Competition makes sense up to some extent. But when you're literally drowning in an olympic-sized pool of bills, we're not talking about "dog-eat-dog", adaptation and survival. We're talking about something that's becoming pathological. It's somewhat of an "I-want-more" disease, where you're spiralling down the "give moah" path and there's no end in sight.

Wat these giants don't get is that their high level fight is making thousands of people suffer directly; no raises because armies of lawyers must be paid, layoffs because war chests must be filled, forced overtime because the other giant does the same to his people. This is madness and I shiver at the thought that someone else actually approves this sort of behavior.

Such activities involve a pretty large number of people. It's interesting how they collectively can keep it a secret for a pretty long time.

I have no less than 5 browsers: IE (for some work netapps), Firefox (main work browser, home use for shadier stuff, like torrent trackers), Chrome (personal sites, such as Slashdot and GMail, both at work and home), Safari (for site testing purposes, rarely used) and Maxthon (used it for a while but it had some weird behaviors so I abandoned it). I don't use Opera because I hated its guts years ago. But to me it's a matter of not mixing fun and work; almost daily I am presenting some analysis in a web conference and showing a browser riddled with personal bookmarks and tabs doesn't look professional.

Once I forgot my Chrome open with a tab showing hotnews.ro (a Romanian News website) and a Director asked abruptly "What sort of HOT news are you reading?". For a moment there it was awkward but then I showed it to him. Now he reads it using Google Translate, says it keeps him connected to Romanian culture. Heh.

Yeah and then you want to sync bookmarks, save a ile you reach and want to download, get a PDF to read, etc., etc. Plain browsing without taking advantage of anything else? Bland.

Being proud that Win 3.11 stayed infection-free 20 years ago doesn't impress me :)

YOu have to balance risk versus risk mitigation effort. Striking the balance is key to sanity. An extreme absolute would be disconnecting from Internet and accessing localost only, and you're VERY close to that.

I don't take any special precautionary measures and my last virus infection was 8 years ago, I think, and that was because of me, I disabled the antivirus to overwrite its alarms while installing a crack for a game I really wanted to try out. It was in 2005 IIRC.

There are wary people, and then there are paranoid people, and then there's you :)

Adopt me! Please? :)

I stand as living proof they're wrong.

EVE Online, World of Tanks, World of Warplanes, War Thunder, Path of Exile, Neverwinter, Smite, Hawken, PlanetSide 2, MachWarrior Online, just to name a few. And there's more to come still (World of Warships, Elder Scrolls Online, etc.)

F2P is the new hype and it simply seems to work.

A common misconception is that WoW players would only switch to similar MMOs. This isn't really true. Granted, some would, but most simply are looking for "something else" (whatever that is) and when they find it, they switch. Hell, they could just play ALL of the above for a fraction of the cost WoW used to incur (save for EVE Online which is still faithful to subscription-based play).

...Or you could just perform at the countryside; I see nothing wrong in starting a business there.
Sounds like your roommate wanted all the perks of the city but couldn't stand any of its disadvantages. Life doesn't agree with such a wish.

So if it doesn't apply to YOU, then it must be wrong.
I agree habit plays a large role, but think of it like this: if you were to be raised in a more natural environment, maybe your today's performance would have been 150% of what it is now. Truth is, you wouldn't know. It's one of the things you can't prove unless you go back to birth and start off on a different path, and then a Godlike power would compare the two :)

It doesn't matter, I started with a really lousy job :)
Besides, I am not from the US, and here in Romania you can increase your salary tenfold in a matter of years if you specialize in something. Minimum wage is below 200 USD.

Depends. If your password is complex enough, then you can use one for a core of websites (2-3 most secure).
And for all the ever-so-many bullshit websites you don'r care about, you can have the same U/P combo; if it gets hacked, you lose access to many bullshit sites you don't care about. Good. Losing my miniclip account would only translate as more free time and better productivity :)
That's why my password there is "12345" - same as my luggage's...

My salary grew 500% over 8 years. I definitely am better than Linux, Microsoft or Apple.

Um, WHAT?
73.7B - 60.4B = 13.3B increase, that's a bit over 22% increase in revenue in 2012 compared to 2008.
Compare that to Red Hat total FY12 revenue (1.13B), that's 1.53% of Microsoft's revenue for the same year.

You must have a very strange definition of "significantly".