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Don't be a spelling pedant unless you are 100% correct.

instruction is spelled properly.

Then != Than

And yeah, parent post is a troll.

Then != Than

And yeah, parent post is a troll.

And presumably you used your windows laptop to post that comment?

However, let's put aside the medical jargon for a moment and look at mainstream usage. I originally quoted the definition from the The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, published in 2000:

1. Of, relating to, or caused by a toxin or other poison: a toxic condition; toxic hepatitis.
2. Capable of causing injury or death, especially by chemical means; poisonous: food preservatives that are toxic in concentrated amounts; a dump for toxic industrial wastes. See Synonyms at poisonous.

Using this simple definition, and noting the fact that we do have a vibrant living ecosystem, it can't be all full of toxins as your original premise asserted.

Now let's look at the law of the land, namely the Toxic Substances Control Act:

"The act authorizes EPA to secure information on all new and existing chemical substances and to control any of these substances determined to cause an unreasonable risk to public health or the environment."

Note the use of the word "chemical". The bulk of the usage of "toxic" is to describe man-made chemicals. Hence the term "toxic waste" and the fact that it doesn't usually apply to a big mound of celery which has inherent anti-insect proteins.

Of course living things produce toxins. We've got snake venom, spider poison, etc. These natural toxins are toxic because they produce injury/death.

For the most part in today's world, however, the bulk of what is toxic to man in the environment has been created by man. Many more people die of man-made illnesses than are killed by natural toxins. And I include poisoned and broken ecosystems here. The crazy use of chemicals in the environment has thrown many ecosystems out of kilter, creating giant problems. Without Man's stupid intervention, Nature had been self-regulating for millions of years. We'll be lucky if human life lasts as we know it for another 100 years.

At least you could spell the word of the day correctly. It's "Augur", not Auger.

1. behaivoir
2. corperate

1. behaivoir
2. corperate

I'm pretty sure if you use your awesome mind powers you will be able to surf to various dictionary websites. You might notice that the definition of censorship only implies authority, not government. If my ISP uses SPEWS it gives spews the authority to remove or supress email it thinks is objectionable. If you restrict people from voicing their opinion on your network it IS censorship. But you have every right to censor them because you are a private entity.

Actually, I was using the most precise sense of the word: One who makes threats, or carries out said threats, against one group with the intent of forcing another group to bow to their demands. True, the definition does specifically mention violence, but "terrorists use bombs and anthrax" is also a generalization.

They still had to pay though - it was called a dowry.

The difference is this: back then the women paid the dowry. Now it is the man forking out the big bucks to get married. Money has always been a part of marriage, unfortunately.

There is no such word as "definate"!!! You did it more than once, and it's so fucking irritating! What the fuck is wrong with you people? Why do so many of you assholes make that same damned mistake?

Obviously, you aren't a total fucking moron and you can spell most words (even uncommon ones). So, why the fuck can't you spell this one? Just think about it... definite, as in defined, as in not infinite. Clearly, you are just using the word, with no comprehension of how the word came to be or its relationship to other words (do you even know what it means?), otherwise the spelling would be glaringly-fucking-obvious.

Uhm.... Yes, it is...

all right funny guy, if that's the way you want to be, you just made it on to my friend list 8-)

Oh great. Now I have to dig out my old 720K floppy disks to check my notes on how to be sociable with actual human beings, and I can't find the way to change the CMOS settings for the old FDD controller.

My grilf just broke the F10 key while we were doing NGMWT--Nerdy Giggly Man/Woman Thing--in the client room (immediately adjacent to the server room, which is actually a garage converted from holding actual cars to holding underpowered motor scooters, solar arrays (during rainstorms), and firmware development stations for chips nobody cares about anymore)).

NOT!

::::snort:::: ::::::nosewipe:::::

What's next? You gonna ruin the exquisitely calibrated pitch of the blades of the propeller on my beanie? ::::::sigh::::: :-p

But all right. You win. ;-) Pleased to meet you. :-) :::::extending hand::::: :::::wondering if you remembered which hand most recently absorbed my proboscal mucous:::::

BTW- can you explain your .sig? followed the link and I have to admit, I'm kinda lost.

Google whacking only permits two terms, and it's so indistinguishible from impossibility that, with odds like that, I believe it would be wiser to arrange a date with Pamela Anderson.

Thus, in my quest to find the perfectly mediocre challenge, I "invented" Google befuddling. I guess its rules are as follows:

1. Use more than 6 words in a Google search.
2. Make the query appear perfectly valid in human logic.
3. Show off the results to people in that Google, as if by a "miracle", failed to do its usual magical coherence in its answers.
4. Old fashioned "pre-Google" search engine rubbish is "victory".

I guess it is not inherently competitive any more than figure skating is. It might very well be an artform. For example, due to the question generated by Google, this link has some merit, IMHO.

I'm not quite sure. I just extract these ideas from a spatially sequent malodorous orifice (near a wild hair), and the consequently necessary cleaning and disinfecting runs up a lot of temporal overhead. I think you can about imagine, huh?

Anyway, hope that helps. (snicker) :-)
Now as you were saying about who should ascend to the throne after Governor Schwarzenegger...

Check the posting time of the article on the bbc site:

Last Updated: Monday, 25 August, 2003, 09:20 GMT 10:20 UK

Then see how long it takes for a slashdot ed to read it and think ... think ... "Oo. Oo. I can post about that on slashdot.org!" and hey presto:

Posted by Simonker Monday August 25, @03:41PM

That's 5 hours thinking time.

I build up karma on this board every day (check my history) and occasionally I see someone go and make a "me too!" comment and get modded as "Insightful". And this I'm afraid is one of those times.

There is no way this can be called "news" by any definition.

1. Retarded motherfucking moron fucknut fuckers that say "alot"
2. I forget the second one.

If you want to refer to the continents, they're North America and South America. Collectively, they're the Americas. Allow some reason:

America ( P ) Pronunciation Key (-mr-k)

1. The United States.
2. also the Americas (-kz). The landmasses and islands of North America, Central America, and South America.
--dictionary.com

Even the friggin' dictionary says "America" is the United States, and "the Americas" refers to the continents. The rest of the world can differ if they like, but I have the authority on the English Language on my side, so I don't give a rat's ass.

You'd think after all of these years someone would learn how to spell the words "a lot".

There is no such thing as alot, the word is meaningless.

a lot on the other hand is quite useful: to a very great degree or extent; "we enjoyed ourselves very much"; "she was very much interested"; "this would help a great deal"

And of course, the author of the headline was wrong to use that phrase, since he does not seem to have desired to imply intent. So in a roundabout way, by reading it wrong, you got closer to his intended meaning. That is still no excuse, however, for him to use sloppy language, or for you to defend him for it.

Sorry to knock you off your high horse, but "virus" is not a collective noun. From dictionary.com:

virus n. pl. viruses

For more information on collective nouns, click here.

Sorry to knock you off your high horse, but "virus" is not a collective noun. From dictionary.com:

virus n. pl. viruses

For more information on collective nouns, click here.

Or...

The correct word is actually viruses.

'Virii' is slang.

Let's look at the dictionary definition of obscure:
Actually, go look at it yourself, I'm too lazy to cut/paste it here. Anyway, the point is, if you can't even use the word correctly (and trust me, you're not - the protocols you describe are basic to the Internet, not "obscure"), you'll have a hard time convincing me you breathe oxygen.

Are these old protocols? Well, yes and no. They don't date back to the 50s or anything, in fact most Slashdot readers are probably older than HTTP. But they weren't published last year. What does this mean?

Well, for one thing it means they are "tried and true" - they've been around long enough that any oversights have been found and worked around.

For another thing, it means these are really standards - they are for the most part independent of corporate interference. These days, whenever a new standard is being developed, half a dozen major companies bull their way onto the standards committee, each trying to steer the standard in a direction favourable to them. It happened with XML, and it happens with other new "standards" all the time.

And, to poke a nice big hole in your core argument (which I think is that these standards are inherently insecure because they're old and for Unix - which is supposed to be capitalized, BTW), how many worms for non-Microsoft implementations of (say) SMTP can you count? Or RPC? Or even HTTP? Keep in mind, Apache on Linux far outnumbers IIS on Windows, but which one's worms keep coming back for more? As a hint, I see one or two Code Red infections attempt to attack my machines a week - and that's a two-year-old virus with a three-year-old patch! (But lazy f***ing users who won't apply patches is another story, for another time...)

Flamebait? It's called satire you fuckwit moderators and I was making a serious point.

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis ;)?

dictionary dot com

Ummm... don't you mean schadenfreude (with an "r")?

due to virii

viruses

It's an amazing piece of Stream of Conciousness. If you didn't make it to Chapter 3, he/she/they (not clear on that part) attempt to criticize writing styles. Or even better, complaining about other writers being "just a boring son of a bitch" or "You fill up your review with unsuccessful attempts at humor".

How did this make the front page? And what's "incisive" about it? The definition is "Penetrating, clear, and sharp". I didn't read far enough to judge if it was penetrating, but it was neither clear nor sharp.

"Did you mean phrenologist?"

from dictionary.com

phrenology n. The study of the shape and protuberances of the skull, based on the now discredited belief that they reveal character and mental capacity.

Mind you there are so many frenologists on google, that it seems to have adopted the new spelling.

Btw I think that the cgi reconstruction looks more like Angelina Jolie than the limestone statue in the Berlin Museum.

Ahh, more stuff for my list. Your insightful and compelling
argument(s) about why copyright infringement isn't a big deal have been added
to the bottom.

Well, thank you. However, it is customary, when misquoting, to add an ellipsis to represent the missing section of sentence.

(Don't take that too personally! :-)

>Some people, especially young children, seem to have a difficult time grasping that although nothing physical is taken, theft has still occurred.

No, it hasn't. Most parents (including yourself, I'm sure) tell their children, once they're old enough to read, that they should check the dictionary. I hope you don't mind if I do it for you.

theft

\Theft\, n. [OE. thefte, AS. [thorn]i['e]f[eth]e, [thorn][=y]f[eth]e, [thorn]e['o]f[eth]e. See Thief.] 1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.

Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief. See Larceny, and the Note under Robbery.

I don't know how much clear it can be than that, sorry.

>it's not the physical manifestation that's holds the majority of the value of the item, it's the intellectual property.

The only real IP I know of is Internet Protocol. "intellectual property" is a buzzword used by various anti-piracy groups to scare users. IMHO, it rates right up there with "speed kills" and "this baby is crying because it's dad was killed by a drunk driver".

>So, your thinking that even though you took it, the fact that they still have it (wow, magic), let's you off the hook is just plain wrong.

I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that piracy is not only a lesser crime (IMHO) than stealing, as it only deprives the owner of an imagined profit, and, in fact, does not cause a direct loss like shoplifting, it really bears no relation to stealing. The similarity ends at the word loss. Speaking of which, murder would be a loss of life, and therefore has the same amount in common with stealing as does piracy.

Again, just my humble opinion.

That being said, I feel that piracy ISN'T a good thing, that it is illegal, but that it is overzealously punished in today's times where steamboat mickey is still copyrighted property. The only way what people will wake up and stop the insanity (put copyright terms back into the hands of the people) is if people stop making it out to be something it isn't.

>By the way, you're not even close in interpreting how copyright laws apply to these situations.

Uhh, seriously, read a law dictionary. Without something being missing from the victim, and without it being in the hands of the perpetrator (preferrably at the same time) there can be no theft.

While the crime of copyright infringement is generally punished in a federal court, and the crime of speeding violations in a municipal or provincial (or, in the US, a state) court, the style of offense is identical. They're both victimless crimes. Sure, you could say I *would* have bought a piece of pirated software rather than pirating it, but at the same time, if I get a stolen (for real) camcorder for $50 that sells for $5,000 do you think there's even a chance in hell I would have bought it if it weren't stolen? The fact is there is normally no specifically identifiable victim from piracy that can prove a loss, which is just like when you receive a speeding ticket -- nobody can prove a loss. It's just illegal, that's all.

It's always a lot more complicated to convince someone a crime is bad when there is no victim, and *THAT'S* why the BSA (et al.) want you to (wrongly) think copyright is theft. Because then they have their victim -- english teachers.

In fact, you'll find my previous dictionary definition a little lax. Merriam Webster says:

theft: 1 a : the act of stealing; specifically: the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property

When dictionaries start saying specifically, and highlight it; I think they're trying to curb an improper usage of the term.

I think you mean chemotherapy , since kimotherapy isn't a word.

I think you mean chemotherapy , since kimotherapy isn't a word.

I think you mean apprehensive

I think you mean apprehensive

The dictionary may agree with you, but I have my doubts. :)

Anyway, I don't remember there being a story about the guy making his own CPU, but I do remember everyone in one of my introductory ECE courses doing that. Does that count?

He probably should have said double entendre.

It's more then mere hypocrisy. SCO cannot use an attack on the GPL in any legal way, due to the doctrine of estoppel.

> what the fuck is so funny about the above statement?

The part where he said "That's a lot of food stamps." Click here to understand why.

...unless we have a more comprehensive vocabulary, in which case we may choose to say inbuilt

just pretending to be one

That's the word that comes to mind when I read SCO's statements.

Bill Gates may be the devil to many people, but at least he's not a total fucking moron like these guys. Unbelievable.

Fuckwit.

"Rape can be funny. I can prove to you that rape is funny. Picture Porky Pig raping Elmer
Fudd. See hey, why do you think they call him Porky?" (George Carlin)

offensive: Causing anger, displeasure, resentment, or affront

No action is offensive in and of itself. One can only choose to take offense at that action. If the action itself was offensive, then all that experience it would be offended. I personally find child porn offensive. It offends me, but there are sick fscks out there that like it, so by definition, it does not cause them displeasure, resentment, or affront and therefore the act itself is not offensive.

Disclaimer: this is *NOT* a promotion for rape or child porn, just examples of the mis-use of actions and words by intolerant people who think they know what best for me (collective) than I (collective) do. Shut up and worry about your own life and let me worry about mine.

-Ab.

Quoting http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=virii:

No entry found for virii.

There is no such word. Can you people stop using it? It's "viruses".

Billion:

1. The cardinal number equal to 10^9.
2. Chiefly British. The cardinal number equal to 10^12.

The people who spell it "an historic" aren't pronouncing the "h". I say it and spell it the way you do, but AFAIK they're both valid pronounciations.

That's fine if you're quoting someone who doesn't pronounce the "h", but according to dictonaries such as this one, pronouncing it without the "h" is not recognized as valid.

Bullshit.