My health insurance (MVP) covers exactly nothing for hearing aids (it would if I was under age 18, i.e. 30 years ago when I didn't need them). Can I still blame the insurance companies? Is it a common benefit?

(They don't cover eyeglasses either)

From the MLB.TV FAQ:

Regular Season Weekend U.S. National Live Blackout: Due to Major League Baseball exclusivities, live games occurring each Saturday with a scheduled start time after 1:10 PM ET or before 8:00 PM ET and each Sunday with a scheduled start time after 5:00 PM ET, will be blacked out in the United States (including the territories of Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands). ... and man is this stupid. I'm not going to watch two teams I don't care about simply because it's the only game on TV. I'm going to do something else instead. By denying me an opportunity to watch "my" team, you decrease my level of involvement with/commitment to the team and to MLB in general. So no one profits by this deal (well, maybe MLB, *if* they received enough money to cover the decrease in fan enthusiasm and thus attendance and purchase of apparel and so forth).

Exclusivity in video has to fail eventually too, but we'll probably have to go through a couple decades of pain first.

I went tankless (Rinnai) a few years back. Saved $600 the first year - it was also a switch from electric to gas. It will have finished paying for itself some time this year. To be fair, the prior 40 gallon tank wasn't the correct size for a single person (was there when I bought the house).

There is about a 30 second delay at the start before I get hot water. There is also a little variance shortly after switching from the tub faucet to the showerhead.

I didn't find anything about wearing out faster when I was researching.

I think it's a good upgrade.

Of course I watched ST:TNG when it ran, and if I come across a rerun and there's nothing else on I may still watch it. But I don't think I'd buy Blu-Ray. Maybe put it on the xmas list since I'm always struggling to find stuff cheap enough for family to buy for me that I haven't already gone and bought myself. But what I really want fervently is Hill Street Blues. Fox released seasons 1 and 2 on DVD and then just stopped. Bastards!

I'm one of those who moved from a webOs phone to an Android phone to get better hardware. One of the things which gets me about Android is that when I look at the recent apps list, *it doesn't tell me which apps are actually running*. Anything in the list might still be running, or it might not. It might be chewing CPU cycles, or it might not. It might be using data bandwidth, or it might not. Advantage: cards. The set of apps in the recent apps list may include a few apps I am presently switching between to accomplish some set of tasks and may also include other apps I have recently run as a one-off. Having the one-offs there is a slight dilution of my focus. I can swipe them off of the list. But if I've already exited the app from its menu, then also having to swipe it away here is unnecessary extra effort. Advantage: cards.

I've tried to discuss the permissions they require with some Android app makers but I've never gotten anywhere. It usually goes something like this:

I inquire as to why an article reading app would need permission to use my camera. They say the app has a function to take pictures and submit them. I say I don't currently have any interest in doing that - can't they have a base app which doesn't require that permission, and then for those who want to do something like that, have an add-on app which does require that permission? They tell me that Android permissions don't work that way. I tell them that I won't be installing their app.

or

I ask why a game wants access to my contact list and permission to make phone calls. They tell me it's just for a "friends" function, and they only want to read my phone's ID, they promise they would never do anything unwanted. I say I don't trust you that much yet, can't you have a version which doesn't require those permissions, and over time maybe I will come to trust you and then I can install the full version? They tell me that Android permissions don't work that way.

or

I ask why a streaming music app would need permission to "send email without my knowledge" or access my calendar. They say the app has the ability to share stations with my friends, "entirely under your (my) control", and display ads with a button which can add an event (concert presumably) to my calendar. I ask why then they would need to be able to do these things "*without my knowledge*". They say thank you, come again. I say I won't be installing your app then.

So I would say the permissions are nice in theory but in practice many app developers are not willing to finely tune them and either unwilling or unable because of (they claim) platform restrictions to provide variants of the app with different functionality and different permission requirements.

I have no experience with iOS so I can't say anything about that.

Leela, my favorite! Her primitive, instinctive personality was a great complement to the Doctor's over-rational one.

I was in college at the time, and she would have been welcome to sexualize me any time.

Frodo failed. In the end, he buckled.

Bilbo was no better. "I'll hide here while someone else kills the dragon, then I'll take the loot."

And I'm a fan of the movies.

> All comments here about having to search apps in the dash prompt just indicate ignorance. You only have to do that once, then you can add the apps icon to the launcher.

The problem as I see it isn't with things you use frequently but with things you use very infrequently and thus would not put on the launcher. "What was that program I used last year to adjust volume levels on all my music files?" "What was that program that let me see the night sky?" In an ideal Unity world all apps would be registered to the search engine by all the keywords the user could ever possibly think of so the search would find them ("gain" obviously, IF the user can think of that term; "volume"? "music"?) - but then we might see the problem of a keyword matching too many items. I would not call all comments on this topic ignorant.

> But it has a lot of potential and deserves a little more appreciation than the bashing by people here who obviously haven't tried Unity, but nevertheless have string opinions about it.

Perhaps there are such people, I don't know. I do know that there are many people who HAVE tried Unity and also have strong negative opinions about it.

Yesterday I found classicmenu-indicator which restores the menu even if it is over in the indicator area. It may help me get along with Unity. I also found the hack to restore the classic scrollbars - that will help me a lot.

We do like usability and ease of use. Unity is the antithesis of these on a desktop. I can't speak to its appropriateness for a laptop or tablet since I haven't tried it there. But really - who thought these were good ideas?
- Scrollbars you can't even see unless you put the cursor on _exactly_ the one correct pixel, and then you can't just click-click-click to advance pages, you have to drag, which means you have to keep track of page boundaries with your eyes .... WTF? Just let me put the cursor in the scrollbar column and each time I want to advance a page I'll just click the mouse without even needing to look at either the cursor or the keyboard (as I would to hit PageDown).
- Hide all apps unless the user knows the name of the app he's looking for. WTF?
- Constantly drawing these shaded rectangles over the screen. WTF? I _think_ the computer thinks that I'm trying to resize or reposition a window and it's using some kind of smarts to "help" me position it where I want it, but in fact I'm not trying to do either, I've merely clicked on a window to bring it to the front. Helping me out is great, but please wait until I'm actually doing something you can help with.
- Moving the menu from the window I'm actually using waaaay over to the top-left of the screen. WTF? You _want_ me to take longer to do my tasks?
- Breaking all of my favorite indicators.

On the plus side we have ... nothing at all that I can see.

Unity is the most user-hostile thing I've seen in ages.