Right there with ya. I used to have a P4 furnace but have upgraded to something a little newer and cooler. The GPU and TV Tuner cards have picked up the slack, however.

There are sports other than football, y'know.

The point GP was trying to make was, I think, that the negative cash flow to the federal government was approximately equal to the amount of the budget deficit for 2010. So the assertion that if there was neutral cash flow to the feds, we wouldn't have had a deficit isn't incorrect....

I think you read the larger picture properly, but I think you got your nose too far from the computer screen for the point GP was after ;)

You know, I try to leave the door open for benefit of the doubt. Yes, I understand Comcast believes it to be in their best interest to lock down content and ensure that they control as much of the signal chain as possible. Yes, they're probably under some pressure from content creators to ensure as much encryption as possible is used.

What I really don't understand is why they don't get that the ubiquity of equipment I can use to tune into their programming, and specifically, the ability to run that signal into my computer for my system to record the programs I want to watch is A) *increasing* not decreasing the amount of Comcast / content creators' content I'm enjoying, and B) basically the only good reason I can think of to maintain Comcast's service.

If they break my setup and insist I get one of their boxes for each TV (or PC) I want to run the A/V signal into, Comcast loses its single compelling, discriminator. IOW, for me, by making themselves as locked down as everyone else, they effectively *increase* the number of players in my marketplace, and at that point, I'll almost certainly choose a different provider as a result, or at the very least, kill my TV "service" altogether. Either way, net loss to Comcast.

"a significant portion of huge nerds ... uses this software"

I'll pass up this opportunity to rave about your excellent long-distance subject-verb agreement and just accuse you of being an insensitive clod, how's about that?

That would be an interesting job. Microsoft Smut Engineer.

Heh. I've actually done this; not for Microsoft, but another search company (for a _real_ search company, one might say to get in a cheap shot ;)

It's actually not nearly as much fun as it sounds. At some point, your soul just feels dirty -- it's not just porn; depending on the strength of the filter, you could also be looking for drugs, innuendo (OK, I really like the innuendo...), hate sites, etc. Hate sites are the worst.

While blocking the domain really does sound like a nice feature for anyone running a network they want to lock down, this of course doesn't block the explicit content from any other search engine. And it's relying on dolts like me (only they work for Microsoft) to make it happen. I hope they have a lot of dolts. There's a damn lot of explicit stuff out there!

And if you quit calling it an "omnibus" everyone on the bus would quit calling you a "prick" which would, I'm sure, make your time on the bus more pleasant.

I haven't a clue what to do about the French people, though.

Emergency admit, 4 days, 7 hour surgery, $106k here. :-P Believe me, I have a thing or two to say about the insurance / medical billing industry in the states.

Or (for anyone who's recently seen the people in the emergency room) illegal immigrants who are an even more universal drain on services.

Though I don't care for the tone of your comment, I will grant you that if they weren't performing the dangerous, uncomfortable or just downright shitty jobs that no American citizen wants to take, they'd be spending less time in the ER. True.

Yes, because that's exactly what any rational person would do when they have a screaming child with a broken arm. Jesus Christ... I hope GP fought the hell out of the charges. I did for my treatment and managed to receive just treatment. After a year of haggling, yelling, stressing, and tracking down points of contact. Good times.