It's all shit and we're all fucked, so there's no point even trying. Greetings from Finland.

Same. And browser functionality as well as the number of web standards has skyrocketed, which means that once Firefox is extinquished, truly new competition is very unlikely to pop up. Especially one whose funding is not based on pure evil, it's hard to compete with a monopoly that gives away its product for free.

Well the "really strange sensation" is kinda the problem here, your eyes think you're accelerating and decelerating, but your inner ear knows better.

I think the sound is more like wood creaking and snapping, as the microstructure of the plant changes. Or perhaps somewhat like the involuntary sounds a human gut makes. I'm sure chemical signals play a role when plants "communicate" information about their environment to other plants. Not so sure about them hearing other plants, although hey, many flowers are shaped in a way well suited to capturing sounds around them, so...

It would know more than anyone or anything, yet still be locked in a perpetual loop of self-doubt.

the recent adoption of DRM by W3C? Or the new standards by industry giants for mandatory biometric authentication? Or the increasing censorship and restriction on free speech on the web?

They paid the listing price...

Well from a guys point of view, I would like to have sexual interactions with most of the non-obese 15-40 yo females that I encounter on the streets. That's just how my male brain is wired.

I'm stronger than them, so in a natural sense, there's very little stopping me. True, our society has rules, but civilization and its rules are pretty new constructs. What IS stopping me from acting is, first and foremost, human empathy, something which we do not all have in equal measure. And fear of consequences, suuure, but that requires that one is capable of thinking ahead.

We all have this biological urge, because there is an innate need for the human species to survive, and for that we need a man to impregnate a woman. Human society has added layers of complexity upon that, but that's what it boils down to. And like all people who've had good sex know, those layers can vanish in an instant.

Because of that, man-woman interaction in society is sort of a grey area. Courtship can manifest itself in millions of ways, and there's all sort of tensions going on. Men are clumsier in the field of feelings, and often misinterpret female signals, if indeed capable of interpreting them at all. Also, as any old gigolo knows, the female mind is often quite malleable when it comes to what it wants.

Hell, maybe the muslims got it right, women and men should be separated. The "empowered" women in modern societies seem to expect that they're only approached by males that they approve of. Sorry sisters, that's not how it works! You can stare at your cellphone all you want, but the real world is made out of shit and meat, and you'll still have to sift through a lot of that to find that precious gold nugget of yours.

Yep, but if anyone decides to upload those bootlegs to Youtube (or, I suspect, anywhere on the accessible web), it's only a matter of time before Google will analyze and start recognizing it. Not to mention that they might use some kind of advanced heuristics to recognize songs even if they are not 1:1 with their analyzed samples. In fact they already must be, since live soundscapes are always full of secondary noise.

Well, it of course all boils down to economics. Rising economies produce mass-market goods cheaply, and get better at making stuff. When their perceived production quality comes closer to that of established quality manufacturers, these quality manufacturers will find themselves in a price war, something that they cannot sustain with their recently acquired standards of living. Rinse and repeat.

The moment someone receives a text that you're about to take your life, all sorts of measures will (probably) be taken. They will try to contact you to talk out of it, the authorities might start locating your phone, that sort of stuff. Suddenly you're in a hurry, and most suicide methods are not 100% effective either. I guess he could have used some kind of delayed SMS app or something, but I think the guy just wanted to carry out his suicide plan in peace.

Although this is Slashdot, I have to respectfully disagree with you. Yes, Microsoft has had bad products, especially when they have tried to keep their cash flow going by forcing new features into products that do not need new features, such as MS Office and certain version of Windows. And they have faltered many a time, often when trying to conquer new markets (Zune, anyone?) Their products have sometimes even been sub-par, especially in segments where they have used strongarming instead of letting products compete on their own merits.

But not all of Microsoft has been crap. The Windows NT line was decent for its time, and Windows XP gradually evolved into a good product. Windows 7 was a good operating system. Microsoft's hardware has usually been good enough for the price. Even Microsoft branded phones weren't all that bad IMHO, they just failed to catch on. The Xbox ecosystem is going strong, and even their server products have been a viable alternative for those who just wanted to click away and get things done.

Now I'm not saying that Microsoft should be such a strong standard as it is today, especially with their recent schizophrenia regarding licensing models and platform-specific design choices, as well as lack of user control. Yes, they could have been much more open and "fair" during all these years if they'd wanted to, instead of only resorting to it after exhausting all other options. And I'm also worried about their recently acquired interests in telemetry, big data, and the Linux ecosystem.

So, umm... Clearly they're trying a bit of this and a bit of that. I don't know if Microsoft will be relevant in the future, or "avoid being the next IBM", whatever that means. If they go, they go. I just hope that they don't extinquish any other ecosystems on their way out. And while I don't hold a soft spot for Microsoft in my heart, even Microsoft counts as an alternative, and more choice is always good, even if Microsoft's own attitude hasn't traditionally exactly reflected this philosophy.

I get what you're saying, but it honestly isn't very unusual for women to melt out of their pants if a foreigner compliments them in their own language, no matter where you are. Women are always somewhat interested in bringing exotic genes into the local gene pool, it's a basic evolutionary tactic to avoid inbreeding.

I recently found a series of Yale lectures on population growth on Youtube, they are a bit repetitive at times but I still highly recommend them to anyone interested in such matters (and frankly, we all should be.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

C'mon, there's also videos of dudes getting kicked in the balls, and girls endlessly pondering what to wear.