Wow, here in Sweden SMS is finally and very slowly starting to die out in favor of various online methods of messaging (Apple's Messenger thing seems to be growing and lots of people just use Facebook's chat function with push alerts on their cellphones).

I would've paid for this bundle if Company of Heroes had been available for OS X and Linux. I already have a copy for Windows that I've tried to get running under Wine (with poor results).

No interest in Windows-only games for me though.

I thought Emacs was the leading virtual LISP machine. It's got a bunch of neat software that will run on it. Sadly the default text editor is a bit clunky.

I run my own mail server and I try to keep SpamAssassin relatively up-to-date.

Did have a period when I didn't update it for six months or so though and didn't really detect any more spam than usual slipping through (and no legitimate mail being marked as spam either).

If 40 is the new 60 does that mean I can retire at 45? That'd be neat.

In my experience it tends to be less a failing of the design and infrastructure of the Internet as a whole and more a failing of whoever is hosting the content (bogged-down server(s) or lack of bandwidth on their end).

There are always exceptions, of course, I know a few people who insist on using "wireless broadband" even when they have access to FTTH/FTTP services simply because they chose the wireless service a year or two ago and they keep telling themselves it's "good enough" (while waiting 30-90 seconds for Youtube videos to buffer enough to start playing) much in the same way that they feel their TV reception is "good enough" when the signal doesn't drop out too often on days with good weather (and it's pretty much unwatchable on rainy or snowy days). These people are the exception though, they're the ones who just won't admit that their setup is broken for whatever reason (a lot of times the Swedish word "dumsnålhet" would seem to be fitting, it translates to something like "cheap/stingy to the point of stupidity", it's when you've got a $1500 gaming PC and you won't spend another $3 per month on broadband because it's "too much money" or you've got a $2000 3D TV and you can't be bothered replacing the antenna cable because a new one costs $10).

Sure, because running around in the woods practicing how to repel a soviet invasion that was unlikely to happen since the USSR had already imploded on itself was much more useful for society than going to college...

Also, I didn't refuse to serve, I was simply very clear on my lack of interest and they chose to let me off the hook (technically up until we got rid of conscription they could've decided to reverse that decision and even now if a war pops up they can bring conscription back and make me go through Grundläggande Militärutbildning).

Yeah, I managed to avoid conscription when I was 18 by simply acting sufficiently disinterested. Apparently there is a point at which even the (Swedish) army just sort of gives up on any hopes of turning you into a soldier.

Mostly I just didn't see the point in wasting a whole year running around in the woods when I could go straight to college.

I thought it was God(TM) who put them there to test our faith. Or is that just one of Satan's lies? Does that mean the christians who claim this are actually heretics?

I keep hearing this "with unions everyone will get the same salary" thing from Americans and I've been getting the impression that there's a lot of irrational hatred of unions based on this misconception.

This is not some fundamental consequence of unions, it's simply a side-effect of some of the American unions. Here in Sweden, where we have a lot of strong unions in all sorts of industries, most just demand that there's a reasonable minimum salary, that you can't be forced to work as a "temporary" employee for years on end, that when layoffs happen they do so in a fair way, that local labor laws regarding overtime pay and things like that.

But for what one might call the current generation it was popularized by the show.

I've actually been thinking about this every now and then the last few years. That in a not-too-distant future someone will be able to whip up a virus that can kill only those its creators want to kill.

Like you what I thought wasn't targeting individuals so much as ethnic groups, some white supremacist in the US targeting genetic traits mostly found in black Africans (and their recent descendants), European right-wing extremists going after Arabs, certain groups in the Arab world going after ethnic groups which are predominately non-Muslim and so on.

If I was one of these crazies I'd also take other factors into account, for example, certain cultures are predominately patriarchal so you could perhaps limit your weapon to men, thus not completely depopulating a region. Or how about some crazy cultists targeting women in general?

It's really quite scary to think of.

I'm actually a fan of Firefly, and a Star Trek fan. It's just that I've always had issues with ST:TOS, it's just too out there for me to suspend disbelief (one of my favorite pet peeves is Spock's amazing ability to say something is "logical" even though he's actually making an argument based in no way on logic or rational reasoning).

Meh, pulling DIMMs at least implies a little knowledge, when I did tech support there were people who called in to complain about how they had to cut parts of the connector on their network cable off to make it fit the RJ-11 connection on their DSL modem and what a bunch of idiots we were because it still wouldn't work even though they had "fixed" our "defective" hardware...

So you're saying you want your SCIENCE fiction to be "YEEEHAW! Cowboys in space! With BLASTERS! And JAR-JAR! PEW PEW!"?