ORA's own titles have in general become really quite regrettable. Their "Hacks" series is particularly dreadful, but even the animal books are just not what they used to be.

Manning's "In Action" series on the other hand has shown consistently high quality for every title I've picked up, particularly when it comes to Java.

That's why you give non-generic species different names. For example, Weiss and Hickman decided halflings in their games were fearless, impish, and not at all swarthy or stocky, so they called them Kender instead.

What irks me more is that several systems (including, urgh, D&D 4.0) lean away from role-playing back toward pure combat simulation

Tell me how previous editions actually encouraged roleplaying? Did anyone ever actually take the abstraction of minute-long rounds seriously? Those started going down the drain the moment AD&D was published.

Seems to me that offering a streamlined system would demand more roleplaying.

I think I've met porn your neighbor.

Ah I did forget about that default. I do know about the quality of anecdotes (it's why "support horror stories" never move my buying decisions much) but the run time of a full fsck is a well-known problem.

Maybe Reiser4 fixed all that, but now it does go back to the politics of picking a fs with no stable developer base.

I'm frankly kind of surprised anyone was still running ReiserFS before he was in the news: its failure modes are spectacular, partition-eating things, the recovery tool never worked, and even recoverable errors take eons to fsck.

All browsers offer an API for getting at the current selection. You just hook MouseUp and read the selection. Nothing so low-level as translating mouse coordinates.

Running a different httpd does nothing to protect your app, nor does jailing it. Modsecurity is for sanitizing and rewriting requests til you get your vulnerable app patched or replaced.

It's great that they're pushing for cleaner power, but isn't this a textbook case of interstate tariffs that states are forbidden to enact?

> What current gen smartphone do you know of that lacks a basic headphone jack?

Most phones that aren't an iPhone. How many phones have you even owned?

Angstroms are awful big. Just for the sake of maximum precision, how many digits would you need if you were measuring in planck lengths?

Nor does it come with a mini-usb to phono patch cable. The earphones that come with the phone oddly enough end in actual earphones.

Yes, getting an adapter is not a big deal, but it's a technical hurdle you can't surmount if you don't carry it with you or keep it in your car. My point was that bluetooth is supposed to free us of this nonsense, but I still don't see it making any inroads for home or car stereo equipment.

> The best part is if I select a restaurant it will bring up pertinent info on that restaurant such as its phone number and opening hours.

Actually what's really nice is you can then flip between the map and the Zagat reviews (or whatever you have in Oz) while you listen to some tunes to pass the time, then when you find one you like, call the restaurant, browse their menu on your phone while you're on the phone, quickly put your reservation into a reminder, then flip back to the menu while still on the call.

Minus the background tunes, I did exactly that just the other day, and I'm hardly some kind of tech wizard (I don't even read my email most days).

> It's called an aux in jack, and many more new cars have them than IPod docks

Except the phone doesn't come with an aux out plug. And wasn't bluetooth supposed to make this irrelevant?

I never said I wished them dead. That's the sort of mean-spiritedness that the Darwin Award fans go in for.