I have noticed Netflix has fewer and fewer of the DVD's I want to watch; I have more in Saved than in my Queue. Am I the only one, or is netflix slowing down on DVDs?

You're not the only one; I've had several DVDs moved to my saved section, after being in my queue for years (I filled up my queue rather quick, then let it sit for a while; what can I say, I've been busy). For me, I currently don't have the bandwidth to stream, so I hope they don't neglect their DVD side.

I'm not sure how the moderation formulae work, but I will admit that I've been moderating you (and many others) who were moderated something like "Troll" or "Flamebait" as "Informative" if I honestly believed it was. My definition of "Informative" seems to vary from the norm, as sometimes others will mod the same comment "Insightful" or "Interesting". I prefer "Informative", as even if the comment is "Insightful" or "Interesting", I prefer to tag something as *factually* "Informative" if it brings information to light, even if that information might be considered "well, duh" by some, or an insightful revelation by others. Of course, I'm the kind of person that believes you can't really teach anyone (especially if they are unwilling), so presenting information is the best you can do.

"Underrated"? Not so much. If something is worthy of being upmodded, then it is "Informative", even if it's obvious, or seems obvious to those in the know (such as "infringement isn't theft").

1. Move away from America
2. Develop whilst simultaneously not caring about software patents.
3. Sales and profit.
4. Get sued in America
5. Don't turn up
6. Don't go to America (or South Korea) ever again.

I'll add one: Don't support IEEE (that is, don't be a member, and boycott their conferences). IEEE supports software patents.

The message I receive is that if I become a U.S. Cellular customer I am paying for a lot of bullshit, toxic advertising.

This is *exactly* why I try to avoid companies who spend big on marketing; either they are wasting their customers' money, or they are gouging their customers; either way, I always feel that advertising is a net lose for existing customers. This really hit home hard when I was doing a comparison of sunblocks a few years ago, and No-Ad came out on top in Consumer Reports. It's also why I go with Vanguard for my Roth IRA, and USAA for car insurance: both companies have the least advertising I have seen. Granted, USAA is a limited market. I have been very pleased with both companies. Word of mouth for the win!

Hey Comcast, want your users to have fast access to Google? You should start paying Google then. Or maybe AT&T will sign and your customers will go there, because everyone uses Google.

No, it's even simpler and less evil than that: any time anyone from an ISP even *implies* that "big Internet companies" will have to pay extra to get access to their users, Google should immediately put up a static web page concisely stating the problem, who is advocating it and include the phone, email and any other contact information of the company who advocates it. Then redirect *all* of the customers and requests from that company to that web page, until the company makes a full apology and signs a contract to never to advocate for a non-neutral net again. We'll see who can last longer without the other: Google or the idiot ISP :)

Of course, someone will whine about monopoly abuse, but the fact of the matter is that the ISP monopolies are the real abusers here, and there's nothing that we as individuals can do about it. Quite honestly, I don't trust Google and believe they probably are a little too powerful. But I *know* for a fact, as has been repeatedly shown through past actions, that the ISPs (such as Comcast and Verizon) are fucking evil greedy assholes who would screw over anyone they can get away with without a second thought. And they have quite a lot of power to screw people over with.

I think grouping processes by controlling TTY isn't a really sensible strategy in an age when a lot of our software doesn't even have any use for a TTY.

Perhaps; but what of the possibility of scheduling groups of processes, where "group" is defined differently? If nothing else, this patch could lead the way to being able to schedule "process groups" where the partitioning into groups is done differently (eg, background services vs user apps, foreground window vs background window, etc).

If Linus didn't really believe it was an improvement, then why did he eventually call on Ingo to write a very similar scheduler?

Maybe he did realize he was wrong; then there's always the consideration to be made that Ingo has been around for ever in the Linux kernel community, and Linus trusts him. Not to cast aspersions on Con, but if someone came to you with some "great idea" and just give it to you, would you take it? Especially for something as important as the scheduler, where use cases you can't even imagine are the norm. Use cases you can't imagine unless you've been developing one of the most widely used kernels, in applications from micro-embedded computers all the way to highly distributed clusters, for going on almost twenty years. The three years Con spent on the scheduler may sound like a lot, but it's nothing compared to the man-years that have been put in by the Linux kernel developers; and, yes, Linus has his favorites, because they have come through time and time again, and have been around forever.

Linus didn't want to admit he was a jerk who made a flippant personal decision rather than focusing on the best code.

Nobody's perfect. And it's obvious you haven't spent much time on LKML; people regularly flame and get flamed; it's part of the culture, and it's also a way to winnow out those who aren't willing to stick with it.

Actually Linus lost track of many such things because too self centered or ego driven (which happens to most of us when you such success and things to deal with but anyways)

Or, you know, maybe he gets so many patches that every once in a while, even a good one can slip through the cracks. I mean, you try dealing with the literally hundreds of people emailing their really "great" ideas to you every day for inclusion in a kernel that you not only rely on personally, but put your name and stake your reputation on. Now, I'm not going to claim that Con was some idiot, but most of the whining about his patch not being accepted that I've ever heard was from people who probably couldn't even tell the difference between C and C++. Or if they could, they were too busy bitching to write their own patch for inclusion in the kernel. As for Con? I have a lot of respect for him, because unlike the whiners, he sucked it up and started all over again. Linus isn't perfect; he's not a god, but he knows a damn sight more than anyone here bitching about him rejecting patches.

Kills random processes? As in kill -term? I've never seen that.

As a big Linux fan, and past developer of RTLinux, I can tell you that the OOM (Out Of Memory) killer does exist. The algorithm isn't really "random" (least not the last time I looked at it), but it will terminate with extreme prejudice a memory hog if the whole system runs out of memory. Let me repeat that though: *if* the *whole system* *runs out of memory* (including swap), the Linux kernel *will kill the biggest memory user*. This falls into the "well, duh, what should it do? sit there and jack off while hoping that somebody's misbehaving app will just politely stop using RAM?". I mean, honestly, this isn't a problem with Linux; it's a problem either with the app developer or the system administrator (and if you are the only user of a computer, *you* are the sysadmin and should know better; either get more RAM or stop using such shitty apps).

This suggests that religion is not the defining factor.

Religion /per se/ may not be the problem, but I can tell you as an American, that religion in this country is most *definitely* against science. You need look no farther than the creationists (aka, intelligent design proponents) and those against stem cell research to see just how strongly religion opposes science in America. It doesn't help that anti-intellectualism has been ascendant in America for (at least) the last three decades. Even ignoring the flat out obvious real world examples, all religions posit to have the answers. Why perform research or experiments when you already "know" the answers by faith?

or Intercal. No, definitely Malbolge. Yeah, that's the hot new programming language of 2010!

Someone here suggested that "people need to get over being seen naked". I can't find that comment to respond to it because it has (rightfully) been modded into oblivion, so I'll post this as a general response: some of us don't care about being seen naked. Hell, if people are so concerned that I might be smuggling a bomb under my penis (it's not *that* big), I'd go naked all the time; I don't care. The only thing that would bother me is the cold. What *does* bother me is that there are serious health concerns with the scanning machines. I don't know about you, but I've known cancer patients. I've seen some die. It's not pretty, and we shouldn't have to sacrifice our liberty or our health just to FEEL "safe". If anyone needs to "get over" something, the original poster needs to grow a pair and stop being so scared that he's willing to sell out his own country and sacrifice his health to FEEL "safe".

Person B does not care about Person A, and instead selfishly only wants the gifts that they want and as such ignores the feelings/beliefs of person A

I can sympathize with this sentiment, but let's turn that around and see how it works in some cases you perhaps have not thought about:

• Person B is a non-Christian (Muslim, Jew, atheist, etc) and person A is an evangelical; A sends B a five foot tall cross, or a huge picture of Jesus. Should person B keep the gift out of "respect" for person A's beliefs, or should he find a way to get rid of it?
• Person B has a small house, doesn't like to own many things, etc. Person A sends them something that won't fit in the house and/or person B has no use for. Would it be insulting to reject that gift?