I am sick of having "experiences" pushed in my face by marketing drones who think I need to know what's "cool" or "interesting." The "experience" I'm really interested in is a browser that functions properly, doesn't crash, supports standards, and which doesn't eat all of the available memory or CPU. I'm even willing to PAY for something like that. If the management team at the Mozilla Foundation has time and resources to surreptitiously load unwanted extensions hyping some television show on the browser, they sure as hell have the time and resources to fix some of the more egregious and annoying bugs.

I sure hope Firefox isn't about to plummet into "form over function" irrelevancy like Skype recently did ("The most expressive Skype ever!"). Bugger "expressive" or "experience"...just make the damned thing work properly.

The essay has little to do with creative satisfaction, which is what the title implies. Substitute the phrase "light entertainment" for the author's use of "fun", and one gets a slightly better idea of what he seems to be writing about. The article appears to be a social justice essay rather than a technology discussion.
  While he makes some interesting, fragmentary points, much of what he wrote is full of unsupported assertions and generalizations, which makes it hard to accept his conclusions. My own experience certainly doesn't agree with his assertions about the nature of the way programmers think.

Exactly; the EPA test track is only good as a baseline measurement. Granted, it is impossible to define "average" driving conditions versus having precise control on a test track, but it would be of great use to have professional drivers test vehicles in a series of defined driving environments over a period of time and use the average results. This would be a far better reflection of real mileage versus the ideal (and totally unrealistic) test track. We have test pilots, why not test drivers which are responsible for similar levels of care in measurement and reporting? Perhaps an industry lab that is funded by all automakers selling cars in the U.S. with government-defined test conditions and federal inspectors reading and giving a critique on the results?

I regularly get 25 MPG or better in my 1996 Cadillac DeVille, which isn't bad for an 8-cylinder, 275 HP engine in a 3,800 lb vehicle, and I can get 40 MPG in my 1999 Honda Accord if I am on a long road trip, driving carefully (4-cylinder ULEV-rated VTEC powerplant). The EPA estimates for both vehicles are considerably lower. In fact, the Cadillac gets 30 MPG on 2 hour trips over rolling hills at 70 miles per hour, something that most people would never believe of a vehicle that is regularly used as an example of a gas hog. It's not, and it's a great example of what good engineering can already achieve. Some people have measured 65 MPG or better in their Volkswagen diesels, and Honda sells a diesel in Japan and Europe that gets better than 50 MPG. Why do we need to be spending inordinate amounts on hybrid vehicles that have toxic battery packs that need replacing every seven to ten years? The technology to do better is already available on standard powerplants.

Just because the EPA is unwilling to change its methodology to account for advances in technology, we have automakers shelving perfectly good ideas. Exactly what is so hard about changing protocols? It's not like we don't have well-qualified people available to make this happen, and many of them work for automakers. I bet Ford and GM would be happy to have a place to show off what they can do for mileage improvement; it might even help generate sales, and since we're trying to create jobs, what are we waiting for?

I believe you are correct about the reasons for the oil consumption figure. Much of our heavy manufacturing in the midwest has disappeared, thanks to relatively cheap labor available in other countries. What many don't seem to realize is that all those plastic doodads and sub-assemblies that go into larger products require oil, and if you're not making that here (the USA), oil consumption will fall in this country -- but not elsewhere.

You make a very good point about distance transportation, which really needs to be emphasized further in these kinds of discussions. Out where I live (east-central Texas), discussions of "practical" electric vehicles, mass transit and things like using a bicycle are greeted with well-deserved derision. Farm equipment as an example, cannot be powered by anything but a concentrated, portable energy supply that is easily stored at the farm. Batteries just don't cut it, and even if they did, getting the electrical infrastructure capable of handling high-volume charging requirements would be prohibitively expensive in rural areas. Running out of battery off-road is not good; try carrying enough battery capacity in your arms to get going again versus five gallons of gasoline. And, the idea of using a bicycle to go get reasonably-priced groceries 30 miles away (not uncommon in this area) is ludicrous, not to mention hauling 1,500 lbs of feed. A go-kart powered with a lawnmower engine is a paragon of practicality by comparison. Urbanites often seem to forget that most of the country is empty space, and for many applications, there is a stark choice between limited human or animal power, and something that gives you the energy density of diesel or gasoline. Diesel being far less difficult to handle and store than gasoline. Gasoline with ethanol added is an incredible headache, since it destroys engines that don't get run every day: Farm equipment is not cheap, and destroying it with dodgy fuel just to satisfy someone's need for a subsidy or an obsession with ethanol is just criminal. And people wonder why food prices are climbing.

If policy-makers spent less time in their little insular world of suburban life (and watching the talking heads on the evening news), they might have a different perspective on things. I know that growing up in Los Angeles during the 1970's (I left in 1978), I had no idea what effect reasonable-sounding energy policy had on the rest of the population. Now I do. Bottom line, attempting to legislate the use of certain technologies because they work well under specific circumstances is an invitation to all sorts of problems. You cannot anticipate all needs, requirements, and problems. But, Congress seems to think this is possible and so we are stuck with things like massive ethanol subsidies; money that could be better spent elsewhere improving technologies that actually work.

For example, I have my suspicions about motivations with fuel economy. A diesel four-banger compact gets extremely good mileage; Honda's 2009 diesel Accord achieved better than 50 MPG and met the European "clean diesel" standards. Why can't we buy them here (along with counterparts from Nissan, Toyota and others)? My 1996 Cadillac DeVille (which some consider a "gas guzzler") gets 24 MPG highway/city combined (actual measured value), and I can get 30 MPG (actual) on 2-hour highway trips at 70 miles an hour, cruise control engaged. This is with an emissions system that needs repair -- my mileage will improve after it is fixed. My 1999 Honda Accord (4 cylinder VTEC) gets 30 to 38 MPG depending on the type of driving, and on long trips I've achieved 40 MPG. The point I'm making is that if we really want to reduce transportation's consumption of oil, the technology required to do so is already proven and available, and would not require gutting the livelyhoods of people that have to drive long distances or use petroleum-powered equipment for vital things -- like growing and transporting food.

Peak travel, like some other problems, vanishes if we're willing to be sensible about some things. Environmental concerns aside, we cannot become less dependent on foreign energy imports if we continue to stick our heads in the sand while spending inordinate amounts of time and money on dead-ends while we have the means to at least help ameliorate the problem already in hand.

Education is the only way out, and I have to applaud you for using facts in your reply. A steady repition of the facts is what will finally get people to start thinking, even if it means repeating those facts until they become unpleasantly obvious to all.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, stop using Viacom product. There's more to life than the crap Viacom and its subsidiaries like to feed people. Just because they make it available doesn't mean you have to consume it. Let the general public (your neighbors and friends who struggle with email) know what's going on. They get spoon-fed the news and haven't stopped to think critically. Maybe you can be the first crack in the armor of ignorance.

I realize that getting people to turn off their TV and stop listening to commercial music is a tough call, but that's what it boils down to. I stopped watching television twenty years ago, and I haven't purchased a CD from an RIAA-member publishing house for almost as long. Thanks to the 'net, I really don't need to sit through thirty minutes of advertising so I can watch a talking head read me the news from a script; I can read the same thing online in a few minutes, and I can actually find the source of the story to see how badly my "news" provider has skewed the facts. Thanks to YouTube, I can see an entire security cam video and find out what happened, not just the part that the network news wants me to see.

As for Viacom, there are a lot of ways to get their attention. Contact the EFF (which has more political clout than individuals). Send snail mail in large envelopes (so they don't get tossed immediately) to Viacom's legal department. Buy a share of Viacom stock and hold it for a while, then get in touch with investor relations at the company. Above all, make it clear that the goal is to impact their business negatively by encouraging others not to purchase their product.

The Slashdot community as a whole is a little smarter, a little better informed and a little more activist than the general population (think you'll ever see xkcd in a newspaper any time soon?). Time to let Viacom know -- and other companies like them -- that screwing us is not a good idea.