You, sir, are a veritable fossil, much as myself - get out on that bike, ski, run around in the woods, get into a boat and paddle like mad, swat at 12,507 mosquitoes at summer camp, catch a few 15 lb carp, go sledding, swipe pumpkins, chase girls, etc. Don't wake up at 40 to find half your hair gone along with most of your life in empty pursuit of points and levels.

?

I found many games to increase my stress level to the point I can actually hear red corpuscles whistling through the capillaries in my cranium.

and once I finished getting them unpackaged, installed and running my stress level went even higher

the researchers were set upon and beaten with an inch of their lives by video game company executives, reviewers, players and given severe noogies and wedgies by Gabe and Tycho.

In other words, if somebody tells you he/she is driving, and you continue to text, then you may be liable.

So if I send a text saying

"Call me when you get to [destination]" or "Call me when you're not driving"

what's my liability there?

Where this gets really fun is when the argument is presented that "the program" and "the computer" are analog, rather than digital. A hole you could pilot an aircraft carrier through.

Unless it perpetually indicates 5:00 PM - time to check in at the Tiki Bar.

Some of the biggest liars I've ever known occasionally tell the truth, otherwise they'd function like some Bizarro World inhabitant.

Actually, what *IS* the point, except to get attention?

What did they expect to gain from this? What was the cause?
If it's due to actions in a foreign country, then what does terrorism against the public accomplish? More militarization and privacy restrictions probably aren't going to help reduce US foreign influence (except in cases of perhaps spreading it a bit thin).

I've never understood the logic in targeting civilians as opposed to those in power who actually make decisions or wield influence/money (not that I support either),

Actually, I wonder if there's a Snowden (well, NSA) link here.

From what I've read, MS is now known (though previously suspected) to pass on access and backdoors to the NSA. Hereto, it stands that the NSA - and by extension the US gov't - has some stake in ensuring that MS continues to live on. With the push for "secure computing", it seems that backdoors and lock-in may be integrated down to the hardware level. Maybe MS doesn't give a f*** because they don't expect they'll have to, as sometime in the not-so-far future people will be even more locked into their OS than now.

Portable languages, I agree that MSVC++ is definitely a bit of lock-in... but toolkits are starting to be fairly cross-platform, with LeadWerks, Unity, and many others supporting not only Mac but also Linux and mobile devices.

Depending on your tools, it may be a matter of using different IDE's/compilers for different OS's, but it's still doable.

Odd as it might seem, I can like somebody (or some corp) without fully trusting them.

Like a fun buddy who you wouldn't want to introduce to your sister...

We don't have to eat them. I heard the polar bears in the north are having trouble getting food due to the melt-off. Maybe polar-bears would like anti-vaxxers?

for less than 10 grand

Well then, I'll just head on down to WalMart and drop the extra $8k I have sitting around on a generator...

Oh wait.. anyone want to lend me 8K?

Higher overall payment, but a lower per-unit cost.
If the costs of energy were to increase, then in theory energy-saving would become more desirable (and hopefully more common).

Eventually it reaches a trade-off where paying extra better home insulation, more efficient appliances, etc is more affordable than paying for extra power.

Drop from 22,000 miles: terminal velocity will be different than if you drop from 1 mile. So will several other things, like the temperature of the object, and the cost of the experiment. :)