Sarah81

*sad sigh* Yeah - named after the idiotic woman who spilled McDonald's coffee on her lap and sued over the resulting burns, the Stella Awards have been shaming Americans for a few years now.The problem? We graduate so many lawyers every year, and they all have to do *something* to make money to pay back their massive student loans. So, file a bunch of frivolous lawsuits, miraculously find a jury who will actually pay attention to the outrageous demands and everybody on the plaintiff's side gets rich.If the losers always had to cough up court costs for both themselves and the winners, I bet there'd be fewer pointless lawsuits.

The Web site that OP gave states that this is a response to Microsoft recently releasing tools to help users switch from Domino (IBM) to Outlook (Microsoft). Seems like this is just another tactic to compete against the corporate giant.But hey, things like this are always interesting to watch.

I'd rather just see income taxes go away, to be replaced with a flat tax rate on spending. No more income-tax evasion. No more audits. No more stupid forms to fill out once a year. And more people actually paying taxes instead of either putting it off or finding creative, albeit slightly illegal, ways to pay less.But the rich people would whine because they'd pay more in taxes for their Mercedes Benzes and their Bentleys than the rest of us do for our Fords and Toyotas.

What's the big advantage to wireless when you're settng up a home network? Would it be more expensive to set up wired routers and invest in CAT-5 cable? Or is the wireless preference so that you can connect with a laptop computer anywhere in the house? That - laptop connectivity - is the only reason I can think of for not going with a wired connection at home.

Movie fans can finally purchase legal downloads. Movielink, a company that used to specialize in downloaded rental movies, will now let you purchase movies and download them to your computer. But, most people aren't going to bother until Movielink and the other involved parties (Sony studios being just one of them) perfect the system. 1. The downloads cost pretty much the same as if you walk into Best Buy and purchase a copy of the movie on DVD. No, really. Expect to pay between $10-30 depending on the age and popularity of the film you're buying online. 2. Downloads WON'T work in your DVD player. Forget takng your newly-purchased film on a road trip, popping it into the home-entertainment system for family movie night, etc. But you *can* put the file on up to three computers, and burn a non-playing copy as a backup in case your system(s) crash and destroy your data. 3. The files won't work on Mac computers. Or Linux. Or pre-Win2000 systems. Some people think that Apple will work out its own agreement with studios, but that could take a while. In the meantime ... keep buying DVDs. I'm sure that plenty of people will gladly use the service, but I'd rather buy the DVD version.

I can see how older users will benefit from these features, but younger people - even mid-20s types like me - can make use of a lot of the things that this new phone will offer. The cushioned ear piece, for example, would be great. If I had this design on my phone, I wouldn't spend nearly as much time adjusting the volume to accommodate the various background-noise levels.

Blockbuster's Netflix ripoff stinks anyway. A friend of mine tried a free one-month trial ... took nearly two weeks for the first DVDs to show up. Whereas Netflix, upon new account creation, gets the first DVDs in your queue to you in just a few *days*.So ... Netflix should just sit back and let Blockbuster commit suicide by bad service.But then again ... if they have the patents, yeah, they have every right to sue.

I'd rather park the car/truck/whatever myself. Call me old-school if you will, but I take a tiny bit of pride in being able to park a full-sized pickup truck *without* power steering, in a standard-sized parking lot. Without taking up more than one space or hitting anybody/anything.And if the parking assistant is Windows-based, the thing will lock up your brakes, interfere with your stereo system and probably start a small fire somewhere in the engine compartment. *smirks*

It's not that hard for bad guys to get their hands on things that they aren't supposed to have.Find an employee at the manufacturing plant or distribution center and give him or her a big wad of cash. They'll cough up the new anti-Tazer vests faster than the cops can obtain them.Or break in. Or find a corrupt law-enforcement official. There are lots of ways to do it. That's how the armor-piercing ammo rounds found their way into the hands of gang members (the LAST group of people on this planet who need them).But, there's good news: this fabric probably won't stop the bean-bag shotgun loads, or other non-lethal crowd-control methods. And I bet it won't stop regular old bullets either. So the police won't be completely helpless, thankfully.

Poker rules. My dad taught me how to play Texas Hold 'Em years and years ago - you know, before everybody in the universe started playing. Even with that advantage, I still get my butt kicked *grins*Welcome to the forums.

I'm wondering if the guys who developed Remove It Permanently (RIP) will come out with an updated version for the new FireFox release. I really miss being able to cut out (permanently) elements that I don't ever want to see on Web sites.AdBlock's a good extension too, but it doesn't let me kill nearly as much as RIP did.

Nobody's voted for GeoCities as of right now. Gee, I wonder why. Could it have anything to do with that awful, super-annoying side pane that pops up filled with GeoCities ads? Oh yeah, that could have something to do with it.

Google needs to hurry up and upload new maps for my Mom and Dad's area (rural Texas). Mom made me download and run Google Earth just so she could find out if one can see our neighbors's meth labs from overhead. Too bad it's all just a blurry mess right now. *grins*

I've heard that it's a pretty good game, at least the XBox version. I'll probably pick up a copy for my brother (the XBox owner/player in the family) sometime. Okay, maybe soon because he lent me his XBox, so I have it right here to play now *grins*

Gee, so much for China and democracy trying to get along.

The new Nintendo's controller relies not just on your button input but also on your motions. I'm guessing that fly-fishing games are going to be disgustngly popular for this console.

And if you use it in conjunction with Google Earth, you can look at your new computer-matched sweetheart's house from 5,000 miles away.Mwahahaha.Yes. You're right. They *are* trying to take over the world.But man, it's fun to watch.

Yeah, that's fast enough to get stares *grins* even I would stop what I was doing to stare if you could go that fast typing *real words* and not just random stuff *grins*

When I was a kid - about 14 or 15 - just about everybody who saw me type commented on how fast I went. Back then, I was at about 80 WPM, but now I'm doing around 100 without too many errors (maybe 3 every minute ... more if I'm typing as I think, because I usually go back to rephrase things).At community college - a very small school in a rural area - half the class would sit and watch me type. They eventually got used to that and left me alone, but the first few weeks of school were just ... weird. (I was a journalism major, so I spent a lot of time in the lab next to that classroom typing stories and stuff for the student newspaper. Otherwise I don't think I would have had much inclination or reason to do any typing at school in the first place ... which would have been nice.)Anyway ... then I got to university and nobody notices. I notice students, and some teachers, who type about as fast - or even faster - than I do. Nobody gives a rat's fuzzy backside if I can type fast or if I hunt and peck - which to me is sweet, because I'd rather *not* spend my entire time at a four-year university being known as a freak. *grins*So ... my fascination with social oddities leads me to ask some questions of you all.1. How fast do you type? Informal estimates are fine. I only know my "official" typing speed because I was tested for a job interview.2. Where, if any place, do you get the most reaction? 3. I'm also curious about how other people learned how to type. I pretty much had to learn touch typing to keep up in IRC rooms. The ones I liked limited the number of chatters to 50 ... which is a really big conversation even if only half of the people are actively involved.

I don't see what use I could possibly have for a mouse with a built-in mike. If I want to record sound that badly, I have a headset. Perhaps it could be used for spying if you didn't have to set this mouse and software up to send the recorded files to another computer. I suppose that parents could use this thing to help figure out what their kids are talking about while they're using the computer ... but there are simpler and less obvious ways of doing that. But no ... I don't think we've quite moved all the way to "Big Brother" phase yet. Not quite. *grins*

Mwahaha - Googlefight's been one of my amusements/distractions for MONTHS now *snickers*Here's some of the better ones:PC whipped up on Mac (no surprise there, hehe)Satan creamed Darth Vader 39,500,000 to 9,990,000And a surprise - books edged out TV.I'm far too easily amused. I really am. *grins*

Turbo Grafx 16? Yeah, I remember that system. I wanted one when I was a kid, but we lived in a small community. The only games that you could get were for Sega or NES, so Mom did the smart thing and bought the NES instead. She only had to drive 15 minutes instead of over an hour to take us game shopping *grins*But if I recall correctly, one of my brothers bought a TG16 system at a garage sale or something years later. He has a bunch of old game systems that he can't hook up because the cables and such are missing. Hmm. I wonder ... nah. Probably not worth trying to find the hookups *grins*

I'm surprised that they still bothered for more than a few months after PS2 came out.My brother had a PS a while after they came out. I'm pretty sure he still has it somewhere, but he doesn't play it - the PS2 is more interesting, and Sony was intelligent enough to make old games compatible with new systems, so he can still play the earlier Resident Evil games and other things that he enjoys.

But at least plastic is recyclable. If we'd actually get off our butts and do that instead of merely trashing plastics that we don't want anymore, or can't use or whatever, then it wouldn't be such a big deal. Really. *grins*

Sounds like you really know your stuff *grins* Great article - informative but written in an engaging manner.As for snow melt: totally n/a here - I live in Central Texas *grins*