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> As an aside: gawd, I hate their use of "patriot" that way, does anybody
> know the etymology of the word "patriot" with respect to this legislation?
> Whose idea was it to use "patriot" and why? It seems like the worst/most
> transparent type of label possible for such a group of laws that seek to
> strip away personal freedoms and rights to privacy. ... also known as The Samuel Johnson act.

Prior Art.

This isn't Tautology it's Technology. Using a codified process to obtain a result.

Or didn't you notice the point of the experiment was to test their publisher's claims of quality. This is after all News for nerds, stuff that matters and at least some of us want to get published even if it's for fan fiction about which Star Trek Captian is best. Making complaints about reduncancy is griping about moderations. If your currently not a moderator then pour yourself a nice cup of STFU.

Pr0n expands to fill the memory available to occupy.
http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/workexpandst.html

You're right - I probably shouldn't have lumped the two words together so much, even though they have the same linguistic origin. "Lively" was the best compromise fit for both alegre and allegro, and it's how alegre's present meaning is derived - first it became something like "merry" and now it's more like "happy"...

If you're interested in that sort of thing check out the Indo-European Roots Index . It continues to amaze me how much the same word can change over time.

Sorry. I just had to reference this: http://www.bartleby.com/1001/.

Relax. It's cheap sarcasm ("As if I could care less...").

Some of the key lessons they drove home when I took the seminar some years back was this:

1) The more you advance in management, the less you need technical skills, the more you need administrative and people skills. This "Peter-Principle's" many technical people right out of what they were good at.

2) A technical lead focuses on planning, leading, originating ideas, and controlling a project. A good manager needs to envision rather than plan, empower rather than lead, create a positive environment rather than originate ideas, and coach rather than control.

3) Technical people rely more on skills to accomplish their objectives. Managerial people rely more on relationships (people skills) to accomplish their objectives.

You might not agree with some of the underlying philosophy, but the points are still worth considering. Some of the fundamental aspects of what makes you a good geek may have to be tossed in order to make you a better manager.

Actually, the quote in my sig predates the Bill of Rights.

The original quote (and I'll change my sig) dates from 1750.

Differences between the Male and Female Pelves.--The female pelvis (Fig. 242) is distinguished from that of the male (Fig. 241) by its bones being more delicate and its depth less. The whole pelvis is less massive, and its muscular impressions are slightly marked. The ilia are less sloped, and the anterior iliac spines more widely separated; hence the greater lateral prominence of the hips.

Differences between the Male and Female Pelves.--The female pelvis (Fig. 242) is distinguished from that of the male (Fig. 241) by its bones being more delicate and its depth less. The whole pelvis is less massive, and its muscular impressions are slightly marked. The ilia are less sloped, and the anterior iliac spines more widely separated; hence the greater lateral prominence of the hips.

It doesn't matter if you have facts to back up an assertion like that, you're still going to pay a price in suffering that makes it far better to just shut the hell up.

That sounds like a pretty dangerous argument. I suspect the same sentence could be used to justify oppression of many kinds.

E.G. "It doesn't matter if you have facts to back up an assertion like [ the Earth revolves around the Sun | Capitalism is the best economic model | Evolution is a correct model | Deficit spending is bad ] , you're still going to pay a price in suffering that makes it far better to just shut the hell up."

I am not saying the underlying statement is true. I don't know if it is true or false. But a university, above all institutions, has a primary purpose of discovering and teaching truth. It is pretty dangerous stuff when we from government or self-imposed censorship we prevent "truth" from being determined.

As for the "truth" of the statement, the market place of ideas operates on all ideas being available for discussion. For discussion on why we should allow people to express ideas that are in part false or perhaps all false, see "Of the liberty of Thought and Discussion", but John Stewart Mill. Here is a link.

http://www.bartleby.com/130/2.html

http://www.bartleby.com/61/24/G0202400.html

>'surly bonds' of the atmosphere

1. I think the biggest bond to the planet is gravity, not friction.

2. Why would the "bonds" be described as sullen ill-humored, threatening, or arrogant?

The BBC is here

To be a Cockney one needs to be able to hear the Bow Bells which are here

I'm not sure that the BBC has such good hearing!

>Oh, and by the way... disagreeing with people is not "trolling".

Right, and it's also not "rationalizing antisocial behavior".

You rant a lot, but you don't draw any lines. A lot of people still think of culture as something that is free, that is a part of society, what they like, do, and talk about. Copyright law was (originally) written in a way that would pass copyrighted material from private control into the public domain. Copyrights have expired on the works of Maurice Ravel, Thomas Nast, Washington Irving, and many others, with undeniably great benefits for us all. This process is now stopped at 1923! All of your arguments are couched in economic terms, but our culture does not operate that way. We are exposed to various expressions of media, but we are not allowed to recycle anything created after 1923. This is the problem of copyright law, and not that anybody is "stealing." The acts which you characterize as theft can also be seen as a desire for the populace to use more recent works of copyright, with lawsuits by copyright holders against citizens being one illustration of tension between the law (as it has come to exist) and the will of the people. Of course much of the behavior being discussed here is currently illegal, but it also seems the legislature was out of touch with the constituency when making it so.

Turion: A thick fleshy young shoot or sucker, such as an emerging stem of asparagus. (Source:The American Heritage Dictionary)

and it was delivered deadpan too

Other people have replied attributing it to Ben Franklin, but this being the older quote is the more original.

The quote from Poor Richard's is: "Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead."

This quote goes back to Chaucer: "For iii may keep a counsel if twain be away."

A contemporary of Shakespeare, John Heywood also used a version of the Chaucer quote ("Three may keepe counsayle, if two be away") in his collection of proverbs (1562). The nurse in Romeo and Juliet presumably misquotes a proverb that would probably be familiar to the audience.

Shakespeare also wrote something similar in Titus Andronicus, act iv. sc. 2.:

The empress, the midwife, and yourself:
Two may keep counsel when the third's away:

Chaucer and Heywood could have been quoting a common saying so it's hard to know where Shakespeare may have heard it.

Maybe you meant "altogether"? :-)

No, the AC was right; you made a pun, not a double entendre. Actually, to read the definition, it seems that technically a pun doesn't need a latent sexual meaning in order to be a double entendre. Still, it's bizarre to hear "double entendre" used that way, unless you meant something risqué by "wave."

I think you'll find the phrase is "couldn't care less". Saying you could care less implies that you do care about it.

How can anyone trust Microsoft? How many _ANTITRUST_ lawsuits have they gone through and lost? It should be well known by now that if you plan on doing any sort of business with M$ you better have some KY with you because you will be ass raped. Do not throw stones.

Furthermore, the next time you try to correct someone's word usage, it might be a good idea to know what you're talking about.

Furthermore, the next time you try to correct someone's word usage, it might be a good idea to know what you're talking about.

I just finished H.L. Mencken's "the American Language". What Mencken maintained was that American English was easy to learn to speak, as compared to many other languages, but writing it is harder, due to factors such as the lack of phonetics. Recently, an acquaintance of mine who is originally from Poland and thus cannot read too well in English, asked me what a bumper sticker said(he did not understand it); he proceeded to pronounce literally: "I LOVE MY GUITAR". Guitar as pronounced by most Americans should be rendered geetar instead of a literal rendering of the sound of each letter. When I prounounced it for him correctly instead of phonetically as he did, he understood the bumper sticker and recognized the word. There is a gap between spoken English and written because of the lack of phonetics, native speakers do not notice this as much. Another example is wished, which is usually pronounced wisht by most. There are many other such examples.

Hello mister reviewer, you mentioned you consider yourself a writer. Well, I have something to show you; here is something you should have read. And if you have not read Strunk & White, please do so. Reread and refer it often. Reading that review induced my eyes to bleed ... profusely.

Common sense ... rotflmao

"Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race." ~ Giambattista Vico
http://www.bartleby.com/66/52/62852.html

You blame the "pirates" rather than dealing with it's root cause. Furthermore, you've lumped everyone from those who won't pay to play up to and including commercial mass-production blackmarketers.

If the price was actually affordable, there would be little if any copyright infringement. This would be even more true if copyright was limited to fourteen years as the founding fathers had intended.

It's clear from my perspective that it is you who requires an exlanation of both critical reasoning skills and basic economic theory.

from http://www.bartleby.com/65/en/endorphi.html
1) Endorphins interact with OPIATE receptor neurons to ....
2) .... endorphins are also thought to be connected to physiological processes including euphoric feelings, appetite modulation, and the release of sex hormones.
3) Prolonged, continuous exercise contributes to an increased production and release of endorphins, resulting in a sense of euphoria that has been popularly labeled "runner's high."

So, when are they going to start legislating my endorphin-producing 30-min cardiovascular workout every other day as "addictive" because it produces similar effects in the brain to a manifestation of sexuality? I'd rather masterbate before or after my workout to continue the effects of the endorphins (yup, I don't believe any of the workout-myths about any manifestation of sexuality having a negative impact on your workout ...) Sexuality in any form only enhances my human well-being, because you know 2500 years ago that humans of that time would hunt or gather, play, eat, have sex, rinse and repeat without reguard to any ideals of christian morality ... beyond the civil social setting, why shouldn't our private lives resemble humanity at it's earliest/most natural state of existence. Of course, I have to explain that in order to do such a thing in a civilized world, one must have an adequately disciplined and compartmentalized mind ...
I think this issue just shows how ritualized (e.g. the defintion of ritualized society from the Reciprocality industrial psychology paper) some of the fundamentalists really are....

Remember what happened to the technically challenged French in WWII? I believe they call that "steam rolled..."

Actually the word is "flanked". The guns on the Maginot line couldn't turn around. The French didn't see any need to be able to aim the guns back at their own country. Why would they ever need to aim their guns back at their own territory? Well, they weren't being creative enough in their planning.

The Germans flanked the Maginot line, they got behind those big ass guns and forced the soldiers inside to surrender.

That's the perfect example of what can happen to you if you don't "think outside the box".

It may seem like a waste of money to spend $10 billion. In the long run it may be, but I'd rather be able to shoot down a home rolled cruise missile in 10 years than to have one slam into a nursery school.

Who knows, maybe the advances we make in chemical lasers will have new applications in bringing laser surgery to third world countries.

So many military developments have transitioned into civilillian progress that we could scarcely count them.

LK

Actually, it doesn't take any special expertise. It's not hard to survey scientific opinion, because good scientists publish, and get cited by other scientists. The best scientists get cited a lot.

I'm afraid I have to disagree with that, as does American Heritage Dictionary.

Get help somewhere.

...Chris Stone, a respected open source advocate and the man often sited...

tr.v. sited, siting, sites
To situate or locate on a site: sited the power plant by the river.

tr.v. cited, citing, cites
To quote as an authority or example.

Do it now, before it's too late.

a form of state political organization in which the government is based on religious offices.

Sounds bad.

A system of government controlled by the dominating religions beliefs inherent in the society.

Sounds good, given that you have a set of ``dominating religions beliefs''. If you think that the U.S. doesn't have that, you must be new here. Supreme Court Justice Black said: ``We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.'' The original government of the U.S., as described in our constitution, would be a theocracy by that definition. It was designed to be controlled by the religious majority.

Letting religious organizations get a little bit of slops from the pork barrel is a long way from either of those definitions of theocracy.

Actually, it's Jens'

Here we go:

1. Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

   Charles's friend

   Burns's poems

   the witch's malice

   This is the usage of the United States Government Printing Office and of the Oxford University Press. Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names in -es and -is, the possessive Jesus', and such forms as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake. But such forms as Achilles' heel, Moses' laws, Isis' temple are commonly replaced by

   the heel of Achilles

   the laws of Moses

   the temple of Isis

   The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and oneself have no apostrophe.

American Heritage disagrees with you on the indigenous theory.

Heard Tom Hanks talk about the making of A13. Turns out he didn't get sick unless he forgot to take his Scopdex. Never used Scopdex? Not suprising, since it's a combination of scopolamine and dexedrine. Just say no!

Dumbass.

I agree, even if it's more properly known as "Bayes's Theorem" - see http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html#1.

I don't see any point in continuing this. You are clearly utterly ignorant of Libertarianism and you don't care to learn, otherwise you would have read the Wikipedia article which would have answered your questions.

I expect you will respond that I've failed to make my point and therefore I am not responding to your points. I assert here that I have responded to your points by providing a pointer to a detailed 3rd party article and I now find myself in the position of "trying to teach a pig to sing".

You might also benefit from reading the articles about Cecil Rhodes, Rhodesia, and Zimbabwe. More on Cecil Rhodes is here, here, here, here, and here. Unfortunately, none of those sites support your assertion that the British government couldn't stop him (or that it even wanted to) but then life's not always the way we want it to be.

Congratulations on buying a supercomputer for your third rate school with our money. The smart people who made it in California and sold it to you must be very happy. And thanks for hosting a NASA test site too dirty for any state of smart people to have in their backyard (at least 200 miles from yours), though it's a good demonstration of socialism working to drag smart people from out of state to prop up a failed society. Offering them the state's 70 miles of beachfront probably helped them ignore the swamp of ignorance and mud to the north.

Since I embrace the smart Mississipians who can cut it here in New York City (and elsewhere that I've met your refugees), I'm hardly the bigot that you are. Unless a prejudice for smart people as "smart" is bad. Of course, I don't expect you to understand words like "bigot", when you point at state schools which admit 13% of their students as black in a state with 36% black people: "in 1992 it was necessary for the U.S. Supreme Court to order the state college system to end its tradition of segregation". Thanks for the chance to quickly research the facts behind the obvious display of bigotry and idiocy that is synonymous with "Mississippi" after all your hard work. Please send back some of our tax money - I promise New York will spend it on sending you more of that good TV that you love so much.

"Asserting that one must first know the rules to break them, this classic reference book is a must-have for any student and conscientious writer. Intended for use in which the practice of composition is combined with the study of literature, it gives in brief space the principal requirements of plain English style and concentrates attention on the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated." This book has never been out of print since 1918, and Lo! W. Strunk and E. B. White (you may recall a fiction of his) still hit the nails on their heads! I highly recommend every person have this thin volume on their desk for casual perusal, but failing the hard copy, here's a link to the online version http://www.bartleby.com/141/

There's a great deal of truth in what you say!

"The new gold is IP," McBride said. ...SCO soon to become ghost town, after unsuccessfully mining the Linux kernel and not finding one itty bitty nugget.

...*couldn't* care less.

Back to the original subject:

I believe that voters _should_ be informed in order to vote, but would not argue for any restriction requiring them to be informed--due to the almost certainty of abuse. Consequently, I do not think that people should be blindly encouraged to vote. Uninformed voters are too easy to manipulate.

I'll not be voting for either GWB or JFK, but I will be voting Libertarian, because I strongly support the platform--despite the fact that Badnarik has essentially no chance of winning. I'd rather not have my vote diluted by a popularity contest amongst people who don't really care who wins.

If I couldn't find a candidate I felt I could support, I'd leave the position blank, but I'd still show up and vote--because I believe it is important, not because someone told me it is.

-se

Verify your facts before posting.
That way, I won't have to do it for you.

Bartleby begs to differ.

First, science and religion are only incompatible to the simple-minded. Second, prayer doesn't necessarily imply a petition to God, but could simply be something hoped for (see def. 5a).

As far as I know, you should have either written "metres" and "litres" or "meters" and "liters". Mixing British and American spellings mid-sentence is a bit odd.

Also, Centigrade was renamed to Celsius back in 1948.

Finally, the US government has never really tried to legislate the use of SI the way most others have. You do not have a legal requirement to list kilograms anywhere pounds are used, or to post speed limit signs in kilometres, or anything of that sort.