Absolutely. They just create PR disaster after PR disaster at their customers' expense.

I couldn't agree more. They ought to have *rented* the boxes out like 1970s telephones if they wanted to attempt this business model. Its funny. I had intended to buy a PS3 until the Other OS lock down. I considered it again once that was dealt with. But now, their heads are so far up their arses I don't want to give them a dime. Glad to hear their market share is still terrible.

I guess this means its time for me to throw out that copy of 2.1x I kept in the original box, eh? Then again, its my only means to prove Ventura Publisher existed.

It depends a lot on the industry, the demographics of the work place, and the company's customers! All of the above are great tips. Try to get a feel for other people's interests, their work ethics, their dress and appearance, and their level of self-expression, and try to emulate it. I've worked at ma and pa telcos where ties and sparkling clean desks are unspoken mandatory, trading firms where just talking to another employee can spark a random stress meltdown, as well as government contracting companies where people wear jeans and have nerf gun fights. Be yourself - just get a feel for how much of yourself you can be.

A lot of other people have shown (appropriate) outrage that GW is suing their biggest fans (and customers). But aside from that, think of this from a marketing and money perspective. Do they really lose more money due to 'trademark infringement' than they gain from free press? I really doubt it. These sites are a great way to get people involved in their tabletop and PC games, and to get the word out to new players. If they shut down every fan site, they are going to have to shoulder the whole burden of marketing their products. I'm not certain they really comprehend how much staffing and money that really entails. The fact that their MMORPG (which really is a pretty solid game) is now down to only 4 live servers should be a clue to them. Outside of geek and gamer culture, Warhammer is not quite a household name like Dungeons and Dragons, Warcraft, or Magic: The Gathering. People who play it often devote a lot of time and money into playing it, but in my experience, GW has never made a huge outreach to bring in new players since launch. Its world and gameplay is complex and detailed. In my experience, people start playing Warhammer because their friends play Warhammer, they happen to walk into a GW store, or because they *read about it on the internet and get interested*. I agree that this is a really bad move by GW, but they've been doing this for some time, now. You have to wonder what is going through their corporate heads.

According to the technical details and documents online, these devices even are network ready for test and maintenance purposes. Makes you think. They can reassure me about TSA professionalism all they want. I've flown a lot, and I just don't see it. I think I lost all confidence when they were patting down my 74-year-old grandmother. These knee-jerk reactions and massive errors are getting real old. You fly to Europe or Canada, and their security personnel have a clue - they're practical, they keep a sharp eye out, and they use the right response for the situation at hand. I'm sure as hell not flying commercial anymore. I hope enough people share the sentiment that the US airline industry manages to tank even more. And I love flying so much I have an aviation degree.

I'm glad some attention is finally being brought to this. I edited my profile a couple of days ago, and hit the new interests-to-fan page conversion. It did not do a great job at all; I ended up a fan of some really off-the-wall, incorrect things (because the same word or title can have multiple meanings or belong to multiple organizations). My immediate concern was that there is still no way to make membership to a fan page private. So I immediately checked the privacy settings, and while I had been opted in (without consent) to display my likes and interests, there is a privacy option to make them private. The *HUGE* catch in the fine print is that people can still check to see if you are the member of any fan page simply by looking through the group's members, where you'll be visible. Unless I am mistaken, only reliable option for people with legitimate concerns about human rights violations, nosy employers, angry exes, or nosy family members is now to enter absolutely no interests, things to do, music, movie, or books on Facebook, as all of this data is now at least partially public, regardless of how security settings are configured. I just read an article that discussed identifying intimate details, such as a person's sexuality, using only this publicly available data and statistical data. While things like that are generally protected in the US, consider Facebook members abroad - people who practice a religion or philosophy in countries where there is religious persecution could be at tremendous risk now, and not even know it. All their government would have to do is start scanning certain fan pages. Obviously, Facebook's income does not come from members, it comes from advertisers, who are its real customers. However, for the last couple years, they have made Buzz-worthy privacy moves that its millions of members really need to stand up to, before somebody gets hurt.

And yet, it should be noted, that in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world, a world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect and nourish. He did not feel this sacrifice a vain or an empty one - and we will not debate his profound wisdom at these proceedings. Of my friend, I can only say this... of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most ... human.

Agreed. Even PC game manuals in the 80's and early 90's had serious content. Going through my box of old 5 1/4" floppy disks, I don't see a single manual that's less than 1/2" thick. Most include space for writing notes. Today's manuals have about the same amount of content as the quick reference cards that came with the older games. Xerox Ventura Publisher and Microsoft DOS came with hefty books that would be $30 guides (or more) on today's shelf. I think the manual is sort of dead, already.

Sensible Christians can smile at themselves. Sensible Atheists can smile at themselves. Sensible Catholics can smile at themselves. Sensible Hindus can smile at themselves... And so on... This is a sacrifice we have to make to coexist with the rest of the planet in globalized society. Taking oneself too seriously all of the time (at others' expense) is an indication that one has absolutely no willingness to permit others to be different.

It would be more reliable than dog tags, and even ID cards... if it were used for the appropriate purpose.

I'd like to know, from a historical perspective, how this was just "misplaced" so close to the capital, even during war time. Unlike Europe, this is not an area where a war occurred - and the article states it was one of only a few "major" dumping sites. Classified or not, I would imagine this is something that the US Government took rather meticulous records of, even back in WWI - and something that a reasonable number of scientists, military officers, and technicians knew about. Was there some significant loss of records over the decades relating to these programs?

They also don't have the potential to share completely unrelated information, like internet browsing history, information about internet provider or computer hardware and software. However, this is information which is relatively easy for ecommerce retailers to collect.

Granted, there are a *lot* of wastes in government I would like to see go away before government-funded manned spaceflight, but the US deficit is growing *dangerously* large. If the partisan divide is too great to eliminate anything else, something has to go, at least temporarily, before our social services go completely by the wayside, or much, much worse. I'm not saying that this is anywhere near the best choice. But these days, our country is divided that nothing else can be agreed on. Our politicians are at one another's throats instead of making compromises we need to survive as a nation. In addition, heroism aside, I think that the unmanned and orbital space programs like Hubble, rovers, and the ISS are much more critical for scientific discovery than manned missions. While less of a symbol, they produce immense amounts of useful scientific data. The Bush administration's Mars plans would likely have occurred at the expense of these programs. So there is no good answer. If civilian agencies take up the slack and begin performing the exploration, then there may be some hope.

Darn it, thank you for showing me the error of my ways. I *knew* I should have built that time machine in 2007 to go forward in time and get a phone that didn't exist yet... (?)