Much has been said about piracy. Simply, it's illegal.
Much has been said about DRM. Simply, it's a response to piracy.

It's the wrong response.

DRM: My copy is less useful. A pirated copy would be more useful.

You do not sell games by making stealing more attractive.

Active gravitational mass, passive gravitational mass and inertial mass all have to be equal, and it's theoretically possible to have negative mass. This does some neat, strange and terrifying things.

What I'm wondering is, has any physicist worked out what happens if you have complex mass? Mass = R + Ci?

Make a modable, pre-rooted, open, bare-bones tablet and OS. Release all the specs, so anyone can make addons. Leave plenty of slots for addons. That's how the 386 architecture won the PC wars for two and a half decades. And let's be honest. For almost two decades, a certain OS+platform had no major competitors. I can't guarantee success. But the best predictor of future methods of success...Is past methods of success.

Tablets are clearly better than PCs for the most common use cases. But which tablet is the best?

It's the one you can customize.

Thank you for the effort many of you put into creating regular videos on a multitude of topics. A lot of effort clearly goes into the ones I've looked at. Now, I haven't looked at all of them, and as Youtube videos are free, your videos clearly must be something you're passionate about. And it's not always easy to listen to criticism when you're passionate about something.

(Uh-oh)

By no means do I mean to criticize what you're doing. While there are indubitably criticisms that could be leveled at this or that video, there's no criticism that could fairly be leveled at all or even most of them.

I do, however, have something constructive to say about the presentation in some videos.

You put in regular videos. You have interesting topics. You're clearly knowledgeable about the subject (for a completely arbitrary example, FPS video games). By those measures, your videos are a success, and I don't intend to dispute that.

However, please consider taking a good public speaking course; even just a ten-hour one. Even if you don't think you need to improve, it can only help you convey your thoughts and ideas better. Some of you may have already done this; if so, congratulations. If it doesn't seem to have helped, perhaps it wasn't the best course, or you could have used a more advanced one.

Sometimes Sleepy,

Narf

He's a straght-laced cop with a calm and stable attitude, and he's the only one who can save the city.

Betrayed by his superior, this soldier collected evidence and presented it to the military police, allowing the matter to be handled within the UCMJ.

Two cold and cynical executives meet and fall in love...With each others' money. They sign an eight-hundred page contract and merge their companies in a months-long process that'll leave many workers out of a job, increase profit margins for the remaining company by 10%, and result in one of them having to look for a new job.

Watch the every-day goings on of an ordinary African-American family, including: Walking the dog, going to work, dealing with bills and a lack of laugh-a-minute spontaneous comedy or every woman being sassy.

Walking directly into the local FBI offices, a college student asks to join as a spy. They are put through a rigorous set of physical, mental and emotional tests and training, probably washing out early on. If they pass, they'll do data analysis for years before being evaluated for possibly doing anything critical.

After having a wild party on an ancient Native American burial ground, the participants wake up with a vague feeling of shame and guilt, along with being cold, wet and miserable. They decide to party somewhere warmer next time.

Dreaming of being stalked by a mysterious tormentor, a group of children go to see a psychologist, who determines that they are suffering from mild trauma from having watched a movie too adult for them. After some counseling, the dreams stop and they live happy and abundant lives.

A group of drunken college students try to rampage through the streets, and are arrested for public indecency, causing property damage and driving while intoxicated. Their parents have to bail them out. Afterwards, they try to spin it as an epic adventure.

Having unfairly lost his job, this angry ex-corporate worker shrugs and finds a better one that pays more, too. Life moves on.

After finding a winning lottery ticket, the family decides to invest wisely, then use only the interest. They and their descendents stay quietly wealthy, often contributing to charitable causes, and living prudent financial lives.

I can explain it in four words: "Dumb terminal and server". Everything you use is stored in "the cloud" and your computer acts as a dumb terminal. This conclusion is based on research done across the web, reading both pro and the occasional anti website.

And now you know, and can evaluate that option in its true framework.

Good question. The answer is that I'm still recovering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. That's all the answer I'm willing to share on the internet at this time, anyway.

Also, a few more HD failures.

Fortunately, with faith, hard work and medication, I'm recovering. I'm even making a post on my livejournal.

Livejournal tells me this is somewhere around the right day for that.

...I should update mine. Or will this do that? Anyway, cake is good.

I received an e-mail with a nice, religious poem and read it, as I generally do, with cynicism. All too often (Almost always), these poems end with some version of 'And if you don't pass this on, you're a horrible, horrible person who'll have horrible things happen to them'.

The hypocrisy of that general ending poisons the message.

This poem managed to almost take a higher route.

Almost, but still worth posting: http://home.att.net/~mcp3_2000/_classics/002/angel.htm


But is it so hard to just write something nice, without any 'carrot and/or stick'?

Experience is knowing and avoiding the mistakes of the past.
Wisdom is anticipating and accepting the existence of the mistakes of the future.

It is easy to see where things went wrong with hindsight. It is not so easy to see where things are likely to go wrong in the future, nor is it easy to accept my own fallible nature and accept that I will make mistakes - And that they are, for the most part, harmless.
One reason I write so little fiction is that I have a constant editor in my head, rejecting anything less than perfect. That editor doesn't understand the learning process, or that things need not be perfect the first time.
Which makes it terribly hard to rough-draft.

That editor is a terrible critic and should be ignored.

Wisdom sees the mistakes ahead; experience tells us which mistakes to dread.