Also, these aren't actually doing much to conceal the identity of the wearers. This is equivalent to sticking a piece of that reflective tape they put on schoolbuses over your eyes.

Until approximately a month ago, I used Firefox. The extensions I made the most use of were all privacy related:
NoScript (duh)
Ghostery (allowed me to block the little niggling crap scripts allowed through from the first party domain with NoScript)
Self destructing cookies (whitelisting cookies, brilliant idea)
BetterPrivacy (dealt with flash cookies, though I think Firefox handles those itself now)
Scriptish (which is 99% scripts I make for my own use, like removing the sitenotice node here on Slashdot)

Then I switched to Chrome and got uMatrix, and felt like a complete pleb. It never quite dawns on you the kind of content amalgamation a simple webpage actually is until you have a comprehensive breakdown by subdomain of where every cookie, script, XML HTTP request, plugin, CSS file, image, etc. is all coming from. It even has built-in options to spoof your useragent and clear the browser cache on regular intervals, spoof referers, block hyperlink auditing, etc. Switch that bad-boy into what I call "hostile mode" (block everything that the user does not explicitly whitelist) and you feel like Gandalf.

uMatrix covers the function of Noscript and Ghostery very well, and I found an extension called Tab Cookie which covers the function of Self Destructing Cookies. Tampermonkey replaced Scriptish, though I've yet to find something with a similar function to BetterPrivacy. Hulu is one of the sites I frequent with a flash cookie whose existence is obvious (the volume level) and I've noticed it is not resetting between logins, so it must not be handled by TabCookie.

I've made a habit of skipping every rating that is the maximum and every rating that is the minimum of the allowed scope. Somewhere in the 2-to-4-star gamut is the truth of the matter.

My mother worked as a nurse for some time, and she has told me on several occasions that if a vein isn't hit the first try that I should tell them to stop, then ask for someone who knows what they're doing.

I used to donate plasma when I was attending college, and for some time I had no problem; one needle stuck in, draw for 20-ish minutes, done. Then, on the very last time I went there, one of their phlebotomists started fishing (which later left me with a baseball-sized bruise on the inside of my elbow). I told her to quit and get someone who can find a vein, and even though she looked pretty pissed off, the older lady she summoned found a vein on the first try in the other arm and the rest of the visit proceeded without incident.

What these glasses seem to be addressing is unqualified or under-trained people sticking needles into me. If I see someone approaching me wearing a pair of these things, I'm going to fold my arm back up and ask them to find someone who knows what they're doing.

As long as I can say "fuck you" and completely reverse this design -- whereby script only runs by me whitelisting it -- with a config option, or just good old NoScript, then I can't find the energy to care. I am well aware that I am in a minority of web-savvy users and that a vast majority of the web lets arbitrary scripts run all the time with nary a care in the world, but my current "personal message" on Pidgin sums up my feelings on this matter pretty well: "any website devoid of content without javascript enabled is developed by a fraud and a failure". I had this problem just this afternoon where a DDG search led me to what seemed like a promising result, but all I found was a completely blank page and a big red cross-out on NoScript. Did I temporaily whitelist the domain for the content I was looking for? Hell no, I hit backspace and went to another site designed by someone with half a brain.

I live rural and CenturyLink has a complete monopoly in this area.

I had dialup through CenturyLink until 2006, because every time I asked them about their DSL service I received the same bull about being in an extended service area and how the performance to my address would degrade. Shortly before it became impossible to get a tech to your address any more (they ship replacement hardware by UPS, etc.), I talked to the guy that was maintaining our lines (the same guy who responded to every service call here for years) and he agreed to fib a little on our account to place us inside what he told us was a 4-mile radius of the nearest DSL switch for availability. CenturyLink gave us 512 kbit ADSL (which is currently $75/month), and the rates coming through are greater than what they're supposed to be (approximately 72 kilobytes per second down and 40 up). So much for "degraded service".

Now for the last two years, I've been getting the exact same speech about being in an extended area and would suffer degraded service if they would throttle me to any higher available package. The connection is rock-freakin-solid and the only time I've ever had an internet outage was when the power was out, but they continue to refuse to take my damn money for some reason.

I'm with you on this. There is very little overlap for what is called the "hardcore" market and what is called the "casual" market . The former isn't going to transform into the latter and play Black Ops 2 with an omnidirectional treadmill, and not to mention this will significantly reduce the amount of time per person being invested into these games because you're simply going to be worn the hell out after a match or two. This is not what the developers want.

From a practical angle, I don't want to run around like this before or after a shift at work, I want to veg out on the sofa in my boxer shorts and move, at most, my arm from the elbow down to reach into the bag of Doritos leaning against my thigh. I also didn't notice any strafing, jumping, or crouching going on, so yet again these gimmicky input devices prove that the keyboard+mouse/controller is still the superior input mechanism. You can see the red team running circles around this guy the entire time.

The problem becomes that regardless of how this works out, EA isn't accountable. If you boycott the game and don't buy it, EA assumes this is entirely the fault of the game or developer. If you do buy it, EA thinks you're apathetic or complacent about whatever silly DRM they've employed and will continue using and/or cooking up crappy new anti-consumer methods. Unfortunately, the better scenario is buying the game. You have to support titles and developers you like, despite the evil publishing facility they've decided to use or have been stuck with.

At the same time, I'm glad to see these stories about server issues caused by shitty DRM. I hope it continues to draw attention to how all of their paying customers are being treated like thieves.

Daylight savings is an anachronistic practice. The world runs 24/7 these days, why does it matter where the daylight is shifted within our time system?

Somehow I don't find it surprising that the same site has reported from 'reliable sources' that both the 'PS4' and '720' will take issue with used games. Are we attempting a self-fulfilling prophecy here? There seems to be a lot of excitement to proudly proclaim "I fucking called it!" if either one of these consoles employs a CD key or account-lock game ownership mechanic.

Furthermore, what is their problem with backwards compatibility? There were two big things that prevented me from buying a PS3; the price tag for the longest time, and its removal of PS2 backward compatibility. Certainly it can't be difficult to copy-paste the old code from the PS1/PS2/PS3 and launch the proper interpreter depending on disc era?

The country has three concurrent wars for oil going on, and to fund it they probably spend more than NASA's entire yearly budget in a few months. Add to the mission goals the intent to research and build a giant continent-vaporizing laser, or allude to the presence of crude oil on Mars, and watch your funding skyrocket.

In all seriousness though, there does seem to be a significant lack of interest in the sciences whenever there isn't a clear end result of return on investment. It's no big secret that the almighty dollar makes the world turn.

The issue with goto is that it is a supremely useful language construct that resides on the far end of Caveat Valley. Egregious use by those who are inexperienced far outnumbers proper use by those who employ it correctly, because it is somehow more attractive than the construct they really need, which is generally break.

Goto and other program 101 are at such a basic level that those who generally require education on its proper deployment are too inexperienced to comprehend an example that displays its proper use. Instructors just take the fire and brimstone approach and declare goto is a sin just to simplify the process. It's a victim of character assassination.