I knew a girl who was a "native" Esperanto speaker in the sense that it was the language her parents spoke to her as a baby. As far as I could tell, she spoke it fluently. Of course, she also had crippling emotional issues. Since I like irrationally inferring causation from correction, I blame Esperanto.

And the author needlessly misunderstands Adam Smith. Nice. Adam Smith had a point. Compare your standard of living, as a Westerner or member of some other wealthy nation, to that of your ancestors one hundred or even one hundred fifty years ago. The fact is that you probably live in a situation that is…

This is excellent news. I rejoice whenever us humans find a way to beat back another source of misery and suffering. Kudos to Mr. Houghton and any others involved in finding a potential vaccine for this wretched disease. I just hope that the FDA approval process finds it as effective as the preliminary results say…

I switched from Windows to OS X back in 2007. While I still prefer Apple's offering to Microsoft's, I have two things to say. First, Windows runs very well on Mac hardware. My bootcamp installs of Windows XP and then Windows 7 on my old MacBook were blazing fast (I've since moved to VMWare Fusion on my MacBook…

@Adam: if the Raspberry Pi ends up being as promising as it looks, would there be a Lifehacker write up in the future detailing how to use it as a media center?

Meh, I didn't think the town's response was THAT unexpected. I've had the chance to associate with people from various small towns (admittedly not in Maine) and there can be a great deal of judgementalism, self-righteousness, and priggishness. I think it is a function of the fact that in small, isolated places it is…

@Adam: I would guess that you probably know this, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. If you ever DO make the plunge and start using Reeder, just know that the program has the same "j" and "k" shortcuts for moving between articles that Google Reader has. It's also pretty friendly with the arrow keys for…

Well Europeans, if it's any consolation, a good share (most?) of us Americans don't even get the "smallest of US holidays" off. Pity your neighbors across the Atlantic.

As long as I can still create a bootable USB drive on my own like I could with Lion I'll be happy.

I'm glad to see you're still sporting the iPad for comic books. After your comic book article a year or so ago, I bought an iPad 2, ComicZeal, and a collection of 250 pdf issues of the Amazing-Spider Man. While I did end up torrenting those same issues (since the Marvel pdfs came with ugly watermarks on them), I…

*sigh* File systems are on the way out? I guess that means we can't expect to see any upgrades to Finder in OS X 10.8? Maybe the plan was to keep the Finder experience only so-so so that people won't miss it when it's gone?

So, now the updates only come one year apart?

You pointed it out... and now I can't stop seeing it. *despair*

You have a point. In the past, people could potentially give away any information they had about you. But I think the key distinction is that it took a much larger affirmative act. The leaker had to email it, snail mail it, submit it, etc. before it was available. Now the most it might take is clicking "Ok" on a…

I actually don't believe iPhone/Android/Other users should even have the option of voluntarily uploading their address books to the cloud unless the cloud service prohibits the firm that operates it from reviewing its contents.

Question: I am interested in trying Cobook, but I am concerned about its newness. Does it play nicely with Address Book, or does it have a tendency to mess things up? Has anyone had a bad experience with it, or should I expect smooth sailing? I only ask because I have worked hard at maintaining my contacts and…

Courageous defense lawyers defend even those who are clearly guilty. That's the whole point of a system of law: everybody has a chance to defend himself or herself in an ordered process. True, in this circumstance it looks like murderers got off without punishment. But if the law is not strict enough then there…

Hey, this is a great tip! Is this new with Lion, or has it been in previous versions of OS X?

I was wondering if there had been any word on if/when Mozilla plans to incorporate support for Lion's fullscreen mode and gestures. I was hoping this update would do the trick, but no luck.

I posted something similar to your comment before I saw your post. I apologize for that, but I promoted you to try to make up for it.