Here's one thing I ran into after switching from XP to 7. My "Stereo Mix" option (That's "What U Hear" for you Creative soundcard owners) has disappeared from the sound recording options. Even after ticking the "reveal disabled/hidden devices" thing, it doesn't come up. That means I can't record or stream over (through things like Ventrilo etc.) what I am listening to at the moment on the PC. This was very nice for piping over soundbytes from a tv program I was watching (analog tv card) as well as useful for acting as a bridge between two different voice chat programs. I suspect this is one attempt to "plug the analog hole". With this method you could record soundtracks off YouTube as the video played for example. There's an anti-feature for you, and it sucks.

Exactly. Anyone who is railing against the GPL for "not being free enough" should advocate orbit-nuking proprietary software 24/7 or is a hypocrite.

Somewhere, somehow an odd disconnect is taking place between those two archetype FF users (I wouldn't call them trolls). I myself have been using this FF thing since 0.2, on XP with no memory usage problems whatsoever. I also use FF on Ubuntu since I think 2.0, again with no mem usage issues to notice. Always same add-ons, namely ABP, BugMeNot. This mem usage skyrocketing issue so often reported thus always appears as a mystery to me, and I assume to others who don't experience the problems. I really wonder what is going on.

As a social scientist I can't live with myself if I let this slip. Actually Hobbes's depiction of life as "nasty, brutish and short" is the exact opposite of a "prediction". It describes life not in the future but in the hypothetical and long past "state of nature", before the development of civilized society and the State (The Leviathan) which puts an end to "the war of each against all" that causes life to be "nasty, brutish and short" in the "state of nature". The transformation is purely social, based on a contract between individuals who agree to submit to a strong authority in exchange for personal security. The development of technology etc. does not come into the discussion in any significant manner in Hobbes, although you could argue for that as a factor independently.

I don't see the cause for panic. The donations system appears to work great. I just donated $10 through paypal when I saw the funding drive. It's easily the most useful website online and is ad-free. If $6M/year covers the expenses, we could do this every year no problem with the 150M/month visitor base. Why risk a working system with an inherently contradictory, alienating revenue model that is ads ?