I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic, to see if I can give you some mod points.

So then I guess everybody should just skip slow-start then? If Google and Microsoft can and are having tremendous results, why shouldn't everybody? Heck, why is slow-start even still around then? Should be tossed to the wayside like a Colecovision if its optional and gets in the way of your performance...

AMEN! People who don't try demos or test a game first deserve to have their money taken.... unless its a Blizzard product, which then they'll never let you test it or get reviews until you've already pre-ordered it and find out that its worse than stuff written a decade ago (I'm looking at you SC2 and B.Net 0.2).

If you understood anything about programming and Operating Systems, you would realize how idiotic that statement just was. I mean, if it were that easy then why are there still Buffer Overflow Attacks, an attack originally discovered in 1988? Seriously, over 20 years to "patch some flaws"? Or maybe, just maybe, its much more technical with HOW THE HARDWARE WORKS, and more-so that, unless you want a crippled machine running much much slower as it checks and double checks and triple checks even the simplest things like adding variables together, it is IMPOSSIBLE for the Operating System itself to protect the user like you are saying. Bad code is bad code. You cannot protect your entire system from bad code.... except for never putting that bad code on there in the first place. Which to me, in this example, is to never let Fallout New Vegas or any other Bethesda product touch your machine.

There already exists prior art to this in a certain form. Hulu.com did this with many promotions for awhile, where you could opt to watch or do an alternative before the show instead of having to be interrupted by commercials. I for one understand the need for advertising to exist and very much like this "opt out of commercials" idea, but they shouldn't be able to receive a patent because its been done before.

Actually, if you have ever worked in a "print" field, you would know how invaluable being able to work in CMYK is. You need to know exactly how your image will look as it prints, and need to adjust the colors in those layers accordingly. Going RGB and then going through CMYK is bad mojo. You never get exactly what you want. And this is all before LICENSING. I've had to work on specific IPs that have nazi's for approvals. For example, we made products on the Dragon Ball Z Franchise. Do you know the values of Goku's Gi? Or the fact that Goku's hair is a specific shade of black? And if its just slightly off those values, you get in trouble? When you need a color to be exactly right, you need it in CMYK.

Even NPR trolls on /.

If we aren't to use GoDaddy.com, who do you suggest that we use? I was about to launch a new site and had hopes that GoDaddy.com would have sufficed. Where else can you find online hosting for really cheap ($20 or less/month)? Inquiring minds like mine want to know! =)

From being in the same position and trying to "get off the ride", I can tell you that it's a coin flip for success while constantly arguing them is more like rolling a 20.

95% of the time when someone is being a bully, they are doing it because it is giving them attention. They b!tch, people respond. And that's the problem - when *you* start to ignore them, that doesn't mean the rest of the message board will. All it takes is one response for the bully to see that his words have taken affect.

The best solution I have found is, after you realize that they ARE being a bully and not just being overly harsh on their critique, is to ban their IP. Yes, it sounds big brother-ish, but it works. Sure, the bully can find ways around this, and then you ban him again. Lather, rinse, repeat until he gets tired and moves on to b!tch on something else.

In the meantime, you've saved time (how much easier is it to ban an IP than to put a rational paragraph together for someone who won't listen?) and kept a flame war off of your boards (he's spending his energy to get back to the boards, not to fight your words). It's not a utopian answer, but it's the best that I've found.

Chippy