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I thought Unix has lots of so called "flavors" so which one are they talking about?

In fact, the little piece I link to has this introduction:

Unix is not a single operating system. It has many flavors (aka. variants, types, or implementations). Although based on a core set of Unix commands, different flavors have their own unique commands and features, and designed to work with different types of hardware. No one knows exactly how many Unix flavors are there, but it is safe to say that if including all those that are obscure and obsolete, the number of Unix flavors is at least in the hundreds. You can often tell that an operating system is in the Unix family if it has a name that is a combination of the letters U, I, and X.

So what exactly are these folks talking about?

The number being bandied about was 1600, not 16 000, and it seems to have arisen from a misinterpretation of SEC filings.

"Despite what some of last weekâ(TM)s headline writers suggested, Apple did not fire 1,600 of its store employees, nor did the company announce or report anything to that effect. The rumors seem to have been born out of some mathematical inferences from Appleâ(TM)s latest quarterly SEC filing. " ...

"Although there has been no official comment from the Apple folks, most likely, their store hours have been cut and vacant positions have remained unfilled over the past year because of general retail recession. It would be pretty impossible for Apple to do a substantial secret layoff over the period of a year without anyone noticing. Apple has better things to do with its creativity than that. "

Source:
http://retailindustry.about.com/b/2009/04/26/us-retail-industry-weekly-numbers-1600-apple-store-layoff-rumors-30-store-closings-162-store-openings-and-one-big-bankruptcy.htm

and be sure to don't send your kids off to war every couple of generations to protect such companies and their assets.

I've always figured a generation is 30 years. Going all the way back to colonial times, the longest period of peace was the 33 years between the end of the Civil War (1865) and the beginning of the Spanish-American war (1898). Since World War II the longest period of peace the US has seen was the eight years between pulling out of Vietnam (1975) and the invasion of Grenada (1983). See this timeline of US and colonial wars:

Slashdot requires more characters per line so I need to add some meanless fluff to the end of my comment to meet Slashdot's statistical requirements. Feel free to ignore this worthless paragraph. It's just going on and on to increase the average number of characters per line. I guess Slashdot is not well equipped to handle definition lists. Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 23.1). Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 23.1). Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 23.1). Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 23.1). Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 23.1). Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 23.1). Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 23.1). Have a great day!

This is true, but perhaps chrome uses some clever copy-on-write VM technology? Or (gasp) perhaps windows does? Any VM guys want to comment?

You mean like the everyday common POSIX fork() command? Yes, apparently Windows does have that capability, they just hide it in their API.

Somehow it just wasn't worth going to war over until the South seceded, at which point it instantly became a major issue and justification for all manner of atrocities.

Reminds me of another recent war, where someone who we once considered an ally and put into power was suddenly the most evil man on earth and must be stopped at all costs. Let me ask you - did you support the second war in Iraq?

You fail one internets:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_fly_in_urinal.htm

To save you all the trouble of reading the previous Slashdot discussion, I have summarized it below.

What does this Firefox extension do?

1.) It installs a BHO (Browser Helper Object)
2.) The .Net Framework Assistant also changes the User-Agent string of the Firefox browser, adding "(.NET CLR 3.5.30729)"

A Browser Helper Object (BHO) is a DLL module designed as a plugin for Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser to provide added functionality.

"BHO can be used to install additional features or functions that are useful, it can also be exploited to install features or functions that are malicious. Some applications, such as the Google or Yahoo toolbars, are examples of good BHO's. But, there are also many examples of BHO's which are used to hijack your Web browser home page, spy on your Internet activities and other malicious actions."

The author on this site goes on to say: "If you are really concerned about bad BHO's and their affect on the overall security of your computer, you can just switch browsers. BHO's are unique to Microsoft's Internet Explorer and do not impact other Web browser applications such as Firefox."

Now that Microsoft has infected Firefox with this extension, his advice in the line above is obsolete!

The following phrases were copied and pasted wholesale, directly from the previous Slashdot discussion without attribution (except in one case where I copied the entire text of one submitter's comment).

The .Net Framework Assistant also changes the User-Agent string of the Firefox browser, adding "(.NET CLR 3.5.30729)", so infected sites can better detect which MS vulnerability to exploit. The .NET framework is not required for Firefox to run. Why would any sane person assume installing a totally unrelated framework would scribble all over Firefox?
It most definitely IS unexpected, because I was never notified anywhere that a MICROSOFT update would entail installing an addon to a completely NON-Microsoft product.

How are they allowed to get away with this? Isn't installing BHOs that are not asked for and cannot be uninstalled without hacking pretty much the definition of malware?

Microsoft modified *another company's products*. What's next? MS is going to start adding updates to VLC player or Utorrent or OpenOffice or WordPerfect?!?!? They shouldn't be messing with non-microsoft products.

Microsoft is doing this in an update without notifying its users (as far as has been reported) that this update will be modifying third party software with no easy way to prevent or uninstall the change.

The true question here is not how to uninstall it. The question everyone should be asking is: is it messing with other settings in firefox, reporting back to MS what other extensions I use, monitoring my web traffic, going to break my browser, new security holes?

Ok Microsoft, you are making automatic changes to software written by other companies without permission or request of the user. I don't care if you say it's just an extension, you didn't ask me!

The precedent has already been established that the OS can be configured to require the local administrator to give explicit permission for each patch to be applied; the outrage here is that this time, that choice was not offered, and the affected software was neither part of the operating system nor even a Microsoft product.

For those of you who are assuming it's probably safe (and admittedly, you're probably right), there's another good reason to get rid of it. Microsoft changing your browser string to indicate that this piece of software is installed in your browser. The purpose of this, most likely, is to increase the installed base for this software, and use that as an argument

They just won't tell you that the virgins look like Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh has been married (and divorced) three times - but he has no children (cite)... so he may in fact be the virgin in question.

"Etimology" of the word moran ;o)

What in the name of the nine worlds are you talking about? Label makers don't use power. You just turn the dial and squeeze the handle.

Canada is the only country to succesfully attack the White House, and there are still scorch marks on the walls of that hallowed building to commemorate it.

True, but they felt so bad about it afterwords that they apologized a lot and finally burned down their own Parliament buildings about a hundred years later.

Hockey is our national sport.

That's one of your national sports, and only for the past fifteen years. Before 1994 Canada's only national sport was Lacrosse, a game loosely based on an old First Nations game in which hundreds of participants would run around a field beating each other with long sticks while ignoring a small ball. Modern Ice Hockey is just a pale, polite shadow of Lacrosse.

Fair enough, but I first heard about this from KCBS, IIRC. There were two studies. One showed the obvious correlation---that overweight people were more likely to consume diet sodas (you'd expect this from reverse causation). The other study followed up on this and tested rats on one of the artificial sweeteners (I forget which one). It noted, among other things, that despite the rats taking in fewer calories in that meal, they gained more weight than the rats that ate the same food sweetened with sugar. Basically, they overcompensated in future meals, making up the calories that they missed and then some.

Here's a link to some less-biased stories on the subject:

• http://thyroid.about.com/b/2004/07/08/are-artificial-sweeteners-sabotaging-your-weight-loss-efforts.htm
• http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/Story?id=4271246&page=1

It is good to see people getting good and passionate legal representation — and even bona-fide criminals deserve it.

But lost behind it all is the primary problem — "Thou shalt not steal". Because, if the 10 Commandments were a "living and breathing document", the "Thou shalt not copy content without owner's permission" would've been found in it long ago.

For "file sharing" is much closer to actual theft (of tangible things), than the Freedom of Speech is to selling pornography, for example.

In general a 1000W power supply running at 10-15% load won't be very efficient.

They're only efficient at a certain operating load range[1].

So yes buy quality, but that does NOT mean buy higher rating.

My Gaming PC only uses about 150-200W. I got a 500W supply and that's probably overkill already.

[1] http://compreviews.about.com/od/cases/a/PSUEfficiency.htm

"In addition, that 85% efficiency unit may only reach that percentage when it is at a 50% power load. When the unit is at 25 or 75% power loads, it may only have a 70% or lower level of efficiency. "

Yes the newer power supplies can be 80% efficient for a wider load range, but if you know how much wattage you need, just go about double and that's good enough - then you can buy the cheaper and still efficient (for that load) power supplies.

So, what American Indian tribe are you a member of?

Choctaw. From what overpopulated shithole did you come to invade my country?

I am American, I'm part Iroquois.

Correct. They are, however, taking capital away. As I stated, this capital is being diverted to provide education and other government services for illegal immigrants and their many children.

They are also paying taxes.

Actually immigrants are more likely to start new businesses creating jobs than those born in the US. More jobs make for a better economy in general.

1. We're talking about illegal immigrants, not all immigrants. Who's being "racist" now?

You? I certainly aren't being racist, though I do admit to being biased. I try not to be but am.

2. If that were true, they would be doing it in their own countries. They aren't.

Some are but others find it easier here.

3. If true, illegal immigrants still don't create enough jobs to make up for their higher-than-average birth rate. Again, look at their home countries for perfect examples of this in action.

If it weren't for immigrants, legal and illegal, the US's population would be in slow decline. "U.S. Birth Rate Hits All-Time Low". While the birth rate, in developed nations, needs to be about 2.1 in the US it is about 2.09. Now I'm not saying it's bad, actually it's worse in Europe. As populations improve their education, economics, and equal rights they have fewer children.

4. More jobs absolutely do not "make for a better economy". Low unemployment, high wages and low resource costs make for a better economy.

With more jobs there is lower unemployment. Lower unemployment drives wages higher.

In fact, fewer jobs is the ideal economic situation

I call BS. Now I'm willing to admit I am wrong, so if you can provide a link to economic studies supporting your assertion I am change my beliefs. But you have to prove it to me first.

That's true. And most of the houses would likely have been built regardless due to poor Fed policy.

Yea, federal policies encouraged financial institutions to make bad loans.

Cheap illegal immigrant labor just ensured that vast quantities of capital would be transferred out of the country, or invested in a new generation of migrant laborers, in the process, rather than continuing to circulate in the US economy to ensure jobs and benefit Americans.

Immigrant labor period help the Third World more than foreign aid does. Immigrant laborers remit more money back to their home country than governments give in aid. You cut those remittances and they would be worse off. Now if you want to reduce immigration them you should oppose the billions of dollars the government gives in subsidies to businesses like Archer Daniels Midland, ADM, and Cargill. With all the subsidies they get, your tax dollars, they can buy and export corn to Mexico to sell it there for less than Mexican farmers can grow corn. If those Mexicans could make a living on their farms then they would stay there.

Also, have you ever heard of trade? Those people receiving remittances from immigrant laborers can then buy American goods, which helps the American economy.

Legalize drugs and release those convicted of non violent drug offenses. Not only would this reduce the costs of laws enforcement but it would reduce drug violence as well.

I'm not really prepared to debate this, but I doubt you can back this up with anything resembling statistics or proof.

• "Portugal Decriminalizes Drug Use".

So, what American Indian tribe are you a member of?

Choctaw. From what overpopulated shithole did you come to invade my country?

I am American, I'm part Iroquois.

Correct. They are, however, taking capital away. As I stated, this capital is being diverted to provide education and other government services for illegal immigrants and their many children.

They are also paying taxes.

Actually immigrants are more likely to start new businesses creating jobs than those born in the US. More jobs make for a better economy in general.

1. We're talking about illegal immigrants, not all immigrants. Who's being "racist" now?

You? I certainly aren't being racist, though I do admit to being biased. I try not to be but am.

2. If that were true, they would be doing it in their own countries. They aren't.

Some are but others find it easier here.

3. If true, illegal immigrants still don't create enough jobs to make up for their higher-than-average birth rate. Again, look at their home countries for perfect examples of this in action.

If it weren't for immigrants, legal and illegal, the US's population would be in slow decline. "U.S. Birth Rate Hits All-Time Low". While the birth rate, in developed nations, needs to be about 2.1 in the US it is about 2.09. Now I'm not saying it's bad, actually it's worse in Europe. As populations improve their education, economics, and equal rights they have fewer children.

4. More jobs absolutely do not "make for a better economy". Low unemployment, high wages and low resource costs make for a better economy.

With more jobs there is lower unemployment. Lower unemployment drives wages higher.

In fact, fewer jobs is the ideal economic situation

I call BS. Now I'm willing to admit I am wrong, so if you can provide a link to economic studies supporting your assertion I am change my beliefs. But you have to prove it to me first.

That's true. And most of the houses would likely have been built regardless due to poor Fed policy.

Yea, federal policies encouraged financial institutions to make bad loans.

Cheap illegal immigrant labor just ensured that vast quantities of capital would be transferred out of the country, or invested in a new generation of migrant laborers, in the process, rather than continuing to circulate in the US economy to ensure jobs and benefit Americans.

Immigrant labor period help the Third World more than foreign aid does. Immigrant laborers remit more money back to their home country than governments give in aid. You cut those remittances and they would be worse off. Now if you want to reduce immigration them you should oppose the billions of dollars the government gives in subsidies to businesses like Archer Daniels Midland, ADM, and Cargill. With all the subsidies they get, your tax dollars, they can buy and export corn to Mexico to sell it there for less than Mexican farmers can grow corn. If those Mexicans could make a living on their farms then they would stay there.

Also, have you ever heard of trade? Those people receiving remittances from immigrant laborers can then buy American goods, which helps the American economy.

Legalize drugs and release those convicted of non violent drug offenses. Not only would this reduce the costs of laws enforcement but it would reduce drug violence as well.

I'm not really prepared to debate this, but I doubt you can back this up with anything resembling statistics or proof.

• "Portugal Decriminalizes Drug Use".

>While the sympathetic media reports them as "gaffes" if any Republican said half the stuff that he did

Bullshit, the media handled all of Bush's gaffes with kid gloves and gave him a free pass on mostly everything for most of his two terms. The idea that the media is liberal is a hilarious conspiracy theory by marginalized conservatives. The people who own the media and make the real decisions on what you hear and believe are hardly liberals, theyre characters like Rupert Murdoch, Rev Moon, and Sam Zell. The hippy media owner only exists in your head. The fact that youre repeating the "liberal media" line is proof at how the well the corporate conservative media operates.

There's a reason our screens are wider than they are tall, though: we need horizontal space more, because we read from side to side. This means things with text in them generally need to be (much) wider than they are tall.

Actually, you're just about 100% wrong on that point. Studies on human reading have demonstrated that it is much easier on the reader's eyes if text width is thinner rather than wider:

• http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/em/
• http://hid.fidelity.com/q31998/column.htm
• http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/finetypography/ht/line_length.htm
• http://www.ronreason.com/personal/bodytext.html
• http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/resources/resources/exp_lang/print.html
• http://www.raizlabs.com/blog/?p=187

On the web, vertical space is used for skimming text and scrolling content, and is hence much more important.

Or... you can do this:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda3

this assumes that the 20 GB hard drive is located at /dev/sda3

From what I've read, it's not yet been proven as to whether or not it's possible to recover data that has been zeroed using dd.

Yes it is, use shred /dev/sda it's much more secure.

Moving goalposts already?

In any case, you're welcome: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/data.html

Also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3090279.stm and http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/icecore.htm

Nonsense. Anyone is capable of writing their own software, just as anyone is capable of keeping and maintaining their own garden.

This is nonsense. Most people can't program even using something like Borland's Delphi or MS Visual Basic whereas there are very few who have brown thumbs or black thumbs.

My mother has zero interest in programming her own apps, just as I have zero interest in growing my own food.

I do both. I started college with a major in Computer Engineering and have been growing gardens since before I was a teen. I also have other interests. In high school I was torn between majoring in CE and Marine Bio or another marine science. I picked CE, though if I had known then what I know now I would have done a double major.

She would probably write very poor code at first, and I would probably keep a terrible garden; both of us could improve with time.

And how many have the tyme to devote to learning programming while they're already working full tyme? Sure people can improve but that doesn't mean they will be able to program a compleat and useful app. Gardening is easier.

Falcon

Yeah, the Trash 80 is a good contender. It could be argued that [low] price is one of the defining features of a netbook.

Other contenders...
History of Laptop Computers

and construction, oilfield etc. I was mostly just giving a kind of generic example rather than actual numbers. However with leased vehicles the lease payment itself is tax deductible in my case the lease is $750/month plus $1000 fuel and $500 maintenance even after market parts to a degree (ie. bull bars, step-up-bars, mud flaps, police scanner, CB radio, etc) I work places where you need a big truck to sometimes even get to the job site never mind hauling big trailers with skid steers or supplies. Writing off 63% of $2250 every month is $1417.50 a month. Here follow the clicky. Ever think about sub-contracting? I would encourage anyone to start their own business even if your only sub-contracting out your own labor.

i have a feeling you brought a lot of that up because of banks, you do realize you cannot treat banks like any other corporation right?

No, I hadn't about banks when writing my post until I got to where I bring up Thomas Jefferson. And they all should be treated the same, if they do not serve the common good they should have their charter revoked.

because wen a bank goes belly up a lot of individual citizens who had deposited money loose a LOT of money. FDIC helps some, but it still evaporates a lot of wealth.

Anybody with that much money deposited in a bank is a fool! The most a person should have deposited in bank accounts is 1 year's living expenses. If your housing, food, and work related expenses are $5000 a month you should only have $60,000 deposited. $15,000 would be in a checking, savings, or money market account with the other $45,000 in two 6 month CDs. Staggered so one CD matures every 3 months. When a CD matures simply roll it over into another one. This is called Laddering CDs.

Falcon

"Howdy, I do IT work for a fairly rural school district in SC. There are so many problems with this idea I don't know where to start"

Countries in the developing world such as the African nation of Rwanda don't seem to have any such problems. As neither does Brazil.

"it doesn't make much sense that a network closet that 20 computers run back to has 10 brand new switches in it while the school can't afford to retain its current teaching staff"

Retraining FUD ..

"All the sudden the room that really only needed power to a TV and maybe 4-5 computers now needs to have the power capabilities to also handle 20-30 laptops as well. This is not to be underestimated"

I thought laptops ran off of batteries :)

"How about network connectivity? Are we going to install network jacks in these classrooms for these laptops or put in WAPs? Who is going to pay for this new equipment/cabling?"

The laptops utilize mesh networking so they can still provide functionality even without a central gateway.

"How about all of the volume licensing agreements? Agreements for OSes, anti-virus clients, patch management systems, etc. are all done by volume. Who is going to pay for the additional licenses for these systems?"

There are no 'volume licensing agreements', the XO isn't susceptible to such things as viruses

"I'm a FOSS advocate, run nix at home, etc"

You sure sound like it :)

"When asked during the EMI conference call about the potential of lifting DRM from video, Jobs said: "Video is pretty different from music right now because the video industry does not distribute 90 percent of their content DRM free. Never has. So I think they are in a pretty different situation and I wouldn't hold it to a parallel at all."

http://pcworld.about.com/od/copyright/Jobs-unlikely-to-push-for-lift.htm

So he did not say it is"good" for movies, but this quote is almost certainly what the GP is thinking of.

http://icanhashappy.blogspot.com/2008/10/funny-chinese-knock-off-products.html

It's like having your very own Replicator.
Except it's not portable or fueled by dilithium crystals.
Instead, it's slower, more messy, employs millions of people, and takes up 38,560 sq. km.
I can't wait until Apple sells me one in 50 years!

Proposing that men get vasectomies is like asking women to get tubal ligations instead of using the pill. It fails for the same reasons.

There are side-effects to vasectomies. Erectile dysfunction or decreased sexual desire can occur in the form of impotence, premature ejaculation, and painful intercourse. The cause is believed to be, mostly psychological in nature and the vasectomy is believed to exacerbate previous difficulties and problems between sexual partners. Counseling and investigation is required to resolve difficulties.

Contraception is reversible. Vasectomies are not always so. Young adults, married and otherwise, can use contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancies, then have kids when they're ready for that commitment.

Because they aren't allowed to charge interest (too Jewish or something)

It's called usury, and it is prohibited quite explicitly by Islamic law. Nothing to do with Jews.

Karma be damned, but..

No one cares about a new search engine. Really, Google suits all my needs.

I would claim that's a dangerous mentality. I was using Metacrawler until Google came along. Even though Google is included in Metacrawler, its simplicity and speed won me over. Is that to say no one can compete with Google? Not at all.

I used to dig holes with my hands which was painful and time consuming. When it became clear this wouldn't work, I discovered a spade did the job much better. And I used it for everything. Though one day I was putting up fences and lamented the width of my spade's blade ... the posts weren't sitting firmly. A man offered to lend me his post hole digger which did that specific task better. No, I wasn't using the post hole digger to dig a trench for a sewage line but adding it to my collection of tools made me more effective at my tasks--so long as I used it for what it was best at.

The hype machine has worked, I will try out Wolfram Alpha and see if it is better than Google or can replace some of the capabilities I use Google to accomplish.

http://freebsd-image-gallery.netcode.pl/_daemonette/111143969_35533831ab.jpg
http://freebsd-image-gallery.netcode.pl/_daemonette/freebsd-002.jpg
http://freebsd-image-gallery.netcode.pl/_daemonette/freebsd-003.jpg

http://media.photobucket.com/image/penguin%20mascot%20girl/twistedliza/signature%20pics/blog/DSC00767e.jpg
http://images.celebrateexpress.com/mgen/merchandiser/38199.jpg
http://z.about.com/d/raleighdurham/1/0/u/8/-/-/Fat-Penguin-Clowns-at-Ringling-Bros-Circus.jpg

in so far as something as new as cable can be said to have a tradition

According to this, "Cable television, formerly known as Community Antenna Television or CATV, was born in the mountains of Pennsylvania in 1948." You must be ancient!

Except, early exposure to alcohol results in a greater chance of becoming an alcoholic.

Thanks to my high school chemistry teacher Mr. Weisbrook, 10/23 will forever be known as Mole Day.
http://chemistry.about.com/od/dictionariesglossaries/g/defmole.htm
6.022 x 10^23

Yeah? Well our head of state is appointed by GOD, yours is elected by gays, lesbians, pot smokers, smelly UNIX longhairs and LIBERALS.

If any of those groups appeared up here THE QUEEN of CANADA would beat them to death with a guitar.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's a bald faced lie by the left.

And this is a lie? http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa092801a.htm

Come on - it's a well known fact that the US was supporting the war against the soviets in Afghanistan. There was even a comedy with that as a theme called Spies Like US, or maybe you dont believe in movies either.

If we consider the fact that the database could do stuff to save space,
you can probably assume less than 2^32 email addresses and compress ever email address to an integer 40bit index, ip addresses are 28bits and dates 16bit(good 180years). at 136b per email (68 extra bits, per extra recipient) you can deal with 56million individual emails per gigabyte (Its hard to estimate how many email recipients revive each spam mail, but ill guess 63) so 4368b per sent spam means they could log 2m sent spams (124m received) per GB. If we take the 2008 figures of 210B/day but assume 72% spam and 4% go to/from uk, 8.4B (6B spam) it would take 43GB/day to store legit records, but ~3TB/day to store all the spam. There is however a huge assumption that when the sources cite numbers for emails sent, they actually mean emails sent, if they are citing emails received then all the spam takes up 'just' 48GB/day and storage is actually feasibly, over a week (9.8 days) per terabyte (spread amongst all the isps)

All calculations are estimates, i know nothing about real life databases, the index would take up space, etc, feel free to improve my estimates or provide a good source for the estimates i used
number of emails addresses? (i think a trillion should be the right order of magnitude if you include spammers)
emails per day? (spams per day)?
average recipients per email? (i assumed 1 and 63 per spam, but both are probably wildly inaccurate)
email traffic in the uk? (Seriously my source was a 2005 paper with nothing to do with email use)

that said i think the estimates probably provide the correct magnitude
If 210B individual emails are sent per day, each isp will likely have store a Terabytes for every few days.
However if 210B emails are recived then each isp will likely have to store a Terabyte of data every few weeks.

Don't look now, buy your monster cables missed a byte. That should've been "Moron."

Moran.

Whoosh.

L2DSM before saying someone is addicted. http://addictions.about.com/od/substancedependence/f/dsmsubdep.htm and no I am not a tech geek, so no short URL, although I would like to know how to do it on slashdot.

At least Google has a habit of playing fair, and is providing services by simply being better. Microsoft since it's inception has been a deceptive, double-dealing company. Remember how MS-DOS got started? Lots of corporate back-room deals and chicanery. Microsoft has NEVER excelled technically. They've always bought or stolen their tech, and then spun it like it was always that way. Amazingly slimy yet effective businessmen, but not the technical geniuses every layperson thinks they are.

http://images.google.com/images?q=iraq+information+minister -- 2nd image.

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/E/8/baghdadbob.jpg

Fat drunk people are funny.
Look at classical depictions of Bacchus...never skinny.

*Ahem* I hate to be nit-picky, ... well, actually that's a complete lie, I live for being picky. But Bakkhos is not noticeably fat in classical depictions (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

I'm guessing you're thinking of Silenos ... except that, usually, he's also not distinctively fat (1, 2, 3), except when painted by Rubens -- a painter of the modern period. And I defy anyone to regard the Silenos in that painting as jolly -- he's revolting! We're not talking goatse revolting, not quite, ... though I can imagine him pulling a goatse after a couple more goblets of wine.

Oaooow. Now my brain needs washing to get rid of that mental image.

Keystoning is a pretty common thing in retail. I don't think this is really news.

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

- Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman

I think if anything, Einstein was above this whole discussion, although somewhat amused by it.
(See: http://atheism.about.com/od/einsteingodreligion/tp/Was-Einstein-an-Atheist-.htm
& http://atheism.about.com/od/einsteingodreligion/tp/Einstein-on-a-Personal-God.htm )

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

- Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman

I think if anything, Einstein was above this whole discussion, although somewhat amused by it.
(See: http://atheism.about.com/od/einsteingodreligion/tp/Was-Einstein-an-Atheist-.htm
& http://atheism.about.com/od/einsteingodreligion/tp/Einstein-on-a-Personal-God.htm )

Why the blanket assumption that Hawkins is an Atheist?

Some of his quotes Imply that he is more of an Agnostic.

Which means we have brilliant scientists at all levels along the spectrum. Atheist, Agnostics, and Believers. (Don Knott), is at that other extreme.

Actually its easier to protect against outbound traffic using the windows firewall,

XP's firewall doesn't monitor outbound traffic at all Vista's firewall only does so with difficulty.

Well they did censor federally funded research that indicated that global warming was occurring:
http://environment.about.com/od/environmentallawpolicy/a/censorship_clim.htm

So that pretty much shows they were only willing to pay for research that showed it wasn't occurring. Is that good enough?

The typeface isn't the problem. In fact, I rather like it. It is a well-designed typeface, very readable, and appropriate for playful images - projects like children's books, comic books, children's toys and clothing, and the like. You know. its intended purpose.

The problem is, the typeface (a "typeface" is an outline/shape - it's not a "font" until it has size and weight, kerning, etc. attributed to it) has become used for things where it is completely inappropriate: the main text in "professional"[sic] web sites, books, official documents, advertisements, and so forth.

I use the typeface on occasion - but only where it's appropriate. In nearly every case where I see Comic Sans used, Helvetica or Arial or even Verdana would be far more appropriate. I won't stop using the Comic Sans typeface where it is appropriate (dialog for comic/clip art/line art images/strips, for example) but I have never nor would I ever plaster it all over the place.

No one typeface is intended to be used for all circumstances. The type of user who would use Comic Sans in a professional document is the same kind of "designer"[sic] who would mix typefaces from four or five (or more) different font families in a single document; you know, as if they were creating examples of how NOT to use typefaces.

Just as with guns, the problem isn't fonts; the problem is people.

Oh, and you're curious about my nit-picking about "font" vs. "typeface?" I'm not in the wrong here. See:

http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/fonts.asp
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/theyre-not-fonts
http://desktoppub.about.com/b/2005/05/02/2-minute-tutorial-font-vs-typeface.htm
http://www.publish.com/c/a/Graphics-Tools/Font-vs-typeface/
http://fontfeed.com/archives/font-or-typeface/

That's a myth, but thanks for playing!