Next Up: the new WoW 3.3 patch comes out next Tuesday, which will render this headline inaccurate.

You can't get to the end of something that has no end.

There are several core issues in regards to smoking that make it different in key respects from doing anything harmful to yourself.

1) I am all in favor of allowing things that damage oneself to be legal. That's the essence of the nanny-state discussion. So I'm with people who are against the idea of a nanny-state. BUT smoking is harmful to others. Go ahead and damage yourself, but when you damage others who have not given consent, that is crossing a line.

2) Smoking by its nature releases smoke into the air and is therefore the business of everyone that encounters that smoke. This smoke is a) addictive, b) nasty-smelling, c) a mind-altering substance, and d) causes cancer. To those who smoke, would be fine if a stranger a) put an addictive substance in your food without your consent, b) farted such a nasty fart near you that it stuck in your clothes for days, c) slipped mild mind-altering drugs into your food/drink, or d) released carcinogenic gases into your environment?

3) On mind-altering substances, I'm very much of the philosophy that people should be allowed to use them. But nobody should be allowed to MAKE me use them. Nicotine affects brain chemistry. While it may be a fix for you, it makes me feel ill and causes terrible head pain.

It's a no-brainer. The violent reaction from smokers to the thought of banning smoking from public places and even outside is no doubt related to the thought of being unable to get a fix with one of the most addictive chemicals known to man. Remove that, and you have a case where smoking causes obvious infringements to the people around you, each of which clearly should not be allowed.

If all smokers switched to the patch, the problem would be entirely solved in my mind. Do what you want, but keep it to yourself.

It's interesting that Expert Sex Change has come up so much on this thread, because essentially it sounds like Murdoch wants what they have - Google able to crawl all their news, but then when you click the link, the news isn't there - only a paywall. So this could be already accomplished in the same way.

Personally, I hope Murdoch gets his way. He seems dedicated to pulling his hateful FOX News out of the public eye, and that's undeniably a good thing.

I'm also pleasantly surprised to find I'm not the only one who is ceaselessly annoyed at seeing Expert Sex Change results on Google when looking for coding help.

Laugh while you can! When the robots develop religion, you'll find that they're creationists thanks to the Unix Epoch!

Hear hear!

Recently in Georgia a TV show we were watching (on Tivo, to boot) was interrupted for several minutes with a vague child abduction warning. No information at all was given about the child abduction - no description, no name, no last-seen location, nothing. Did they expect all of Georgia to run out into the streets looking for any old child? How did they expect people to act on this? Not only was it useless and pointless in the specific, but this is not the sort of thing an entire state needs to hear about.

In an age where everybody is interconnected with cell phones, IM, text messages, internet, Facebook, Twitter, and so on, if there's an emergency, a REAL emergency, I don't think anyone will have any trouble getting word of it. This system is entirely unnecessary and will be a real annoyance.

Mandelbroccoli

What a country where advertisements are being taken to task for being misleading while the news has got the legal power to report outright lies.

Um.. what? Oh, I see - you didn't get that he's talking about politicians.

He's saying that if politicians make decisions for the country based on what profits them personally (bribes, kickbacks, large donations, favor-trading), then it should be considered treason, because they are betraying the American people for their own personal profit. And I agree - that should be considered treason and dealt with accordingly.

While I agree with the main point of your post, your use of the term "mistakes" stuck me as bizarre.

A premeditated and months-long online smear campaign including a defamatory web site with the victim's name is not an innocent "mistake".

You know, I think we could go a long way towards encouraging decent behavior if people were granted the right to slap people who insult or offend them. Think about it. Right now you can badger, harrass, defame, verbally abuse, and insult people with impunity. I realize there's libel laws but that's a huge and long endeavor, very much separated from the immediate situation. It's perfectly legal to be a complete douche and make someone's life a miserable hell and feel invulnerable because the victim can't touch you.

So take away that immunity. If you insult and mouth off to someone, they can slap you, as hard as they want, as many times as they want, and it's legal. People would think twice before opening their mouth and letting loose with a stream of vitriol and verbal abuse if there was the possibility of an immediate response.

It's behaviorism at its simplest. It's how the entire natural world works. Every social animal tests their boundaries, and if they go too far, they get bit. That's how boundaries get set. Our laws have created a consequence-free outlet for verbal abuse that is generating some truly out-of-control people.

Could this be the research that spawns the Infinite Improbability Drive?

If attempts to create the Higgs Boson result in something going wrong with the LHC, there is certainly energy involved in causing the breakdown. If that energy could somehow be harnessed and directed, say to a single failpoint - say a motor that consistently explodes when it fails - then the energy from that explosion could be used to drive the ship forward. Just keep attempting to create that abhorrent boson, and harness the explosions that result. Voila!

Or, in the spirit of the original, remove all reasonable failpoints and let it create all kinds of weird effects.

It's pretty obvious why such a high percentage of apps are pirated. First and foremost, there's the price. The price is set for businesses, not people. Photoshop runs $700. Dreamweaver costs $400. You could get a used car for that much. That's a mortgage payment or a new appliance like a refrigerator or a new stove. Do they really think people are going to want to shell out that kind of money for a non-physical item that lets them be creative with imagery and web sites? The proper price should be more in the range of $50-$75, and that should buy access for an entire household.

Which brings me to the next point - if you buy software, it should be usable by the entire household. The license should let you install it on every computer in the house and be used by all the kids. What if your refrigerator had a license attached to it that said only one person in a household could use it?

And finally add to that the fact that your software effective expires unless you pay $200-$300 a year to keep it updated. I'd be fine with the copy of Photoshop I bought 6 years ago, except that it no longer runs. Since then Apple has updated its operating system and its processor. Unless I stay with the same computer and OS I have 6 years ago, the software is effectively gone.

So how many people are willing to pay an extremely high price for a piece of software that you can't share with your family, has a high annual upgrade fee, becomes unusable in a year or two without paying, and has almost no resale value?

I love that Ralph Lauren tried to pull this on Boing Boing. I've been reading Boing Boing for a while and Cory Doctorow is a strong advocate of fair use and sane copyright, so for Ralph Lauren to go after them with a clearly unenforceable DCMA notice is just priceless. Cory's going to bend them over a barrel and spank them until they get it. *grin*

I'm one of those who is primarily a Mac user but also owns a PC, and here's why. I've always loved the polish and UI of Mac OS X. To me it's simple and beautiful, and since I spend so much time in front of a computer, that matters to me. Another factor is that I trust Apple a lot more than I trust Microsoft. I trust them to be more pro-consumer, to produce better software, and to be the first with new innovations. If all other things were equal between Apple and Microsoft, I'd choose Apple simply for the fact that it is innovative and is moving things forward while Microsoft spends its resources crushing competition and playing catch-up.

I own a PC because there are tons of applications available on Windows that aren't available on OS X. Especially the games! Being a gamer, I don't want to miss out on all the great games that are Windows-only. So I have a PC for that. Having been burned on just about every version of VirtualPC that ever came out, I've decided it's just better to have a dedicated Windows PC. That was before Apple went to Intel, so that might be different now, but I don't want to waste a week finding out it's not.