neat speech. Ignoring the 'science' parts, which might as well be completely made up, the web has completely changed the way I enjoy any type of media, and this change kind of explains them durn kids these days. Not that they're terrible, they just don't enjoy boredom as much as we did. Weird.

I really like that he puts a positive spin on it all - usually I read that the Internet is going to drown us all in extreme pornography or copyright infringement or some combination of the two.

Yes, I am a better person because of Internet. Thank you, Internet.

"We have a dam that we share with wild animals so every morning the children go to get water, it's dangerous for them. Some have lost their lives."

How's that for some 'free-range' parenting... :-S

Happy Birthday!

I lost both my grandmothers this past year, but they both made it to their mid-80s, and were pretty amazed they made it that far.

lol.. love it. It's my new desktop background.

Antinous: "Unless of course, [athletes] shout Free Tibet from the podium, wear a Tibet tee shirt to the opening ceremonies or otherwise disrupt this disgusting, inhuman spectacle."

I'd love to see that too, but I just read that the IOC has promised to punish any athlete who raises a fuss during the games.

"Vazquez Rana, whose organization represents the 205 national Olympic Committees whose athletes participate in the Games, upped the ante, making it clear that while athletes are entitled to their opinions and are free to speak out on many issues, they can't cross the line politically.

'We want our athletes to have the greatest freedom of expression,' he said. 'But an athlete who steps outside the rules of the Olympic Charter is committing a mistake which he or she knows he should not do . . . and is subject to sanction.'

The charter states that athletes cannot make political statements within Olympic venues." - Apr 5th, 2008, canada.com

Vazquez feels that the whole Tibet thing is "China's problem." :-/

Toiletry system, eh? I guess that happy photo was taken before they were sealed in.

"Oh God... honey, I shouldn't have had that Taco Bell..."

Terror indeed.

"the assumption that Homeland security is interested in killing babies drives me nuts"

I can't speak for the poster, but it seems to me that the title is meant to be sarcastic. I didn't assume, reading the post, that Homeland Security has actually declared war on babies. I figured the title was a bit of dark humour referring to the fact that US security agencies have a history of detaining or questioning families traveling with kids simply because their child's name happens to be on some kind of secret list.

I'm sure Homeland Security isn't really interested in killing babies - it's just a side effect of their insane security measures.

"but if the child was so sick then perhaps he or she could have died at any moment."

You may be right, and he might not have survived even if he had gotten surgery, though some reports said the baby was doing very well on the plane.

But check this out:

"It should have only taken 10 to 15 minutes to get Michael from the airport to Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children, where he was scheduled to be hospitalized on Friday and examined for a probable heart operation, Fried said." link

And since the baby was sick, the crew sensibly let them debark first, and their travel papers were in order and the nurse and baby had no luggage. It looks like there's a good chance the baby would have survived had they not been needlessly imprisoned them for 30 minutes. Even if Michael started struggling in the hospital, he'd obviously be much more likely to survive with immediate medical care. The 15-20 minute delay getting paramedics probably didn't help:

"During the flight, the boy was hooked up to an oxygen tank.

Later, inside the locked room, Michael's condition worsened. Futi and Veavea began screaming to call 911, Fried said, 'and the people outside are saying, "Stay calm, relax."'

After another five minutes, the door opened and someone helped perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the baby, he said.

Another 10 minutes passed before paramedics arrived, he said, and eight minutes later they took Michael to the medical center." link

I can relate. My toothpick & matchbook selling business went under once those dastardly restaurants and bars started giving them away for free. They simply did not respect my business model. Hippies! And toothpicks & matchbooks are actually useful, as opposed to songs and musicians.

I've been using Ubuntu a few years now and I really like it. Obviously it depends on what your needs are but I only use WinXP for playing games, using photoshop or recording music, otherwise it's usually Ubuntu.

Sometimes drivers can be a pain if the manufacturer only works with microsoft (it's especially a problem with wireless drivers), but I much prefer the interface and the flexibility that comes with Linux distros like Ubuntu.

I've found that mp3 players that are recognized as a simple external storage device work extremely well in Ubuntu, btw. I have an older Philips GoGear that works better in Ubuntu than WinXP, which tries to open it through Windows Media Player (blech).

"Police fire through the portholes."
"Portholes are made of bulletproof glass."

I see a potential design flaw here.

#20 "STOP MAKING US WAIT and you might notice a reducton in piracy levels."

Exactly!

And when big media companies find out that lots of people in other countries are 'movie pirates', their reaction is to threaten to delay the release of new movies! Brilliant strategy.

It's like they think that their movies are important. It's just entertainment... do I really need to see "American Pie X"? I'll survive, somehow.