I have to devote my full attention to understand what's said in videos thanks to audio processing disorder, and few news videos include captions/subtitles... I wouldn't mind as much if they were just as informative as reading, but it takes most 5-10 minutes to cover as much as a reasonably short paragraph, making it a huge waste of my time & energy.

Back during the Cold War, the USSR went to lengths to convince the world that it was near-invincible & thriving; when horrible things happened like Chernobyl, even their own citizens were told that everything was fine and the government had it all under control. Being honest, showing any weakness, would have been like issuing an invite to attack them -- it was a big shock when we all finally got to see beyond the propaganda.

Likewise, there's no way that Israel is going to admit it even if serious security-trashing damage is caused by hackers. Telling the world of damage would let hackers (some of which might be working for an enemy) know of a weak point, give massive cred to whichever group had succeeded, and encourage others to gain fame the same way. Did anyone really expect them Israel's leaders to not consider that?

Yes, that situation has made them tougher, though I'd say "crushed with settlement construction equipment" sounds more apt than pushed into the sea -- but how has the oppressor been affected?

Exactly... I wish our politicians would quit wasting our extremely limited funds on Israel; I'm tired of seeing our society's needs set aside to back them. I watch my mother's teeth falling out & her health weakening because the severely underfunded support she gets as a disabled citizen isn't enough to buy good food or see a dentist and Medicaid is crap -- and then I think of spending all of that money in Israel only to have them oppress the Palestinians to the point that horrible conflicts (costing us still more) is inevitable.

Other "grown up" Western countries figured out long ago that forcefully colonizing other nations and sticking the inhabitants into ghettos wasn't a brilliant move. That's because whenever the subjugated peoples rebelled, the conqueror was left to deal with the mess themselves even if it took decades (as it did in the UK's Troubles); if anything, each country had to worry about their rivals supporting the rebels (as France did when the American Colonies decided to toss England out on its ear). As Israel wishes to be one of the big boys, it should act like one, rather than as a colony demanding the protection & financial support of the founding nations.

You should look into self-publishing it online -- a growing number of professional mainstream authors and hobbyists (like retro-technology historians) have started taking that route for projects that couldn't get a major publisher's backing. If you put it up on Amazon or Smashwords for a reasonable fee and submit a Slashdot story about it, you'd probably also make a pretty tidy sum of money.

What's up with having the only offline non-paper option equate to not reading? If the person wanted to compare the reading habits of pbook versus ebook fans, it shouldn't have been hard to word it that way. :-p

As I just got to my computer, the last thing I read was a few chapters in Félix J. Palma's very amusing The Map of Time on my Nook Touch last night; it's no different than the pbook form, so I picked "fiction."

FWIW, I don't feel that print is dead, as there are far too many people that prefer/need it for various reasons, but that's a discussion for another thread.

AFAIK, it was more because a new PC clone/parts were cheaper than other platforms while still offering equal or superior sound/video abilities. (My family switched from Apple IIgs to PCs back then in part so I could play the latest Ultima games, but we wouldn't have been able to do it without favorable pricing.) You're conflating two separate years & shifts in computer ownership, though:

--In 1990-1991, PCs were just starting to dominate the market, and Origin Systems released Wing Commander, Wing Commander II, Ultima VI, and Worlds of Ultima, which were all developed (for the first time) on DOS PCs, with major improvements in graphics/sound as a result.

--Ultima Underworld came out in 1992 alongside Ultima VII, at the same time CD-ROMs became affordable and a bunch of games started coming out that used them to offer greater sound/graphics. Contrary to our preferences, though, the games most often credited with driving consumers to DOS (and making the PC a major gaming platform) were Myst and The 7th Guest.

I'm not sure whether we can draw parallels with support for Wing Commander & Linux today, though... Back then, consumers were switching to PCs because it was becoming increasingly difficult to find new games for their older computer systems -- unless MS really sabotages its own market with Windows 8, that dynamic won't be at work here. I do think that Kickstarter could be used to make developers more aware of the many people that are using Linux and only booting into Windows for games, however, and somebody like Chris Roberts taking notice would put out a pretty strong message in the game dev community, I would think.

California has been struggling with costs since prop 13 & the rise in immigration; it's nothing new, and certainly not something that appeared after Brown took office. I've spent my 35-year life in a North Bay (Sonoma County) city, and when I first began reading the county paper in 1991, it was already starting to show articles about the early forms of financial problems we're dealing with now.

In Linux, we can also set files to owner-only read access & run iffy apps with an alternative user account -- no SELinux required. I don't know how easy or feasible that would be under Windows or OS X, however.

I've gone to quite a few concerts in the last several years, but the most I've ever had the people at the entrance do is ask to glance into my purse, and that only happened once. The most likely difference is that I'm not into the current hits, which means most of the concerts can be held at smaller, more relaxed venues.

I was curious whether a major regional ISP was taking part in this clusterfuck, and found an interesting interview from August stating that the only ISPs taking part are AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon; independent ISPs are not involved and weren't even asked.

Relatedly, I highly recommend that anyone in the service area for Sonic.net (their CEO/founder was the one interviewed) use them as an ISP -- they're the only one I know of that has been persistently doing what we've all been saying we want ISPs to do when it comes to governmental & *AA demands and investing in fiber connections. No better way to show appreciation than voting with our wallets where we can...

One of the main reasons I refuse to buy new albums is that in most cases, I know only a few pennies of my money goes to the artist; I attend live shows & buy t-shirts at them instead. This article is the best I've seen for detailing the matter.

In fact, tonight I'm seeing an older artist called Les Chambers in concert that, despite being the lead singer for a couple of hits that have been used all over the friggin' place since the 60s, was never paid any royalties, even ended up homeless for a while (I don't know the story behind that, just that he never used drugs or abused alcohol). It sounds like it was one of those cases where, as a young man in the 60s, he was -- like almost all artists back then -- eager to sign the contract and trusted the RIAA to treat him fairly.

Normally I don't correct spelling, but:
discrete : separate from other parts (common in math & [audio, electrical, etc.] engineering)
discreet : unobtrusive, subtle

Also, he doesn't need to worry about being "tactful", more about not being tacky. Tact is what we use to discuss a subject with somebody without causing them emotional unnecessary distress; being tacky means a person or thing comes across as low-class.

Anyway, to respond more to your message, I agree that something discreet & classy is the way to go. I see them in the 'dedication' area in fiction novels every so often -- something like "dedicated to great-aunt Mildred, whose encouragement kept me writing in the face of so many rejections" or "for cousin Bill, my childhood co-pilot of a thousand spaceships" -- and even though I'm not particularly sentimental, the ones like that often seem quite touching.

I really hope you're being facetious, but if not, look here: Wikipedia: Stanford University

It's the experience of interacting with people inside & outside the classroom that can keep up with your thoughts/knowledge, respond with ideas that challenge & invigorate you, and that share the drive to excel rather than just going through the motions. It's about finding friends and partners that understand from experience why you did things very few regular teenagers do (like spending most of your free time honing a talent as a teenager rather than goofing off), and that can tackle major projects in the future as equals even if their strengths are very different from yours. I'm a Berkeley alumna rather than from Stanford, but the basic premise is the same for any highly competitive school.

Also, attending a university was originally intended to help people learn to view their society & the world from a variety of angles before the ones they grew up with become too entrenched to look beyond, because that ability makes them much better citizens that are far harder for the government to manipulate and are better-equipped to solve their society's problems.

When adults whose college education spanned a variety of subjects look back on those years from that perspective, they often see that various beliefs shifted quite a bit between graduating from high school and from college, and sometimes can see which experiences changed them. Somebody that belongs at a school like Stanford is far less likely to get that kind of experience out of a regular college -- and nobody will get it by just watching lectures online.