To an extent, I agree.

I find that electronic books are fine for throwaway fiction - books that, for whatever reason, will only be read and if they were lost, I wouldn't care. But for reference books, I prefer hard copies that I can browse thru at my leisure, leave open on a desk or quickly flip between sections.

The same goes for music. A lot of it is stuff that I'll listen to once or twice, but wouldn't miss it otherwise. For things that I want future generations to know about, I get a more permanent format.

We're scary close that situation now. A lot of people in the US live paycheck-to-paycheck without any real spare money to spend (yet they spend it anyway). It's not really the fault of the rich, it's more the fault of corporations who went nuts selling everyone credit and the fault of people who bought into that credit without thinking through the long term effects.

> Just treat everyone fairly, how hard is that?

Being fair isn't hugely difficult, but it's easier to raise an accusation of being unfair than it is to combat it. There are people who wait and watch and see intentional discrimination even where none exists.

There's no easy solution. Sometimes there is no spoon.

> I'm not sure if you follow PETA's actions very closely but the *sanity* has no bearing on PETA.

FTFY.

The New York Times got caught in the same filter that catches everyone else while posting in corporate forum. Their problem is that, for some misguided reason, they, being the NYT, believe that they have some sort of free speech rights in a private space. Facebook is not a public space - it's corporate-owned and controlled. It's private space, open to some members of the public to post in, but with whatever restrictions FB feels like applying.

Actually, after that period about 2000 years ago, Israel did not exist as a state until 1948 or so, when the UN (mainly the British and the Americans) forcibly set up a new Israel because none of the major countries wanted an influx of Jewish refugees. It played into the hands of the Zionists of the time, who were keen on setting up a new religious state on their prior home ground, and gathered support from Christians all over the place who were all agog over the messianic revelations in The Bible.

To say that the founding of the new Israeli state was anything but a religious and political clusterfuck of epic proportions is to just be in denial.

What we have now is an even bigger mess, because once Israel beats the crap out of it's neighbors (and it will eventually, for better or worse), they'll turn inward and start beating the crap out of each other in a bout of sectarian warfare that will make the current fight seem like a sandbox rumble.

Whether or not The Ribbon is a Good Thing is immaterial at this point. The point is that Microsoft put it there and if you want to beat Microsoft in the word processor game, you have to either have The Ribbon, the Not-Quite-A-Lawsuit-Ribbon-Replacement, or something that's just plain better (on both a usability and a marketing level). For individuals, who cares? It matters when you're trying to pass off your Microsoft-Word-Alternative.

The Ribbon is not the worst thing ever invented. I reserve that for everything that got tacked onto Word after v5.1 for the Mac, except maybe multi-column editing. Frankly, The Ribbon is only the smallest part of that mess now.

Seriously. Why do distros have to ship with every possible FOSS package under the sun? Why not let the user decide which packages to install after they get the base system installed?

A word processor is not necessary to make a working system, yet every bloody one of them ships with Open Office as part of the default install, which then costs time in removing it. If I want a word processor, I'll install it later.

Same thing with Steam. It's awesome that Valve is doing this, but at the same time, it's not necessary to a working system and the people that are actually interested in playing Valve-distributed games will make the necessary investment in downloading the installer as a separate package. There is no need to include Steam on any distro.

I don't even see ads anymore, thanks to ad blindness. They're easy enough to mentally block (except for the auto-expanders), that whatever they're selling doesn't really register.

No Western leader ever lost an election by failing to appease China.

We'll harrumph a lot and wag the finger at them, but in the long term, we'll just roll over and let China do whatever the hell it wants to, partly because no one ove here really gives a shit what happens to a bunch of poor Chinese people, and mostly because Western corporations are lining up to cash in on their misery. We're all complicit to an extent, being addicted to the teat of cheap goods, and then washing our consciences by telling our leaders "Go get those dirty bastards! They're taking our jaaaaawbs!"

Whatever war we might have pretended to have against Communist China is over and we lost. We rolled over, showed our belly, and now we're lined up to let China run a train on our economy.

And I just recently got all my software updated to Intel, too.

I think they're doing in concert with the software manufacturers so they gouge us for replacement software to run on the new processors.

> so what does that say about Verizon's hiring standards for technically-minded people? Seriously?

Not a lot. Technical ability doesn't have anything to do with moral reasoning or empathy.

Arguably, you could make one of those pick-any-two triangles from that collection.

The DHS is the worst idea to come out of Washington and that's a town that's pretty much only ever generated bad ideas. I'd rather be waterboarded than lift a finger to suport that particular government agency.

> Right. Which is exactly the sort of thing that engenders ill-will towards modders.

But what is the purpose of modding your console? If it's to allow them to cheat at online games, then I would argue that any ill-will is definitely earned.

I'm having a little trouble coming up with any other legitimate reason for modding.

Except we'll be forced to resort to Drudge for news.