Not only was Myst written for the Mac, it was developed using a Mac-only hypermedia application HyperCard. The "making of" video included with later versions clearly shows development happening in a HyperCard environment. Bringing it to the PC was less a port than a rewrite.

You really think the only way a union accomplishes anything is by lawsuits? Wow.

Writer's Guild, not Author's Guild. The Writer's Guild is a union representing (among others) Hollywood screenwriters, and yes, part of what it's supposed to do is to secure the interests of its dues-paying members.

No one said the WGA was supposed to "sue" anyone for him, but they were supposed to "act" on his behalf and he alleges they haven't been doing that. What he wants it to do is nothing more than its job.

Apparently, yes.

"Historic doorknobs"? That's a new one on me. People forget that the entire building was gutted and rebuilt around 1950, since the original was in immanent danger of collapse. Only the facade is original, and I question the historical value of doorknobs installed only 40 years earlier, even if they existed as described.

The nitpick isn't that he was running late, but that he got the Constitutionally-mandated wording wrong.

Modded funny but should be insightful. If someone wrote these, I'm almost positive they'd sell.

You mean "Planck length", which is a concept from physics, not "plank length", which is a concept from carpentry. (Or piracy. Whatever.)

Actually, the only person calling this a "theory" was GP. TFA was very careful not to. At this point it's only a hypothetical explanation for the observed noise, and there could be other causes. But it's useless to rule out hypotheses because they don't fit into any available theoretical framework, especially when, as in this case, none of them work particularly well.

Your counterexample had nothing to do with the specific example, which was of a household where the resident children were all old enough to know better. In such a house, were there to be small children visiting, the sensible parent keeps an eye on them because there's likely to be nothing for them to do.

After all that, I suspect many things are fuzzier to him than to us.

No. Even if the building is like that, the land is worth more. You simply don't know what you're talking about. Yes, there really are places in the country where property is that valuable, even if distressed.

But why would I move to such an area with two special-needs children, one severely handicapped? (This is also why I cannot do without a house of a certain size. I already have to have a bed in the living room.) Living in a high-crime area -- not merely one that's poor, which is another matter entirely -- carries its own expenses and risks, and is probably not worth it.

I work in Santa Clara Valley, not the Deep South. A house anywhere around here offered for a mere $50k would make headline news, literally. Even with the downturn, median house prices are in the $400k range.

Depending on where you live, not that much cheaper. In my area -- fixer-upper or not, ideal location or not, smaller or not -- 15 months of my 6-figure salary will not buy a house, period. They simply are not being offered at that price, not even for a tear-down.

Yes. Really. I suggest you read the Federalist. If I've gone off the deep end, then so did Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, and the other founders. Our Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights that was soon added, was designed to limit government for precisely that reason. They had a recent, violent example of an overreaching government they wished to avoid ever repeating.

The real threat to us from terrorism is virtually nonexistent. In terms of actual risk, the threat from terrorism is miniscule compared to any number of risks we routinely assume without even blinking. It's not worth yielding the tiniest fraction of our freedom in order to combat it.

If you want the Constitution to protect your freedoms, then you have to allow it to protect even those you're certain are doing wrong. And yes, we're even willing to let pragmatics take a backseat to freedom. The government has always been a more clear and present danger to the people than any real-world terrorist threat. The framers of our Constitution knew this, even if they never specifically had terrorists in mind. That's why they were primarily concerned with limiting the government, not granting it vast powers (which it has largely arrogated to itself anyway.)