to disclose personal information if required by, among other things, "court order." This would seem to remove any recourse the "skank" blogger has, since presumably she agreed to these terms when she began writing her blog. As far as her attorney saying that the "right of privacy" is inherent in the First Amendment, I would suggest that's a rather liberal interpretation of that amendment, and not an absolute protection even then. If I'm not mistaken, libel or slander is generally not protected speech. The fact that the plaintiff in the original suit has now decided to drop the suit does put an interesting wrinkle in this whole sordid affair. I doubt we've seen the last of either Ms. Cohen or Ms. Port... sigh...

I wish I could concur with you about MS Office. I've beta tested both Office and Vista, and I've got a Vista Business installation on a removable hard drive for my home system. While I agree that Office 2007 looks better than previous versions, and once you get used to the ribbon it's probably somewhat more efficient, there's a giant problem that's a deal-breaker for me. Outlook 2007 breaks a lot of the email that I get, things like newsletters from stores and organizations that I've actually consented to receive. Its support for HTML is a giant step backward, because of the Office team's decision to use the Word rendering engine for HTML email.

I've got a 64-bit installation of Ubuntu 7.04 on another removable hard drive for the same system that I run Vista on. Its hardware compatibility is actually better than Vista's (it can work with the Hauppauge TV tuner card that Vista chokes on), and its combination of Evolution, OpenOffice.org, and Firefox, as well as all the other apps I've installed, give me a productive PC that Vista (at this point) could only aspire to. If it weren't for the fact that I use a Windows Mobile smartphone and a few Windows-specific apps for work, I would have chucked Windows some time ago, and would have never looked back.