aardvarkious

I didn't know how to swim efficiently: if you threw me in the pool, I wouldn't drown, and I could maybe do one continuous lap (50m) if I pushed myself.

About commercials:

I live in Canada, where the Olympics are broadcast by the CBC, which is a government-owned networks. I too was frustrated by there being commercials every two minutes. However, I got a stopwatch and timed how many commercials there were in an hour: there were 13 minutes, which is actually slightly less than "normal" television. My guess is that they have very frequent but short commercial breaks to better fit in between races, events, or whatever. Also, this makes sure that people who are just taking a few minutes to check in see atleast one commercial. Has anybody made any observations about NBC- do they really have more commercials than other TV?

Now I just wish Canada would win a medal: frankly, it is embarrassing that tiny little Georgia which is in the middle of a freaking war is currently beating us.

Swimming also puts you in better shape IMO. I used to run plenty, but my knees started hurting, so now I only run if I am actually playing a sport. I took up swimming for my exercise. I'd never taken a swimming lesson in my life, but I just went to the pool and started doing it. A few times I asked the life guards for some tips, and I also chatted up some of the good swimmers and got tips from them.

I went for a 2k run the other day just to see what it was like after swimming but not running for a couple months. It was about the same as when I ran everyday (maybe even a bit easier), and I have a slightly more toned upper body now.

The issue with targeted ads isn't the targeted ads, but the information collected and stored to generate them. AFAIK, Ad Block does nothing to help with this. Also notice that opting out likely doesn't help either.

In regards to the first paragraph: my mom has a sweet gadget I'm envious of. It is a sensor you attach to your electric metre (its a camera which reads how fast it spins) with a wireless monitor. The main feature of the monitor is how many $/hour you are spending on electricity (you can have it in real time or averaged over any length of time). I enjoy walking through the house turning on various lights and appliances to see how much they cost to run.

Sure, money brings stresses. However, it also eliminates many sources of misery. For example, a trip to the ER is only going to be stressful for health, not financial, reasons.

Best advice I ever got: all money does is give you freedom (to do what you want and to get what you want). Therefore, it is absolutely pointless to give up freedom for money.

It is kind of arbitrary, but unless your going to eliminate weight limits altogether, I don't really see how else you could do it.

I didn't see anywhere that the early prototypes would be free to developers: just that they would get first dibs.

They're also great for carrying around to meetings where you just want to jot down notes and not do any serious work on your computer.

my possibly wrong understanding isn't that this is law, but that consumers boycott phones without this "feature"

I was looking at a sweet one that also allows you to enter a code. It hooked up to the internet and allowed you to program restrictions on codes. For example, if you had a maid come in regularly (wouldn't that be nice?), her code would only work on certain days or during certain hours. Or if you were afraid you left your stove on and wanted someone to check, you could give them a code that would only work one time. I don't know how much you'd actually use those features, but it was a neat gadget.

I've never heard of that. Does it use the magnet to hold the door locked, or to unlock it? If the latter, what happens when power goes down or the battery runs out and you want to get in or out? If the former, what stops people from disrupting the power supply to bypass the lock?

I live in Calgary, Alberta. For a long, long, long time there has been a company doing the exact same thing between Calgary and Edmonton (a 3 hour drive). I love it- in fact, I take it instead of a plane: its more comfortable, and when you factor in baggage/security, only takes about 20 minutes extra (not to mention it saves the organisation I work for a couple hundred).

One reason they might not be similar: Apple really is marketed to people with little computer skills- they are VERY user friendly as well as trendy. Presumably, an average person buying online would be [at least a little] more computer savvy than the average person buying in store.

If you want to play with numbers, the New York Times has an excellent tool:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/2007_BUYRENT_GRAP...

It allows you to play with multiple variables and then tells you how many years you need to own a home for in order for it to become profitable.

Your right about college students, but not high school students. They have the largest disposable income of any age group. Many of them have jobs, many of them get given money by grandma/mom/pop/etc..., but very few of them need to spend money on necessities- almost all of their income goes to consumer goods. This is why so much advertising is targeted at teenagers.

This is also why the internet is going to be death to the parts of the recording industry that cannot (or will not) adapt- the age group that is their biggest customer is also the most internet savvy.

If you did have to pay (I realize this is hypothetical), what if they charged per article you read and you got a free read when you contributed? Or part of a free article when you edited. Would that help to keep it extensive?

I wouldn't like that one bit. I know a fair bit about technology, but when it comes to most here I probably know diddly squat when it comes to programming. I'm a reddit refugee who finds quite a bit of the articles here interesting and is excited to actually see good discussion. Besides, I'm willing to bet there are a fair number of people who could pass any kind of test you set up and still prove to be quite destructive.

Here is a link that lets you quickly ignore all non friend or group invites- I find it quite handy:

http://www.ignoreall.com/

I don't mind being invited (not with that tool) but its annoying because every so often (its very rare) I actually want to try an application, but I refuse to go to the effort of inviting friends before I try it.