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Anybody ever had an octopus stuck to their sensitive equipment?

I haven't tried it myself, but this young lady seems to be enjoying it.
http://www.answers.com/topic/the-dream-of-the-fish erman-s-wife

Sorry; what I meant by that statement was that usually when people say to have faith in God, they don't mean to believe he exists; they mean to trust in Him (i.e. 1st definition at http://www.answers.com/faith&r=67). Surely, if someone has faith in God, he also believe God exists.

I think we are discussing different definitions of the word "faith"; yours sounds more like definition #2, which very well could be blind. However, the first sense of the word is built on observation.

I only wanted to address this idea of faith, since I seem to see it rather often. I think this viewpoint is wrong, and to teach someone to have blind faith is to teach him to have no faith, since faith is built on experience (e.g. having faith your friend will come through because he always has).

And yet that doesn't make it any less ridiculous. Look, the original emoticons were around from the beginning of USENET and have been co-opted in all sorts of garish ways. They have become ubiquitous and you can't patent something that is such. This just points out how stupid the patent system has become. Isn't it possible people were texting smileys to each other before Cingular even existed?

"Actually, Microsoft is already licensing the Windows source code. However the significance of the new event is, they will not be choosing the licensor (at least not as much as before)."

Just so you know, Microsoft is ALWAYS the licensor as they own the product that is being licensed. They would choose the licensee, or one to whom the license is granted.

http://www.answers.com/licensee&r=67
http://www.answers.com/topic/licensor-1?method=6

"Actually, Microsoft is already licensing the Windows source code. However the significance of the new event is, they will not be choosing the licensor (at least not as much as before)."

Just so you know, Microsoft is ALWAYS the licensor as they own the product that is being licensed. They would choose the licensee, or one to whom the license is granted.

http://www.answers.com/licensee&r=67
http://www.answers.com/topic/licensor-1?method=6

often
adverb
In an expected or customary manner; for the most part: commonly, consistently, customarily, frequently, generally, habitually, naturally, normally, regularly, routinely, typically, usually. Idioms: as usual, per usual. See big/small/amount, usual/unusual.

RPG Maker for the PS2.

Correct, but token. Are there even a dozen significantly moddable titles for North American video game consoles? If so, what are they? If so, and if you aren't willing to do what you might perceive as my research for me, then what should I do to discover moddable titles for North American video game consoles? All Google seems to give me is information about tools of borderline legality for playing backups and imports.

IANAL, but...

A "brand new" 60-gigabyte video iPod loaded with 10,000 songs plus more than 50 movies and TV shows, including the three Matrix movies and the first four seasons of 24. In the listing, the seller says the buyer "must already own all of the music and DVDs. ... If not, they must delete them as soon as they receive it in the mail." The item sold for $551 on Monday.

Now, just like with laptops that come loaded with $10,000 worth of software "for demo purposes only, if you don't own the license, you must remove it upon receipt," this is copyright violation, and, by definition, piracy.

The iPod sold for $152 more than an equivalent 'blank' iPod. Therefore, someone was willing to pay a premium for the added content. Therefore, the seller made money off of the content that they put on the iPod, in violation of the copyright holder's rights. That meets the FBI's definition of piracy.

Now, if the seller instead says "GIve me a list of your TV shows/movies/music, and I'll pre-load your iPod with that for you," it's a lot more gray. That is at least nominally only including content for which the recipeint has the legal rights to use. But selling it with stuff preloaded, and saying "you must remove..." is shipping it with infringing material, then telling the recipient to do something active to become legal.

I'm not one who believes 'IP theft' is anywhere near the same as physical property theft; but this is roughly the analog of selling someone a car with a stolen stereo in it, and saying "Upon receipt of this car, you must turn the stereo in to the proper authorities." You're still selling stolen merchandise. (I think this is the first time I've found an 'IP theft vs. propterty theft' analogy appropriate!)

I have no problem with people who want to commit 'civil disobedience' by breaking copyright for personal use. But the moment you have monetary gain, it's no longer okay. That's not 'fair use' any more.

If you include the source material (CDs, DVDs, or Apple account media was purchased with from the iTunes Music Store,) then I would consider it 100% legal.

The summary is fairly misleading. (gasp!) All the article says is that geniuses who accomplish great things tend to work closely with other geniuses. The summary implies that you are only a genius if you accomplish great things. There are probably a fair number of geniuses in the world that spend too much time on the small stuff to do great things.

Big number fallacy; a nuke is big, sure, but let's be amazingly optimistic and assume it can completely physically clear a 10-mile radius of space junk, while not adding anything itself.

The average radius of the Earth is 3,959 miles, call it 4000. The definition of LEO orbit is from 400 to 1600 miles above the Earth. Sphere volume (close enough) is defined as (4/3)*pi*r^3.

To cover LEO, we need to cover a volume of (4.0/3)*pi*((4000+1600)**3 - (4000+400)**3) miles, which is 378,000,000,000 cubic miles (378 American billion). Our incredible optimistic nuke can "clean" (4.0/3)*pi*(10 **3) cubic miles, or 4,200 cubic miles. Dividing the (unrounded) numbers reveals that we need to set off 90,449,062 (~90 million) miracle nukes to clean the orbit.

(If you start python and type as your first line "from math import pi", those expressions will slide right into Python so you can verify them. Insignificant figures have been trimmed for presentation.)

And it's even harder than that, since the objects are moving at different speeds, and it's quite easy for objects to slip between the cracks if we don't light up the entire orbit at once.

Clearly, this is absurd, because we don't even have that many pieces of space trash in orbit, by many orders of magnitude. Because of the difference, we don't even need to do any sort of statistics to safely conclude that there are no "concentrations" of space trash that could be nuked, and we are in fact going to have to address the situation one piece of trash at a time.

However 'lier' does exist ("the one who lies down"):

http://www.answers.com/lier

Yeah, but "factette" sounds silly ... (source)

just FYI, this has nothing to do with any change in words.

Look up the word analyze - the dictionary says: [Perhaps from French analyser, from analyse, analysis, from Greek analusis. See analysis.]

But the problem with analize is that 'ize' is a suffix that can be added to many adjectives to form verbs that mean 'to cause', 'to become'. So 'digitize' means to make it digital, 'analize' then means to make it anal.

Q: What do you call a hundred dirty hippies in the back of a cattle truck?

A: A deadhead load.

From Answers.com: The current United States Code, Title 10 (Armed forces), section 311 (Militia: Composition and Classes), paragraph (a) states "The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard."

I am an able-bodied male between 17 and 45 and I am a citizen of the United States. According to U.S. Code, I am a member of the militia. Under the 2nd Amendment's most plain interpretation, that since this militia is necessary to secure our freedom, Congress can't make a law preventing my owning a firearm. That's MY take on it.

link

Exactly! And therein lies the joke. This is a pattern of behavior that has been repeated over and over: Big Oil, Railroad Barons, Shipping Magnates, etc. Some group inside an industry decides that they control access to a resource and they try to get every penny from it they can. Eventually they bang their head against the law, because some one comes along and says "Hey, wait a minute, I'm already paying for that!" It's not blackmail, but extortion.

Maybe it could be effecting avolution...

Okay, no decent uses of "avolution. How about...

Flying Spaghetting Monster effects avolition ( http://www.answers.com/topic/avolition?method=8 ) -- I'd pray to FSM everyday, but I just don't feel like it.

Flying Spaghetting Monster effects avolation ( http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=Avola tion ) -- hence "Flying".

How do you know when the FSM is done? He sticks to the ceiling! Hah!

Now, all we need to do is prove it's affecting evolution, and we've proven that His Noodleyness exists.

Or is that effecting evolution?

By the touch of His Noodly Appendage, this sentence could potentially use either affecting or effecting correctly! It truly is a miracle!

Grammar and Spelling Nazis tremble in the face of His Noodily Might!

Now, all we need to do is prove it's affecting evolution, and we've proven that His Noodleyness exists.

Or is that effecting evolution?

By the touch of His Noodly Appendage, this sentence could potentially use either affecting or effecting correctly! It truly is a miracle!

Grammar and Spelling Nazis tremble in the face of His Noodily Might!

here

I guess that from now on I need to be MUCH more formal in my postings than those who reply.

Yes, ok, we pump warm water back into the lake that has been shown to not have a measurable effect on the environment. Satisfied?

I meant, we're not pumping boiling hot water into the lake that causes enviromental damage, like cooling water from industrial uses.

Amen, brother.

A deficiency in mathematics skills is "innumeracy," a counterpart to "illiteracy." The scary part is that people nurture innumeracy as if it were a thing to be proud of. Imagine if people took innumeracy as seriously as they did illiteracy. The literacy rate is well trumpeted as a measure of a society's success. Imagine if the numeracy rate were as widely reported and remarked upon.

Uh? "B" used to stand for and sometimes still stands for *bel*.

http://www.answers.com/topic/bel

If you are going to be a stickler, then you should realize that "B" used to stand for and sometimes still stands for bit. Granted it is much more common nowadays to mean byte. But, that wasn't always the case. If you are going to get technical, it may be better to use OCTET.

http://www.answers.com/topic/byte

You are indeed correct that biogenic means made by living things. Thanks for increasing my word power, AC.

Happily, my point still stands, even with the error. Even more happily, I'm not a fucking moron (at least by the parent's criterion.)

Oh no, I got you beat. You think putting something small in something larger than the small thing and not altering the mechanism (in this case iPod) you want to have continue working is easy? Check out what you can do with an iPod, a doctorate in mechanical engineering, and some balls. Behold my amazing, infinitely customizable iPod retrofitting job!

Perhaps it is that Wikipedia is the information source they have (had) access to that was least influenced by the Chinese government, and must therefore be infinitely more reliable than any other source?

Some folks over there might be able to use http://answers.com/ to circumvent the direct censorship of Wikipedia; are there other sites that repackage Wikipedia's data?

Can't they use Answers.com or some other site to get the same Wikipedia goodness through different channels?

You had a floppy drive? We had to tape together punch cards and feed them into our player piano. And we liked it!

Please see http://www.answers.com/irregardless&r=67

I have a hard time believing that Bill Gates actually scored a 1590 on his SATs. I've seen this repeated a lot of places, but I've seen a lot of things about him repeated a lot of places. Answers.com says

Bill Gates is also thought by the media to be obsessed with his IQ, and IQ in general. His IQ is commonly believed to be around 160; however, many people estimate that had he sat the SAT exam, his result would only translate to a more modest IQ score of around 120-140.

a regular dictionary isn't always a reliable source when you're defining technical terms.

Eleven thousand? Is that a typo? Eve if you're off by an entire order of magnitude - which I have to assume you are as even UPN's worst show commands better than $20k - The Simpsons commanded more than double that in 1999.

Oh and: NFL, NBA and NHL on their own make massive more cash aired per game than any of the toon shows make during an entire season.

The last Superbowl - pretty much the most expensive TV time there is - was went for $2.4 million. That's about 8-9x more than an average Simpsons episode, so that claim is utter crap.

The thing is, no one is saying sports doesn't draw in more viewers and isn't more "important". We're just saying be honest about it!. Football games always run long. We know this. So stop lying to us and making us guess when it shows will be on. Schedule an extra hour or whatever, and throw some sports filler in. There's always sports filler available, pre-game shows talk about nothing at all for hours on end.

I direct you here as you obviously can't cope with google on your own.http://www.answers.com/learnt&r=67

The actual definition of literally, though, does allow for the OP's usage:

http://www.answers.com/literally&r=67
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/literally

But actually, it doesn't:

http://www.answers.com/literally&r=67
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/literally

Now that i've let everyone give me a hard time:

http://www.answers.com/literally&r=67
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/literally

George Gallup said "I could prove God statistically". I think that sums up the reasons for belief in superbeings rather nicely.

The fact is that, when unlikely events continue to happen against their probability -- not just once, not twice, but over a person's entire lifetime -- that influences people to believe that some power is working against the natural flow of events.

When those things lead to much better outcomes than one might suppose the alternatives would have been (I might not have met my wife, I might not have ever ______), one begins to believe that the Power is a beneficent one, holding a plan for their lives and wishing the best for them.

What people here tend not to realize is that, when you tell someone that they believe in a work of fiction, you're telling them to ignore a lifetime's accumulated "evidence" to the contrary. I quote "evidence" here not to trivialize it, but to mean that it's not evidence in the experimental sense, but in the anecdotal sense, which is still extremely powerful - even if it doesn't live up to "The Scientific Method".

And perhaps that's where the rub is. There's no control group for an individual's life. What muddies the water even more is that some atheists thrive while some Christians suffer. And, even more, it's difficult to tell what was "best" for each person. For some people, "best" is a little house in suburbia with their wife and kids. For others, extreme wealth, others, a life of slavery or prison. Saint Paul "endured hardships on [his] journeys: he was imprisoned in Philippi, was lashed and stoned several times and almost murdered once", but he believed it all to be in God's plan for his life.

The point is that people have their own perceptions of God in their lives, and simply claiming that it's unprovable doesn't make it any less real to them. For them, it's not only NOT 'unprovable', is's already proven through a lifetime of experiences.

If you're not afraid to challenge your "unprovable" assertion, then do an experiement. Ask God to do something completely unpredictable and that wouldn't harm anyone else, and then wait and honestly observe. You just might be surprised.

Humans are natural, but the things they create, or do to existing things are not always considered that way. That is the difference between natural, and man-made.

The process of in-vitro fertilization is an unnatural one, but the resulting child development and growth, is natural.

It's not that humans exist outside of nature, it's the fact that what they do sometimes does.

Natural:
"Characterized by spontaneity and freedom from artificiality, affectation, or inhibitions."
"Not altered, treated, or disguised"
- Natural

"The only agreement I made was the exchange of pieces of paper for a plastic, aluminum, paper, and laquer disc with indentations on it that can be read by a special device in a means to produce music. To state that I also agreed to copyright simply because it is forced upon me, outside of any written contract or sign of free will, is ludicrous."

You know we keep going round and round on slashdot over the same topics. You may not get tired of it, but I do. So I want you to go look up "implicit contract"*.

*The GPL is a good example of an implicit contract.

[WalMart] ... sells toned down (i.e. no more explicative lyrics ...) versions of CDs and Movies.

I knew it! WalMart wants to confuse its consumers by selling CDs and movies with no explanations!!

Hint: explicative = serving to explain.

I don't know why everyone has such a problem with multiple meanings of the word 'free', yet they don't confuse the ten! different meanings of the word 'shit'

I cannot confirm that. Wikipedia is slow for logged-in users, because the squid proxies cannot be used, but for anonymous users it is faster than answers.com, at least from here, right now. Try for yourself: log out of Wikipedia and click on

• Methylcellulose
• Methylcellulose

Use answers.com, so's geocities.com and (sometimes) blogspot.com. Empornium.us works.

Really? http://www.answers.com/topic/english-language

or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here.

Unless caused by accident or violence, death is caused by disease. We used to 'wear out' around age 37 200 years ago, on average, now, we average much longer greatly due to our fighting & sometimes defeating various diseases.

The ideal of regenerative medicine is that we could cure diseases caused by environmental stress, as well as ones caused by predators, parasites, and accidents.

I feel compelled to point out (way after the fact and purely for the purpose of defending my vocabulary to solidarity) that the various definitions of eloquence all suggest that it can apply to written as well as verbal communications:

http://www.answers.com/eloquence

As to the awkwardness of my post, your mother was a hamster and your father just bought a copy of Windows ME.

I've never seen a pint or pilsner glass that is graduated from top to bottom.

it is not possible for anything to be in geosynchronous orbit over the US.