meaning you won't be able to watch movies like The Hunger Games and World War Z through the service anymore

Well, this would have been a big loss indeed. If I had been able to watch those movies through Netflix to begin with, not being in US.

It's absolutely mindblowing how much distributor-to-distributor backstabbing goes on in US and it just doesn't matter here because they never got around to get their stuff here in the first place. Obligatory XKCD.

Is there still any prospect at all? I left 5 years ago because they stopped improving anything for a decade.

Emacs still has plenty of awesome projects going on, just that they're bloody haphazardly organised. You need to really go look for them and sometimes some minor assembly is required.

For example, the single most awesome Emacs package right now is Org-Mode, which especially speaks to me as a writer (a lot of writers swear by Scrivener, but screw it, we have a better open source alternative in Org). You'll note that it's developed outside of Emacs proper with its own release schedule. You'll note that if you want the newer versions (which aren't always required, the ones shipped with Emacs itself are usually pretty decent) you need to get the git version or use the one from Emacs ELPA package manager, which in itself is still kind of in early stages and not many projects make themselves available through it (translation: I use a whole bunch of emacs extensions, but none of them are available through ELPA). If you want nifty extensions for Org, you really need to hunt random files all around the interwebs and pray they actually work in current version of Org.

This sort of disorganisation is actually just what Emacs has been all about for decades. The core Emacs devs don't innovate that much (well, at least they do add cool new features in major releases, which is a good thing), and just package the outside contributions whenever they can. There's all sorts of cool shit going on, but you just wouldn't always know where to find them.

(That said, if you want to develop Java or C++, NetBeans just blows Emacs off the water.)

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

To me, this sounds like a pretty open and shut case of "Hey, I've heard that these 'NoSQL' database thingies are trendy these days. Let's use one of those!"

There's a difference between using fun, exciting new technologies and learning something new while doing that... and doing a project which stays in schedule and budget, is based on technology you already know thoroughly, and on which people's lives can depend (well, indirectly).

Hakin9 is a magazine that's not exactly too reputable.

It looks like someone took a paper "written" using SciGen and submitted it to them. Because they didn't read the paper at all, they didn't notice it was absolute bullshit courtesy of finest context-free grammars people could code.

Brilliant work - not only is SciGen great for busting less than reputable scientific publications that don't exactly value this "peer review" thing, but now it has busted security magazines too.

My first computer: Spectravideo SV-318: 16 KB.

Current computer: A not exactly a new PC, way behind the curve even after a few bits of RAM added: 2 GB.

So 125000x the memory, I guess.

Wii hasn't been out long enough for "the test of time" to even be applicable.

That said,

Super Mario Galaxy and Mario Kart Wii are two titles that come to mind. New Super Mario Brothers Wii is also pretty good, not yet old enough to tell how well it'll age though.

Why am I reminded of Star Wreck 4½? Can't remember the exact quote, but...

"Alert the enemies, that we're about to warm up the twinkler banks... soon."

"Alert the enemies, that we're about to warm up the twinkler banks... now."

(Several hours later)

"All right, if you want it. So be it. We will not make any more warnings. All light balls and twinkler banks... feuer."

(The ensuing fight consists mostly of dodging maneuvers of "turn right very slowly" variety)

Yog's Law: The money flows toward the writer. If it doesn't, then you're pretty obviously doing it wrong. Just how many people in other lines of work are paying to do their work? Silly me, I thought that people are usually paid to do their job.

The publishing industry has existed for a long time and has found a way to enable people to pay the authors, without any of the parties along the way screwing themselves over. The reason why publishers pay for ISBNs is that they're the risk-takers, and this arrangement works for all parties involved in normal publishing.

It's silly to assume that this arrangement would be most benefical for all parties in self-publishing scenario. It's silly to assume that ISBN authorities would be somehow entitled to do this same thing with self-publishing authors. And it's silly to assume that authors should be taking the exact same risks as commercial publishers do right now. The right solution would be to offer new mutually benefical arrangements and new approaches. In short, if publishing something requires an ISBN and self-publishers need it for minimal or no cost, offer them at that price. Otherwise, it's just an artificial barrier and it's plain as day that someone's screwing over someone.

HTML is amazingly useful in messages. Simple things such as including inline screenshots of an application under discussion, or ease of properly formatting lists.

For longer and more complex emails I may very well divide the email up into multiple segments using headers

Sure I could do all of that with ASCII art, but why the hell should I when HTML exists?

Look into .NET Micro Framework, it is a completely open source implementation of .NET (by Microsoft!) running on a wide variety of platforms.

Netduinos are the easiest way to get started with .NETMF.

(To be fair, .NETMF is more of a platform in of itself, a cool little mini-runtime of sorts, very awesome and fun to play around with)

My state (Washington) has a nice little label that says "may".

Not the clearest labeling I have ever seen. Something more like "does" or "does not" would be appreciated.

As a happy owner of an original model Kia Soul, it took me all of about 1 tank of gas to realize the reported fuel numbers were off. 23MPH is about the best I can get, which is horrible for a car that weighs 2650lb and has a 144hp engine.

I have actually yet to figure out how in the world the gas mileage is that bad. (The "I am not sure which gear I should be in" automatic transmission may have something to do with it.)

That said, in every other respect the car is great. Practical beyond all belief and fun to drive. (I have one of the limited edition models that is a fair bit closer to the ground than is typical, so I don't end up upside down all the damn time!)

Okay. Voting machines with a miscalibrated screen, coupled with a dumb user interface that causes wrong choices to be made and doesn't allow the voters to be certain what they voted for.

Scroll to comments.

*facepalm*

OF COURSE it's a frigging Obama conspiracy! I mean, Obama did Hurricane Sandy, messing with a few voting machines is easy in comparison, right? Duh.

Seriously, though, this is kind of like an inverse of the common-sense conclusion. Normally, one flaw is a glitch, two is a conspiracy. In voting machines, one election with screwy results is enough to suggest a conspiracy, but when all elections that use voting machines have more or less screwy results, maybe that suggests that the technology just isn't there yet.

3. People who thought studying Economics is nothing but underwater basket-weaving thought "damn, I wish I had actually studied underwater basket-weaving instead".

The DVB standard, which is used in digital broadcasting almost everywhere except North America, still supports teletext. It's just that some of the most commonly used features, like subtitles, have made their way into separate features.