" You can't enjoy a movie at the theatre any more."

Yes, you can, if you go to a weekday matinee.

Some movies are better on a big screen. I'm thinking the latest Star Trek, which I caught in 3D about a week after it opened with about 20 other people in a gigantic theater. It was great.

"Hell is other people" - Sartre

That is all.

Killing 3 people and maiming 234 using explosives and shrapnel counts as mass destruction in my book.

It definitely doesn't count, in my book. You post-cold-war kids are so cute. Did you know the band Megadeth got their name from something that was believed to be reasonably likely could happen? 237 casualties isn't even a blip on the WMD scale. WMDs are for serious scale murder.

Exaggeration sounds like good idea when you're going after a specific bad guy, but it reminds me of how "registered sex offender" used to mean "rapist" and now, for all you know, it can mean some kid who sext-messaged his girlfriend or maybe even got drunk and peed on a parking meter.

Overbroad terminology abuse will remove stigma. Now the next time someone wants to start a hideously expensive war over alleged WMDs, the public will say "why should I care if Saddam II has a hand grenade?"

Hmm... now that I think of it, this could save us a shitload of money. Ok, you've convinced m-- wait, what if Saddam II actually has (oldschool definition) WMDs? Are we going to need a new term that means the same as WMD used to mean, like "WMDs, no I mean for real, 'Threads' and 'The Day After' style, dude!"?

"I used to deal with guys like you every day and not only could you not remember that you gave me permission to call you - you asked me to. "

Think about it. You spent your day... you made your living... virtually barging in on people who don't know you, who for the most part don't want to talk to you, and who get "all twitchy" because they can't remember if they ticked off an opt-out box or not.

You were, in other words, a professional asshole.

I feel they are a problem.

I have seen two articles that I think should have been kept; but some asshole that Mr. Wales trusts decided that they should be deleted. Seems like deleting articles is a power trip to me.

So whenever Mr. Wales asks for money, I am reminded to say no because he allows power tripping editors to ruin Wikipedia. Why would I donate money to these people?

I think the logic there is that sales over the counter aren't interstate commerce

Everything is interstate commerce. You can't describe any activity which isn't. No one can.

And that was a Republican AG.

Except that isn't how it works. The part which has been proposed for inclusion in HTML5 isn't any particular DRM scheme, but rather a generic API for linking various unspecified DRM schemes with the audio and video tags via Javascript. The implementation is either a non-standard DRM extension built into the web browser or a non-standard DRM plugin. Either way, different web sides can require different DRM schemes, which probably won't be portable to different web browsers, not to mention different platforms. Each implementation will have its own unique security issues, just as plugins do now.

Whoops, my bad.

In the UK, the content was so abysmal that "leave it" is what I did.

90% of everything is shit, and the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

I'm sure 90% of your TV is shit, but so is ours. What you're doing is concentrating on our 10% and your 100%. Over here on the other side of the pond, I do the same thing but from opposite perspective: "Damn, so there's much great stuff we're watching from the BBC."

Not directly. That's what it means for them to be "inalienable". However, you can agree to forfeit something alienable (e.g. property) in the event that you do exercise those rights. In the event that you do exercise the right, the loss of property isn't a punishment as it would be had you lost the right itself; it's simply a matter of you keeping up your end of the bargain.

Traditional hiring processes seem to revolve around.. not one's track record and accomplishments.

I'm surprised. First guess is that you've misdiagnosed it being about formal education.

You might have something horribly wrong on the resume. Maybe have a friend look at it and figure out why no one should ever hire that awful person. Then remove the part about how you made the Nazi Party's website 100x faster, or whatever it is. ;-)

Other idea is that people are seeing it and thinking "this guy wants a real job, not our job; there's no way we can afford him." You have to address that in the cover letter, hopefully without throwing away too much money. Think about whom you're approaching. They shouldn't all necessarily get the same spiel.

Good luck, buddy.

I am once again struck by how correct Orwell was when in 1984, state agencies had names which meant the exact opposite of what they actually did.

In this case, the National Security Agency in fact makes a practice of delivering not security to the citizenry, but violations of their personal privacy.

This may have all begun when the name of the War Department was changed to the Defense Department... just when overseas actions were really beginning to ramp up.

Quite right—but that has nothing to do with whether you voted or who you voted for. Cast a symbolic vote for the Greens or the Libertarian Party if it makes you feel better, but don't pretend that things would be any different over the long term if they were in power. The Republicans and Democrats didn't start out as they are now either.

If you want to reject the establishment, the first step is to refuse to play their game, and find ways to reduce their practical influence on your life. Getting involved in politics has the opposite effect.

I hear this repeated often, but it seems like a myth. I've never owned a credit card, and yet I had no trouble getting a loan for my car or a mortgage for my house, both on favorable terms and at a younger age than most. If you rent for a few years before buying a house, as most people do anyway, and always pay your utility bills on time, that will net you more than enough credit history without relying on credit cards. What they're looking for is a history of making regular on-time payments, and a low debt-to-income ratio.