We'll use European cars that already get that sort of milage! Not sure if Americans know, but cars in the US are stupidly large for no good reason. Might help the fuel bills to get a smaller, more practical car. Oh yeah, some people in the US are stupidly large, for no good reason either. Might help food bills...

What the heck has this guy been smoking? it must have been phenomenal. Average life expectancy of a hobbit? is the the sort of hobbit that has a healthy lifestyle, balanced diet and regular exercise? do they drink yakult?! does that factor in dark lords and undead agents?
Beyond the smoke I can see talk of Dragon paleontology, maybe for a slot next month.

What's next on the agenda, Nazgul Kamasutra? how about some Elven Feng shui??

Why don't you get out of your mother's basement and speak to real people! heck you might even get to know some.

While it may be in extremely bad taste this opens the door to some very grey areas.

After all, how can you measure how offended I am? sure people would appeal to things like "common sense" perhaps "civility" and "morals".
The problem only becomes apparent when people start to realize that , morals are made up and really what offends you will not necessarily offend me.

What I see as funny you may not agree with, to jail people over things which offend in my opinion borders on madness.

I wonder if this sort of nonsense is how they ultimately began public stoning, witch burning.

1. Target audience, we're less prone to being polite and conform to social norms with strangers. Simply put, in a forum full of nicknames and no physical connection with the people behind those nicknames we often don't care what they think.

2. Anonymity, there's no consequence to behaving badly/rudely. In fact some people are encouraged they managed to upset another person.

3. Motivation, often when a person is confronted with a similar pattern or argument they would opt to dismiss it, as quickly and as long lasting as possible. This often happens with rehashed debates when people simply give up or excuse themselves from having to explain or repeat. They resort to an emotional response, anger, trolling or ridicule. Often a mix of a few things.
So it regresses to a response that may be useless to one person and more useful to the person responding. Instead of wasting their time hearing something they disagree with people want their beliefs reinforced, not challenged. This is doubly true if the challenge is obviously flawed or flat out wrong.
So more often than not, when someone asks a question that has an obvious answer, is flawed etc someone will make fun of it. A social currency if you will, I have taken time to consider your words, you have said something I deem foolish, I wasted my time but have made fun of you as to at least derive satisfaction. right, wrong, moral or not.

It also allows some people to get attention. This is especially easy if they are consistently funny and other users read their responses, jokes, input, trolling etc.

4. Medium, The way we process written language differs to the way we process verbal language. Typing often allows you to put down raw thoughts that you later revise, edit and refine. When we speak we often think twice about what we are saying, to whom and how that may sound to them.
Conveying emotion is text is much harder, there is no tone of voice, no pitch, volume, pronunciation or accent etc.

5. Human nature, being rude, trolling, it may be a form of rough play. I believe it is imperative that some people experience some of that rough play, it's character building and will allow them to understand they are not a special and unique snow flake that happened to be the 8th winner, their just dumb, fat and live in their mother's basement.

You think this is a privacy win? think again!

If your employer wants your Facebook details he'll have to pay Facebook like everyone else. No more shortcuts!

I wanted to highlight fine points about Diablo 3's shortcomings but in the end I can only say this: I am buying torchlight 2. P.S. I hope the money coming in will make torchlight 3 the game Diablo never managed to be.

As the saying goes. Why don't we continue to run candidates in parallel to SHA-2 usage and when there are signs that SHA-2 is about to be compromised or obsolete we'll just switch to whatever candidate was the best afterwards. Naturally if SHA-3 is significantly better in speed, security and compression etc then we have already made SHA-2 obsolete and need not wait until it "breaks". My two pence.

Noteworthy: over the next 50 years my anxiety will rise 1-2% about it.

This is a prime example of cognitive dissonance and personal bias. People are biased in their own favor to the point where decisions and even memories will be reconstructed to agree with themselves.
Assuming a person is fooled into thinking a past decision was purely their own; what happens when a person has to explain something he does not remember? he makes it up!

It's sort of a basic "Oh it was my idea so I must be right" and the smarter the person the more elaborate the explanation around it will be.

Personally I believe that it is this sort of situation that should make one question an idea he himself has thought up even "intuition". It's surprising that people assume/are biased that just because a thought occurred to them it must be somehow more correct.

Apples has never been more successful, surely they are doing something right. It may be the case that the next "criticism" waved at apple will be maniacally laughed off.

Sure, IF the did X then Y would happen. Yeah, we're all smarter in retrospect. My take on it is that Knight of the old republic was a single player game, a brilliant one at that. KOTR 2 was a half finished mess, but with fan edits & mods (and the eventual remake now on steam) it can be pretty good at times... Now, following that, what made them think that that success of a single player game will directly translate to an MMORPG? Better yet, how did they think they will manage to get all those users in a saturated market when they are not pack leader in terms of features and gameplay? I for one never wanted this online star wars multiplayer thing. I wanted a KOTR 3 that is as well made as the first one. I wanted THAT game, something tells me I wasn't alone. SWTOR just did not deliver that.

Finally, after years of waiting, I can have the same console, that does the same things in a smaller package. Thank you Sony. thank you for thinking about the user.

*cough* You didn't follow the link, did you. *cough*

It would be far wiser If they just spend all those millions on poverty programs.

Let's just give people an option in their web browsers to filter content. Perhaps a similar option to "do not track" we can have a "stick head in the sand" option?
Perhaps better described as; "If I can't see you you can't see me too"

On a more serious google is a multinational business. As a business it must protect its revenue. A good business knows better than to anger it's customers. When you will anger them anyways, you choose the lesser of two evils. Perfectly understandable on their part.
Besides, the people that really want to see the video will find a way.

About the video...yes the video is intentionally provocative and at the same time it does not preach violence. It makes a mockery of a religion.

I'm not a scholar of Islam but I am told that a Muslim must always try to represent Islam in a positive manner. If anything such an approach would lead one to behave in a manner that was better.

Is this how those people hat are burning flags and embassies want to represent Islam? will this lead people to respect your beliefs?

Just because some people believe in some unicorns does not mean it's special. Does not mean it demands respect. Heck it can be a genuine fact based belief and still would be made fun of.
I believe that humor is the real offense to totalitarian regimes, the real danger to unilateral and undisputed rule.