Hmm. I'd say it's closer to a virus. Or at least the GPL-licensed stuff.

I think it's somewhat analogous to video game consoles. If all you want to do is play games, you don't need both a Wii and an XBox. But if you want to play certain exclusive games that only come out on one or the other, then you need both.

On the other hand, I don't have 16GB of RAM because with 4GB of RAM I almost never hit swap space. Hell, my netbook has 2GB of RAM, and I still hit swap space very infrequently. (And I run KDE! No lightweight WM trickery here.)

I've been wondering for a while now what it is people do that they need so much RAM. And don't say gaming. I play loads of games on my 4GB box.

I read faster than I can watch a video interview, and the same goes for most of the people I know.

I thought that was an urban legend. Didn't someone or other debunk the whole "qwerty was invented to slow typists down" thing?

Because your friends don't dance, and if they don't dance, then they're no friends of mine.

Well, you see, when a man loves a woman, sometimes children just happen. So, what, people shouldn't have sex without a year's expenses in savings?

Are you kidding? I make $2000/mo as a grad student (well, less in the summer,) and I consider my life to be pretty dang comfortable. The $2000/mo crowd isn't who you need to be worried about.

I've been running KDE4 since 4.1. I've never had much trouble with it; I dunno what all the bitching is about. Until then I ran KDE3 with no problems.

One of the big reasons I've stuck around academia so far is that once you have tenure, you can study whatever you want and get paid for it. And until then, you're studying things that are generally harmless but might end up being genuinely useful. It's never too late to head back to school and grab a PhD.

I mean, really, who looks at that beard and thinks, "I'm gonna steal from that wizard. No way his bag has any exploding magical components in it or anything."

How does that work?

Game publishers the world over probably just thought to themselves, "Oh crap." Publishers of any medium are less needed every day, and I think a lot more people just realized it. Why even bother, if you're a big enough name, to try to get funding from a publisher when you can cut out the middle man?

I am extremely ok with spider farming being infeasible. Accidentally wandering into a spider farm is the stuff of nightmares.

Why should they do that when you're going to pay for 150+ channels anyway? Cable/Satellite won't change until more people start cancelling their subscriptions.