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Seriously, the Japanese are nice people and all, but they really insist on dividing the world into "Japan" and "everybody else" in a way that's not healthy at all.

What a strange way to think of life. Is life all about being "productive"?

I've just started learning German. Having access to the net has certainly helped with that, if not just to read reviews of training materials and find local people who speak the language that I can interact with. I'm going to be more productive in my learning as a result.

I'd have thought the gadgets are supposed to make our lives better, however you wish to define better.

Productive.. product. When you're productive you're efficient at producing something. It's not a strange way of extrapolating the word at all, but exactly what the word means.

This should help you complete your list. Note that JTS actually purchased the remains of Atari, then sold them to Hasbro before going bankrupt. (Did JTS stand for Jack Tramiel Systems by any chance?)

I guess I'm nitpicking a funny comment, but prions are made of amino acids (think protein) and not nucleic acid as is the case here with DNA.

why not use Konqueror to... and rip mp3's

More examples of apostrophe abuse at The Apostrophe Protection Society.

Potpourri is properly a mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant material, used to provide a gentle natural scent in houses. It is usually placed in a decorative wooden bowl.

...

Most modern potpourri however consists of any decoratively shaped dried plant material (not specifically from scented plants) with strong synthetic perfumes (and also often strongly coloured dyes) added, with the scent bearing no relation to the plant material used.

1. A combination of incongruous things: "In the minds of many, the real and imagined causes for Russia's defeats quickly mingled into a potpourri of terrible fears" (W. Bruce Lincoln).
   
2. A miscellaneous anthology or collection: a potpourri of short stories and humorous verse.
   
3. A mixture of dried flower petals and spices used to scent the air.

failed capitalism doesn't kill millions of people

O rly?

True in terms of the number of people, okay.

Since 1996, though, video games have collected more revenue than is made on ticket sales for movie theaters. However, movies sell a lot of ancillary stuff like TV broadcast rights and DVDs, and as an industry the movie studios still take in more money.

Basically this story's one more drip in the "games as an offshoot of movie sales" bucket. I guess my reaction is that the tie-in games are a pretty serious source of revenue that's underdeveloped. Mediocre shooters that get released along with movies aren't the blockbusters in the game world. You need to do more than drop some new textures into a Quake engine to make a decent game. Hey, my kids loved "The Incredibles" but haven't said anything about the games.

I'm sincerely sorry if I offended you. I mean it. I tend to get all rustic when I talk about where I live (I'm originally from Vancouver), and meant "coon" as meaning a "raccoon" rather than a perjorative for a black person. The expression "a coon's age" is an idiom that refers to the mistaken belief that raccoons live for a long time, and didn't even know that "coon" was a derrogatory term. Again, very sorry if I offended you; it was not intentional.

Well you learnt wrong.

Interesting comments. I too tend to believe that there's more to life than simple biomechanics, but IMO the fuss isn't about Evolution vs Intelligent Design or Science vs Religion.

Many (and I'd hope most) of the scientists, teachers and professors who object to including Intelligent Design in science classes aren't objecting because they think Evolution is 100% correct, or because they think Intelligent Design is wrong. They object because Intelligent Design isn't science, by definition of the term "science".

There are two purposes to any science class, in my opinion: one is to teach students what are currently believed to be the most accurate scientific theories, but the other (and perhaps more important) purpose is to teach the scientific method: the method by which those theories are developed.

The main components of the scientific method are observation and experimentation. That is, you observe something, formulate a hypothesis, develop experiments that you can run to test the hypothesis, run the experiment and then see how well your hypothesis holds up. Typically, you'd find that something wasn't exactly the way you thought it would be, so you'd tweak your hypothesis, develop new experiments, and repeat the process ad infinitum. Through this process, you'd inch closer and closer to "the truth".

With Intelligent Design, however, there aren't any experiments that you can run to reliably test the hypothesis. If God is omnipotent, God can alter the outcome of any experiment. Thus, you can never prove or disprove the theory (which, is the whole point of Faith, as I understand it). While that doesn't mean Intelligent Design is wrong, it means it doesn't fit the definition of Science.

Now, many people (including Senator John McCain) wonder why teachers and scientists are so opposed to including Intelligent Design in the curriculum. The problem is that doing so would be an inherent contradition and, as a result, teachers would not be teaching the scientific method, which is the whole point of the class. It would be like teaching that beef is a vegetable in a botany class.

That's not to say that the current scientific theories are all correct. In fact, we know that they're not. One hope of teaching science is to develop the next generation of scientists who can test and refine or change the current theories (or develop new ones) and bring us closer to "the truth". If we teach students that it's acceptible to ignore the results of scientific method in favor of theories that are untestable, then we are crippling our own progress and will slip further and further behind Germany and Japan (for example) in fields like Engineering. Would you want to fly in an airplane whose design was based on theories that are not testable and which contradict what we believe to be the laws of physics? Or, more succinctly, would you fly in an airplane whose design was based on faith?

This is not to say that we should never discuss Intelligent Design at all. I've heard many scientists say that it is a valid topic, just not for a science class (or, at least, not a high-school level science class, in my opinion).

Interestingly, many scientists feel the same way about String Theory as well (which is why this isn't about Science vs Religion). String theory is an attempt to rectify some of the inconsistencies between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The problem is that there's no observable tests for String Theory. So, while it might be true, there's no way we could test it to find out.

At one point (and it may still be the case) there were five versions of string theory, all of which seemed equally valid. But some of those theories contradicted the others. Since none of them could be tested, how would you know which one is correct? Similarly

If you think this is funny, wait till you see the definition of the 'fundament'.

Someone thinks it is:

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

Following the definition of "related" are variants:
relatedly, adv.
relatedness, n.

Dr. Kevorkian never took himself to a mental hospital. Not to say that he wasn't pretty messed up, though. And I'm sure the average person doesn't know the symptoms of HIV well enough to know whether or not he/she has it.

Just because your computer isn't slowing down or anything doesn't mean you don't have a virus. I had a computer once with a boot-sector virus, and I ran it for a year or so without knowing until one day I tried to transfer some files on a floppy disk from that PC to another, and the other PC said the floppy had the virus on it.

Funny thing is that the infected PC had an antivirus program made by - guess who! - Microsoft, called MS Anti-Virus for Windows.

Funnily? I can not remember going over this word in English class.
So the only words that you think exist are the ones you were taught in class? Do you realise that there are a lot more words in English than can be taught in any class?
It's one thing to complain when people mangle existing words, and use them in contexts where they don't apply, or make up sentences with weird grammar or punctuation, because then it gets (slightly) confusing. It makes no sense to object to a perfectly constructed word that is consistent with the way English words are usually formed, and has no chance of misinterpretation whatsoever.
Oh, and FWIW, funnily is a word.

The fact is, if you post something on /., you are now ineligible for protection from ridicule on your improper use of homophones. Instead of "lack their of" the parent comment should say "lack thereof." Take some time to check out the definitions of thereof, their, and of.

The fact is, if you post something on /., you are now ineligible for protection from ridicule on your improper use of homophones. Instead of "lack their of" the parent comment should say "lack thereof." Take some time to check out the definitions of thereof, their, and of.

The fact is, if you post something on /., you are now ineligible for protection from ridicule on your improper use of homophones. Instead of "lack their of" the parent comment should say "lack thereof." Take some time to check out the definitions of thereof, their, and of.

Apparently the emails weren't as private as they ought to have been. Actually, my guess is he sent something to college-democrats-l@kansas.edu or its equivalent (college democrats? I don't know what sort of organization he targeted it at- I'll bet you it wasn't college republicans, though).

... Creationism ... is a religious belief... Creationism, version 2, relabeled "Intelligent Design" is put forth (to the best of my understanding) as a *scientific theory*.

http://www.answers.com/topic/accept 5b: To agree to take (a duty or responsibility). Fucknuckle.

http://www.answers.com/topic/christ-church-cathedr al-montreal

I remember seeing this project going up, quite an impressive civil engineering job (photos show the entire church up on piles while they worked underneath). Naturally, they tied-it into the pre-existing underground city.

This project is related to speeding 18 wheelers on Highway 401, currently the busiest highway in North America. It is not intended for use with passenger vehicles, or cars. CNN is spinning the story a bit into some obtrusive civilian control technlogy.

Really we just want transports to max out at 110kph, still 10 over the limit.

In this case, the US has done a pretty good job of upholding their rhetoric regarding freedom of expression and the internet.

Napster getting shut down. 2600 not permitted to link to certain things. Scientology forcing Google to remove websites from its index. Scientology forcing Slashdot to remove comments. Pressuring ICANN to say no to .xxx twice.

The only difference in freedom of expression between the USA and, say, Germany, is that the Germans ban hate speech, and the USA bans speech that people with lots of money don't like.

Quit it with the "freedom of expression" cheerleading. It's not true, and every time an American claims that they are better than the rest of the world in this respect, it sounds like you are all a bunch of brainwashed morons.

Rhetoric: Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous

Yup, sounds about right.

Doing the 10 letter word problem is totally simple : add "nonesevent" to the dictionary.

http://www.answers.com/nonesevent
Nonesevent (nôns-E-vent') pronunciation
noun
1. This is the word that Ted Clarke, 79, a British engineer invented to force his solution to the 10 letter acrostic puzzle to succeed.

I may be wrong, I've been unable to verify this absolutely, but I thought the whole point of the CIA World Fact Book was that it's prepared using the U.S.'s own data..?

Four words: Chief Knock-a-Homer.

No, the record comnpanies want to dictate to you how you use YOUR PROPERTY. See the right of first sale doctrine. Here is a good summary:

http://www.answers.com/topic/first-sale-doctrine

When you buy a copyrighted work, you own it; you do not license it. Do what you want. Rip it if you please. Reverse engineer to your heart's content. Just don't infringe copyright by distributing copies of it.

(n.) Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.

Sorry, but I don't know which hysteria you mean, and where you read that I say that "they" are interchangeable.

You wrote "the ij is originally a y with an umlaut" which is not true. Not because the dots on the U+00FF aren't an umlaut (which they aren't, functionally they aren't a diaeresis either), but because the origin of the Dutch letter 'ij' is otherwise.

The U+00FF Y DIAERESIS (dotted-y) is used in French names and in some other languages, but is erroneous for Dutch. The dots on the dotted-y are not an umlaut (like in Mann/Männer, compare also mouse/mice) or a functional diaeresis (like in coöperate, naïve, preëmptive, reënact, Chloë, Zoë), they are diacritical marks to show that it is a different letter. More on Umlaut

In old Dutch handwriting (about 16th century) you will find the mix I mentioned, such as a shape that looks a bit like the U+00FF dotted-y, but it shouldn't be represented by that.

In contemporary handwriting you often see a shape like a lowly connected i-j, with a dot on top of each of the two verticals. Just like a handwritten 'g' can look like an 'a' with a descender, a handwritten 'ij' can look like a 'u' with a descender (with or without dots).

The Russian character that when printed looks like 'bI' is often written with a shape like 'y'. That also doesn't mean that they are interchangeable.

The problem is that the fetus can't form intent to trespass

Lack of intent to trespass may be the pro-lifers' ace in the hole under this theory. But then copyright has also been likened to trespass, and look at what happened to George Harrison without intent.

and (assuming consent) the mother is partly responsible for the fetus being there.

Assuming consent successfully rationalizes the pro-choice view in cases where the mother was sexually assaulted. Hmm...

Also, the argument implicitly supposes that the fetus is a separate entity from the woman.

The fetus has separate DNA from the mother and a separate blood supply, making it a separate parasitic organism. And even if this isn't sufficient to form a separate entity, if the unborn child is considered a body part, then the pro-choicers have already won.

ObTopic: The disparate laws commonly called "intellectual property" are an abortion in sense 5.

I realize that this is probably COMPLETELY unrealistic, but I'm curious for an organo-chem geek oppinion on something. What would be the plausibility of cooking up either of the following two products:

Ac-Nle-cyclo[Asp-His-D-Phe-Arg-Trp-Lys]-NH2
or
Ac-Nle-cyclo[Asp-His-D-Phe-Arg-Trp-Lys]-OH

The common names are Melanotan II and PT-141. They just so happen to be the first known honest-to-god aphrodisiacs (nasal-spray administered). Chuckle.

Yeah yeah, I'm no organo-chem geek, but I do know a complex amino chain - a cyclo to boot - is seriously the sort of monster you want to harvest from a bioculture, but I just had to ask anyway :) I fully expect the answer to be "No way in hell".

If you want to see the molecuar diagram or read other general info you can see it here.

-

> Hinduism is a body of religious and philosophical beliefs, as well as a family of cultural practices, but that is not the same as a society.

From the definition of society [1]:
n. A group of humans broadly distinguished from other groups by mutual interests, participation in characteristic relationships, shared institutions, and a common culture.

As you admit, Hinduism, is a family of cultural practices, beliefs etc. By the definition of society, a group of people who observe this would be considered one. Such a group has existed continuously since 2500 BC. If you consider Vedic incluences, you can trace it back to 5000 BC [2].

Ofcourse, if you define society as something that gets wiped out every time an aggressor force conquers it, then nothing survives long; but even so one would argue that even if a "society" is conquered, there is a lot of cross pollination and the aggressor is incorporated into the old society and eventually subsumes it. Indian society, to this day, is a mixture of vedic teachings, muslim influences, British practises -- but the important thing to note is that the influence of the Vedas has been non-trivial, and contiguous for 5000 years even after numerous invasions.

> I think it's silly to say that it's the same society as existed in the ancient Indus Valley

Indeed. It is not the same society in that it is not the same "group of people" due to human mortality. But it is the same society in that it has been groups of people who (largely) share the same beliefs, culture, mutual interest etc over 5 millenia; and while people get killed off, there has been a contiguous overlap of people who believe in this culture.

> After all, with the preponderance of sects, cults, philosophical schools, etc, it would be hard to define by anything other than 'family resemblance'.

If 'family resemblance' is what is used to define a society, then nothing lasts longer than 3-4 generations. But the moment you boraden the definition to anything that evolves (culture, beliefs), the longevity increases to 5000 years and more.

Thats not to say that all society's last 5000 years under this lax definition. Mayans disappeared. The period of contiguous sharing of their beliefs is bounded by 2000 years or so. The group of people believing in Christianity started about 2000 years ago, and are still around. Pharoes and the whole bunch disappeared, and few, if any, believe in that school of thought these days. So including 'beliefs that evolve' in defining society does not trivialize the concept of longevitiy of a society.

Society, by the definition in [1], and by most non-mortality based definitions can last for several millenia, and the Hindu/Vedic civillization that started back in the Indus Valley is a testament to that.

[1] http://www.answers.com/society&r=67
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_civilization

Perception is reality. Which is why two people can look at the same facts and come to opposite conclusions.

Not by any conventional definition of reality. What is real doesn't change depending on perception. Reality by definition is objective, not subjective.

I've noticed pseudoscience types and religious people use "reality" as a synonym for "belief". That's not the accepted definition for reality, and pretty much anything can be considered "real" by that definition, which makes it useless. Don't use "reality" as a synonym for "belief".

Change the perception, change the reality.

No, change the perception, change the belief. Change the perception, change the conclusion. You cannot change reality by perceiving it a different way.

http://www.answers.com/topic/bay-area-rapid-transi t In 2004 Bart was named the best transportation system in America. It is now printed on the side of every BART car. BART is pretty damn good, I moved to LA and miss it all the time, just you wait till you move away and have to deal with crappy public transportation systems. Bart goes to many places and covers a wide area, in SF it stops frequently and goes to many major destinations making it easy to use.

Errp. Wrong answer.

Great way to debate.

We are killing the oceans as we speak. We are depleting them of biodiversity (reducing nutrient density) and poisoning them with industrial waste.

This is irrelevant to the argument. We are killing some species (such as via overfishing), and reducing some biodiversity. However generally, we are having no negative impact at all on nutrient density - if anything we are increasing it due to run-off and nitrogen-based fertilisers. But even then, this is of minor significance compared with natural nutrient supplies.

Can you give a citation for that figure. I can believe double, but not an order of magnitude more. I am happy to be proved wrong, but would need scientfic data to back it up.

Sure. Obviously, the exact amount depends on the year, but typical annual CO2 production by volcanic and similar activity (including natural fires) is of the order of several hundred million tons. Human activity currently produces billions of tons.
(http://www.answers.com/topic/carbon-dioxide)

http://opera.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=j 83qissb56fa?method=4&dsid=502&deid=948846596&gwp=8 &curtab=502_1&sbid=lc02b

NB: UNDERHANDED == SNEAKY!!!

iTunes is a player. On windows players can use any installed codec (when called through the API). Realistically iTunes should only install the codecs and leave the rest of QT as an option. Trojan does apply in the classical sense in so much as it hijacks all your media associations without asking. The Benefit? How about if the "free" QT didn't have the infuriating "wanna go Pro" popup nagg-ware? Of course that doesn't count coz it's apple and you're a fanboi.

The only reason I can see for "breaking download records" is the RDF. You can't attribute a DL of iTunes as a QT DL if you have no choice in the matter. Wait OK, _you_ can, you're a fanboi. Remember MOVs on windows look like tripe - but look sweet on a mac. The only people who I have seen install QuickTime on windows, on purpose, were mac users who "needed" it.

There is no such thing as Natural Rights.

If society were to crumble, and humankind were to revert to the savages we naturally would be without our artifical society, your only 'right' would be to defend whatever you felt you wanted with your life. Even it it wasn't really 'yours'.

Not only could one 'naturally' FORCE you into slavery, one could naturally decide to kill you, with or without your permission.

'Naturally', if any life form decided that you looked tasty, it would eat you -- if it could. Similarly, if said life form could make you gather food FOR it, with or against your will, it would make sense for the life form to do so. Naturally.

To argue that there is such BS as 'natural' rights is to defeat your own purpose. Rights must be fought for, and you must fight to keep them. To pretend that rights are natural, gifts from some mighty Entity... such pretension is a trap which will help those who wish to take advantage of you to do so.

Finally: there is no such word as 'Irregardless' -- http://opera.answers.com/Irregardless

From answers.com citing the American Heritage Dictionary,
the etymology of panspermia:
Greek panspermia;, mixture of all seeds : pan-, pan- + sperma, seed
... no hint of interplanetary relations by the root words.

No, Venereal Mounds.

Launching massive spacecraft is quite feasable with the Orion drive. While the usual objection is the fallout from the nuclear explosions, this pales in comparison with a large asteroid hit. Plus, fallout can be limited and launched in a less sensitive area.

coercive monopoly:
a type of monopoly which arises and whose existence is maintained as the result of any sort of activity that violates the principle of a free market and is therefore insulated from competitive forces that would otherwise be a potential threat to its superior status.

The word "bug" did exist. They wrote that there as a *JOKE*.

I don't think anybody's claimed that the word "bug" didn't exist before computers. People have been "working the bugs out" for probably a hundred years or more. You could reasonably claim that was the first use of the term "computer bug" possibly, but adding the word "computer" doesn't change the word "bug."

From answers.com:

http://www.answers.com/bug&r=67

A persistent error in software or hardware. If the bug is in software, it can be corrected by changing the program. If the bug is in hardware, new circuits have to be designed.

Although the derivation of bug is generally attributed to the moth that was found squashed between the points of an electromechanical relay in a computer in the 1940s, the term goes back to the 1800s to refer to flaws in mechanical systems. See buggy, bug fix, software bug, broken and Web bug. Contrast with glitch.

A Note from the Author
On October 19, 1992, I found my first "real bug." When I fired up my laser printer, it printed blotchy pages. Upon inspection, I found a bug lying belly up in the trough below the corona wire. The printer worked fine after removing it!

Almost perfect. There is a marked difference: if Apple had Microsoft's position, there would be no Gates Foundation equivalent; you would _have_ to get your hardware from iSteve at substantially more than you do now, and you can bet TheChosenOS(TM) would be more expensive too. As such Linux would be further along, because it would have had to be. Can you imagine what iSteve's ego would be like if you couldn't slap him down with "only ignorant people like your FisherPrice toys"? Probably like Ol Larry d'Oracle but with ego and turtle neck.

The gravitational waves! They're all in your mind!

Heh. You're a good sport. Check out the dictionary. I hear it'll explain my previous post... :)

Astute my A$$, NASA had a project considering rail guns on the moon for launching
material into space, and possibly back to earth .

It is always easier to say it can't be done, than to support the harder mission
of trying to do it .

Lots of ppl like to line up as the naysayers over and over .

http://www.answers.com/topic/mass-driver

I swear to god this place has become the home of ppl that can't even do a simple
damn 'google search' on something before spouting of some egotistical rhetoric, and some
pocket monkey friend chimes in with agreement .

Ex-MislTech

When was the last time you actually heard anyone use that term, though? I don't see what makes it so much more riot-worthy than any of the other phrases in this list.

(I'm half Irish, and proud of it, BTW.)

Well then I assume you support bloggers having to conform to all rules and laws that cover journalists, since you've just declared their material to be a publication.

Non sequitur. Is there some mental illness going around that twists the meaning of day-to-day words in peoples heads or something?

Publication:

3. Communication of information to the public.

Are you seriously arguing that bloggers do not communicate information to the public?

If you want blogs to count as credible, veritable nonfiction in published form

And where did I argue that? I said that if the moron complaining about the word "article" wants to question their credibility he should actually question their credibility instead of mealy-mouthed whining about the word "article". I did not say that bloggers should automatically be considered credible. I made no comment either way on the matter.

Might I suggest reading these? Reading comprehension is an important skill that people should have developed a long time before having an Internet account.

nonfictional prose forming an independent part of a publication

Is it nonfictional? Check. Is it prose? Check. Is it an independent part of a publication? Check.

What, exactly, is your complaint? If it's that this is being treated seriously when it shouldn't, then say that instead of spouting nonsense about how this isn't an article, when it clearly is.