Where are people going to see movies these days? Pleasure Island from Pinocchio? I've never seen or heard anyone texting, talking, or whatever on their phones. Granted, it's not a monastery, but it doesn't disturb me or ruin the movie for me. If you haven't been to the theater in 15 years, how do you know the behavior has gotten worse?

Maybe you are the new-fangled type that prefers to watch media on their home entertainment system?

I've found that certain movies are enjoyable on the big screen, and less so on the small. Does that mean they lack something? Probably -- but for me, it's about the experience of the film. If it needs to be seen on the big screen for me to properly get the full effect, so be it. If it makes a less stellar movie feel like it was worth it, then it was worth it.

I don't go to the movies twice a month-- probably more 6-8 times a year-- but if I could go whenever for $19.95 a month, I might see almost every movie. If have have to shell out $10 for a movie, I have to think really hard if it will be worth it. If I've already shelled out the cash, it's a no-brainer.

You forgot:

- No one is willing to fix code that already exists because it works "good enough"
- No one is willing to expend the resources (read time and money) to go back and rewrite bad piece of code.
- Fear of new code exposing how bad the other code is.

(32 years of real world coding.)

The full and proper set of rules is:

1 - Always treat a gun as if it is loaded, unless you, personally, have ensured that it is not.
2 - If you do not intimately know how the gun is loaded or unloaded, or how to check for a chambered round -- consider the gun is loaded.
3 - If another person tells you the gun is not loaded, treat it as loaded.

My dad taught me those when I was 8. I've always followed those rules to the letter, and I have never had a single accident with a gun. I have taught my kids the same rules, and they have never had a single accident with a gun.

This is not rocket science.

However, one of my "gun control nut" friends continues to tell me that there is no safe way to have a gun in your home without your kids blowing their heads off. This, despite me demonstrating that, with proper training, a gun is completely safe.

Horrible example. The term "Cancer Stick" for cigarettes was coined in 1873. "Coffin Nails" was a favorite term since the 1890's. We didn't need the tobacco companies to tell us anything, we all knew it. Personal responsibility is the fact that, knowing this, people smoked them anyway. And I say this as a person who watched his two pack a day uncle die of lung cancer at age 59. He knew damn well that they were killing him, but he refused to stop smoking. He never thought they were anything but bad for him.

Guess what, alcohol can kill you too, so can cheeseburgers. So can not exercising. I suppose you want Big Brother government to tell you what you can eat, drink, and do with your free time too. Funny, our current "health-conscious" president is a notorious chain-smoker.

About three years ago in Colorado Springs, three drunk teenagers broke into the home of a 93 year old man and his wife. The teenagers were all swinging baseball bats and tire irons. The 93 year old male pulled out a Colt .45 ACP fired one warning shot and then drilled the first kid in the chest, one-shot. Great. The other two advanced, and hit his arm with the bat. At that point, his aim was no longer ideal. He took four more shots to get one in the arm of the attacker, then a second round that disabled him. At this point the third attacker fled, and he fired one more shot that grazed the buttocks of the third attacker. Police, called by the wife at the start of the attack, took 4 minutes to arrive. They followed the blood drops to the third attacker who was arrested.

Total rounds fired: 8
Rounds remaining: 2 or 3 (not sure if he had a chamber + 10, or just the 10 in the mag)

Had the third attacker continued to press, he would have had a chance to drop them. The three attackers were later linked to another home invasion where they had beaten an 80+ year old couple to death after repeatedly raping the wife. Your three round limit would have ensured two more dead victims, and only one dead attacker.

If you limit weapons to three rounds, all you ensure is that home-invasion teams will start having at least four members.

This is interesting, but will this tell us if his brain is truly different from any other physicist, mathematician? Before we go making any pronouncements, I think we should do a little more research into people of his profession.

To each his own and different strokes makes the world go 'round, etc. But I found the first half of Anathem incredibly good and the second half (once they left the Math) much less exciting. Part of that may be because I'm a fan and amateur student of philosophy.

Two things. First, a three year old doesn't have to unlearn years of expectations of a system acting a certain way. Second, what a three year old is trying to accomplish on a PC might be just slightly different from the purposes of a typical business user.

When it doesn't even burn at arm's length? You're an idiot.

No, it would take evidence that these are actually a problem beyond a few alarmists over-reacting when they see a green light. The optics in a hand-held laser are cheap and even with good optics, no laser beam lacks divergence. The laser I use for pointing out stars to my son spreads about ten centimeters for every 100 meters. By the time such a beam would hit a cockpit, it could easily spread to over a meter across and anyone seeing it would be exposed to 1/1000th the brightness of looking directly into the beam at arm's length.

This is just the latest technophobe scare story. No different than worries about x-rays from color televisions, behavior effects of video games, gangs hanging out at arcades, etc.

Yooo-hooo! Mr. DHS officer? Yeah, I think this guy knows BlueStrat.

Personally, I think I'd prefer to let a few people get fake IDs now and then rather than force all of us who need ID to drive to put up with a facial recognition system. I promise you this will find more and more uses in a "post-9/11 world" where bureaucrats fall over themselves to grab more control.

Okay ... I'm getting up and moving to a seat a little farther away from BlueStrat.

What's that? No, no, I don't know that guy. Never saw him before in my life.