I've never had my desk crash, losing all pieces of paper on it. Contrast that to Windows.

When push comes to shove, I can always get a paper form to the person that needs it. Contrast that to relying on an Exchange server.

When a form needs authorization, having the right person sign it with a pen always works. Contrast that to trying to get digital signatures to work.

So how does a person determine that a check is _actually_ good, so they can avoid these problems?

Build a wall of tubes with water as higway sound barriers (near houses). Less noise will get trough and maybe it will get some hydrogen to help power a LED light to illuminate part of the road at night (along with a solar hydrogen generator on top and a fuel cell in a closed loop).

A car is a car (except when one is mandated via regulation to have a full set of air bags and not throw the engine block trough the passenger seats in a crash and the other car ... is not).

Government regulations setup the baseline of quality control expectations, so that the customers don't have to check every line of fine print and might actually have some confidence in the safety of their choice.

Is it just me or is the entire world going into a period of reduced freedom and increased state control? Every developed nation appears to be banning violent games, porn and free speech in general and they're doing it for no logical reasons. Modern Warfare 2 sold 6.4million copies in the first week in the US and UK alone and yet there weren't 6.4million new mass murders on the streets. This is more than sufficient evidence to prove that violent games don't turn people into killers and yet are moronic, moralist rulers still press on with their attacks on our freedom.

I've been wondering for several years now how long this must go on before the average person realizes that it's a concerted effort. Two or three sovereign nations adopting similar restrictions in similar timeframes is a coincidence. Most of the Western world doing so within the same timespan of a few years indicates a common agenda. It has to be at least significant enough to overcome nationalistic pride, "not invented here", and other factors that would tend to make any given nation not want to follow the lead of all the others.

Only the public education system could produce such large numbers of people who fail to realize or fail to appreciate that a frighteningly small number of people strongly influence, control, and own the major governments and multinational corporations of the world. Historically, small aristocratic elites have never cared about what was in the interests of the average person. Why does anyone suppose they would start caring about that now with video games and the freedom to play the ones of your choice?

What has already happened among the various states of the US is now happening with nations. US states once had significant differences in terms of social norms and state laws. If one state's restrictions really bothered you, you could move to another state that had different laws. Now they all have the same drinking age, the same smoking age, similar speed limits, the same list of prohibited substances, etc. The same thing is happening to nations.

The tendency now is to gradually erode the diversity that exists among nations and turn them into uniform carbon copies of each other so you cannot "vote with your feet" for greater freedoms. This is necessary for two reasons. One, a highly visible counterexample might cause people to decide they won't accept arbitrary restrictions ("country X didn't ban Y, and they haven't had problems with it, so why do we ban Y?"). Two, a few nations that remain free countries would have significant economic (and other) advantages when competing with the ones that jump on the state-control bandwagon. This is in fact one reason why the USA became a superpower in the first place.

Both of those points would serve to undermine the notion that central management of daily life is a necessary function of modern states. That's why so many nations are doing this at once. It's quite obvious to me that it's more than coincidence.

So then just don't use Steam. There's a difference between being tracked involuntarily a la Google Analytics and tracking your game stats and achievements on a gaming platform that contains such community features, which you signed up for.

Unfortunately there are a growing number of games that now REQUIRE Steam, despite being available as a retail purchase. Given the size of Steam and the attraction PC gamers and developers have to it, it wouldn't surprise me if 90%+ of all major titles require mandatory Steam installation and registration in the future.

So sure, he can avoid using Steam. He'll just be left with a dwindling supply of non-Steam games, at least on the PC. It shouldn't have to be that way.

Good thing the article is talking about photons, not electrons.

I can jailbreak an iPhone and install more apps. I can't jailbreak bandwidth pricing.

As opposed to all other lien holders. Well, that's Florida's fault. Who wants to move to Florida and have some fun?

That's actually perfectly valid in perl. Since it's the last statement in the block, he's set.

Two Words: Windows ME.

While I didn't drive on the interstate for my first few months of driving, by the time I got my license, I would drive on the interstate rather regularly: somewhere on the order of 90% of my trips.

The interstate is a great deal faster than the side roads, with less chance of getting lost, as well as being noticeably safer in several ways. You have two basic options for types of roads in many places: The first is about ten to twenty miles per hour faster than the other, and the second has lots of intersections, many of which are unregulated, and is rather twisty at times, as well as being small, and perhaps not as well lit or maintained. Would you take the interstate or the side streets? Which would you want your kids to take?

While the interstates are certainly faster, and while I would never put a brand new driver on them, I would tend to believe that they are otherwise safer for less experienced drivers under many circumstances than an alternate route composed of side streets.