Trust me, go. Don't fret about lost years, that's an illusion. Everyone has periods in their lives when the road ahead takes a hairpin bend; it's not a mistake, it's part of moving ahead. You've learned something. Now move on.

Ah, Slashdot...

No, as it has not been tested it has not yet gained the status of "theory". At best it is an hypothesis, although that is probably not applicable if there is not a way of testing it.

Hypothesis + supporting experimental results = theory.

Until its proponents come up with a convincing way of testing its predictions, 'religion' probably covers it.

Actually, l33t would in certain circumstances be a better move if you are playing a defensive game - it's much harder for someone else to make another word connecting to it as there are no other words currently that include a 3.

... missing option - Blizzard's database. Mah epix!

My partner went onto the lego website, designed me some lego roses, and gave me the kit on Valentine's Day. I got to play with the lego!

Now there's a guy who knows how to romance a geek.

"I get enough of that shit at work."

This quote made me smile. I run a raiding guid, not super hardcore but we're on heroic 25-man content.

And what I like about it is it is just like work SHOULD be. I get to organize stuff for 50 people, motivate them, keep them happy while maintaining discipline, work with the team to achieve things... all the stuff that should create job satisfaction in your job. Except I don't have some dick who can't tell his arse from his elbow coming along and setting impossible deadlines, slashing the budget, micro-managing me and my team, and generally fucking things up to the point where the only sense of achievement is a day where you made things less bad.

I work with one other person, and we have chosen to work together. The people are there because they want to be. I get to recruit who I want. And I've been able to prove to myself that my ideas about managing people - happy people are productive, people do their best when encouraged and given opportunities, teams are stonger than the individual, and all that other happy-happy crap, are all true. Sure, some days are shit, people give you grief and don't appreciate you, but hey, that happens everywhere in life.

But yeah, WoW is escapism - it's an escape from a broken world where money is everything, into another world where all that stuff you were taught as a kid about how being a decent human being leads to happiness actually applies.

Goddammit, now I've got that song stuck in my head...

... "And how happy are you about that?"

I'm seeing 'some larger group' at work in a horrible noisy open plan office. I'd rather be at home in my room, playing WoW and seeing nothing but virtual folk.

Verbing nouns has been with us forever, and has been done by Shakespeare himself. Just because this results in ugliness as well as beauty doesn't mean it's wrong.

Language evolves. Deal with it.

Ok, so, what do we have against Will Smith all of a sudden? The guy can act a bit, and has a little charisma. Did he piss in your lemonade or something?

Now, Keanu Reeves and we're talking. That guy has appeared like vomit on the tablecloth in so many scifi movies I can't stand it. NO acting ability, NO charisma, NO attempt to even speak a line in a manner that suggests he might be getting paid for doing it and therefore should make just a BIT of an effort.

Keep Keanu out of scifi!

Actually, the "well-known" claim that there is a CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK, used by the media to put the fear of an omnipotent God into folks, (and believe me, there is plenty of outrage to be found if you read the "right" papers *cough*Daily Mail*cough*) is based on some very dodgy estimates, gathered by researchers from two streets in Putney:

Channel 4 Factcheck

There may or may not be a lot of cameras. No official figures exist to say how many. However, there is good reason to believe that the usual figure quoted in not the correct one, either way.