While if you want to change white balance on a film camera, you need to rewind the current roll of film, hope that you have another roll with the correct color balance in your bag, then load that roll of film. Or fiddle about screwing and unscrewing filters onto the lens for finer adjustments. Yeah, much more convenient than simply pressing a button and turning a knob!

This biker got photographed at least 53 times.

(Although he might have been aware of that...)

Sure. I don't say it's a decisive factor all by itself, but it's certainly a factor. We could be seeing the "mainstream" thing from two different angles; here in Sweden the newspaper polls show 50+ of questionees admitting to filesharing. An even nicer angle: most of these people are probably "adults" of voting age.

The Yahoo! Messenger client for iPhone uses notifications; once you're signed in you will be notified when a message comes in, even if the phone is on standby or if you're in another app. This type of notification support was added in iPhone OS 3.0, I think. Dunno if other IM clients use this, but I'm pretty pleased with the Yahoo! one.

My grandmother used to like to bet on the horses, and, in the UK at least, with some bookies you paid tax on the wager itself (with no tax on the winnings), at others you paid tax on the winnings (or nothing if you lose).

In most of the US you don't pay tax with any bookies, but if you can't cover your losses, you lose an arm and a leg.

The sysadmin to go with it.

Ubuntu is all well and good until you need something that is not covered by its package manager. It's all well and good until some piece of hardware only has limited support via some hack.

The problem with Linux is that even with all the advancements, it's still a fragmented platform that only works properly if you stay within it's narrow selection of hardware that is known to work.

# Level 4: Assaultive (Bodily Harm). The subject may physically attack, but does not use a weapon. Use defensive tactics to neutralize the threat. Defensive tactics include Blocks, Strikes, Kicks, Enhanced pain compliance procedures, Impact weapon blocks and blows.
# Level 5: Assaultive (Lethal Force). The subject usually has a weapon and will either kill or injure someone if he/she is not stopped immediately and brought under control. The subject must be controlled by the use of deadly force with or without a firearm.

- Marine Corps Close Combat Manual (MCRP 3-02B)
I realize they were army not marines but the rules are likely similar. The armies rules seem to change based on the military action? Either way I couldn't find it online, tell me if you can.

SFA rules (Hague/Geneva): http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/Repository/FM3071.pdf
Some main points of the above rules from the wikipedia summary which may be of interest (full thing is pretty long):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOAC#Roles_of_laws_of_war_in_the_United_States_military

Fight only enemy combatants.
Collect and care for the wounded, whether friend or foe.
Do not attack medical personnel, facilities, or equipment.
Destroy no more than the mission requires.
Treat all civilians humanely.

I would contend that the family in the van hadn't been shown to be enemy combatants hence civilians. The unnarmed guy crawling in the dirt has been effectively neutralized and wounded. And I would certainly argue that they destroyed more then REQUIRED.

Planned obsolescence is when you plan for your product to become obsolete some time AFTER it is sold. What we're looking at here is a new format that will already be obsolete when it first comes to the market.

There's a rational reason for planned obsolescence: it allows you to make more profit by convincing your customers to upgrade to a newer product in the future.

Releasing a product that's already obsolete usually results in zero profits, as what few sales you do achieve are less than your initial investment in R&D and promotion. This is a strategy usually only seen with businesses run by morons. Of course, many businesses are run by morons, so it's not that unusual, but that's no reason to refrain from criticizing it.

Let's hypothetically say that that was true - so what? Carrying weapons is legal in Iraq - private security forces, bodyguards, authorised militias (Sons of Iraq etc.) are all allowed to openly carry guns. So even if you saw some guys with guns, what exactly does that prove? Without further identification, you would still have no idea whether they were friend or foe.

Indeed. The ultimate fate of Itanium is to wind up as HP's upgrade to PA-RISC. You have to wonder how much further interest Intel is going to have in it's development. I suspect it will end up getting tossed back into HP's lap.

I already voted with my wallet, I'm sticking with DVD until they are done playing games.

Haven't bought a new television for HDMI, haven't bought an HD-DVD or Blu-ray player and you know what? I didn't even buy a PS3, Wii or XBOX 360 for the same reason.

You can't say its a standard or a feature and then change, remove or force me to upgrade anymore. I'm done with that stuff.

I'm satisfied with my standard television, my standard DVD and my standard gaming on a PS2 (more of a PC gamer anyways) and what's more, a lot more people are getting the same way. If there's no explicit reason to change something, don't upgrade, don't buy it and just support what you like or use and save the money for supporting that, it is cheaper in the end anyways.

Too bad this will fail just like google failed.

Care to elaborate where Google failed, shipping 60,000 Android units a day is hardly what I'd call an unmitigated disaster.

I disagree

It's not a compassionate act on your part, but it's still a compassionate act by the government.

And there's no reason a design expert should be forced to explain those reasons to a layman

Bullshit. In a project which prides itself on its community, there is every reason.

as windows resize, the top left corner is the anchor from which all resizing is done

That's an interesting hypothesis. I hadn't thought of that.

as left-to-right/top-to-bottom readers, our eyes are naturally drawn to the top left, so putting critical controls there makes sense

I'd say that's a reason to put the most destructive controls (closing and minimizing) as far away from that corner as possible.

Yeah but by that measure Australia and India are both pretty damn empty too. It may just be a question of awareness or interest.