What is the "other" category that the US government is using outside of search warrants or subpoenas?

Yeah, after reviewing his "tribulations", I'm not sure I'd want to hire such a whiner.

You hit the nail on the head. I was willing to put up with a lot more bullshit when I was in my 20's. I was willing to "write to spec" at the behest of bad managers even when the spec was clearly ridiculous. I was willing to put in extra time at work because I did not have a family or much savings. Now, I prefer to do meaningful work and pursue my own interests in off-hours. The video game companies went through this problem about ten years ago (full disclosure: I work in that industry). They would hire a bunch of young, hungry developers and burn them out on a few titles, then shut down the studio. It turns out that doing that is not a long-term strategy because you destroy your capital -- and so they changed course (well, most companies did) and started investing in long-term, productive work forces.

Meanwhile, the world population is nearing 7 billion. We men have 99 problems, but fucking ain't one of them.

I'm glad Microsoft is pushing the racket costs through to the consumer. The DVD licencing group is just a shakedown, and it's great to let users opt-out of their shenanigans. Linux distributions have been doing this for a long time with mp3 codecs (for example). Savvy users can get around it, but it's also very simple to pay a nominal fee to appease the intellectual property bandits.... if you want to support their practices.

Maybe my point wasn't clear enough then; I don't believe that there was any kind of conspiracy to "kill" Hypercard -- I believe that all the developers moved on to either more capable development platforms. The person likely to build something in Hypercard then is probably reaching for Dreamweaver, Excel, or FileMaker Pro now. The actual developers have moved on to professional tool sets.

Hypercard killed itself.

Version control is a lot more than that; you have to manage branches and merging which would require a lot of work to integrate into a visual development tool. As it stands, the LabView user would still need to understand the code underneath in order to meaningfully contribute. Integration is another mess (how do you write test cases in a visual designer?).

Having "grown up" with the Amiga, visual development has attracted me, but it has never escaped the realm of neat toy.

Or, it could be that all those fond memories of Hypercard are exaggerated. I can't recall even one such application that was useful apart from simple educational games. The challenge in creating a GUI-based development system has been tackled many times. The most recent one that I have used is the default Mindstorms programming environment LabView, which I quickly discarded for a gcc-based environment.

The one killing blow that keeps me from really using these environments is that they are fundamentally incompatible with version control. This means that they cannot be large projects, or have much collaboration -- relegating them to trivial systems, which are all I remember Hypercard being.

I would agree with you if you amended your statement to include all the tax breaks the baby boomers gave themselves. They want to have their cake and eat it too. The trouble with reform is that it must come from both ends: revenue and reduced spending. Whenever either is discussed, all rational conversation is shut down by the screaming heads on either side.

Don't forget Kucinich as well. Most of the left of the country oppose the Middle Eastern wars. The reason that Paul stands out is that he is pretty much alone on the right. I remember Richard Gere standing at that New York support event and getting booed off stage for daring to suggest that war wasn't the appropriate response. It was a mini-McCarthy era from 2001 to around 2008 or so -- if you didn't have a yellow ribbon on your car, then you supported the terrorists.

And now the same kind of demagoguing is happening to our monetary system -- popular vitriol is being thrown at the government to ensure that the entire system collapses, putting the crown jewel in to Bin Laden's legacy.

You're talking about this story: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/03/steam-user-violates-subscriber-agreement-loses-1800-in-games.ars

In which case Valve refunded the account. Regardless, this is the future whether you like it or not. You won't be buying physical media in the very near future. The 360 and PS3 may well be the last consoles to even have removable storage of any kind -- if not, the next generation will be the last.

Developers complain about pirating on the PC, so they make console-only titles, then they complain about used game sales. I would have purchased Red Dead Redemption on Steam, had it been available -- instead I bought a used copy at GameStop for $20. Sorry Rockstar. Eventually all games will be delivered digitally, and the producers will need to have a more sane stance on pricing. Not every game is worth $60.

Let's worry about that when it happens.

What is the difference between this and the already-in-place fuel tax? The fuel tax is even better at metering costs to those that chew up roads (heavy vehicles). This sounds like a solution looking for a cause to me.

Many people have sight problems that prevent them from seeing 3D -- why would Nintendo exclude them by tying gameplay mechanics to a display device? It's similar to cinema -- not everyone wants to see a movie in 3D.

I think the biggest problem facing the 3DS is its underwhelming software lineup.