Saying 'Two Thousand, Four Hundred Ninety Eight' is no less correct than saying 'Twenty-four hundred, ninety eight'. As for writing it, it depends. For casual writing, you can write it any way you please. For more standardized things, like business memos, and performance reports, 2,498 is how it should be done.

My question: Why do people think that cartoons are for kids only? Same goes for video games. Can't I just enjoy what I enjoy in peace?

Ahhh, he's summoned a demon!!! Quick, I'll cast all-barricadus, everyone behind me!

I was taught that the correct way to say that number is "Two thousand, four hundred ninety eight". You use the 'and' to represent the decimal. So if the number was 2,400.98, you would say "Two thousand, four hundred and ninety eight hundredths. Whether or not this is the correct way of saying it, I don't know. But it was how I was taught.

You should be far more worried about where it's going.

You know, pronouncing large numbers has been bugging me lately. Not that anybody can help me with this, but I'm sharing anyway, as long as we're on the subject: in Finnish, to say that something is in a given place in an order (like, "first"), you have to use the whole number in the genitive case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case). Consider the following:

one - yksi, first - ensimmäinen
twenty-three - kaksikymmentäkolme, twenty-third - kahdeskymmeneskolmas
three-thousand-forty-seven - kolmetuhattaneljäkymmentäseitsemän, three-thousand-forty-seventh - kolmastuhannesneljäskymmenesseitsemäs

Once you go above the hundreds, it just gets ridiculous. Despite being a native, my tongue just gets twisted with words like neljäsmiljoonaskuudessadaskahdeksaskymmenes-tuhannesseitsemässadasviideskymmeneskolmas (4680753.). Without the genitive, that would be neljämiljoonaakuusisataakahdeksankymmentä-tuhattaseitsemänsataaviisikymmentäkolme. Obviously, in written language we just use the numbers when you go above tens, but in speech, it's a problem.

So yesterday I started up my Firefox. It didn't display any menus or buttons, just a website it automatically loaded. The site in question: http://web.mac.com/drgonzo/Site/Welcome.html. To my knowledge, I have never been to the site. I don't think I have it bookmarked anywhere, although years ago, I've been to its precursor once or twice, but I'm reasonably certain it was located elsewhere back then. This computer has certainly never been used to access it.

The webpage worked normally, but I had to quit Firefox and restart it to get things back to normal (with menus, and buttons and so on).

My question is, how is this possible? My work computer has heavy security and I'm pretty certain it's virus-free. A known bug in Firefox? I'm reasonable tech-savvy, but this just baffles me. Firefox didn't crash the last time I closed it.

My question is how can there be so many advertisements for new cars? On TV especially, but other media as well. Could so many people be buying or leasing new? How much of the cost of a car goes into advertising/marketing?

I don't know about the figures, but cars are such big investments for all involved, as the seller, you want all the support you can get to go over your competition. And however much people think they're buying cars rationally, cars are sold extremely heavily on the image. I've studied brand management for five years, and the case studies feature cars heavily, just because it's so image-driven.

As a rule of thumb, I prefer being knocked out whenever I'm cut into. The reason they're asking is because anesthesia is always a risk - there is the very tiny chance you might not wake up. If you're otherwise healthy and have been under full anesthesia before, I wouldn't be concerned.

Then again, it would be super interesting to remain awake while they operate. If the thought doesn't disturb you too much, why not enjoy the show?

Well I certainly would not make that claim about Heavy Metal or even South Park for that matter. But I do think it looks weird that Cartoon Network puts a disclaimer on before it. What isn't offensive to SOMEONE any more?

While we are on that topic, is there anyone out there that actually gets offended and changes the channel when the disclaimer before a TV movie says, "may contain nudity"? Most of the guys I know go, "woohoo", and put down the remote.

I have a question: what's this bug?

The last time I said "woohoo" at that it turned out to be full frontal male nudity in an early 90's angstfest called This Life. Not playing by the rules, surely. And it was a 50 year old bloke too. I doubt anyone enjoyed that one.

My question: why do so many console games ask me to "press the start button" before taking me into a menu that I need a controller to navigate around anyway? I don't see the point from a user interface point of view.

That is a really good question. I think I might ask one of the designers here about that. I'll get back to you.

Edit: Right off the bat I'd say that the reason might be because you have multiple controllers plugged in. By pressing the start button, it can recognize which controller to use to treat as the "main" player. I've played several games where whoever pushes start first get to control the rest of the navigation through the menus. But I'm still checking.

Also, if you go under full anesthesia there's 2 things that are going to happen. One, it means they paralyze you with drugs and have to intubate you (stick a long plastic tube down your throat.. well, your trachea) in order to breath for you. Not so bad since you're knocked out when they do it, but you'll be awake when they take it out. Second, it means they are going to catheterize you (stick a long plastic tube down your wang into your bladder) to monitor urine output. And yes, they'll be doing the wang intrusion while you are fully awake before they knock you out. And you'll be awake for the removal as well.

Not trying to scare you or anything as thousands of people have it done every day. It's just if I'm ever given the choice, I think I would always opt for local anesthesia maybe along with some valium for the nerves. And maybe check and see if I could bring in a DS or iPod or something to distract from the tugging and pulling that'll be going on as they work on your knee.