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I'll just ignore the baiting in the "in a healthy environment" part, given that children raised by same sex couples grow up equally well socially adjusted to the general population. Instead, I'm going to just focus on your comment about "violating its very purpose".

In 1995, 4.1 million women in America were "voluntarily childless". Double this to get the total number of people. The trend has been continually rising - almost three times the percentage as in 1982. 18.4% of married childbearing-age women have no children. Where's your self-righteous rage at them?

What percentage of Americans are gay? That number is highly contentuous (and partly depends on definitions), but usually ranges between 1% and 10%, usually around 2% of adults in a same sex relationship at a given point in time. Lets say that 1.5% of Americans are in a long-term (marriage-equivalent) same sex relationship. That's 4.2 million people. Hardly a staggering number compared to the 8.2 people in 1995 (probably near 10 million now) who are voluntarily childless, and the many millions more who are involuntarily childless.

At a more fundamental level, "violating its purpose". So, when your children are raised, is it time for a divorce? No? Then it's not solely about raising children. But even if it was, same sex couples who raise children have the exact same *purpose* as straight couples.

Realistically speaking, I doubt if you could say that Google is censoring the internet, seeing that you can, as a matter of fact, search on Google.com from within China, even if your search results might be blocked. To me, Google is just responding to its apparent committments to Chinese law, while at the same time, not quite censoring itself. This is a crucial point, I don't know if American audiences get this, but it's big out here in Asia; consider what Bloomberg and the International Herald Tribune have done in response to muzzling attempts by another Asian government.

Professor Baron Cohen is also the cousin of Sascha Baron Cohen, AKA. Ali G.

Actually according to this article, you are correct.

Entertainments companies in particular are hurt by focus groups and rule by committee. Disney turned out a better product when Walt was still around. Turner Entertainment faired much better under Ted, than under Time Warner/AOL.

People forget that the Nazi's were Christians and that Hilter quoted the bible in most of his speeches. In fact the Nazi party mandated Christianity as their countries official religion.

From this link:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is _16_121/ai_n8702389

  MOST OF the Nazi leaders considered themselves not merely Christians but instruments of God's will, proclaims Richard Steigmann-Gall, a young Canadian historian. Many people think that if the Nazis had any religion it was derived from Wagner's operas and Teutonic mythology. Not so: the paganists were a minority, much derided by Hitler and Goebbels, who remained nominal Catholics and paid church taxes to the end.

The impression that Nazis despised Christianity derives from two factors: our revulsion at what the Nazis did, and statements near the end of the war by Nazi leaders, including Hitler, which seem to indicate bitter antipathy toward the church. These statements, however, reflect less an abandonment of what those Nazi leaders considered their own Christian values than disappointment with the Protestants of Germany, whom they believed had badly let them down.

--

The scary thing is how many reports of Bush saying the same thing about being the choosen of god.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story /0,6903,1075950,00.html

That is part of being a scientist. You don't let your ego get in the way of the truth.

O'Toole's ordeal spotlights how science's allegedly self-correcting mechanisms broke down at every checkpoint. It never occurred to the referees assigned to review the paper that there could be anything even slightly shady in an article co-authored by David Baltimore, one of the world's most distinguished scientists. Fellow scientists likely wasted countless hours and money trying to build on the bogus findings. Investigators at Tufts University, MIT, and, initially, at the NIH performed little more than a perfunctory probe of O'Toole's charges. As the New York Times wrote in a scathing editorial, "the initial investigations of Dr. O'Toole's complaints smacked of an oldboy network drawing up the wagons to protect scientific reputations."

HSOs (Homeostatic soil bacteria) are already in use as a form of probiotics, and widely advocated by individuals such as Jordan Rubin (who had a very severe form a Crohn's himself). There are many suffers of diseases such as Crohn's and IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) who seem to have been helped by them, but more research is necessary.

See:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is _2002_Nov/ai_93736412

and the pics can't be deleted, once you take them they're there forever. It also can't be charged, or new batteries added, "the slide show could be watched a few hundred times and the camera could be taken to a developer to get the photos printed."

How's this any better than the digital camera walgreens already sells for $11? Least photos can be deleted and has a flash, and you simply bring them to walgreens and they print them immediately and you can mail them to whoever you want.

ok his idea removes the need to bring it to walgreens but still, it's double the price, doesnt have a delete button, and when the batteries die it becomes completely worthless, you really do have to trash the entire camera.

The reason walgreen's idea works is because they're hoping to recoup the price of the camera because you have to return it to get your photos and then they can resell it. This guy's idea will never work because he cuts out the middle man and since the batteries can't be replaced it really does become disposable, for the same price it costs to make this camera a company could make a camera with replaceable batteries and sell it.

you know what it'd take to make this work? Make the camera like it is, but when you're done you drop it in a pre-paid envelope that came with a camera with a list of who you want to get photos from it to mail it back to whoever you bought it from, they take it and send prints to whoever you want. That way they get their camera back to resell to someone else and your friends/family still get their "postcards".

good thing he's a industrial designs student cuz he'd make a crappy business man.

20 years, same as Europe (mostly; From issue date vs. from filing filing date).

Thus, while today's low uranium cost equates to about 50 years of assured resources (3.1 Mt) using conventional reactors at the current usage rate, a doubling of the market price increases this time roughly ten-fold. In all, conventional estimated resources account for about 250 years' supply (16.2 Mt) at the current consumption rate. This does not include advanced uranium-extraction scenarios (phosphate deposits accounting for 22 Mt, seawater accounting for up to 4000 Mt) that require 10-15 times the current market price.

Indeed, some do write honest reviews. Reminds me of Computer Gaming World's review of Postal 2. Absolutely priceless:

We caught a lot of flak a few years ago for using a naughty word in a preview for Majestic, and we pretty much resolved against using it again. Until we got Postal 2. So turn away if you're under 18 or weak of heart, because the only honest response we can make is this: Copulate this game.

You might argue that such a profane reaction debases us, that by saying this we only sink to Postal 2's level, and to that I can only say that this herpetic accretion of digitized hate and social retardation would have the pope swearing like the most guttermouthed drunken Tourette's sufferer. It's a relentlessly idiotic, ill-conceived, hateful, humorless romp through an infected colon.

All you really need to know about Postal 2 is "Fag Hunter." That's the title of an arcade game in the Running With Scissors offices in the game, and it pretty much sums up what passes for humor in Postal 2. RWS has turned decrying political correctness into a personal crusade, but this is simply offensive by even the most primitive metric. Everything in this product is shot through with the pathetic mewling and puking of self-pitying crybaby dilettantes so consumed with pointing out how they're being crucified they fail to notice that they're the half-wits pounding the nails in. Antiviolence protesters storm the RWS offices! Oh, boo-hoo-hoo.

In a weird way, your heart almost breaks from the concerted, energetic, woefully misdirected attempts at "edgy" humor limping throughout this dispiriting exercise in godawfulness--it's just so overwhelmingly pathetic. From the screaming Osama Arabs to the cat-and-dog-munching Asians to the lighthearted japes about Waco, everything in this shooter is pulled from the "Look I made a doody!" school of humor--only less subtle. References, politically incorrect and otherwise, are constantly made yet never put into any sort of context and therefore are about as effective and funny as a sock full of liver. Postal 2 has hanging chad jokes for crying out loud; even Jay Leno stopped making those a year ago.

But just in case you're the kind of person who's pissing on yourself with excitement at this idiocy, there are plenty of other reasons to avoid Postal 2. Excruciatingly long load times in excess of a full minute, often within moments of each other, make wandering through the graphically mediocre sprawl of the town a case study of stupidity. The alleged location-based damage model is a lie, as it takes repeated shotgun blasts at point-blank range to drop an unarmored foe. The game is built around five fun-filled days of running errands that feature real-time waiting in line and devolve into the same "some wacky politically untouchable or oversensitive group storms the building" style of mayhem. You have to escape a burning building at least twice. The voice acting sucks, the framerate drops when things get hectic, the interiors are little more than boxes with an occasional desk inside, and more.

Until someone boxes up syphilis and tries to sell it at retail, Postal 2 is the worst product ever foisted upon consumers.

VERDICT: No.

There are other mechanisms for restricting genetic spread. For example, there's evidence that a considerable portion of the world's male population (0.005%) is descended from Genghis Khan and his near relatives. In most societies, there is an elite group of males that is much more likely to have children, legitimate or otherwise. IMHO, this would lead to a flow of genes from the elite to the masses over time. If the population of elites is small, then within a significant number of generations, it can generate the same effect as being descended from a few thousand people.

black women outpace their male peers by larger margins than the wider population."

Maybe that's because college is where people get hooked on the internet, and black men aren't going to college much.

(also they don't let you use the internet in prison)

i dont think the companies are interested in forcefully giving it to african and muslim nations where men rape women and spread the virus.

In this issue we document again the horrendous brutality by men in Moslem countries -- for instance in Pakistan where rape and murder flourish, supported by Islamic laws. The stoning of women to death is ordered by Islamic judges after women are raped - while the rapists go free: and this is Islamic justice! the article

but there is still more. this is africa specific.

Among the young men questioned, 80% said women were responsible for causing sexual violence; 30% said they thought women who were raped 'asked for it'; 20% thought women enjoyed being raped; and 10% said they thought gang rapes were 'cool.' The survey, was conducted by Johannesburg's Southern Metropolitan Local Council and the nongovernmental organization CIETafrica, also found that about 60% of rapists knew their victim. . .South Africa's AIDS epidemic, which affects more than 4 million people, 'adds a frightening dimension to the country's rampant levels of rape,' Reuters reports. the article

giving away medication to rapists and recieve no money does not sound enticing. again, im not trolling, this is factual information.

i dont think the companies are interested in forcefully giving it to african and muslim nations where men rape women and spread the virus.

In this issue we document again the horrendous brutality by men in Moslem countries -- for instance in Pakistan where rape and murder flourish, supported by Islamic laws. The stoning of women to death is ordered by Islamic judges after women are raped - while the rapists go free: and this is Islamic justice! the article

but there is still more. this is africa specific.

Among the young men questioned, 80% said women were responsible for causing sexual violence; 30% said they thought women who were raped 'asked for it'; 20% thought women enjoyed being raped; and 10% said they thought gang rapes were 'cool.' The survey, was conducted by Johannesburg's Southern Metropolitan Local Council and the nongovernmental organization CIETafrica, also found that about 60% of rapists knew their victim. . .South Africa's AIDS epidemic, which affects more than 4 million people, 'adds a frightening dimension to the country's rampant levels of rape,' Reuters reports. the article

giving away medication to rapists and recieve no money does not sound enticing. again, im not trolling, this is factual information.

....but creationists? For some reason each and every single time a story about evolution, intelligent design or even the origins of life appears, it amasses enourmous amounts of comments in a short period of time. I predict the same for this story, with regret.I'm 50% with you, brother

I'm wondering what the hell is going on? Is it just a political hot potato and ./'ers are simply venting here? This might be, but I've seen a lot of comments from Slashdoters in support for ID one way or the other. It's scary because the Slashdot readership to me is apparently amoung the most educated on the net. We are mostly geeks after all.
Some points:
1. Most Slashdotter's are American.
2. Most American's are religious. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0OBW/is _10_43/ai_113526975
That's a fairly skeptical study. Virtually 80% of Americans believe in a deity.
3. Therefore, barring specific evidence about geekiness and atheism, I'd say most Slasherdotters would be religious. Even if ONLY 40% of slashdotters are religious (versus 80% of americans), and even if only 25% of those believe in ID, that'd still be 10% of slashdot which believe in ID.

That's enough to make these discussions total 1-sided flamefests, but big flamefests. Which they are.

It would be scary to think that all the geeks around me actually believe in religion. When I was younger I just assummed that most people were completely secular like me, and didn't believe in religion at all; delegating it to the status of fictional works like comic books etc. It came as something of a shock to my world view that most people are not in fact secular but do hold religious beliefs. I haven't quite recovered from it.

Perhaps that's how you were raised. That's how I was raised. Sometimes, however, you need to look into the looking glass, and realize that not everyone was raised that way. Many, many geeks I know were raised in VERY religious households. Most of these loose up quite a bit; there's something of 'slacking' in geek culture, and this includes slacking on things like church. However, there's a big difference between having your worldview weakened, and having you worldview flipped on its head.

If you feel that you are a smart person, its easy to believe that all smart people would come to the same conclusions as you about life, the universe, and all 'that jazz'. However, this is not often the case; in nature versus nuture, I assure you that nuture does matter quite a bit.

One day, man may create an enlightened civilization that does not require a universal father figure. We've had that before, in various cultures, and some atheists have that now. It's not eschewing spirtuality totally; Shintoists don't believe in an overarching deity, early Zoarstrians certainly didn't (and of course don't forget Nietzsche), and many polytheistic cultures didn't see their deities as father figures but rather as power players whom one might some day compete with. This goes for both the extremely sophsticated polytheistic cultures, like late Hinduism, or more succinict religions, such as aboriginal tribal beliefs; I find it quite endearing that aboriginal tribes talking about their uncle, God of the West, or a great-great-grandfather, a minor deity who was responsible for such and such. These living religions are _very_ interesting to me.

For whatever reason, the judeo-christian-islamic tradition really likes God, the Universal Father, who Watches and Punishes us. *shrug*, To Each His Own.

For me, it's easy to be spiritual without having a formalized religion (ah, I do like early shintoist thought). Having had haullicinations at one point in my life helps, but I feel that the entire nature of the universe, the idea that there is a layer of randomness that we find difficult to pierce without something approximating faith, (science calls it assumption->hypothesis test) combin

Lets see, from that link, there are about an average of 5 terrorist attacks a year.

Now, for example, this page: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3787/i s_200509/ai_n15326103 states less than 2 people die a year from bear attacks.

Let's take into consideration that things like swimming: http://www.nsaa.org/nsaa/safety/facts_about_skiing _and_snowboarding.asp
Yet the government feels fine about letting people swim.

What about C. molestus , the London underground mosquito? They appear to be a different species at this point, and researchers have not been able to get them to interbreed with the population from which they evolved.

De. Regulate.

Real deregulation has nothing to do with Congress making laws, changing laws or getting rid of a few old regulations that actually don't affect communications. True deregulation means getting rid of ALL laws that affect communication, including ones that were set up over a hundred years ago that we still have to follow.

In my opinion, the interstate commerce "clause" in the Constitution was not intended to control communications, set up an FCC, or regulate costs or services. It was intended to prevent taxation and tariffs (exactly the problem we have today!) I'll grudgingly accept the argument for the regulation up to maybe 1995, but after that, we saw an unregulated quantity of computers magically connect without major subsidies (I'll grant you that ARPA was originally tax paid, but how big did it get during the government years?). The fact that so many people got online without excessive regulations aimed at driving the Internet leads me to believe that the best form of our beloved Internet IS anarchy (not chaos).

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ...

My speech is free to go where I sent it. For Congress to say that 2 or 5 or 10 big companies know better than thousands of little ones is typical nannyism. Who knows best? The People. We choose ISps that meet our needs. The system works. Some ISPs go under. Some combine into one ISP. Some fall apart into seperate smaller ISPs. This is how the free market works. We're going to see more free WiFi ISPs (my small town has 3!). We're going to see faster cell phone bandwidth (my EDGE network gets 150kbps downloads). We're going to see less reliance on the phone companies and the cable companies. This isn't happening because of regulation.

As to the two-tiered Internet, I'm all in support of the system if it isn't regulated. Without regulations, the ISPs must compete with one another. This means that the two-tier system could actually be of benefit to the end users. I have customers with offices all over the country who have to maintain expensive T1 lines. With a two-tier system that gives customers on the same network preferential treatment, I think we'll see lowered costs for corporate WANs, meaning lower prices for consumers of those corporations' products. Every dollar saved is some money passed on to the consumer.

Yet these two tiered systems can, overnight, become a mess if Congress decides to set rules and restrictions and requirements. Instead of promoting more bandwidth between same-network customers, regulations will push less bandwidth for different-network customers. If the little guy is pushed out (as regulations tend to do), the big guys won't have any reason to stay competitive. It isn't AOL versus MSN versus Comcast versus SBC that lowers prices and raises bandwidth. It is the thousands of smaller ISPs that are like mosquitos, constantly biting the big elephants and causing them to make changes to their service. For years I used Speakeasy and converted dozens of my customers. I still prefer Speakeasy, but they've been cut off in my market -- by SBC and Comcast that lobbied my local government and state government. REGULATION killed off Speakeasy in my area -- deregulation gave me years of amazing performance and price.

Don't believe the hype -- anarchy in communications has led us to a smaller world and a brighter future. Regulations have led us to 90 years of excise taxes on our phone bills that won't go away, even if the reason for the taxes is antiquated or ancient. Yes, we're still paying taxes on our phone bill that were set up in 1898 and for World War I costs. And you continue to support those leeches by voting for them?

".357 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the whole world"

A .357 is a powerful handgun, but there are several others more powerful. The current champ* appears to be the 500 S&W, which from the article generates 2600+ ft. lbs. with a 440 grain bullet. A .357 magnum generates 583 ft. lbs. with a 125 grain bullet according to Chuck Hawks' site. The same chart also lists the .357 as having the highest (in that list of cartridges) rate of lethality in street shootings, but what exactly that is a measure of isn't stated.

* pistol-only cartridge. Magnum research makes a .444 Marlin (a rifle cartridge!) revolver, and some manufacturers of single-shot pistols (Remington XP-100 and Thompson/Center, among others) also take different rifle cartridges, some of which generate more ft lbs than the 500 S&W, although you've got to wonder at the practicality. I use a wussie pad for my .30-06 rifle, I can't imagine a .30-06 T/C Contender pistol being at all manageable.

Geeks are in right now - don't you know that? Even supermodels and hollywood stars are dating them. Find a girlfriend now why it lasts (or at least stop blaming not having one on being a geek). ;)

Geeks are "in"

Computer Geeks Are "In"

It's chic to be geek! Geeks are in vogue on TV, film

If we were improving our economy by giving the Internet to our competitors, I'd agree.

But we're not.

Making GDP bigger is not improving our economy.

It's improving theirs and counting it on our books.

This was a war we lost without even trying to stop it. Thank Carly Fiorina.

And you're right. It probably cost us closer to $3 to 5 Trillion...

Dell, Dell, Dell. The customer at one site decided to buy into Dell's 'home-grown' mid-tier SAN offering in that brief period of time around 2001 after Dell and EMC had parted ways and before Dell came back to its senses and re-partnered with EMC. The re-badged EMC Clariion controllers + arrays on a Brocade fabric had not given us a single issue in the year they'd been in use, but this new demonic half-breed SAN shows up as part of the "new Win2K SAN" (yes, this customer ended up with 4, I kid you not, 4 different and non-connected SANs in the same physical server room).

Dell techs came, and Dell techs went. We had a former field-circus clown who was "certified" on this new storage system sitting in our server room, leafing through the product manual and scratching his head while customers were ranting and raving about not being able to get to their files. The cluster software didn't work. Various bits of the hardware routinely committed seppuku rather than operate with that demon of a storage system. The Dell-trained installers ran the cables backwards between the disk trays and the controller (gee, I wonder where all these fiber-channel errors are coming from). Files mysteriously disappeared. Various VPs within Dell called and made weekly pledges of earnestness in an effort to not get their product thrown out of the server room.

A few months after all this, Dell quietly discontinued their 'home-grown' SAN products and went back to EMC.

I'm happy to use their laptops and desktops as long as someone else pays for it :), and their entry-level to midrange server offerings aren't significantly worse than anyone else's, but may I be damned to the foulest depths of Hell if I ever recommend their storage systems and professional enterprise services to anyone. Ever.

And who launches and manages all DoD satellites through which all secure and unsecure DoD and government traffic goes through? Here's a couple of links google the rest your self. http://www.quantumleap.us/Industries/USAFStation.h tml http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BMD/is _158_8/ai_90429359

Sorry to disappoint, folks: the 10-squares in the file you mention above were not discovered by my program - in fact there's a very small word list also in that directory ( http://www.gtoal.com/wordgames/wordsquare/update.1 0.txt ) which contained words known to make 10-squares, which I was using as a Q.A. check for my code. (Hence the filename 'benchmark')

The square mentioned in the Times was discovered quite a few years ago, as you mentioned - however it was indeed discovered by Ted, who is a likeable is somewhat eccentric old buffer with a monomania for word squares.

What you may find interesting is the work we've done since on multi-lingual tensquares - see if you can find any of the articles by Rex Gooch or Ross Eckler. (eg http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb346/is_200 408/ai_n5540701 )

The privately-produced magazine Wordways has published the more interesting work on the subject.

It's not especially interesting from the computer science point of view, although the size of the problem at 10 or 11 does make it something worth doing on a large distributed system.

Best regards

Graha Toal

But what teenager has the $300 for a game console plus $50 per game without getting the money from his parents

Among all teenagers, 34 percent were employed sometime during the year(1998), with average annual earnings of $2,270. source

With no mortgage, rent, food or bills to pay that can go a long way. But any kid who holds down a job and makes that much money ought to be able handle a video game.

Ok - I did. And one of the first links I found was this http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is _19_54/ai_92049028 debunking of the contents of the book you refer to.

And frankly, just from the last paragraph on that page, I was convinced it's worthless tripe.

Oh, and I'm not a Lincoln obsessed patriotic yank - just a curious Brit.

Why is it that people who are trying to make pathetically weak arguments stick, always resort to personal insults, as if that was going to make what they say any more valid.

Well, in the spirit of quid pro quo (look it up, its latin):

I've been working in network security longer than you've been out of diapers, assuming you are out of diapers.

WPA , like all of the feeble attempts at wireless security, was cracked before it even got widely deployed. For the curious,here's just one of many examples one can find with a simple google search-
www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=369221

Like I said before, when you think wireless, think of hoola-hoops. Wireless will be a fad for about a year, then in five years we'll all be sitting around asking "What ever happened to wireless?"

Walmart has cancelled theor wireless plans
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zd4168/is_20 0307/ai_n9518993
Intel is cancelling intetgrated wireless support plans for desktop chipsets
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipsets/display/2004 0928023130.html
The Starbucks wireless provider went belly up
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/10/11/starbucks_ wireless_wonder_goes_titsup/

The wireless wave has crested and is now rolling back into the sea of oblivion.

Like I said before, when you think wireless, think of hoola-hoops. Wireless will be a fad for about a year or two, then in five years we'll all be sitting around asking "What ever happened to wireless?"

Ads in games aren't exactly new.

Am I the only one who noticed Bawls in the fallout series?

To be honest I think it added a sense of "oh ya I guess that could be our future" to the game.

If done tastefully and correctly placement distracts less than having a can of 'cooko-cola' on the table rather than 'Coca-cola'.

Heck my first GTA hack was to put back in Real products into the game rather than fake ones for Ads and Billboards.

If a politically powerful, fanatical anti-drug campaigner who constantly lobbied for pot-smokers to be thrown in jail for years and fined huge sums of money were caught smoking pot, I would not be surprised to see large numbers of people demanding that he be thrown in jail and fined millions

Hmm.. sounds a LOT like Rush Limbaugh, doesn't it?

"What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use, too many whites are getting away with drug sales, too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too." - Rush Limbaugh

"Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up." - Rush Limbaugh

from here: CNN reported that the conservative radio commentator's name had come up during "an investigation of a black market drug ring in South Florida," where Limbaugh has a home. A former housekeeper told the Enquirer she had sold him tens of thousands of hydrocodone and oxycodone pills during a four-year period.

Two years later, i'm still waiting for the millions of voices to clammoring for his imprisonment. Okay, yes, some stuff is happening, but not much.. and in the end, he'll get a no-jail probationary plea, write a book, and make millions more.

Go ahead and mod me offtopic, but my main point was.. bullshit hipocrisy like this transpires everyday. Did Sony's firm steal code, and then Sony distribute it in violation of laws? YES. Will Sony get in any real Signifigant trouble? NO. God, I hope i'm to be proved wrong.

There has never been a time or a place where this has not been the case. Literature, the arts and so on has always been a matter for a cultural "elite" (and I don't mean it in the republican/conservative sense) and the low-to-middle class people that aspire to it.

This is not true. In Soviet Union the arts where a matter for everyone. All works of art were for everyone. Museums, theatres, classical music, classical literature, all of that was intended for everyone, to farmers, workers, engineers, scientists, other artists. It was a matter of state interests to improve first the literacy, then education and cultural level of all people. And it worked. Of course, with the collapse of the socialism publishers decided to get some quick profits, turned to printing pulp, people became interested to check it out, they initially liked it, because it didn't require as much thinking, then publishers stopped printing classics and good modern books and people didn't have a choice, but had to read the pulp. Finally, some demand emerged again for the classics, but now the print runs are small, the prices are high and the rich tend to buy good books, while the poor read low-quality dreck.

And although the Soviet Union clearly lead in the quest for literacy and high culture for everyone, other countries tried to follow. Read The Classics in the Slums, an article about British workers in late 19th century - early 20th century. They had a huge interest in reading, art and learning and a lot of them (a majority?) were interested in classical literature (Greek tragedies, Shakespear, poetry), classical music and education. For them it was a matter of personal development and a break from the monotony of the jobs. Not everyone could easily accept that because of class prejudice - "They knew that you breathed and you slept and you worked, but they didn't know that you read. Such a thing was beyond comprehension. They thought that in your spare time you sat and gazed into space. . . . You could almost see them reporting you to their friends. "Margaret's a good cook, but unfortunately she reads. Books, you know."" It's today that people actually sit and gaze into space. It's called TV.

A UK survey of pupils (1940) in a below average group showed that 62% of boys and 84% of girls had read some poetry, their favorites including Kipling, Longfellow, Masefield, Blake, Browning, Tennyson, and Wordsworth, 67% of girls and 31% of boys had read plays and students averaged six or seven books per month (this excludes texts required in schools).

A USA study of adults ("Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America", 2002) showed that 43% of American adults had not read any books at all (other than those required for work or school), only 12.1% had read any poetry and only 3.6% had read any plays.

Another interesting article is As a weapon in the hands of the restless poor - On the Uses of a Liberal Education, an amazing experiement in teaching humanities to poor people. 50% graduated from the course and liberal education DID help poor people to improve their lives. It not only increased students' self-esteem, but also their abilities to divine and solve problems. They enrolled in colleges, got jobs, became politically active.

Read something like Against School to get some understanding on why Western school is so bad. It is by design, the system goes back to German schools and was intended to sustain the difference between the classes. The children of the elite got classical education, while the masses got dumbed down education. It is sometimes called the "two corridors model".

This is another area, where Soviet system shined. There was only one system of education, starting with the kindergarden and ending with post-graduate studies. A worker could (and was encouraged

Yup.

...he could well be, som e data suggests that as many as one male in 200 is his descendant http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is _6_163/ai_97997816

also http://amos.indiana.edu/library/scripts/khandna.ht ml

OTOH, it might be an evolutionary advantage as long as it doesn't become too common. For example, in the book, Sperm Wars, the author describes a hypothetical advantage to homosexuality. Namely, that a homosexual gains sexual and dating experience faster than a heterosexual. Hence, they can compete better for mates. But this might only work if there aren't a lot of homosexuals.

I guess that since about half of all Americans have smoked pot that it's now popular and legal?

Well, if you think Slashdot has great advice, then wait until you check out 21stcenturydental.com =/.

Daily Flossing Can Add 6.4 Years To Your Life.

I'm sure there's a lot of exaggeration going on there, but I've seen serious research indicating that flossing does help prevent heart disease.

In searching for such articles, I found a bunch of "Real Age" web sites with lists of lifestyle changes intended to "add years to your life." This one takes the cake. Apparently getting a dog, having sex, not smoking, flossing, and going to bed early will double your life span. By this metric, Hugh Hefner will live forever (assuming he flosses).

The thing is, it's not new technology. From http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BRZ/is _9_22/ai_101679012 ...

The first SSD was delivered to the MVS mainframe market in 1978 by StorageTek and sold for $8,800 per megabyte-much cheaper than add-on memory-and had a maximum capacity of 90MB.

(SSD = Solid State Disk)

It had moderate success back then, but then disappeared as mainframe memory and disk costs dropped. Obviously it can be done a lot cheaper today, but in comparison to the cost of disk, it's still hard to justify the cost, particularly in business. And realistically, the home market for this kind of thing is kinda niche.

Here's the full version of the article.

It doesn't actually have much more as the bulk of the article talks about the possibility of multiple SKUs for the PS3.

You're joking, right?

If you'll re-read my post you'll see that my point was that the decline in public morality as evidenced by the crime rate, high divorce rate, etc., indicates the churches aren't getting their message across.

Second, if you check the CBS poll referenced at the top of this thread you'll see that the number of people who believe the creation story has declined since Nov, 2004 and the number of people who believe God merely guided evolution has increased. However, with "the error due to sampling" of 4 percentage points, it's hard to say for sure whether the number is really down or even if it is really still above 50%

Another recent poll shows 42% of the respondents support the creationist position on evolution. Although even the latter number is amazingly high, it may just as easily indicate that the churches have reached the limit of their influence on this particular issue.

There's some evidence that church attendance is declining and has been overstated in the past, which would account for the effort by some churches to push their message into public schools. If church attendance was strong and rising, there would be no need to get into a constitutional fight over public education.

In any case, regardless of the success of the churches in fighting evolution and supporting certain politicians, their moral influence, which is their primary mandate, is clearly in decline. If they think that watering down science education is going to reverse that trend, they're probably mistaken.

Here in Canada we even had an attempt by chiroquacks to get a university to issue degrees in chiroquacktic "medicine". Thankfully that fell apart.

I blame post-modernism and the return of swing music. ;-)

If you understood science you would realize everything you said is complete bull. If you understood the bible you would also understand everything you said is complete bull.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3924/i s_200504/ai_n13510230

Of course if you truly believe the people who wrote the bible not only heard the voice of God directly and lived, yet also had complete understanding of what he did....

Try this article for better understanding. The term is rather new, but they needed something to describe all these people who love Bejeweled.

A step back from a hardcore gamer, BTW, is a "serious" gamer.

If high-end graphics can be done entirely in software on a reasonably current machine WITHOUT having to spend hundreds on a separate board, software sales increase significantly.

That's true. But they can't, not even with this package. This package is aimed at casual gaming. i.e. Garage Games and Puppy Games are its intended audience, not Id Software.

As such, I'm stuck playing Quake III, Oni, and Daikatana - would that these recent games had a kick-butt software renderer that let them run decently on a no-hardware-acceleration graphics card.

This is not the definition of a "Casual Gamer". The term "Casual Gamer" was invented by the industry to identify people who purchase most Indie games. It's intended to refer to their habits of playing Solitare to pass the time, not Quake 3. This software package will not help "serious" gamers. (side note: "Serious" gamers are defined as people who play games like Quake 3 and Half Life, but not religiously so. People who follow games religiously are "hardcore" gamers.) It would be too slow to run even Quake 3 in software mode, much less Doom 3 or anything else that might use DX9 features.

This article may help you understand the "Casual Gaming" market better.

Given those points as a backdrop, your assertion that what you call "piracy" (and please do stop using industry-sponsored emotive buzzwords) caused the production of films in Hong Kong to fall of is certainly false.

It is no accident that cheap methods of reproducing DVDs coincided with the demise of the HK film industry.

http://cio-asia.com/ShowPage.aspx?pagetype=2&artic leid=2175&pubid=5&issueid=55
http://english.sina.com/taiwan_hk/1/2005/0430/2961 6.html
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/8801/jcnopi racy.html
http://www.pwchk.com/home/eng/e&m_article_apr2003. html
http://www.grayzone.com/hkmarch99.htm
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0WDP/is _1999_March_22/ai_54400833

The above articles describe economic slumps as a factor, however they point to piracy as the primary reason of the demise of the industry. Basically few will invest in making a new film because the returns are crippled by piracy.

Softway was acquired by MS in 1999, after the succesful half - POSIX compliant Windows NT release. See here, here, and here.

Since then, we have no evidence of real work towards POSIX compliance in Microsoft operating systems. Just marketing, for now.

a post-modern abstractist style FPS

Actually, it's already been done. At a show called INSTALL.EXE a few years back at the Eyebeam Gallery in NYC, they had a number of abstract interactive installations (to call them 'games' might be stretching the term a bit) based on the source for Wolfenstein-3D and Quake. Here's a review.

I'm white and grew up in an economically depressed rural region. I attended a school that offered the bare minimum of college prep. No AP classes. No AV club. No computer lab. No arts. Just the State of Illinois bare minimum curriculum. Yet, I got in to a four year university, no problem, and had no problem paying for it.

That said...

You went completely off track with the "woe is the white male" crap.

Racism is when you make a generalization and apply it to an individual. For example: The vast majority of the players in the NBA are black. Jack is black. Therefore Jack is good basketball player. As is: Local news shows many black criminals. Jack is black. Therefore Jack is a criminal. However, saying since Black Jack is rich, poor blacks aren't an issue, is ignoring the problem; and that's what you're doing.

You taking exception to being told that minorities have less access and less success at college is particularly disturbing. Blacks and hispanics, as a demographic group, do not achieve the same educational level as whites and asians.
According to the US Census Bureau only about 13.1% of black males and 14.8% of hispanic males aged 25 and older have a 4 year degree in 2003, compared to 29.5% for white males. So educational opportunities are still not being realized for blacks and hispanics. Admission rates still lag behind whites and asians, and as of 2001 were actually declining.

Why aren't blacks and hispanics enrolling at rates equal to whites and asians? That's a complicated question, and one that still has no answer. A lot of times in the US we use race as a proxy for class. As a society, we find it easier to talk about ethnicity, but don't want to confront the brutal realities of the haves and have-nots in our "classless" society.

People from underachieving schools attend college at lower rates than those at other schools, and those that do attend typically underperform because they were inadequately prepared in high school. Schools underachieve because they don't have enough funds to attract top teachers, keep up infrastructure, and pay for greater academic resources. Schools are typically funded by property taxes, therefore schools located in poor districts receive less funds than those in wealthy districts. People with less education, are less likely to move from where they were raised, for reasons including not having enough money to leave. Poor people don't have the investment capital to improve the economic neighborhood, therefore the neighborhood stays poor. Poor people have kids that attend the very same local schools that underperform. Poor people as a group have significantly lower voting rates than afluent people, and so nothing changes. Repeat ad infinitum.

And what ethnic groups are over-represented at the low end of the economic scale? That's right. Blacks and hispanics. So what do we talk about? Blacks and hispanics. Now I'm not saying that problems of blacks and hispanics are soley economic. They aren't. Racism does still exist. We've made great strides, but frankly striking down "no niggers at the lunch counter" laws was the easy part. Racism now is more subtle, and therefore harder to prove and just much harder to irraticate.

The best rationale for affirmative action I've ever heard was from President Johnson when he introduced it. He said, that you can't just simply remove the shackles that were holding back a runner when everyone else in race has already started running, and say "Go on! You're equal now. If you don't win, it's your own fault." That "head start" takes the form of better schools, better access to health care, better living conditions, and the like. If you don't help those that are disadvantaged, they will remain disadvantaged for a long long time.

You complaining about a compartively small amount of pr

You may not, but someone else did. A tank was stolen from a National Guard armory and driven through an LA suburb, Claremont.

The Buckland Hills Mall in Manchester seems to be the favourite example

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CGC/is _n19_v19/ai_14469314

I don't think upper class = rich. I see "rich" people as being in the upper part of upper class.

Regarding definitions of classes, it depends on the area in which people live. The average technical person lives in a place with a higher cost of living, in general. So, when comparing income to cost of living, they aren't that far outside average.

BTW, households that are considered to be "in poverty" tend to be much larger than the average household. Here's some info on poverty thresholds in 2004 in he US: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/threshld/th resh04.html

I don't think it's a fair assessment to say that anyone above poverty level is middle class.

"20,000 is well above 2 standard deviations from mean, is probably even above one standard deviation. 200,000 on the other hand, is close to the 2 standard deviation mark. "

Income comparisons use median, not mean, since it is a skewed distribution; for the same reason, std devs are not really useful. You can use the loosely defined "around the national average" model, but a more generally used measurement for middle class in the US is 75 - 125% of the median income. The federal government does not use cost of living to adjust this, however; I would prefer a measurement of 75-125% of median income / cost of living adjustment factor (based on family size and location), but this just gets too hard to calculate and do meaningful comparisons.

US median income was 44,473 in 2003, so by the accepted definition from above, US middle class is 33,355 - 55,591. (No adjustments for family size, cost of living, etc).

There's an interesting article about why so many people consider themselves middle class, even when they are not, plus some info about how the middle class is changing -- it's worth a read, even if it is 10 years old:http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m402 1/is_n10_v18/ai_18722956

20k is below poverty level for a family of four... I don't think that anyone above poverty level is middle class. Even if 15% of the country subsists on 20k or less a year, that doesn't mean that they are not in poverty.

I think that too many people think they are middle class, even when they are not. Lower class people want to be be middle class because no one wants to believe they are below average. Higher class people think of themselves as middle class because "middle class values" are the ideal in US society.