Yes. And yes, we're crazy enough to enjoy it. :)

Next question.

In addition to the plethora of recommendations for Scalzi's "Old Man's War", I would like to recommend John Ringo's Posleen War series. As noted on Wikipedia, it's free online thanks to Baen Publishing's marketing initiatives.

While I have no argument with you that self determination is the best way forward, the automatic assumption that colonialism was an umitigated disaster is also false. See one of my earlier posts discussiong what I found on Gapminder.

I met my wife through Match.Com. We've been together now for just shy of 7 years. I pinged her the day after she had decided decided to pull her profile and let her account lapse. Fortunately, she hadn't yet gotten around to it when my forwarded email arrived in her inbox. She told me later that I intrigued her so much she re-subscribed just to reply.

We spent a week and a lot of emails back and forth before we agreed to meet for a quick dinner date. Three and a half hours into what was supposed to be less than an hour, we knew we were on to something good. :-)

Now, we had several factors working in our favor. First, we were both in our 40s so we had enough life experience to spot the obvious predators. Second, we were both coming off long term first marriages that had failed partially due to a lack of honest communication on our partners' part so we were prepared to be up front about our expectations. Third, both of us were prepared to just let the relationship develop naturally and not force it. Fourth, we had both followed up a few contacts on the site already (she more than me, actually) so we had a pretty good idea about how online communication can sometimes obscure true intent.

My advice would be to treat online dating as just one more option to meeting people. If things click between you and someone else, great! If not, in many ways it's a lot easier to walk away from an online relationship gone bad than, say, someone you met at work, at church, or your favorite local watering hole.

I still say, "Get yourself a Roku." In addition to everything else, it includes Amazon on Demand if you really insist on paying for it.

I'm not willing to pay $3 to watch a 27 year old movie. I'm ESPECIALLY not going to do so on top of an $80/year subscription to have the 'privilege' of paying those kinds of ridiculous fees.

Nope, Netflix at $8 or $9 a month is about right for just about everything I want to watch. When I can't find what I want to watch there, Hulu Plus for another $8 a month fills in the holes. (Although I'm finding that my faimly just doesn't care as much about Hulu Plus as I thought they might be.)

Then there's all the free or cheap movie resources of all kinds to fill up your evenings, specialty channels, streaming music, news, private channels created by the community, and more galore!

Forget using your MythTV box for anything other than a basic media center for serving up your ripped DVDs and CDs. Drop your cable TV subscription and get yourself a Roku instead. :-)

Bingo. This is definitely not a do everything, infinitely survivable means of logistical support. However, if it can beat out a mule for a reasonable price, why not keep a small unit or four around?

before making any assumptions:

I'm seeing a couple of articles about an initial determination by the ITC against Barnes & Noble on its patent misuse defense, and there's quite a lot of spin on the ball, thanks to the usual suspects. They are reading a lot into a title of a sealed document. I see many misstatements.

So I'll explain a little about the process, so you can understand it. For one thing, the title of the sealed ITC initial determination is called an *initial* determination for a reason. It means it isn't final. The final one comes later. Initial determinations can be reviewed by the full ITC if the defendant petitions for review and even one Commissioner says yes.

Litigation isn't like football. It is rarely suddenly over.

Most importantly, the materials and depositions Barnes & Noble is seeking in discovery from Nokia and MOSAID have not yet arrived, although the ITC did grant Barnes & Noble's motion to ask Finland and Canada to provide them, and that's still ongoing, so there is likely more to go, even at the ITC. So with those materials not yet in hand, Microsoft's statement today that this means the defense is meritless is... well... to put it kindly premature. I mean, if a determination is made without the complete record being available, what does it mean?

Lots more here.

Well, the mindset for developing a solid back end that never fails no matter what has to be different from that required to develop a solid, easy to navigate UI (or UIs in the case where multiple front ends will be hitting the same back end application). There are very different criteria for success, after all.

So no, I don't think UI work should be delegated to just junior developers. It's a specialty that really should be led by at least one senior developer that has a passion for getting it right along with a talented designer or two. As others have mentioned, letting the designers run the whole show is just as bad (if not worse!) to leaving it in the hands of inexperienced people who are bound to flounder on their own.

Oh, we vets have been speaking out pretty much nonstop since 9/11. We have gotten drowned out, unfortunately, by the likes of Karl Rove, Rupert Murdoch, Rumsfeld, Obama, Bachmann, and all the others who claim to be on our side. :(