They've had this for a long time. You can hide notifications from any app permanently from the news feed. If that doesn't work, go to the page for the app and you can choose Block and also remove it permanently. Usually it works just clicking Hide on the newsfeeds. I do that on all quizzes and other apps that show up. I see a new one every few weeks, but otherwise I don't see any at all - all the popular ones are blocked.

I did not get the idea that war was inevitable because of resources, nor that war was inevitable at all. My impression of it was a sense that "when you have to fight, you fight to win." That was all, at least for that aspect of the book. There was much more in there obviously.

Just in case anyone thinks I'm posting fanboy or paid nonsense...I dislike the laptop generally. The Windows drivers are awful. SP3 on Windows doesn't work - the wifi won't come up resuming from standby, so I am stuck on SP2. The wifi in general on Windows is terrible.

I run ubuntu on it now and have windows virtualized on it. But with the 4200 rpm hard drive it has moments of extreme slowness. Usually it is quite tolerable though. And it's much more stable overall then running windows directly on it.

This is a company laptop or I wouldn't put up with it.

Not just netbooks. I have an HP 2510p with the 9-cell battery. It's a full laptop: Core 2 duo proc, 2 GB RAM, 12" screen. I don't carry it all the time like I would if it were a netbook, but it only weighs 5 pounds, so carry carry it in my messenger bag (when working, not casually around town 24/7). Runs 7-12 hours no problem depending on whether wifi is on. I hate some aspects of the hardware, but love the battery life!

What do you consider normal? I have an HP notebook with 12" screen. With the 9-cell battery I can go 8 hours easily with wifi on doing work in Eclipse and running some server software. It's a standard Core2 system, not an Atom-based netbook. There are some laptops out there with great battery life. I realize most companies give developers more powerful laptops with bigger screens. But if you travel a lot it's worth having a lighter, smaller laptop with twice the battery life.

So you like the feel of a semi-private community where you can easily interact with friends, colleagues, or people with shared interests without being bothered by spam and outsiders. But you detest Facebook, which is exactly that. That's what I am reading from this.

I dislike Facebook messages too because of the extra time they take to read and send compared to regular email, but isn't the idea of a BBS essentially what Facebook is?