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Greeting Dragonslicer. I'd like introduce you to my good friend, the Transitive Property of Logic, and his pal, the subset. Now that you are aware of each other, I am sure you will all get along swimmingly.

"put paid to"

"canard" (see def 1b)

I've been rightfully accused of highfalutin', but this was pretty impressive. On principles, I don't normally recommend writing to the third-grade level, but there is such a thing as too smart.

there seems to be some gigantic gaps when enhanced services bit is highlighted from verizon, I'm sure out west the population might be sparse enough for them to not care, but still, eastern spots have people there.

and also, you've forgotten something, where do people typically live?

Your link compared with, Where aussies live. Notice that in order to not get 3g coverage, you basically have to be more than about 200km+ into absolute nothingness of desert, that's an effort.(alternatively just standing near faraday cage equivalent works)

Now This map (with enhanced etc selected when you get there, 3g does broadband, mms etc) vs US population distribution

From the looks of the maps you've linked, in the US the moment you drive out of a major city you've lost reception for data etc, but will pick it up again when you pass another town. with AU it seems to be the case that you can drive a fair way into nothingness before your reception dies.

This is exactly because the US are so pro-free-market. As you say, Telstra are obliged (by government regulation) to let anyone place their switches at their exchanges - to a pro-free-market person, this is an appalling travesty of justice. Yet, the results speak for themselves. Even though Australia is so badly placed+spaced for internet connection that it looks like it was intentional (we're a sparsely populated and geographically isolated country, with the bulk of our population occupying a thin strip of coastline from Brisbane to Victoria, plus North Queensland, Tasmania and Perth), in many respects, consumer internet is better than the US's. For most non-rural areas, we have more choice of ISPs, which means faster speeds, better service and more competitive pricing (devil's advocates would point out that we have to deal with broadband caps, comparatively higher prices and shitty latency, but I attribute these to Australia's position and sparsity). In other words, in this case, free market is possible only through regulation. How's that for a piece of irony?

Yeah, we've been so lucky to find Mohammed Atta's passport in pristine condition several blocks from Ground Zero one day after that hell-like firestorm brought down 1.2 million ton of material.

This... survived this...

> winning a chess game against your high school's prom queen.

Boy, sucks for you if your prom queen happens to have been Judit Polgar :)

http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=99019&rendTypeId=4

"In 1991, she achieved the title of Grandmaster (GM) at the age of 15 years and 4 months. She was, at that time, the youngest person to do so. Polgár is ranked number 22 in the world on the July 2008 FIDE rating list with an Elo rating of 2711."

Given that the full gamut involves only twelve notes (two non-overlapping hexachords plus the intervening "ti"), 15 people is in fact overkill.

I would argue that both are equally important - without coming up with stuff, you have nothing to make popular, and stuff you come up with and don't make popular is basically worthless. Either way, Apple did a lot of both. Maybe more of the "making popular" than the "coming up with," but they definitely originated a lot of the concepts that we still use to this day.

I think if you take a Lisa or an original Mac and subtract everything that is also in the Xerox systems, you get a pretty good idea of what Apple came up with.

Here's a screenshot of the Alto (if the link doesn't work, googling for images of xerox alto returns a bunch of screenshots). Doesn't look a whole lot like a modern Windows, Mac or Linux system. Here's the Lisa. The parallels to modern systems are very, very obvious.

Sure, everyone contributed, and everyone copied. All I'm saying is that the people who claim that Apple copied Xerox wholesale and added nothing are wrong. Of all the companies involved, Apple probably contributed most of the concepts we use in today's grahical computer user interfaces.

jet engine
any of a class of internal-combustion engines that propel aircraft by means of the rearward discharge of a jet of fluid, usually hot exhaust gases generated by burning fuel with air drawn in from the atmosphere.

Ahh, and now we have hearsay. Would you care to back that up with evidence, without resorting to vandalizing Wikipedia articles yourself? Click Random Article in the Wikipedia sidebar as many times as is necessary until you find offensive words that are vandalism. Now select as many random Britannica articles as is necessary to come across an offensive word (you can do that by using a random number generator to generate 7-digit numbers and plug the numbers into the Britannica URL, for example, http://search.eb.com/ebc/article-9368545 . Then, repeat the experiment a dozen or so times, and average your results. Until you've done that, your argument is baseless.

The plural of virus is not virii it is viruses, virii is the plural of "man" and means "men".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus
and for those who have access to Britannica
http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9106000

Sorry i meant http://cougar.eb.com/sound/d/debacl01.wav

This is a "tomato" type situation. The way i pronounce it and have always heard it is with an r sound... something like this but not quite http://cougar.eb.com/sound/d/debacl02.wav. You might pronounce it differently.... I don't care .. you all knew what i mean so get over it ....

one fault of a person makes all of their intellectual ideals null and void? you act like only "rich white" guys have owned slaves. blacks did as well as numerous other societies throughout history.

in my view it does not diminish the contributions those cultures made to the world.

(c)

Where I got that you're a holocaust denier was from the post where you wrote:

When I asked you if you believed the holocaust took place, you didn't answer the question.

As for Paris:

http://search.eb.com/normandy/articles/Choltitz_Di etrich_von.html

http://www.fact-index.com/d/di/dietrich_von_cholti tz.html

http://www.historynet.com/wwii/blparissavior/

Why wouldn't you cite the actual encarta page? Since Encarta's not a good encyclopedia to begin with, here's a decent citation:
"Worldwide Adherents of All Religions by Seven Continental Areas, Mid-1994." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2003. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 15 Jul, 2003 http://search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=125916.
Britannica lists Athiests as 4% of the population. Non-religious is another 16%, but Asia really skews that figure, by adding about a billion to it.

Laws can change for a variety of reasons - not necessarily because people's convictions change. And sure, people's convictions can and do get changed by force of law over time. Most people in the former German Democratic Republic were religious before the communists took control, and now only about 1/5 are religious because of state encouragement to renounce religion. Only a fraction of those are actively religious.

But anyhow, the parent is correct - the non-religious are in a minority, and believe it or not, cultural biases evolved for a reason. There is a reason why the traditional family is structured the way that it is (e.g. the woman would stay home because it was most convenient - there's no way a woman could work the fields during or shortly after pregnancy). What is debateable is if we are socially or technologically at a point where these cultural biases/norms can be changed without breaking down the social order because we did not think out our changes through well enough before we started dickering with things. It's a valid point, address it...

For the most part, religious ideals are reflected in the laws of the land - especially in the US, where the land was founded upon religious principles, even though the left would probably want to renounce the country's heritage.

As far as "diversity" goes - what the heck is that? Sure most major religions have a lots of different types of people in them. The only ones that don't probably meet in strip malls. However, Any religion worth its salt has a set of religious ideals, and if you do not believe them you are not a follower of that religion. Be as "diverse" as you want within those confines and you're fine, but for example a Roman Catholic cannot have an abortion, watch pr0n, and/or be a practicing homosexual in good conscience. That person would simply not be Catholic, but I'm sure there's some religion they could get by in, should they want it.

And your opener: Your arguments are almost completely based upon personal conviction, thus they are difficult to reason with. is just a bunch of unnecessary crap - he made an argument, you addressed it, you didn't have to resort to some sort of "since my argument was based on 'fact' I can't argue with you" BS.

[...] causing processes to go bezerk.

Nu-cu-lar?
Try again dumbass

You see it over and over again, 'Private Ryan' was actually the story of a British soldier from Coventry, and it happened before the US even entered the war, same goes for U-571. What is your basis for this statement? 'Saving Private Ryan' appears to be loosely based on the Niland family. Fritz Niland of the 501st PIR was sent home after learning that his three brothers had been killed in action: Bob, 82 Airborne, on D-Day; the second on Utah beach, and the third, a pilot missing in China. He was located by an Army Chaplin and sent back to the US. This is documented in Stephen Ambrose's books 'Band of Brothers' and 'D-Day'. He was the Historical consultant for the film. For more, see http://private-ryan.eb.com/page1.html

There are already a few encyclopaedias online - one can be found here As to science related search engines - why not try Scirus.

We defeated a nation controlled by left-wing ideology in WWII...

And that nation would be....? The Nazis were anything but left wing. They suppressed the socialist and Communist parties and followed no policies of their own that were founded on Marx or any socialist philosopher or economist. As for Italy and Japan, they were as right-wing as you could want.

Yet at the same time this same "liberal" is generally very much in favor of things like socialism.

You do not appear to know anything about liberals or socialism. Very briefly, socialism advocates public ownership of industry. All of the big Washington liberals (Kennedy, Lieberman, Clinton, Daschle, etc.) are solid free marketers.

Authority that is not accountable and vulnerable to the will of the people is tyrrany.

Every liberal and conservative and all shades in between agree with that bit of bombast. And that "will of the people" demogoguery doesn't sound anything like libertarianism. I thought libertarians were suspicious of mass movements and mob psychology that threaten the rights of individuals, dissidents and minorities. In any case, the Founding Fathers thoughtfully set up an independent judiciary as a check on the will of people in case it ever got out of hand, which it often does.

I fucked your god in the ass.
This is what he said.

...that guy could buy Bill Gates, and still have enough left over to purchase quite a few elected officials.

Does he really think that the beam from the average keychain laser pointer could go 238,000+ miles?

What will his next project be? Hooking his laser pointer up to a car battery, putting a telescopic sight on it, and telling us he's augmented his local Neighborhood Watch with its very own homespun missile defense system?

The government should monitor this "project," round up everyone who participates, and unleash them in Iraq or something.

~Philly

I remember visiting the Encyclopædia Britannica website (www.eb.com) back in '97 and you had to subscribe then to access to encyclopædia...

Did they set up britannica.com and start providing access for free or something?

D.

your analogy about gunpowder is 100% wrong.

see this article and read it: http://search.ebi.eb.com/ebi/article/0,6101,33623, 00.html

On a related note: No non-volatile memory will not help you computer boot faster. Why do you reboot your computer? Because 1) something is messed up and you need to reload the contents of your RAM to fix the problem or 2) because a configuration change was made, and the reload is needed. It will however offer a lower power sleep mode.

It's still a terrible argument.

I-129 is formed in exploding supernovas (as are all elements heavier than iron) because the iron nucleus is exceptionally stable, and producing heavier elements consumes energy, rather than releasing it. *Trace amounts* may be produced in a 'living star' but not concentrations we could detect, even as Xe-129, billions of years later. The accretion disk of a black hole might have this capacity, too, but it does not affect my argument.

That means that the Iodine 129 was produced in a previous star -- and hence possibly a previous solar system (and almost certainly previous material bodies such as dust clouds and asteroids) I don't think anyone would be surprised to learn that previous solar systems may have contained water.

The age of the metorite is unknown. Even if one accepts the theory advanced in the CNN article (it is plausible, but not much more than that) the meteor is almost certainly much older than 4.6 billion. This meteor probably did not accrete in our solar system. To accrete in our solar system there would have had to have been a supernova in our vicinity within few hundred million years before our solar system accreted

If the nova had been any older, its I-139 would already have decayed before the meteor formed and would not be present in detectable quantities. Such a recent, near nova is inconsistent with the astronomic data (no gas cloud remnants, or visible effect on nearby stars) and is inconsistent with any current model of star formation and planetary accretion -- the supernova would have played hell on the proto-sun and proto-planetary gas disk, and it takes more than a few hundred million years

The English theory is just a goofy hypothesis that would knock many far more established theories out of whack, and offers no basis whatsoever to revise those theories. It is embarrassing.

The meteor is most likely *far older* -- more like 7-10 billion years than 4.6 billion

Of course, feel free to insert your own argument about how those who would commit the mortal sin of piracy (or "sharing") aren't likely to want to pay to pirate music.

B

In my opinion, the journalizm community has a deep understanding and commitment to copyright and fair use issues. If the comments were not given due credit, it is probably because it was not clear enough what comprises due credit. The reputation and continued success of a journalist depends on his fair treatment of sources. If we make it clear exactly what the Slashdot community considers fair treatment, I beleive that most reporters will respect it.

Here are some thoughts for possible fair use guidelines:

• If your article is largely based on a slashdot discussion thread, please give the URL for that thread in the text of your article, or porvide a link at the end. The format for such a URL is
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• If you wish to cite a slashdot discussion, use the format
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  For example,
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  To cite a post, use the format
  • Poster Name, "Post Title," opinion expressed in Slashdot Discussion "Discussion title." [Accessed date].
  For example,
  • Homunq, "Two words: Fair Use," opinion expressed in Slashdot Discussion "Mainstream Media on Slashdot and Microsoft." http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/08/122625 5&mode=thread [Nov 8, 1999].
• If you wish to report the representative sense of the slashdot community, please note the mechnaisms by which the community assigns trust to opinions. Posts that have been moderated up, and those by users with high karma, should be given higher weight and maybe considered representative. It is a disservice to the truth and to slashdot to reprint the flamebait ramblings of an anonymous coward as representative views.
• Anonymous Cowards are a necessary evil, but their comments are neither authoritative nor accountable. If you repeat the opinions of an AC, please make it clear that those opinions are in no way representative of the slashdot community. Before you choose to repeat the posts of an anonymous poster, strongly consider whether it is appropriate. (An exception may be made if an AC post has been strongly moderated up, to +2 or above; such a post may be considered representative).
• Keep in mind that comments are owned by the poster. It is fair use to quote them, in context, in a story or paper. For deeper questions on the copyright limitations and freedoms, see Stanford's copyright FAQ.

In my opinion, the journalizm community has a deep understanding and commitment to copyright and fair use issues. If the comments were not given due credit, it is probably because it was not clear enough what comprises due credit. The reputation and continued success of a journalist depends on his fair treatment of sources. If we make it clear exactly what the Slashdot community considers fair treatment, I beleive that most reporters will respect it.

Here are some thoughts for possible fair use guidelines:

• If your article is largely based on a slashdot discussion thread, please give the URL for that thread in the text of your article, or porvide a link at the end. The format for such a URL is
  • http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/08/1226 255&mode=thread
  (where the date/unique number is replaced with the appropriate value).
• If you quote a slashdot post, give the real name or nickname of that poster. It is generally inappropraite to refer to "a Slashdot poster" if that person's name could reasonably be used as well. In an online article, please link the user's name to his or her slashdot "User Info" page. Such a link appears below each post, and has the format
  • http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=userinfo&nick=cm drtaco
  (where the text following "nick" is replace by the user's nickname). Please do not link to the poster's email address, even if it appears in the post.
• If you wish to cite a slashdot discussion, use the format
  • "Discussion title." Slashdot Discussion. [Accessed date].
  For example,
  • "Mainstream Media on Slashdot and Microsoft." Slashdot Discussion. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/08/122625 5&mode=thread [Nov 8, 1999].
  
  To cite a post, use the format
  • Poster Name, "Post Title," opinion expressed in Slashdot Discussion "Discussion title." [Accessed date].
  For example,
  • Homunq, "Two words: Fair Use," opinion expressed in Slashdot Discussion "Mainstream Media on Slashdot and Microsoft." http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/08/122625 5&mode=thread [Nov 8, 1999].
• If you wish to report the representative sense of the slashdot community, please note the mechnaisms by which the community assigns trust to opinions. Posts that have been moderated up, and those by users with high karma, should be given higher weight and maybe considered representative. It is a disservice to the truth and to slashdot to reprint the flamebait ramblings of an anonymous coward as representative views.
• Anonymous Cowards are a necessary evil, but their comments are neither authoritative nor accountable. If you repeat the opinions of an AC, please make it clear that those opinions are in no way representative of the slashdot community. Before you choose to repeat the posts of an anonymous poster, strongly consider whether it is appropriate. (An exception may be made if an AC post has been strongly moderated up, to +2 or above; such a post may be considered representative).
• Keep in mind that comments are owned by the poster. It is fair use to quote them, in context, in a story or paper. For deeper questions on the copyright limitations and freedoms, see Stanford's copyright FAQ.