giantrobothead

Tremendous talent, admirable range as an actor, and, most admirably, he seemed possessed of a genuine compassion for his fellow human beings. Certainly he'll be missed by those who knew him personally and through his work.

As a child of a parent who suffered from bipolar disorder, his death hits fairly close.

Goodbye, Robin, may all doors be open to you and all obstacles removed from your path.

Any act that gets you away from work for a while and allows your mind to wander is ultimately helpful. A long shower, a long walk, a long drive, interstitial spaces that give you time to think are invaluable.

I used to drive for about an hour to get to my former place of work, and I had time to think about things, whether they were related to a problem I was trying to solve or what haqppened to be on the radio at the time or the meanderings that usually lead to new ideas. While the job became increasingly unpleasant, I did enjoy those drives.

Acting on those ideas is key though, if you generate all these great ideas while you're on a constitutional but never do anything with them, how does that help your creative output?

Interesting read. I particlarly enjoy the fact that Montgomery Ward basically commissioned a computer for production. Makes you wonder what would have come about if all those retail outlet computers had gained traction and become established brands.

I regularly use links (as opposed to lynx) to access text heavy sites; nice, clean, distraction-free reading.

Yes! Score for you, my friend. Chuck Jones is one of my personal heroes. Got to meet him at a book signing in my college years, and he was as personable and humbly awesome as you'd expect.

I purchase a phone/cable/internet bundle from my provider and the price has held steady for the six years I've had it. In fact, the only increases have been when we've added services, like more HD channels, on-demand, etc.

Of course, the fact that they have a virtual monopoly on the cable TV business in my town probably has a lot to do with their pricing stability. The only competition they have is a satellite provider, and calling them "competition" is being a bit generous.

Well, there's the rub. I'm a Slackware guy, and have never installed Ubuntu.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'd pay to see a movie starring that triangle.

I confess I had no idea this even existed.

And, thinking about that statement, that is probably part of the problem.

Hey Cap'n. My eyes are up here. Yeah, me, the one with the money.

It's really refreshing to hold Ctrl-R and see what new comments slide into place.

When I was a wee lad, my Grandmother used to spend days with me while my parents were working, and after say, a morning in the park, we'd go to the mall and get lunch at the restaurant in JC Penney's.

It was run by a gentleman of Greek descent, whom my Grandmother knew, as she seemed to know everyone, and served brunch, lunch, dinner, like any other small cafe. I would routinely get a hot dog, served on toasted white bread. It was tremendous.

I miss those days, and the subsequent teen years of the nineties spent mall-ratting with my friends, hitting the record store, book store, the arcade (don't get me started on the demise of the video game arcade) people-watching...

Times change, and I assume, so will these structures, whether it be to fade into irrelevance or transform into something vibrant and communal again.

I was never worried about being a Marxist.

Twitter seems to be working here, unless it's some uncanny fake...

Aha! Sounds like something the true inventor of bitcoin might say. Gotcha back!

Well, according to the authorities at slate.com, there is a distinct possibility that I might have invented bitcoin.

(Full disclosure: There's no way I invented bitcoin.)

Sensationalist tech journalism? Well, I never.

For the past few years, I've managed to earn more than I've spent, and have put a good portion of that money in savings. If I should lose my job, I've got a significant cushion to survive on.

110K would make for a bigger cushion, though.

Somewhere in all of this, I suspect a Laundryverse story lurks...

Hey, I'm an old(er) guy and I think 110K is a lot of money.

Funny that you should mention the Whole Earth Catalog, as Stewart Brand has been heavily involved in this venture.

TED Radio Hour did a piece on this in a recent show. It's worth a listen:

http://www.npr.org/2013/08/10/209178988/the-hackers?showDate...

The last few routers I've used have an option for remote management, but that option is disabled by default, as it should be.

Or "I don't mean to be rude, but..."

"The Year Multinational Corporations with Powers Beyond the Scope of Individual Actors Broke the Internet" just isn't as catchy a title, huh?

I tend to think that it is instinctual, probably related to the vastness of the thing, and the fact that it is simply beyond our ability to grasp completely.

For me, terrifying can be read as a synonym for thrilling. It didn't scare me so much as fill me with awe, and delight, and any number of contradictory feelings.

Unfortunately, nowadays, I fall asleep much too quickly to contemplate the nature of universal size like I used to be able.

When I was a little kid, I used to lay in my bed, in the dark, and think about the size of the room around me. Then I'd think of the size of my house, then the size of my hometown, then the size of my home state, then the size of the United States, then the size of the planet, and so on until I couldn't conceive of the scale of what I was trying to envision.

It was at once exciting and absolutely terrifying. This doesn't quite capture that feeling, but it's still pretty neat.