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Uh... sorry. Chopsticks have been in use for well over 1000 years, and probably longer.

Look here for some information about the history of chopsticks.

Well, although nobody seems to know what it was for, he was arrested once. :=(

SB

Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon, Richard Murphy and Kenneth Boss shot 41 times at Amadou Diallo. Nineteen (19) bullets were found in his dead body.

I think the people behind this idea know it can't work. They're not trying to address the terrorist->airplane->tragedy issue, they're trying to address the popular idea that if you just redesign the technology so that it 'knows' not to let bad people do the 'wrong' things, then we'll all stay safe and rich. And they've realized that the best way to bring this fallacy to light is to establish the reduction ad absurdum of that belief as a strong meme that will resonate well with the masses.

So thank you Dr. Edward Lee (and colleagues), we salute you, Mr. Just-Rebuild-All-Planes-So-They-Won't-Hurt-People.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a bag of tacos here quicly seeking thermal equilibrium. Talk amongst yourselves.

I'm sure that in 1937, all the German people thought their government was the greatest thing on the planet. I'm sure that even the Jews didn't really think they had anything to worry about, after all, they weren't breaking any laws.

This really is a common misconception. The Nazi party started cleaning up political dissidents and granting the police extensive powers quite soon after they got to power, Dachau was established in 1933 and the Gestapo soon after, it all went downhill from there. Incidentally Hitler was chosen the person of the year by Time magazine in 1938.

Um, I first tried Microsoft Windows in 1985 or early 1986, which I would certainly classify as "nearly 20 years" ago. Given the author's background, I would think he tried it at a similar time.

Granted, I found it ugly, bloated and slow in 1985, and he apparently liked it, but matters of taste don't change the date.

NOTE: This may be an urban legend, so take it with a grain of salt.

It is.

Yup, they are quite smart. They've found that the cheapest way to extract oil from difficult areas is to buy themselves a puppet government that will underwrite the costs and pass the (now non-negotiable) bill to us.

"Jaws" is the name of a character in one of the older Bond movies (don't remember which) who had immensely powerful steel jaws and teeth...

first google result for "jaws bond"

2)Storage area on the device is tiny. For the small passive devices you are referring to the storage area is less than 1Kilobyte. Not much space for your medical records here.

Can we say "primary key"? It's odd that the author of the above comment missed this point, since even the article mentions that Michelin's tyre IDs are not vehicle identification numbers, but will be potentially associated with them. Same goes for the IDs on your jeans-- they may not contain your medical records, but they can still be an index into a table that points to arbitrary other information.

At around the same time, however, the operating system was ridiculed by one of Microsoft's key developers for containing 63,000 known defects and bugs. The first service pack was released less than six months later. The latest service pack apparently has about 675 bug fixes.

Maybe "not-inexpensive" is another sample of George W. Bush's new style of the english language (aka. a Bushism). I've heard some of the new words so many times now that when I think of the word no more "Invalid Grammer" exceptions are thrown in my brain! Once, I almost used a Bushism in a sentence! Fortunately, I caught myself before I said anything.

Here's a sample from this website.

'They misunderestimated me.'

'Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?'

'Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.'

The rest of the SSN's could probably be figured out with some brute force and a Luhn formula checksum calculation.

I'm not encouraging this; I'm just saying ;-)

Teach your kids to be good, upstanding, homophobic Americans! Just like the good old days!

> Like Bono perhaps?

Sonny is dead. ...or do you mean Cher?

*ducks*

Just so you know, I don't believe in evolution.

I aggree that if these things got out there would be changes. But no more than any other evolutionary change. Both are equally unpredictable.

If this was to happen at random in nature, it would be amazing and wonderful, but if we caused it due to a desire, its evil bad and distructive, for the same exact reason, because we (Humans) dont know what it will do.

Why is the reaction different?

IIRC according to the theory, it takes a really long time for significant changes to occur. What's happening now is like an "over night" kind of thing. What these guys are doing is taking some genes from one species and putting it into another. That's like recombining the branches on the evolution tree. I've never seen a tree do that or a frog with feathers. It really isn't natural. The point people are trying to make is that you have to have studies on the affects of something like the fish getting into the wild before releasing it in the "wild". It may be harmless, it might not be...who knows? Better to err on the side of caution.

Now, if we could do that to ourselfs, the same 'oh no its bad!' reaction would happen. But if it was a natural mutation.. for the same thing.. What then? Would it be bad then too? Would it be ok? Why?

When parents have a child that is not "normal", they usually try to correct the deformity. Maybe people are born without legs because nature knows that most of us drive cars now. That doesn't make sense. I know your example was extreme and so is mine.
If evolution as a theory is correct, you'd think that nature would make small changes so as not to upset the balance. Metaphorically not throwing a big rock into a small pool.

So lets look at small changes. GM grains. They are evil because, why again? They compete with life like everything else and happen to be better than the things they kill off?

From personal experience, I have allergic reactions to GM crops like Canola and Soya. I never had problems with food before now. I have to actually read what is on the labels before I buy something (a good practice anyway). Canola is resistant to pests because it's basically a poison "they" just modify it so that you can tolerate it. If you check out the history of soy you'll see that it was never meant to be eaten (especially at the quantities we injest now). Again, it's modified so we can eat it.
Why do they modify these plants? Just because they're cheaper to grow. What I really don't like is that they also modify the plants so that they are sterile...which means that if you plant these crops in the field, you'll have to buy their patented seeds from them every year (increasing their profits). Sterile not meaning that they don't produce polen which can go anywhere.
I've even heard stories of companines suing farmers because they try to reuse seeds (before they got the sterility right) they produced under patent infringment laws.

What about if we could genetically change a human to not be allergic to something (Say, milk) is that as equally as bad if these changed humans get out and reproduce?

Right now we have both types of humans, the 'older' strains that are allergic to cows milk, and the 'newer' strain that isnt and can drink it.
Its a small gene change but it is no different if we do it or it 'just happens'.

You're not necessarily born with allergies. In the case of milk allergies, you can grow out of them.
"old strain" - It's dangerous to start classifying people by what genes they have...think about it...

A fish is a larger change. But its the same example, whats the differce if it just naturally happened? And who are we to say it never would?

Maybe thats just a far out way of thinking, but no one that reacts

I fully agree -- that is why my next vehicle will most likely be a VW Golf TDi... They get about 49 MPG on average, and have a range of over 700 miles per 14.8 gallon tank. More torque, more horsepower, more reliability, no bad diesel smell anymore, no huge batteries to replace, and cheaper than the Civic hybrid -- it's a win-win situation.

Back in the day, being asked to give a couple bucks to King George III for some tea caused quite an outrage. First there were tea boycotts. Then some guys dressed up like Mohawk Indians, boarded three ships and threw their tea into the harbor. Later guns started firing. Lots of people died. A new country was born. And we're all (those of us in the US) very proud of all this.

All because of tea.

Now money that is spent on the media used to promote free communication should be taxed? Certain senators want to destroy people's computers? The US attorney general wants to circumvent the right to a fair trial? Blowing up Palistinian families, children and all, with US missles is "defense", but the impoverished occupied Palistinian nation's response is "terrorism"? Launching thousands and thousands of sorties, killing tens of thousands of unwilling soldiers to prevent "mass destruction" by weapons that cannot be found is not ironic? Our economy is a shambles. The rich are laughing. And our commander-in-chief wants to appoint this penis to the bench!

Osama bin Laden is free today. US citizens are not. And we would like the rest of the world to follow our lead. God bless Sweden for seeing the way. I'm Swedish. American. And pissed.

Flamebait? It's a /. high crime. Fomenting an uncomfortable discussion. And that's just talking! God forbid anyone ever actually did anything!

No doubt a similar question was asked when the LASER was invented. =)

in the San Gabriel Valley... someone began circulating an email stating that several cases had been found locally and named specific restaurants and markets that had been closed.

The first time I read it I thought it was a hoax, but then a friend who worked at a local hospital called me and told me they were distributing it as a general alert at the hospital.

I ended up going to the Police Department, scared, to find out. Turns out the email was a fraud, and that the PD had been recieving 500 calls a day about it. The establishments mentioned had seen a decrease in business of 50% as a result of some A-HOLE playing a joke. This is similar to what happened in China, I think. I would applaud if they caught the originator and put them in prison.

SECOND EMAIL.

Parent never heard of google? Here is a link to a short history of patents:
Patent History, USA and Europe

What I REALLY wonder about is all the idiots buying SCO stock, and why it's still hovering around $10 as opposed to the 1 cent it's really worth.

You have, perhaps, not heard of the speculative practice of shorting stock.

An interesting discussion about Truck-Stop Electrification in order to reduce the envrinmental impact of idling.

Try this site, and see what you think then:

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

selling devices that improve public health by reducing the harm caused by illegal substances is illegal

All the above is quite true - not only is the most dangerous aspect of relatively harmless psychoactive plants the legal trouble it can get you into, the beneficient and protective govt. actually approves and sells products that cause many known health problems. Just like 'home brew' in the basement was popular during the prohibition years of the 20's (thank you for alcohol prohibition, women voters!) so you didn't have to support the local Al Capone making megabucks off the law, today it's the closet garden.

On topic: New???? Someone in my family was giving away corn plastic stuff (like pens) for xmas over 20 years ago. Maybe this is a new formula or process.

currency converter - findsounds.com

how stuff works - infoplease

about.com - librarian's index

rebecca's reference - tom mayo's links
-words:

acronym/abbr -lookup -finder -bm

trans -babelfish -worldlingo -google bm

bartleby

phrontistery

pseudodictionary

jargon file
--music

epitonic - pitchfork

sonomu - electraum

gnod - audioquarium --books:

amazon - abebooks - bookfinder

gutenberg & onlinebooks

loc.gov - lambiek comiclopedia - rebecca's books

The Internet Protocol - IP - was created in the 1970s to support early computer networking with the Unix operating system. Today, IP has become a standard for all modern network operating systems (NOS) to communicate with each other. Many popular higher-level protocols such as HTTP and TCP rely on IP.

Two versions of IP exist in production use today. Nearly all networks use IP version 4 (IPv4), but an increasing number of educational and research networks have adopted the next generation IP version 6 (IPv6).
IPv4 Addressing Notation
An IPv4 address consists of four bytes (32 bits). These bytes are also known as octets.

For readability purposes, humans typically work with IP addresses in a decimal notation that uses periods to separate each octet. For example, the IP address

00001010 00000000 00000000 00000001

usually appears in the equivalent dotted decimal representation

10.0.0.1

Because each byte is 8 bits in length, each octet in an IP address ranges in value from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 255. Therefore, the full range of IP addresses is from 0.0.0.0 through 255.255.255.255. That represents a total of 4,294,967,296 possible IP addreses.
IPv6 Addressing Notation

IP addressing changes significantly with IPv6. IPv6 addresses are 16 bytes (128 bits) long rather than four bytes (32 bits). That represents more than

300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0

possible addresses! In the coming years, as an increasing number of cell phones, PDAs, and other network appliances expand their networking capability, this much larger IPv6 address space will probably be necessary.

IPv6 addresses are generally written in the following form:

hhhh:hhhh:hhhh:hhhh:hhhh:hhhh:hhhh:hhhh

In this notation, pairs of IPv6 bytes are separated by a colon and each byte in turns is represented as an equivalent pair of hexadecimal numbers, like in the following example:

E3D7:0000:0000:0000:51F4:9BC8:C0A8:6420

IPv6 addresses often contain many bytes with a zero value. Shorthand notation in IPv6 removes these values from the text representation (though the bytes are still present in the actual network address) as follows:

E3D7::51F4:9BC8:C0A8:6420

Finally, many IPv6 addresses are extensions of IPv4 addresses. In these cases, the rightmost four bytes of an IPv6 address (the rightmost two byte pairs) may be rewritten in the IPv4 notation. Converting the above example to mixed notation yields

E3D7::51F4:9BC8:192.168.100.32

Stolen from:
http://compnetworking.about.com/library/weekly/aa0 42400a.htm

I use several of those listed above and would like to add this one to the list. It covers a broad range of topics.

Islamists call the people of Israel and all countries that support Israel (esp. the U.S.) 'Zionists', referring I'm sure to Mt. Zion...

To be precise, they are referring to Zionism, a racist ideology very popular in Israel.

Based on the rest of the comments throughout this entire topic, I can only conclude that the average /. reader slept through their history classes.

To wit: yes, the Egyptian censorship is about Zion (in the movie) and Zionism. The fact that most people missed this implies they don't know what Zionism is.

Zionism refers to a Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and sought to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine.. To dismiss it as "a racist ideology very popular in Israel," as above, is to ignore the roots of the mideast conflict.

Put simply, Zionism was a movement based on the belief that as long as the Jews lived as ethnic minorities in other countries, they were going to be discriminated against ("discriminated" meaning "killed and robbed whenever public tension needed an outlet" - read up on the Pogroms sometime). The Dreyfus Affair convinced a reporter named Theodor Herzl that the only solution was for a Jewish homeland. He founded the Zionism movement, with the goal of creating a Jewish state. This movement slowly fought for progress over the next 50 years (see also the Balfour Declaration)

Fast-forward to 1948. After 6 million or so Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the survivors got serious about a homeland. With lots of leftover guns lying around from World War II, they founded Israel. In doing so, they resorted to terrorism, and displaced much of the non-Jewish palestinian population.

None of the neighboring countries wanted to absorb the Palestinians, and something like 6 wars have been fought since then. So, for the Egyptians, Zionism represents a massive local disruption which they've lost wars over.

So-called "Modern Zionism" is the "racist ideology" referred to above, which basically boils down to "Jewish Israel - love it or leave it." To focus on it and ignore over 100 years of history is short-sighted.

I think what walmart might do is lower their prices so much that local stores can't compete. I think this is called outsourcing?

The phrase you are looking for is predatory pricing and Walmart has been accused of it many times.

Outsourcing is when you hire an outside company to perform job functions that would normally be performed internally - such as payroll, legal, etc.

In November, 1971, a company called Intel publicly introduced the world's first single chip microprocessor, the Intel 4004 (U.S. Patent #3,821,715),

...Here

Remember the old "modem tax" myth that was curculating on the BBSs for year? Ah, here we are. No? Ah well...

Also mentioned is Postum, though it's not a glowing mention. I haven't tried this myself, but I will in the future. My own next personal favorite is Pero, which, while quite different from coffee, is fairly pleasing when mixed in the right proportions.

Most coffee substitutes seem to be mainly dandelion root, chickory (which we've started in our garden this year), or malted/roasted grains (mainly barley and wheat). We do plan on trying homemade versions of some of these -- good way to rid the lawn of dandelions!

To get my tea fix, I've turned to rooibos tea. The fermented "red" type is the best black tea substitute I've encountered (not that I've expended a lifetime in the pursuit of this, but still...). I haven't ordered the unfermented "green" variety yet, but I will eventually. Rooibos is still very new (in the mainstream, at least), and I can't locate pure versions of this stuff at our regional natural food chain, Wild Oats (seems to be down at the moment). You can even get flavored versions of this, such as Darjeeling and (my personal favorite) Earl Grey (served "hot", of course). And as a male in his thirties, I was interested to know that, due to it's ultra-high concentrations of antioxidants, rooibos is recommended often in the sci.med.prostate USENET hirearchy.

Of course, you can get zillions of herbal teas in any old store these days. Hell, I throw a teaspoon of dried rosemary leaves (try it -- you'll like it!) or fresh mint from the herb garden into the french press on occasion for tea.

While researching links for this post, I found this link, which is pretty good coffee substitute starter. You'd do just as well to google "coffe substitute".

• P.S. SCO's stock is going up like crazy today. Big volume too.

Step 1: Demand liberal-biased news reporting.
Step 2: Supply liberal-biased news reporting.
Step 3: Profit.

Conservative reaction: whine,whine,whine. So I propose that just as soon as the usual conservative moran's shut up about the myth of liberal media bias, liberals will shut up about the dominance of conservative funded television.

The thing that makes me saddest though is the whole 'Threat Level' stuff that is being pushed at the moment, with 'Elevated' being your current state. It's scarily reminiscent of the afraid mindset that it was in back during the cold war days... I was just watching a copy I have of the 'duck and cover' propaganda campaign that was out at the time... and it's scary, would have made me scared as a kid, and I can see the current campaign doing the same.

If you haven't seen it (Which you probably have, you see well versed with political movements etc.), you can download it from here

Trying to keep the threat of imminent attack at the forefronts of people's minds is a great way to have a populous who's thoughts are diverted from the more 'mundane' things of homelessness, unemployment, education etc. It makes me sad that the government is pushing this so hard.

Pardon my spelling mistakes etc... I have just had coffee, but I still stuff them up. :)

I wonder if George W Bush plans on attending?

This will be nice.

Literally, perhaps. This is ' nice ' for networks, so to speak, right?

C'mon, 'unpleasant incest case' is like 'disposable condom' -- it's redundant, and it makes you shudder thinking about the alternatives.

Bad example - the original condoms were washable and reusable.

You must have read some really bad history books then. The swastika has been around a lot longer that Hitler.

Yeah I remember that, there's some info on it here.

Incidentally, the swastika used to be (still is I guess) a symbol of strength and good luck. More info on that here.

Offtopic I guess, but interesting.

That decision is ludicrous. How about if I go and patent a machine with four wheels and an engine, never bother to test or use it and sue everybody for royalties. Why, oh why are we judged by a jury of our peers not smart enough to get out of jury duty? BTW I do answer the call when it comes [$15 a day woot!].

His statement is completely and totally incorrect.

FGCS-Selective Availability Removal

President Turns Off GPS Selective Availability

Yeah and we could finally make those Japanese imitation see-through skirts really work!

Maybe your old monitor can take you into space. (Here's About.com's take, a bit popsci.) I thought this was bogus until I saw This mouse flying in a lifter - including RealVideo.

Perhaps we have a workable alternative to rockets available. Rockets are a terrifically inefficient way to get, essentially, a 1 to 8 hour drive straight up. In order to do that we have to spit 100 times our mass out the back. That's a lot of commotion and expense and danger. If the tech shown here actually works, it might make the whole concept of rockets obsolete.

It seems this guy Townsend Brown patented what is now mostly called "ElectroKinetic Drive" back in the late 1950's. It was immediately ignored. But it seems to work quite well, even in a vacuum (I'm still a bit skeptical on this point - IMHO the vacuum test I saw pics of on this site was not sufficient.) Lift capability appears to be on the order of 1 gram per watt, perhaps better than that with good design.

At this point, there are almost 200 successful experimenters worldwide, flying lifters using the 'asymmetrical capacitor'. In Japan they have one over 5 meters wide, flying 15 meters in the air. (one of the photos also shows some cool sci-fi looking high voltage equipment below it.)

All of these devices so far have been powered by external high voltage sources, mostly from old PC monitors. I'm not a HW geek, but I figure if you can build a HV system that generates 15KV to 50KV, and enough continuous power to produce 2.5 or more watts per gram, you could build a completely self-sustained lifter.

Of course, I wanna be the first to do this, so I'm not gonna post it on Slashdot. No, really, I hope that lots of people start experimenting with this, and publish their results using a GPL-type approach to patents, so the major tech is bound up in open hardware licenses. This will prevent those who want to own this tech from patenting every nut and bolt and preventing us from building our own. For example, using attitude sensors and a crossover network to vary lift on different sides and maintain attitude and generate horizontal velocity.

Here and Here are some thrust calculations. The latter has a calculator to design your own. If you build one big enough for me, please give me a ride!

Also, if you follow this up, you'll find lots of interesting and downright spooky connections to UFO's, the Lockheed Stealth Blimp (what was that thing that floated over Phoenix in 1997?)

1. Afghanistan, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003
2. Bosnia, 1994, 1995
3. Cambodia, 1969-70
4. China, 1945-46
5. Congo (now Zaire), 1964
6. Cuba, 1959-1961 ("Bay of Pigs" invasion)
7. El Salvador, 1980s
8. Grenada, 1983
9. Guatemala, 1954, 1960, 1967-69
10. Indonesia, 1958
11. Iran, 1987
12. Iraq, 1991-2000, 2003 (The U.S. government used radioactive bombs in the first war against Iraq. See United States War Crimes Against Iraq for what appears to be an accurate history.)
13. Korea and China, 1950-53 (Korean War)
14. Kuwait, 1991
15. Laos, 1964-73
16. Lebanon, 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
17. Libya, 1986
18. Nicaragua, 1980s
19. Panama, 1989. The U.S. government called it "Operation Just Cause". The link is to a U.S. military web site.
20. Peru, 1965
21. Somalia, 1993
22. Sudan 1998. There are doubts that the pharmaceutical plant that was bombed was making weapons.
23. Vietnam, 1961-73 (An estimated 2,000,000 Vietnamese were killed.)
24. Yugoslavia, 1999

There are many sources for this information. For example, see this PBS web page: PBS: A Chronology of U.S. Military Interventions (PBS is the Public Broadcasting System in the U.S.) Also see From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan: A Century of U.S. Military Interventions [zmag.org] and The government of the United States is a consistent opponent of international law. [

My left arm and right arm are already taken. I don't have any more arms, you insensitive clod!

More correctly:

Excerpted from The Unusual History of MS-DOS

The "Microsoft Disk Operating System" or MS-DOS was based on QDOS, the "Quick and Dirty Operating System" written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products, for their prototype Intel 8086 based computer.

QDOS was based on Gary Kildall's CP/M, Paterson had bought a CP/M manual and used it as the basis to write his operating system in six weeks, QDOS was different enough from CP/M to be considered legal.

Microsoft bought the rights to QDOS for $50,000, keeping the IBM deal a secret from Seattle Computer Products.

In 1876, at the age of 29, Alexander Graham Bell invented his telephone.