It's also the only way to get the bonus features -- commentary by the cast and crew, deleted scenes, and sometimes the "making of" features are interesting, like when there is lots of CGI or spectacular stunts.

I'd drop my DVD subscription in a heartbeat if ...

* You could stream bonus features.
* You could stream old movies.
* They'd make their streaming site useful.

I've found the best way to clear my mind before sleep is read something completely unrelated to anything else that requires no subsequent thinking. Sometimes owner's manuals for some new simple gadget. But the best by far is the short stories in Peck's series of Bad Boy stories. He wrote them for his Newspaper in the 1880s to increase circulation. They are 3-4 pages, a 5 or 10 minute read, with delightful illustrations. The Bad Boy is a teenager always getting into trouble, like putting signs in the grocer's produce -- "Cabbage the cat has slept in, 5 cents". The bad boy's father is a drunk, his mother is a saint, the grocer is a cheat, the preacher is a hypocrite. The bad boy lines his father's had with limburger cheese. He wraps a card deck in his father's pocket handkerchief and soaks it with rum so his church speech goes haywire. My favorite is when he learns the grocer has rigged a darning needle beneath a hole in the counter where the bad boy sits, with a string to pull and stab the bad boy. The bad boy puts a piece of wood in his pocket and sits down. While the grocer is leaning down to see what is wrong, the bad boy gives up his seat to the preacher who has just strolled in, the preacher gets stabbed, and the bad boy leaves as they are rolling around the floor.

They are not politically correct by any means, but they were in a family newspaper in the 1880s.

There are probably thousands of similar books. Find any collection of 5 minute reads, none with cliffhanger ends. Nothing does better at separating daytime thinking from nighttime nothing.

I remember discovering you could muck with the add tables to use any base less than 10. I don't remember now how the multiplication tables were organized and whether they could also be changed to different bases.

We did have 1311, but I don't remember address 00796 particularly.

A friend and I had a contest to see who could get the most instructions on one punched card. I won with, I think, 120, overlapping data and instructions. It typed THIMK over and over on the console typewriter. One sense switch changed the speed, another halted it. It was THIMK because the M was the halt instruction.

IBM 1620 Mod I (CADET -- Can't Add Doesn't Even Try) with 20K of BCD memory. Then a CDC 6400, a Univac SS 90, a 1620 Mod II, and an XDS 940 (supposedly a 930 modded as the 940 prototype). All were great fun, fantastic learning machines.

Glad to know that gravity, Newton's equations, Maxwell's equations, supply and demand curves, the laws of thermodynamics, and so much else is completely worthless.

But wait -- can YOUR statement be applied to anything? Oh my!

"Friendly reminder: Slashdot continues to allow users to post comments and stories anonymously as an "Anonymous Coward." This is something that's been criticized since its inception, but it's something we think is important and plan to continue for the foreseeable future."

I do indeed approve this policy. It is a fine policy.

What if this was planned by Apple all along, and this is how they "prove" to the FBI, NSA, and everybody else that it's a bad idea? What if they left some hints for these hackers?

I don't think Steve Jobs had that kind of devious mind (I could be wrong), but Tim Cook ... now there's a guy who hasn't got Steve Jobs persona but wants to leave his mark, and maybe this is the kind of subterfuge he'd pull.

Thanks for the name. Looked him up on Wikipedia, and ....
"He strongly felt that people working on the programme (notably Williams, script editor Douglas Adams and star Tom Baker) had stopped taking the show seriously: it was parodying science fiction, rather than presenting serious storylines. He also believed that Williams had allowed Baker too much influence on the show's direction, rather than confronting Baker over his increasingly comedic acting style. Nathan-Turner, together with new script editor Christopher H. Bidmead, decided Baker's creative influence needed to be reined in."
Yep, that's the new guy I hated so much.

Goes on to say he was the last producer for the first series. Gosh, I wonder why it got canceled when he was so proud of taking all the fun out.

I sort of want to agree with you, but I gave up on this most recent Doctor after, I think, the second DVD from Netflix; the first was atrocious, I kept opening a book while the shows were playing, and hoped the second DVD would be better. It wasn't. Plot holes, logic holes, and the way-too-woke nonsense (Guns are filthy, it's so much honorable to kill en mass; oh he's just having a bad day and is not really horrible).

I haven't watched one since. So I sort of feel like I have no right to write down my opinion, or agree with yours. But I will anyway :-)

Not the actor's fault. This was down to the producer / writers / somebody in charge. I felt the same way when Tom Baker's last season was handled by a new guy, who bragged about taking all the fun out of it, no more of that! this is a serious show! And bragged about making Tom Baker wear makeup, IIRC. But this one is much worse.

Moore to the point, Moore's law was an observation of a natural trend. This is the opposite, typical of so much legislation.

Moore's law is like having a speedometer needle showing the speed, or a thermometer showing the temperature. Legislation which tries to change society pretends changing the observation will change reality: move the needle to slow down or speed up; move the pointer to raise or lower the temperature. In reality, you need an entirely different device to do that.

"So let it be written, so let it be done" sounds good in movies, but it don't do squat in real life except muck things up.

The Che fanbois are not ironic, they think he was a hero. You are just as naive if you don't recognize the difference.

Another echo of the dubious 99.7. It shouldn't take 2 seconds to realize what nonsense that is. Did you also believe the reports of Fidel's popularity?

99.7, such a believable (and unverifiable) number. I'd like to know who dreamed it up and how they justified it. Was it people who recognized the alphabet?

Any post relying on such a dubious statistic is suspect right off the bat.

Clinton and Trump campaigned in the swing states because that is what the Electoral College encourages. The popular vote "imbalance" is a mirage. If they had been campaigning for the popular vote, if there had been no Electoral College, the campaigns and the results would have been different in ways we can't imagine.

To change the Electoral College process now, after the popular vote is over, is sour grapes.

Hopefully Trump won't renew the economic oppression of the Cuban people.

Unsure how to respond. If you mean is Trump the heir to Fidel, the answer is no. If you mean the stupid embargo, that was the best thing to happen to Castro; he couldn't have asked for a better justification to continue his own oppression of the Cuban people.

If you actually do think Castro was good for Cuba, you are sadly ignorant. Batista's Cuba was famous for literacy and doctors per capita, compared to the rest of Latin America, so Castro's improvements were pretty small, he killed far more people, and destroyed all chances for improvements.

Maybe you are one of the who thinks Che Guevara was heroic and cannot see the irony of selling t-shirts with his picture.