Well that's really the principle at work here isn't it.

To an advertiser, the content of the site is noise. To us the adverts are noise. Some people block adverts on that principle alone.

The rest depends on the signal-to-noise ratio. Too far in one direction and you don't get enough money, too far in the other and you alienate your readership. The key is balance.

Advertisers forgot that. They took the short-view and went with increasingly intrusive and annoying adverts. They broke the balance in their favour, so we broke it in ours with filtering tools.

It just so happens that it's easier to block every advert on the entire Internet than to be selective about it. And here we are.

I never clicked an ad except out of accident, ever. Why should I be forced to see them when I know I will NEVER react to them. You won't make money out of me except out of accident. And you don't deserve that.

It's ok to create dynamic queries as long as you aren't generating those based on user content. Doing the following (VB/Pseudocode) is perfectly fine.

sql = "SELECT item FROM table WHERE keyword IN ("
FirstValue = True
ParamNo = 1

For each Value in MyValueList
If Not FirstValue Then
sql &= ","
Else
FirstValue = False
End If

sql &= "@Param_" & i
cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@Param_" & i,Value)
ParamNo += 1
Next

sql &= ")"

Since there is no user input used in generating the query, you can never have an SQL inection attack, and still use dynamic queries. There are ways to do dynamic queries, without opening yourself up to attacks.

And it's a dying and obsolete product category anyway.

Uhuh. Sure it is. Meanwhile, Echo and Direct are both moving their customer base over to DVRs as fast as they can, and cable companies have been rolling out DVRs to their customers for years and years.

Pro-tip: Just because you're a nerd who pirates all his content, doesn't mean everyone else is.

You'll become a lot more interested as soon as your internet barfs right after you finish a particularly difficult boss.

Boost phase is a Good Thing(tm).

You destroy a missile in boost phase, and it comes down in his territory, not yours.

They already do; counterfeit parts are a massive issue.

Consistency doesn't necessarily mean "stays the same," it can mean "does the same thing, the same way." Take OXO Good Grips, for example. A different tool for every task, but the handles are always black and little squishy so even people who have never cored a pineapple know how to hold the tool.

If a UI changes to suit a task, that's ok. The UI in the iPhone is constantly changing, but a button shaped like an arrow pointing to the right always opens a sub-menu. Selecting a text box always brings up a keyboard. And it gets more specialized than that, but not more confusing. If you're typing in a field that expects an email address, you get a ".com" button. I haven't seen anyone look at the ".com" button and freak out.

The problem is many people are under the delusion that what somebody else thinks, and does with their own body; harms them.

I, for one, reject the notion that the identity on my passport is more "real" than the one I post on Slashdot (and a few other sites) with. We should do away with the concept that having more than one identity is some kind of deception.

Web browser making requests to web server is just the 1990s+ version of mainframe terminal making requests to a mainframe. The difference is a one-to-few relationship becomes a one-to-many relationship. IBM terminals (and some others) understand page layout, and things like form elements. What we really need to defeat is "...on the internet" patents, and that's essentially what this is given the similarity to mainframes.

It doesn't matter - all it takes is someone who is willing to say "hey, that code infringes our copyright". The "offending" code gets removed, and (after the third time) the person who posted it gets kicked off the net.

Good luck trying to clear your name when you don't get to use the internet, and you can't sue to get reconnected because the company that made the claim is in another country.

And if you *do* manage to get it cleared up, the company just says "whoops, I guess I was wrong", and it starts all over again.

I believe you are being mislead by the word 'friend'.
It is supposed to be a person whose company one enjoys and who is there in good times and bad to give advice and encouragement as a confidant(e) and a sounding board. Not the 400-odd people who you may have met once in a long-forgotten party and have collected like baseball cards.

But what better cover for a spy than a profession that cannot be used as cover for spies?

I was with 3 other people for dinner the other night, none of them geeks in ANY way... When ebooks came up, 2 of them had heard the Kindle 1984 story and it gave them the willies. "They can just delete my stuff?"

Based on this massive sample I will say that Joe Public may be more aware of the problem than we give him credit for.