I finally removed flash from my main browsers (Safari and Firefox). I don't even using FlashBlock anymore since that lies to sites ("I want flash content!") and sometimes prevents html5 video from appearing. I use Chrome as my backup when I really need Flash, ie: to watch Fringe on Hulu once a week.

Whenever I do run Flash, it inevitably kicks one of my Core2Duo's cores to 100%. My laptop heats up, the fans kick on at full volume. Then I close down Chrome (which didn't have flash in the foreground or operating anyway, but maybe in a background tab) and the fan shuts off, cpu drops back down to 2-4% usage.

Having flash on my phone sounds about as good as towing a yacht with my bicycle. DO NOT WANT.

It can be annoying on occasion, but sad as it may be, Google is almost always right. And when it isn't, I've always had the "Click here if you really wanted to search for "teh internet" not "the internet"", which is easy and reasonable enough for me. That said, I absolutely despise no-interaction auto-correct systems in general, so I'm still on the fence with google's work even though they've managed to not annoy me yet.

AFAIK from implementing an AVS system at a previous job, the zip codes aren't required because there are so many older systems that don't support them. The retailer gets a discounted credit card processing rate for each transaction (or maybe if X% of transactions include zip) to encourage them to use zipcode verification.

I'm not sure what the point of asking is if they aren't going to reject it anyway, but they may use the zipcode along with other info (eg. location of the purchase, retailer's sketchiness quotient, purchase amount, etc.) to selectively reject transactions.

Also know as: BritneySpears.jpg.exe

I've always thought of autorun as a ridiculously obvious attack vector. But you have a good point, in that once upon a time the only CDs available were software (that you were going to execute anyway) and music CDs (whose creators were not malevolently-inclined towards their users). Around 1998 or 2000 when CD-R drives were in every computer, that's when MS should have removed autorun or done this prompt-ever-time fix. I wonder how many corporate systems were infiltrated simply by leaving an unlabeled CD-R on someone's desk, or mailing them one.

When you put a music CD in your drive do you expect it to run executable code (that potentially roots your windows install)? Of course not. Media has long been used more for file storage than for executables/installs, even moreso now that installation discs are out of date by the time they ship.

How did you turn it off, out of curiosity? There seems to be about a dozen different ways, which I found quite frustrating after finding an SD card that had a windows virus on it. (luckily found that out when plugging the card into my mac, not my PC)

When Apple made (only) crappy products, you had a point. But welcome to the year 2011, you can retire 1995's memes. Apple makes some great but expensive products. They are being copied by other manufacturers left and right because of their design, not because of their marketing.

I'm gonna believe them, sorry. Woz is neither infallible nor an expert on automobiles or their electrical systems. Woz is talking about a repeatable cruise control issue, not a brake failure. My car does the same thing all the time, especially if you turn cruise on while going uphill. You're decelerating rapidly so your car immediately drops below the cruise speed and the car slams on the gas to try to catch up, and then stops just as suddenly once it hits that speed.

I drive a Honda btw, and cruise control does the same thing on every other model car I've driven.

I heard on the radio last year that the rates for Toyotas were almost identical to the rates for every other manufacturer. There are a lot more Toyotas out there than most brands so you hear a lot of Toyota anecdotes. But percentage-wise, Toyota was unremarkable. The other car manufacturers are/were scared shitless that there would be a high-profile incident of driver mistake in their cars that caught the media's attention.

Feel free to hunt down the stats and correct me if I'm misremembering.

Security researchers look around for security holes, that is hardly news. They're also way too public to actually hack/crack into a site. That's illegal and leads directly to jail. Meanwhile, how would the CEO even know *who* hacked the site? Did he triangulate their position with his ethernet prowess? At best he can claim the researcher made the security hole known and someone else took advantage of it -- if he's claiming more than that, he's plain nuts.

Have you every looked at Conway's Game of Life? It has a far far simpler rule system than our universe, yet yields magnificently complex results with very simple inputs.

As long as inorganic compounds that exist naturally in the universe can form self-replicating compounds, the rest is elementary evolution. And I believe multiple inorganic self-replicating molecules have been identified.

The wikipedia article on abiogenesis goes into much more detail if you have any earnest interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

We also dismiss the non-religious "theory" of boogeymen under the bed. And we accept religious truths and philosophies ("do unto others..") that are useful and supportable. Creationism is not disregarded because it is religious, it is disregarded because it is useless. It provides no testable hypotheses to suggest there is anything correct about it.

Speciation has been observed. Repeatedly. I fear you will need to retreat with your god to a new gap.

The "theory" of evolution is testable, useful, and has repeatedly and correctly predicted real-world results. Just like the "theory" of gravity, when something is consistently true we regard it as truth. And just like the effect of outer space or quantum physics on the theory gravity, we will continue to adjust our understanding of evolution as research clarifies more details of how it works.

Thank you for that clarification, I could not believe any study would claim 60% of high schools teach creationism. How long ago was the Scopes Monkey Trial now?

I'm amazed at how many commenters (in addition to the OP himself) believed the OP's post.

I wonder if that was intentional - Slashdot had a major problem in that discussion only took place in the first thread, because the system allowed it to stack indefinitely. If you wanted people to see your comment, you respond to the first reply's first reply's first reply's... A flatter discussion with topics as top level nodes would be ideal.