Speaking of yelling, "Get off my lawn!" I actually had to yell that at kids yesterday. They were smoking pot behind my woodshed (seriously). I thought of Slashdot and instantly felt really, really old, even though I'm only 27.

Concerning 1.B: Merchants are the ones held responsible in cases of fraud. If you steal a credit card and buy $1000 worth of Wal-Mart shit, then Wal-Mart is out $1000 unless they can figure out who you are and either have you arrested so you can pay restitution or sue the crap out of you. Generally, most companies are forced to pick option C which is: bitch about it, fire someone and do nothing to stop it from happening again.

That's where your point 1.C comes in. VISA is going to do exactly 1.C by threatening to issue their contractually allowed $100,000 fine for a data breach if Sony doesn't fix the original problem, which can escalate to $500,000 if VISA wants to be a dick about it. That's probably the main reason why the PSN isn't back up. Well, that and if Sony reactivates the PSN without at least looking like they took care of the problem, VISA could terminate Sony's merchant contract altogether. So I agree with you that Sony fixing this problem for real instead of for fake is caused by VISA acting in their own interests. It just happens to be that it's in Sony's best interest to shut up and take the hit for the team, lest they have real problems like not being able to take VISA. If it wasn't, you bet your ass the Sony wouldn't have shut down the PSN and would already be on our third or forth breach.

Jesus H Christ, I hate it when people say this kind of crap. Have you used Word 2007? Oh, OK. I see, you used it for five minutes, couldn't figure it, felt stupid and then decided it was crap. Fuck that. Use Word 2007 for real work for two weeks (like 8 hr/day) and then tell me if it sucks. I assure you that it is the most awesomely usable interface you'll ever use for word processing.

And don't bitch about it sucking up too much vertical space on widescreen monitors. Rotate your monitor 90 degrees with a $20 stand from Menards. If you use a laptop for real work and you don't drive to other places to do that work, then you're dumb. Get a desktop OR an external monitor (rotated 90 degrees) plus keyboard and mouse for when you're at home or work.

This. Seriously.

Why do people insist on spending an extra $5000 for leather, power seats, an underpowered "premium" soundsystem, heated seats, etc.? I will never understand this. Those things are anti-features for me. Leather is uncomfortable in the summer, and freezing in the winter. Heated seats make my butt sweat. Soundsystems ten times better sounding than anything Toyota makes are dime a dozen. Brush your mirrors off when you brush your windows, for pit's sake. And learn how to shift a gear, and save some cash now and forever.

The only accessory-type features that I wouldn't to live without in a car either mandatory by law (power steering and brakes, anti-lock brakes and/or traction control, seat belts, air bags, all of which are either currently required in the US or slated to be required in the future) or hard to find cars without anyway, like power windows and locks (I don't care so much about keyless entry, but power locks are necessary in my neighborhood).

Air conditioning is nice but I've lived without it before, and is therefore a neutral feature.

I give the thin tin sheeting probably not being a problem, since I have no issues with my soundboard (my first paragraph was most disagreeing with OP about the use of insulation on interior wall.) The chicken wire from stucco thing, I can assure you, is 100% true. Now, it's possible that water is the actual cause and the chicken wire a coincidence since we're in Michigan and there are streams in everyone's back yard and pools, ponds, and lakes are everywhere, but it seems like a bit too much coincidence that phones work near the windows and doors, but not the walls and interior spaces.

I wouldn't say it's a non-issue, but it's certainly not a new issue. A lot of houses use insulation or soundboard (which is metal coated, like in the picture in TFA) in bedrooms, to deaden sounds (who wants their kids to hear sex noises?); even older houses have it. In fact, my brother and I both put insulating soundboard in our master bedrooms for noise reasons, and because the stuff was on sale for $2/sheet at our local Habitat for Humanity Re-Store. As these materials become more common, we'll be seeing them and their problems in more and more new houses and in more and more retrofits and remodels.

And another annoyance, in many older homes, such as my father's and my old college dorm building, is the use of "Stucco of Death". That stuff is aw[esome|full]. It will cause severe roadrash when you're drunk and fall into it, much to your detriment and friends' laughter. And the chicken wire that is used as a backing for the stucco is a very good Faraday cage. It's nearly impossible to get signal for any cell phone in my dad's house even though you get full bars outside and at open windows/doors, and no one can get his wifi signal outside, even though he has four APs throughout his house.

Nope, Sorry. The definition of a prime a number is a whole number with exactly two distinct whole divisors which produce whole quotients. Note the exactly two distinct part. One is divisible by one and itself, yes, but itself is also one, and thus it does not have requisite two distinct divisors but rather one divisor of one used twice.

You know, I always hate it when people call them Social Security "Benefits" and Unemployment "Benefits", as if it's free money for dumb/poor/broke people who don't deserve it. Those two programs are INSURANCE policies, that just happen to be government run. What would you say if Progressive or All-State just up and decided that they're too poor to pay you collision benefits after auto accidents anymore, but you still have to pay your premiums?

This. Particularly sentence 2. Also, the Air Force, being a part of the US Government can exempt itself from lawsuits at will.

Asus RT-N16

This is why I love Michigan. While you can't kick squatters to the curb without an eviction (at least 45 days to get all that done), home invaders can be killed with whatever's convenient, so long as you kill them before they get a chance to leave.

Bizarrely, logic board is the correct name for what normal people call a motherboard when you're in Appleland.

I saw an all electric vehicle once. It was crazy. I was replacing the water pump on my 1996 Geo Prism in a restaurant parking lot that was next door to a hooker hotel (literally, a hotel frequented mostly by hookers). When I looked up, there were ten SWAT guys jumping out of a black APC-looking thing. Fully armored, the works. I never even heard it pull up and I was only 20 feet away. I was talking to one of the cops after the SWAT truck left (the crime scene still had to be taken care of, and the criminals carted off in regular cop cars), and she said that it was all-electric and just wonderful for serving no-knock search warrants on drug dealers. They never get the chance to flush. So I guess the noiselessness might actually be an advantage in some circumstances.

The real question is: does where Obama was born even matter? That's why I don't understand the birthplace conspiracy theorists. I mean, the Constitution's Natural Born Citizen requirement just means not a Naturalized Citizen. Obama's mother was a US citizen at his birth, so Obama was born a citizen regardless of where he was born, so what's the big deal?

No, what's funny in TFA is that the cops found molds of human feces. WTF?