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The ants here
--
"Kann man Herzen brechen
kÃnnen Herzen sprechen
kann man Herzen quÃlen
kann man Herzen stehlen

Sie wollen mein Herz am rechten Fleck
doch seh ich dann nach unten weg
da schlaegt es links

KÃnnen Herzen singen
kann ein Herz zerspringen
kÃnnen Herzen rein sein
kann ein Herz aus Stein sein

Sie wollen mein Herz am rechten Fleck
doch seh ich dann nach unten weg
da schlÃgt es links
links zwo drei vier

Kann man Herzen fragen
ein Kind darunter tragen
kann man es verschenken
mit dem Herzen denken

Sie wollen mein Herz am rechten Fleck
doch seh ich dann nach unten weg
da schlÃgt es in der linken Brust
der Neider hat es schlecht gewusst"

Ich mÃchte zu Rammstein danken sagen.

See EVEN Rammstein saw this coming years ago...

Oh it is even worse than that. Try a 64bit OS, you know the kind of OS you pretty much HAVE to have since RAM is so fricking cheap and even cards with 1Gb of RAM on the GPU are like $50? yeah well...guess what? the game itself plays perfectly but their #%$#^%$#% DRM doesn't fucking work in 64bit!!!

It is SO fun when you only have a single drive with no Alcohol or Daemon Tools installed and get "please insert disc into drive E:" It IS in drive E: you #%$#^%$#% stupid DRM POS! So you know what? Screw them and the horse they rode in on. I installed Alcohol 52%, and I refuse to buy a single fricking game for more than $20 now. By then not only do I get the game cheaper but the patches that are put out because your game is a #%$#^%$#% buggy POS has already been cracked by then, so I can actually play what I bought. I mean, is there ANY other product where they can sell you something that doesn't actually work and then say "Too fucking bad. You opened the box and we got yur cash!".

It is just ridiculous. Hell just 6 months ago I bought the MoH 10th anniversary edition and the two expansion packs for the game won't even run in XP32! I had to install them on an old Win98 box just to play what I paid for! In 2009,WTF? And then they have the brass balls to claim the reason they are tanking is because of piracy. No, it is because you are treating guys like me and him like dogshit and just expect us to take it. Look at how many games he has on his shelves. he is not a pirate he is your FRICKING CUSTOMER!

So is it really any wonder that piracy is on the rise? All the big corps seem to go out of their way to spit in your face when you pay them! And that is supposed to make people want to pay you again? I'll tell game designers the same thing I'd tell the *.A.As-Sell a decent product at a fair price and give the people what they want! Don't, treat them like shit and act like they are all dirty criminals, and watch as they rob you blind. I mean for God's sake it is 2009, HDDs are fricking huge, and they want me to leave the disc in the drive like its a fricking PS2 W.T.F?

Yet another game whose bombing will be put down to "piracy" when in actuality it will be their own asshattery. Starcraft was great for LAN parties, but as other posters have pointed out with the upload speed on the average cable connection that is now deader than Dixie. You watch, when it doesn't sell the kinda numbers they expected because they burnt the LANers they will STILL blame piracy!

It makes me think of the interview not long ago with the head of THQ over the closing of Iron Lore (here is the link), where all he did was bitch and moan about how it was everyone's fault but theirs that the company went under. It was piracy and PC having some many different combinations and it isn't our fault..bla bla bla. I tried the demo and it spent more time crashing to desktop than playing, and when it did play it was obviously a lame Diablo ripoff with very little to make it different from it or Dungeon Siege.

I for one am sick of this "it's always piracy" bullshit. Because that is EXACTLY what it is. yes, there are some who pirate games, just as there are those that pirate movies or books or music. i don't see those guys going out of business, do you? How about making a product that doesn't suck with fancy epeen graphics and physics with bad guys dumb as Forest Gump, how about that? All your anti piracy bullshit doesn't hurt the pirates, they get it cracked before the game hits the shelves. It hurts guys like me that won't even buy your games at release anymore because I have to crack them due to the fact your ^%$#%^# DRM doesn't run on my 64bit OS but the games do. WTF?

So to conclude this rant, quit playing the bullshit piracy card Blizzard. We know as well as you it is because you are now Blizzardvision and think every fricking thing should have a WoW constant revenue stream or be able to be rehashed year after year like CoD. You are screwing over the fans that actually bought your fricking product just to try to squeeze them for more cash and probably hit them with ads while you are at it. Well fuck you too buddy. I will not be buying Starcraft II even though I was really looking forward to it. Anyway this guy is able to rant about the anti piracy BS better than I can. QUIT SCREWING YOUR CUSTOMERS!!!!!

Nice post. Do you want to take the first shift standing in line outside the games store when starcraft II comes out or would you like me to?

Yet another game whose bombing will be put down to "piracy" when in actuality it will be their own asshattery. Starcraft was great for LAN parties, but as other posters have pointed out with the upload speed on the average cable connection that is now deader than Dixie. You watch, when it doesn't sell the kinda numbers they expected because they burnt the LANers they will STILL blame piracy!

It makes me think of the interview not long ago with the head of THQ over the closing of Iron Lore (here is the link), where all he did was bitch and moan about how it was everyone's fault but theirs that the company went under. It was piracy and PC having some many different combinations and it isn't our fault..bla bla bla. I tried the demo and it spent more time crashing to desktop than playing, and when it did play it was obviously a lame Diablo ripoff with very little to make it different from it or Dungeon Siege.

I for one am sick of this "it's always piracy" bullshit. Because that is EXACTLY what it is. yes, there are some who pirate games, just as there are those that pirate movies or books or music. i don't see those guys going out of business, do you? How about making a product that doesn't suck with fancy epeen graphics and physics with bad guys dumb as Forest Gump, how about that? All your anti piracy bullshit doesn't hurt the pirates, they get it cracked before the game hits the shelves. It hurts guys like me that won't even buy your games at release anymore because I have to crack them due to the fact your ^%$#%^# DRM doesn't run on my 64bit OS but the games do. WTF?

So to conclude this rant, quit playing the bullshit piracy card Blizzard. We know as well as you it is because you are now Blizzardvision and think every fricking thing should have a WoW constant revenue stream or be able to be rehashed year after year like CoD. You are screwing over the fans that actually bought your fricking product just to try to squeeze them for more cash and probably hit them with ads while you are at it. Well fuck you too buddy. I will not be buying Starcraft II even though I was really looking forward to it. Anyway this guy is able to rant about the anti piracy BS better than I can. QUIT SCREWING YOUR CUSTOMERS!!!!!

It was fly by wire. In effect there's a computer between the controls and the rudder, ailerons & elevators.
If that computer fails, all the airmanship in the world is no good. It's like all the cables/pipes have all been cut.
In most fly by wire systems, the "computer" in question is not really much more than the airplane equivalent of a power steering or brake booster pump. Also, they still have redundant systems. What has been happening more, particularly with Airbus is that the computer takes all inputs, analyzes them and decides whether the pilot is about to do something that will land them in a world of hurt. This is the sort of over-analyzation that causes crashes like this one and the demonstration flight crash of another Air France Airbus, this time an A320. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-Yk-Hy83k2Nk/crash_airbus_a320_vol_296_air_france/. The plane thought it was landing and wouldn't allow the pilots to do a go around.

OH NOES! Skullcrusher Mountain asploded!

and it didn't go so well... http://www.metacafe.com/watch/561211/7upp/

I can see the logic that large airships which are held aloft passively by lighter than air gases, requiring fuel only for movement being economical, but it might be different with standard planes which require fuel to generate lift.

Lighter than air has several problems.

One, two lift something, the balloon part has to be very big in comparison. It will never replace rail moving cars upons cars of freight.

Two, helium will get very expensive. Unless you want to go with flammable hydrogen, which at least has the benefit of greater lifting power. But having watched mythbusters, it wasn't really the skin that set it ablaze....

Three, ground crew. The Hindenburg needed dozens to hundreds of ground crew (luckily, they always had volunteers). Zeppelins/Dirigibles/Blimps are not good in windy conditions and on landing you always need extra precaution. Lockheed Martin and others designed heavier than air blimps that get 80% lift from a lighter-than-air gas and the other 20% through aerodynamic flight, eliminating the need for ground crew in a smart and cool way (but how much can it lift?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-791
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/907865/lockheed_martin_turbo_super_blimp/

Anyway, this report is BS. Government reports have long shown that train is much cheaper than truck is much cheaper than air.

For a really goo example, see here. I myself have stopped buying games that I don't find a crack for first, thus making sure the games companies can only sell me games when they have dropped in price. Why? Because just as with the link I provided way too many times I have set there and watched that damned SecuROM screen pop up even though I HAVE the stupid %^%#^$$# disc in the drive!

Of course, now that I have switched to XP X64, cracking the games I paid good money for is no longer a simple desire not to have to keep the %^%#^$$# disc in the drive, that maybe works 50/50 for me anyway, but one of necessity. Because while the games play wonderfully in XP X64, their %^%#^$$# DRM doesn't work. So I HAVE to crack the %^%#^$$# game just so I can actually use what I fricking paid for. And just like the gamer I linked to(just look at the amount of game boxes surrounding him. That is a serious paying customer they are boning) their DRM for me just makes me jump through damned hoops so I can have the "privilege" of giving them money while the pirates laugh their asses off and don't have the hassle.

Is it any wonder more and more people pirate? It is because you are screwing your customers! And it is 2009 and I have big fat HDDs! I should NOT have to change %^%#^$$# discs when I want to play a game. if I wanted that I would have bought a Fricking PS2! And please don't mention Steam. As someone who had his $50 stolen by Valve over the HL:GoTY Edition I will never use that damned ripoff! Look up HL:GoTY Edition and ripoff and you will see Valve burned a LOT of folks. pretty much if you buy anything in a nice retail box from Valve they can rip you off and ANY time and refuse to give you what you paid for. No thanks!

Uhhh...because if you do that you end up with too many situations like this? I can't count how many times I've had to go crackalaka on games I had just shelled out good money for because for one reason or another they simply refused to work. Since nobody accepts opened boxes of software you would probably be setting yourself up for a massive class action suit when whole groups of customers found out they spent $50 on a paperweight. Even if you switched to DLC like this I can't see the corps giving back 30-45% of all sales because their latest DRM scheme don't work. They would probably put some "tough luck" clause in the EULA and it would be lawsuit time.

The way it is now they can pretend to shareholders that they are actually doing something to curb piracy, keep Billy Joe Bob from just running Nero to copy his game, while at the same time allowing all those that payed good money for the game and ended up with a paperweight to simply go around the BS. Hell more than half of the MoH 10th anniversary box set I bought wouldn't work at all without going crackalaka, and these were all brand new disks. Of course now that I have gone up to XP X64 it is even worse, so now I have to keep a crack folder so when I want to install one of the ton of games I've got sitting in a drawer it will actually work. The games work fine in XP X64, the DRM crap don't. Considering that dual core barebone with 4Gb of RAM are like $250 it is just nuts how all the DRM crap is still stuck in 32bit land. But if we couldn't go crackalaka you could end up with a nightmare of "I'm sorry, but you have XP which we don't think is "cool" anymore. Our DRM only supports Win7 ultimate expensive baddass edition. Go shell out the bux luser!".

If they want to get rid of piracy make games cheaper, or do like MoH and bundle your older games to give a better value, and make DLC that requires a legit serial to get. That way they get paid, we get good value for our money, and none of us would have to deal like the above video and jump through pointless DRM hoops that often only punish the guy who just gave you $50 while the pirates laugh their asses off. Because as long as it can be ran SOMEBODY will find a way around your DRM, just look at the firmware hacks for PSP, which is a tiny niche. Give us a good value for our money and you WILL get paid. It is all these RIAA types with their marketing speak of "maximizing the IPs money making potential" charging a buck a song and whining they aren't allowed to charge 5 that has made piracy rampant. $50+ for a game you can beat in 6 hours or less is just nuts.

Bundle or lower the price and quit gouging the hell out of the customers and the money will flow. Most will be happy to pay for the convenience and not having to run the risk of ending up with a disk full of malware. Those that are left are too cheap or too broke and frankly isn't worth killing yourself and pissing off your legit customers for. Treat your customers fairly and make it convenient to pay you and most will treat you fair. Treat them like shit and charge out the wazoo for 2 year old crap that wasn't good when it was new and don't be surprised when the money don't roll in. It ain't because of piracy, it is because you suck as a company. Nobody likes feeling ripped off, and more and more often these days that is what you feel like after shelling $50+ for a game and finding the thing is short and lame.

I am so God-damned sick of the three laws. I want to say to people who take them seriously, "Oh, you read Asimov in high school, good for you." It's been so obvious that this is not the path the human race is on.

Also, for things for people to fixate on, why the three laws? Why not psychohistory? That seemed more fun to me.

Asimov was a cockied-optimist. His is not the world we inhabit.

We don't even inhabit this world, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

This is the world we inhabit: "you now have 15 seconds to comply!"

Verhoven:1 -- Asimov:0 !

Civilised behaviour is not required to "win" at evolution.

We just had to kill more of them and make babies faster than they did.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2682654/idiocracy_opening_sequence/

You wouldn't shoot a policeman, THEN STEAL HIS HAT

You wouldn't go to the toilet in his hat, then mail it to his widow... and then STEAL IT AGAIN!

You wouldn't shoot a policeman, THEN STEAL HIS HAT

my uncalibrated out of the box $20 crimpers from Ideal do just as well as there $150 at minimum crimpers that are custom pieced together. At least according to the Fluke.

You're doing an electrical test on day 1.

There may be mechanical or reliability issues which appear on or about day 600 after multiple connect-disconnect cycles that would favor their fancy frames and dies that probably mechanically limit the minimum and maximum compression applied to the connector and conductors. I'm also guessing that their crimpers are calibrated and tested to meet a specification, probably verifying that the pins don't get too far recessed into the housing, that the dies don't have contaminants on them, that the dies aren't made out of potentially incompatible materials...

Yours may work just as well in general, but NASA has (had?) money and they'd rather spend money than explain why there was a very dramatic accident because someone was too cheap to spend a few dollars to do it better.

Don't you watch the movies? They would've backtraced his IP address through their firewall with a Visual Basic program within seconds.

Actually, it was a TV show. Here's a short documentary on the subject.

Especially for something like rugby

I knew that all kinds of nasty would occur when it became blizzardvision. The PHBs at Activision have always been major douchebags and we really shouldn't be surprised they are going to RIAA the coders that help make their game playable. Deity forbid that someone other than the great blizzardvision should actually make a dollar. Just another case of short sighted greed by a big corp. They keep this up and they'll make EA look good! But that is the nice thing about competition. I'm sure that other MMOs would be happy to take the developers that blizavision pisses off.

I just hope all the major game corps with their "how bad CAN we screw everyone and still get away with it?" attitude finally have it come back to bite them in the ass. Between the DRM from hell and crap like this it seems like the big corps are determined to run off all their customers. Oh well. Most of the AAA list titles I've seen and played lately sucked IMHO and I hope that more developers will come in to fill the gap. I personally don't care if a FPS has SOF I level graphics if it is FUN, which is something a lot of shooters I've played lately simply don't have any of. But if no little developers come in to fill the gap there are thousands of PC titles I still haven't gotten that should keep me happy for years.

My boys have switched to MMOs that use micro-transactions as they said the big ones like WoW are just getting too much grinding to be fun. From the looks of things that may be the way the little guys can compete with the big guys without screwing their customer base. I'm all for competition so I hope this trend continues.

unique and elegant design:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2191712/honda_walking_assist/

You're half right.

The Honda Walking Assist device has a rather unique and elegant design:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2191712/honda_walking_assist/

No online though, which of course was the ONLY reason to buy the damned thing instead of pirating it! And don't I feel great for not just snatching the thing when all I got was the freaking finger from Valve. Of course the pirate version had ALL the single player and multiplayer mods with a really nice installer, so yet again the pirates got a much better experience than me, the guy who actually bought the fucking thing. Between that and all the damned DRM bullshit that the other companies put you through, again giving the pirate the BETTER experience for a whole $0.00, is it any wonder piracy is on the rise?

I don't know about you but frankly I'm getting pretty fucking sick of handing over my hard earned cash and then getting kicked in the nuts for my trouble. It is like that scene in "Time Bandits" where Robin Hood has his men punch the hell out of the peasants so they feel they have "earned" their reward, but we are PAYING for the privilege of getting punched! And meanwhile the pirates just laugh and laugh and laugh as they enjoy their DRM free games that just fucking work. And the game companies are surprised piracy is on the rise? If I treated my customers that way I would be out of business in 90 days or less. Maybe if that happens to a few of the sorry bastards they will remember they actually NEED customers and stop treating us like shit!

I play shooters so the options are.....what exactly? I HATE playing online so that takes care of the FOSS shooters which are nearly all multiplayer only. I can't use a console, which is nothing but "DRM in a box" anyway, so that is right out(my hands won't hold a controller without intense pain) so that leaves......what? I wait until they are in the bargain bin where they ain't getting squat for them, but if I actually want to play anything that is as far as I can go. I trust eBay about as far as I can toss a Russian scammer so the used market is right out. So if you have a suggestion for someone that likes to play good single player FPS games that only plays PC, I'm listening.

But I am NOT going to punish myself by not playing anything, because that doesn't work. I haven't bought a movie or album in 10 years so I guess the *.A.As dried up and blew away, no? The only way that DRM will be killed is actually going on right now. The game companies keep buying nastier and nastier DRM that breaks more and more machines with each version. Remember folks don't notice DRM until it bites them in the ass. The DRM coming out today is getting nasty enough the buyers are starting to notice. But I think this guy says it better than me. And notice all the boxes behind him.

To see if it is really as shitty as everyone says? And as far as games go after getting burned one too many times I don't blame anyone who wants to try before they buy and I only buy in the bargain bin. Why? Two games: Max Payne I and Vampire:Bloodlines. I bought both at launch and spent 6 months waiting on a patch for MP and 1 1/2 years for V:bloodlines.So considering the fact they don't get to take it back if it is a $50 coaster I don't blame folks if they want to try first. I personally buy my games in the cheap bin and then chunk their wrapped boxes on the shelf and hit TPB to keep from getting DRM infections that are worse than trojans nowadays. Sad that the "pirate" one is safer than the one from the store, huh? But I think this guy says it better than I can.

But it never ceases to amaze me that folks forget there actually was an original purpose to copyrights, and it wasn't a license for rich old white guys to print money and maximize profits. It was a CONTRACT, nothing more. In return for a LIMITED length of copyrights so that the artist could profit from their work we got in return a richer public domain. But now that copyrights are essentially 2 human lifetimes that contract is irretrievably broken. We need to go back to the terms we had for 150+ years (before bribery..I mean lobbying bought all our laws) and I would argue that thanks to places like iTunes and Amazon allowing you to turn a profit quite quickly compared to the old days that they should be even less.

Finally for those of you that think copyrights aren't broken I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright. The man has been dead for over half a century and yet his first work, one created when cars had to be started with a crank and antibiotics weren't even a dream in a doctor's eye is STILL under copyright. And I'm sorry but anyway you slice it that is just fucked up.

No, needs more cowbell.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1723015/banned_asian_commercial/

http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?&next_url=/watch%3Fv%3DFQZJZRhm_3k

https://www.mywii.com.au/VideoDetail.aspx?id=1296

It would have been funnier if it had been a guy instead (or in stead, hehehe).

(Begin (or, resume) the slashdotting...)

Reminds me of Steam Candle

I saw the video of your story here, but it's not like you told it. This Scotty guy seems to be about forty, not "just out of his teens". And it wasn't about him trying to fuck the donkey either, but the other way round.

Here is the video to go with your comment for those of us that are visually oriented. It is probably how Sony is felling after finding this out, especially the shoes part. ;-)

PC vs Mac vs Linux

He has no clue what he is talking about.

The video is on youtube and there is no rope line, no confrontation or anything. If you watch it, you can see that both were actually comfortable and polite to each other. No one was confrontational to the point the GP claimed. Here is take on the ordeal.

I'm not sure why people think they still need to lie to prop up Obama. He won the fucking election.

BTW, in case you need a laugh Wait till the end.

See also the SNL parody of CNN's election map touchscreen.

>I want to see balloons dropped into the atmosphere of planets.

And how long before you think we'll have the technology to produce such devices (much less have them actually 'float'), given the 'environmental' hostilities, that we know of so far?

What is better than laughing at him is learning how alleged "old" ways are any different than the alleged "new" ways. I still get notice from people stealing, killing, tagging or affection to monuments of stupidity (idolatry of myspace, goatse, etc), qualifiedly disobey their parents, trespassing upon their neighbors and hating their neighbors for things unworthy of any offense, selling property more than once and concealing it from advertisement or notice of an original sale (federal reserve notes), false witness (Bernanke lying about causing The Denver Mint to press 800 Billion in Amero and accompanying its delivery to the China Bank of Reconstruction in China to assure their 2.5 Trillion USdollars don't depreciate), oh and sex/simulated-reproduction with animals like David Gergen at Bohemian Grove, and George W. Bush committed adultery with Jeff Gannon, or how Bill Clinton resolved Madeline Albright certain factions to assist Saudi Arabian slave-traders to continue dipping over the borders of Sudan to pilfer free villages while he was helping install James Hormel the former president of Hormel Foods Corporation defacto Ambassador of Luxembourg.

Yep, there are no new ways, and if there were any new ways then it would be like sh1t on our faces "new."

Isn't that getting into dangerous territory (popping balloons, instant blindness etc)? Recently, high-power laser pointer sales have been banned on eBay and Amazon here in the UK, I'm wondering if similar restrictions might appear for drives like this.

And you thought Blu-Ray laser diodes were dangerous hehe...

I am not a laptop guy but MBA lack of CPU speed (although better than Atom) can be masked with a special usage style already built into OS X (especially Leopard). You need at least 811N wireless though with a very speedy line.
I am speaking about these:

http://developer.apple.com/hardwaredrivers/hpc/xgrid_intro.html (XGrid)
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1294717/macmost_now_77_leopard_screen_sharing/ (Screen Sharing)
http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

I am not a laptop customer but you can be sure I would beat any "high speed bulky" laptop using such technologies. For example if my P1i can't render a video (smart phone), I mail it to my mail with a special subject line. My Quad G5 renders it and mails back when ready. All done via Unix layer and ffmpeg combined with Automator. Apple ships the device, you can't blame them if they don't use it right or use for showing off.

Have you tried building them one of these: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/762088/coat_hanger_hdtv_antenna_better_than_store_bought_amazing/
I built one and it works great. Could not be more satisfied with any $100 antenna on the market.

the guy who played kramer got in some hot water for making some off color jokes a while back.

here is a video:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/307809/seinfelds_kramers_racist_tirade_of_craziness/

will NOT BE THAT MAN....

In Israel, that product may be CALLED "ReWalk", but in the US, it will probably mean "NO FLY".

That chair says, "Quicky", and that makes all sorts of things come to mind. I wonder what kind of "charge" the chair position offers. Quick-charge?

And, to need crutches to balance... why not just build servo-gyro circular/shaft motors (which, hopefully won't burn out every 5,000 steps) to dispense with the crutches. Now, if the crutches are a cover story for machine guns....

Well, Machine Girl has that beat...

http://www.horror-movies.ca/horror-movie.php?id=6678

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1072131/machine_gun_breasts/

http://www.movierapture.com/machinegirl.htm

http://inventorspot.com/articles/bizarre_breast_massage_robot_rea_11148

I made a modified version of this with some wire, cardboard, and tin foil. Works great. I have a house and this is used on the first floor, mounted right beside a window:
http://members.shaw.ca/hdtvantenna/

I am in the process of making this, but the first one works so well, I've kind of put it off...(at least until after the Olympics):
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/762088/coat_hanger_hdtv_antenna_better_than_store_bought_amazing/

The key is that they are directional, to be fair, I do have to turn it around a lot for certain stations, but where I'm at they are all more or less due south.

This is by far the easiest and most effective way to get *perfect* results out of the most damaged optical media! Video tutorial found here.

Full disclosure - I'm Israeli too and give me an example of your bull-shit atrocities.

This will end up being by used by the Israeli Left wing fascists to jail anyone who opposes the forced expulsion of Jews from their homes in areas the government wants to turn over to the Arabs.

You seem to forget the thousands of teenagers who were jailed without trial for demonstrating against the expulsion of the Jews from Gaza.

And don't give me any BS about them being violent. All they did was peacefully block roads.

When the labor unions strike and block roads, or shut down essential services like the telephone system or electricity or block the ports and shut down the airports - no one is ever arrested - no one is ever prosecuted.

And don't forget the hundreds of people who were hospitalized after being beaten by police at Amona - including members of Knesset.

I have no idea what a beer bong game would involve, other than drinking excessive amounts of beer.

That's a helluva typo. Allow me to elucidate with the help of hot chicks:

This is a beer bong.
This is beer pong.

There really are blogs for everything.

The Batmobile was also real.

Definitely a cool bit of design that went into it.

your attempt to ridicule my choice is ridiculous in and of itself because a large number of people, not much less than those that prefer BoW like it.

The following of an idea has no correlation with its degree of ridiculousness.

we're preferring BoW because we're use to it from centuries of experience with paper. ... What I'm talking about is preference being affected by familiarity.

There's nothing wrong with that though. It's perfectly reasonable to prefer black on white because everything else uses it. Consistency is very important.

How many documents do you actually print out anyway? How many of them become unreadable if you print inverse? Then there's the ability to hit a print preview or even set preferences if that's what you prefer. Trouble is unless you're an advanced user you're not choosing the colour of your web pages or the background colour of most apps.

This does not address the point you were replying to. What I said was people who must context switch constantly from a black on white paper medium to a white on black computer screen would suffer from eye strain. This is a very common use case and explains easily why black on white is more often preferred.

major packages like Corel Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom - are shipping with a black theme by default.

Yet it's still not the majority preference. Even in the art field. Adobe Photoshop doesn't ship with such a theme, which is easily the most widely used art application. Even if it did, the art field doesn't even come close to representing a majority in computer usage. Or even a majority in professional computer usage.

black firefox themes are so widely varied

Again, this proves nothing. The number of black on white themed Firefox users are still the vast majority.

If you dim your screen enough the surface of the screen's starts to reflect roughly the same amount of light as it is emitting and suddenly the reflections are so bright in comaparison that that causes eye strain.

This is true. A good example of this would be using a laptop with a glossy screen outside in the bright sun. But the issue here is that the contrast is reduced. That's what causes the eye strain. In this case, whether or not the user is looking at a white on black color scheme or a black on white color scheme is far less relevant than the lack of contrast. The solution is to get into the shade, or go inside.

A piece of office paper in a properly lit room isn't going to be the same

Again true. However, a piece of paper in a properly lit room next to a black on white color scheme on a computer monitor will be far more similar to each other than the same piece of paper next to a white on black color scheme on a computer monitor.

Google the following:
black themes less eye strain

Okay. Results:

1. Author supports your position, but no evidence cited. Author's conclusion is disputed in the discussion. http://lifehacker.com/374189/darken-windows-to-reduce-eye-strain
2. Same result as above. http://www.lifehacker.com.au/tips/2008/04/01/darken_windows_to_reduce_eye_strain-2.html
3. Supports neither of our positions, video is comedic. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/337399/avoid_eye_strain_when_using_word/
4. A Slashdot discussion. There are highly rated comments supporting both my position and yours.

metacafe link here and TED link here.

Explosions like this? http://www.metacafe.com/watch/39058/transformer_fire_video/

"The better one was the Tom's Hardware one where they tested an AMD chip and Intel chip..."

I couldn't find the video on Tom's Hardware but this video was uploaded in 2005 and I found this article from 2001 talking about the video so Tom "Pushed a CPU to Heat Death, Intentionally" seven years ago making this article Not News Worthy.

At least your car doesn't waste half of the petrol you put into it.

The Dirty Little Secret of Inkjet Printers [VIDEO]
http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2008/04/13130/
or here:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1181828/the_dirty_little_secret_of_inkjet_printers/

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/770611/big_bang_theory_for_dummies/

Heh, dot, explosion, expansion... (Parent's still aren't going to give you the money...)

But seriously, one of the nice things growing up in an learned family, was not having things "dumbed down". Add to that a more sophisticated video can be watched again in the future with a greater understanding of the more advanced concepts.

No, movies where people murder people are not illegal to own AFAIK. If so, I and many websites including youtube will be in trouble : One or two examples (if you haven't worked this out, these videos are videos of murders. Don't watch if you don't want to). Possessing video of a crime is definately not necessarily a crime in itself, apart from when it concerns sex.

The situation is this now : It is legal to own actual video of murders. It is illegal for a 17 year old to create a CGI of themselves (or obviously film themselves) and send it to their partner.

People are not defending child pornography here, people are questioning the law. Also, there is such a thing a due process - if you start ignoring it for "really nasty" crimes, eventually you'll start ignoring it for more and more crimes, and your liberties are dwindling at an alarming rate. Just because people question the process doesn't mean they are defending the actions uncovered by the process.