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that much difference between "success" and "prosperity?" How do you define prosperity? Wikipedia says it's synonymous with successfulness.

It isn't just about money. I suspect the Puritans who developed the aforementioned work ethic would tell you the same.

travesty

there's not really "legal murder" (besides gov't executions)

No, executions aren't "legal murder". The definition of murder is "The unlawful killing of one human". If it was following the law, it's not murder.

PS. This is it's impossible to translate the 6th Commandment into English. "Thou shall not kill" isn't right, because it includes plants and animals, but "shall not murder" is also incorrect, because it implies the government is always right. The original word, "ratsach", has no direct equivalent.

Well, my apologies if this is a little straightforward, but here goes...

I live in Sweden. Our mainstream media sure talk about piracy alot, but I have never seen them talk about "illegal" trading etc, even if it is against the law.

From American Heritage:

"illegal P Pronunciation Key (-lgl)
adj.
Prohibited by law.
Prohibited by official rules: an illegal pass in football.
Unacceptable to or not performable by a computer: an illegal operation."

Do they write about "illegal murder", "illegal robbery" etc too?

I assume you are talking about redundancy in these phrases. I.e., that all murder is illegal, so why refer to it as illegal murder? Well... If you look farther up in your post...

...Washington Post etc... "illegal filesharing" this and "illegal piracy" that...

It bears noting that there is filesharing that is completely legal. Regarding piracy -- good point. But don't complain too much. It sounds like you're trying to find something to post about, and you're stretching.

Ant Slayer

"Wow, it couldn't be that people were sick and tired..."

It starts with an s, ends in an m, and rhymes with sarcasm. Look it up sometime.

About to occur; impending: in imminent danger.

Because you don't get to manufacture a new thumb in order to meet changing requirements. That would qualify it as an artifact, whereas a thumb, like all sources of biometric information, occurs naturally, and thus is constrained in the range of requirements it can meet.

Early authentication schemes employed naturally occurring artifacts such as jaggedly broken rocks and pieces of wood

Naturally occurring objects are not artifacts. An artifact is "an object produced or shaped by human craft". The word comes from the same root as "artificial." Got it?

In the case of an artificial object or a biometric you are still measuring one or more properties of a physical object.

Here you're treating your conclusion as a premise. No, artifical objects are artificial. They need have no reference to any physical object. For example, a digital certificate is an object created from a cryptographic, that is, mathematical, process. It has no physical properties. Conversely, biometrics are strictly derived from physical properties.

biometrical testable properties of the human body can be altered or spoofed

That may make them bad candidates for use in strong authentication. I made that observation already. A good biometric obviously would be one that is hard to spoof. But that is all beside the point. Clearly these are natural properties that you carry with you. You can't manufacture them to arbitrary standards in the same way as you can an artifact such as a digital signature. That constraint may make them better or worse in certain applications. The point, and you're helping to make it here, is that these two classes require fundamentally different treatment.

Biometric devices have to be built to test certain properties of a human body and those properties must be measured in advance in order to be used. Other "something you have" schemes are built to test specific properties of some object which has to be set (or measured) in advance.

I notice that you're again applying your conclusion as a premise. We've already established that your argument rests on making no distinction between "being" and "having." So far, you haven't produced anything in support of that premise.

How then does a biometric measurement and testing of something that is part of your body differ from the measurement and testing of something that is not part of your body

Because artifacts are not about measurement and testing of natural properties in the first place! That's your claim, not mine, and I don't see that it can be successfully defended.

I think that this will be the end of my contribution, since I've presented my point of view and clarified my understanding of yours. If you want to add any final comments, please feel free.

• A state of agitation or of turbulent change or development.
• An agent that precipitates or is capable of precipitating such a state; a catalyst.

Sure, whatever.

Back to school for you, genius:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=reproduci ble

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gauche/

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gauche/

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=orthogon says that Webster's says an orthogon is a rectangular figure. Therefore orthogonal := rectangular, and OP makes no sense.

Except that you had it right the first time...

Latin? I thought it was an editorial abreviation for "seen in context". Unfortunately, dictionary.com agrees with the Latin explanation. I think my mnemonic is easier to recall than the Latin, though.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=conservat ive

I quit visiting Yahoo when I got disgusted about getting paid ads, presented in a very sneaky way. Did they change that? Is it safe to visit again?

A yahoo "is a crude or brutish person". Lesson: Don't trust programmers to name a company. Programmers will invent a name that sounds to them like a great intelligent joke, but causes problems later. How many people who aren't computer professionals know that the joke is "Yet Another Hierarchically Ordered Oracle"?

Another reason programmers don't name things well is they think it is cool to be self-deprecating. That seems to the reason for "Yet Another".

Notice that using a search engine is called "Googling". That indicates the popularity of MSN and Yahoo.

You know, the reason most people bring up public airways is because of a general feeling that since they are essentially controlled by the FCC, they should be entirely unbiased. But you apparently consider the public airways special because of their popularity, and now that cable is also popular you feel people with whom you disagree should be banned from it as well. So if someone's blog becomes too popular do you think they should be banned from the Internet? What, did you read 1984 and thought it was an educational piece?

I can only pray the rest of your countrymen have a better respect for the rights of the press than you.

Journalist Shi Tao was jailed and sentenced to 10 years in prison for "illegally sending state secrets abroad." The secrets that he revealed were information his newspaper received from the state propaganda department about how they could cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was identified because he had used Yahoo!'s free email service for which Yahoo! turned over log files to authorities that were later tracked back to his computer.

Message to Yahoo's top executives: Please turn in your badges and be out of the building in 10 minutes. You should not pretend to be able to lead a company. You are yahoos.

Definition of yahoo: A crude or brutish person.

PS: I hate your disgusting use of tricky, sneaky advertising.

You missed the point. It's not a mistake, it has a common usage of the word in a grammatically distinct role in colloquial American English. It may be a particularly grating one, but a linguist would say it is no more or less "right" or "wrong" than any other linguistic development.

The American Heritage dictionary lists it as an informal usage at this point and explains the subtleties of its meaning in this form in an explanatory note. See dictionary.com's entry for more.

Remember that English is just a fallen/corrupted/dirtied mix of German dialects with a healthy mix of Romance (Latin-derived) influence. There's nothing so pristine about it to begin with.

planet Audio pronunciation of "planet" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (plnt) n. 1. A nonluminous celestial body larger than an asteroid or comet, illuminated by light from a star, such as the sun, around which it revolves. In the solar system there are nine known planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. 2. One of the seven celestial bodies, Mercury, Venus, the moon, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, visible to the naked eye and thought by ancient astronomers to revolve in the heavens about a fixed Earth and among fixed stars. 3. One of the seven revolving astrological celestial bodies that in conjunction with the stars are believed to influence human affairs and personalities. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=planet I think if we need to define something that we already know what it is, we have some serious issues on hand.

Define a planet as in some way 'larger than a comet or asteroid'. Then, define an asteroid as 'smaller than a planet'. Problem solved in time for tea.

Observe, there is presedence for this highly useful mechanism:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=river / creek/stream

river n : a large natural stream of water (larger than a creek);

creek n 1: a natural stream of water smaller than a river, plus A small stream (..)

stream n.A flow of water in a channel or bed, as a brook, rivulet, or small river.

rivulet n. A small brook or stream; a streamlet. (Logically, a stream is a rivulet is something smaller than a stream.)

brook n : a natural stream of water smaller than a river .. [syn: creek]

Of course, this is all done to add a veneer of aristotlean logical classifications to things. The problem with a classification as an mentally constructed set of delineating lines overlaying a situation of infinite variety is that there will always be "borderline cases", which will always lead to the definition being called into question or seen as impractical or irrelevant. The alternative course of action could be not to define what a planet is, let people describe whichever objects they want as planets, and have data libraries sort their decisions out in a darwinian sense.

This annoys me more than anything. There is NO DIFFERENCE between a privilege and a right. Some people believe that a right is some kind of "Super Duper Privilege", but there is no basis in law for this. Both privileges and rights are protected but both can be taken away. Name a right that can not be taken away by a court of law if you are convicted of a crime? Name a privilege that can be arbitrarily denied you? The state can not deny you the "privilege" of a drivers license if you qualify to have one, nor can you retain the right to a drivers license if you're convicted of multiple DUI's.

Finally, look at the definition of a privilige: privilege (prv-lj) n. 1. A special advantage, immunity, permission, right , or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste. See Synonyms at right .

loose
lose

loose
lose

here's a hint...

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=satire

Generally I (and, I think most other people, including your average dictionary editor) consider a weapon to be something used directly on or against an opponent to disuade, disrupt, disable, destroy, defeat or kill. Things like like canteens don't normally fit that definition.

And that's where you're wrong, actually: (www.dictionary.com to the rescue!)

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=weapon

Your concept of a weapon fits into definition #1, pretty neatly--not quite, but close. If you look at definition #3, though, you get a slightly different picture.

So yes, the term "weapon" can be used narrowly in the sense of some object or mechanism that you use to injure another in combat. But the definition also includes "means used to defend against or defeat another", which is what I was aiming for.

Now, back to the original point, are the canteens, first-aid kits, and radios being used to defend against or defeat another? They certainly are, at least if they're wielded by troops going into combat zones. Seems pretty clear-cut, to me.

I would also quarrel with the way you're tossing around the first-aid kit example. A weapon is all about intent, right? If I have a rifle that I take to the Boy Scout firing range, and I call it a "weapon", I will get reamed out by the rangemaster for using that word. It's a "gun" or a "rifle", never a "weapon", because a weapon is something used to hurt people. So even a gun, something arguably designed with hurting in mind, is not always a "weapon".

Taking the first-aid kit seriously, what if I were to bludgeon someone to death with a metal first-aid kit? In the police report, and in the courtroom, the prosecution would describe that first aid kit as "the weapon he used to bludgeon the victim." This is a perfectly valid use of the term, because at the time of the attack I WAS intending to cause harm with it. The maker of the first-aid kit probably never imagined that someone would use it to kill another human being, but that doesn't change the fact that in my hands, at that time, it was most certainly a "weapon".

True, the issue of intent does make for some very broad and very situational classifications of what's a weapon and what's not, but I think that's inherent in the term. No getting around it.

"IMO when you're writing a comment people can expect that it represents your opinion. therefore IMO stating IMO before or after or within every single thing you say is IMO both unnecessary and annoying as hell. IMO"

Who cares what you think first of all.

Secondly, it appears you speak for all of slashdot I take it?

Simplest point I made was this:

Don't like what it said?? Don't read it.

Again:

"aaaaaaaRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21, @12:24PM (#13614490)
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=paragraph [reference.com]"

4 things to say to that reply to my posting:

1.) If you cannot draw the meaning of someone's words via the context in which they are used, YOU have the problem, not myself.

2.) I don't need YOUR opinion, ok? Just those who have technical commentary on it!

(& not english 101 b.s. technical issues, but on the technical issues in Comp. Sci. it may have in it... that is ALL I personally am/was interested in)

WELL, that, or the moderators' opinions on it (which got a "+1" interesting rating).

3.) Additionally, IF you do NOT like what I write? Don't read it - pretty simple!

& lastly

4.) Care to somehow PROVE you have a PhD in English since picking @ others' writing style, spelling &/or grammar is your alleged forte?

(No, or not possible on YOUR end to produce your evidence of the possession of expertise in said areas, to the last one? I thought as much... but, my first 3 points negate that anyhow!)

* :)

APK

P.S.=> Above all? Grow up! And, by the by?? Go to hell... apk

Very funny, but it's tough to ogle non-appearance related qualities. Ogling a feature-set is like ogling someone's compassion. Tough to do, no?

Your specious argument was *almost* convincing otherwise.

It's ironic that a community of largely unaesthetically-pleasing, overweight geeks who don't care about their appearance

How does everyone arrive at this conclusion about the community here? I've never met a single slashdotter, nor have many others who have leveled this ad hominem attack, certainly not in the numbers necessary to draw this conclusion.

Quit frothing, it's bad for your health.

All this is mute until we can make nano tubes as easily and reliable as we make rope.

So no-one is able to speak aloud about it?

Ooooooh, you mean moot!

</pedant>

Actually, "Allow" does have an anthropmorphic implication.

Check out the defintion if you don't believe me.

Most good editors will recommend 'enable' rather than 'allow' and 'prevents' rather than 'does not allow' when the subject is an inanimate object.

"aaaaaaaRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21, @12:24PM (#13614490)
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=paragraph "

4 things to say to that reply to my posting:

1.) Go to hell first of all, if you cannot draw the meaning of someone's words via the context in which they are used, YOU have the problem, not myself.

2.) I don't need YOUR opinion, ok? Just those who have technical commentary on it, or the moderators' opinions on it (which got a "+1" interesting rating).

3.) Additionally, IF you do NOT like what I write? Don't read it - pretty simple!

& lastly

4.) Care to somehow PROVE you have a PhD in English?

(No, or not possible on YOUR end, to the last one? I thought as much...)

* :)

APK

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=paragraph

GP: that if Debian, Suse and Red Hat....
P: RTFA. Debian is not in.

You may find this link interesting:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=if

I wasn't publishing a peer-reviewed scientific paper, I was posting a comment on Slashdot. I wasn't trying to use the scientific definition of "proof," the mathematical definiton of "proof," or the legal definition of "proof," I was just speaking plainly. I'm sure to your reasoning, the theory of gravity, the theory of evolution, the germ theory of disease, and the heliocentric theory of the solar system are only conjectures, which are not, and can never be, proven. But to all of us who are having a friendly discussion about what all this stuff means, these things have been "proven" by a commonly accepted colloquial use of the word "prove." Any conjecture that passes peer review, stands the test of time, makes it into the textbooks, and becomes a scientific theorem might be considered to have been "shown to be correct," or "generally accepted," or "undoubtedly accurate," or any other synonym or euphemism you might choose for the word "proven." I'm sure, from your message, that if I'd said "Andrew Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem" or "Louis de Branges proved the Bieberbach Conjecture," you'd attack me for "having a faulty grasp of mathematics," because they "only provided a logical proof within an assumed framework."

I'm fascinated by the way you twist your semantic quibbling into a "disproof," if you will, of every actual point I made in my post. It is as if I were to point out that your statement "their coherence with the rest of the accepted body of science" is redundant, because that's part of what constitutes "the weight of evidence supporting them", and then concluded that everything you'd written were false because I caught something that could be improved upon in the way you state your case.

In this case, there would be no reason to fall back on illogical, unscientific arguments for why you're wrong in saying "Currently the theory that nastier hurricanes are caused by global warming has more evidenciary support and is more coherent than competing theories, thus it is the currently accepted explanation," since I can rely on reason and scientific literature to back me up. With your keen grasp of science, I'm interested that you didn't feel the need to, for example, offer any sort of references, arguments, or data supporting any assertion you made in your post. So here's some. First, start with every argument I made in my post, and see if you can actually offer any counter argument to any of them. Then try to actually RTFA linked to the Slashdot story, and notice that this "trend" only exists for the narrow subset of data the researchers choose, and as soon as you throw in the data from 1925, the trend is reversed.

Unfortunately it isn't available online, (well, you can see some of it at Amazon.), but chapter 5 of Bjorn Lomburg's The Skeptical Environmentalist provides an overwhelming accumulation of peer-reviewed data culled from Science, Scientific American, and the UN Meteorological Organization showing that there is no positive correlation between global temperature and hurricane frequency or severity. In fact, the best available data shows a week negative correlation, although any long-term trend is nearly lost in

"Squib: A brief satirical or witty writing or speech, such as a lampoon.
A short, sometimes humorous piece in a newspaper or magazine, usually used as a filler."
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Squib+

Reminder to self: keep humor very, very simple.

it is a venerability and should be fixed.

"vulnerability". (There is a word "venerability", but it means something entirely different.)

hear, hear
An expression used to express approval, as in Whenever the senator spoke, he was greeted with cries of "Hear! hear!" This expression was originally Hear him! hear him! and used to call attention to a speaker's words. It gradually came to be used simply as a cheer. [Late 1600s]

(4) Any island, rock, or key containing deposits of guano, which may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States.

Intuitive means Known or perceived through intuition and intuition means The act or faculty of knowing or sensing without the use of rational processes; immediate cognition. I'm not even sure that really exists. If it does exist, then I'm pretty sure that it doesn't exist in the realm of manipulating software applications.

People say a GUI is intuitive when they really mean that it is easy to use. For most people that means that it is similar to what they are already familiar with. Photoshop has a lot of market share and mind share. I can see why many would believe that any graphics manipulation program that works similar to how the photoshop works would be considered easy to use.

To tell you the truth, I had no clue how to use the Gimp until I read Grokking the Gimp. The Gimp is very easy to use once you understand the concepts because the GUI is a consistent application of those concepts.

Now, I am not a visual interface designer. It is my understanding, however, that one of the basic principles of good visual interface design is that every operation that a user could ask the computer to make at any given point in time should be able to be made visible to the user at the time that the operation is allowed. Thus the application of menus is considered to be good. There are certain operations in the Gimp that violate this principle. I think that is why the Gimp gets such a bad rep.

Intuitive means Known or perceived through intuition and intuition means The act or faculty of knowing or sensing without the use of rational processes; immediate cognition. I'm not even sure that really exists. If it does exist, then I'm pretty sure that it doesn't exist in the realm of manipulating software applications.

People say a GUI is intuitive when they really mean that it is easy to use. For most people that means that it is similar to what they are already familiar with. Photoshop has a lot of market share and mind share. I can see why many would believe that any graphics manipulation program that works similar to how the photoshop works would be considered easy to use.

To tell you the truth, I had no clue how to use the Gimp until I read Grokking the Gimp. The Gimp is very easy to use once you understand the concepts because the GUI is a consistent application of those concepts.

Now, I am not a visual interface designer. It is my understanding, however, that one of the basic principles of good visual interface design is that every operation that a user could ask the computer to make at any given point in time should be able to be made visible to the user at the time that the operation is allowed. Thus the application of menus is considered to be good. There are certain operations in the Gimp that violate this principle. I think that is why the Gimp gets such a bad rep.

It's buboes, not bubons

It's buboes, not bubons

• http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gimp
• http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Diction ary&va=gimp&x=0&y=0http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/g imp
• http://www.google.com/search?q=define:gimp

None of those entries says anything about GIMP meaning beautiful or attractive in any sense. You do know its an acronym right?

Really? Did you know that dictionary.com doesn't agree with you? Look at
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gimp
Um, exactly WHEN did "gimp" mean "beautiful or attractive"? 500+ years ago? It was a stupid choice of a name and I have no doubt the author thinks he is sooooo coooool for coming up with it.

"Britt bent his data to fit his hypothesis."

Do you have any decent evidence to support this hypothesis? I'm not saying he hasn't, merely that your arguments seem deeply flawed, and are therefore no basis to allege such a conclusion.

"Why else would characteristic 3 include "terrorists" as a scapegoat when the regimes he allegedly used for the study never focused on such a group?"

Maybe because back then the word "terrorist" wasn't thrown around with quite such wild abandon as these days? Thesaurus.com gives us such synonyms as "agitator, insurgent, insurrectionist, malcontent, mutineer, nihilist, rebel, revolter, revolutionary" and "anarchist", and these have been used as scapegoats by authority figures since the beginning of time.

It's also interesting that Fascist states seem to have more problems with terrorists than non-fascist states, due primarily to their repressive and authoritarian actions.

"And since when is being a terrorist-- by definition someone who kills, steals, and destroys to force an agenda-- defensible? Are terrorists victims now? Lumping terrorists in with ethnic minorities and "liberals" (nice one, Larry) is suspect."

The point I think he's trying to make is not that these things are acceptable, but that they're scapegoated for things they didn't necessarily do, or their level of threat is wildly exaggerated to permit the authorities to become more repressive and have the population simply accept it.

Scapegoated has a different meaning from "rightly blamed", and scapegoating is always bad.

"Also, scratch number 4 (after all, the liberals keep telling me we didn't allocate enough troops to Iraq or Afghanistan originally and that costs money)"

Number 4 is not strongly so in the case of the US. Nevertheless:

1) Hypothetically, merely because the opposition is also arguing for a single "fascist" element that doesn't mean the party in power isn't also tending towards fascism. In addition, the "liberals" were initially campaigning not to go into Iraq. Now they've failed (and your troops are there), they're campaigning to at least give them enough equipment to have a chance of staying alive. This is very different to prioritising the overwhelming supremacy of the military, which is what the point is all about.

2) Bush is spending a disproportionate amount of money (and raising international tension) developing new high-tech military gadgets like bunker-buster nukes, SDI defence systems and the like.

The keyphrase here is "supremacy of the military", not "having more soldiers than anyone else", or "well-funding all aspects of the military equally".

"number 6 (please point out the state-sponsored censorship in the NYT, LA Times, or Air America Radio)"

Point six says "controlled mass media", not "rigid censorship". In fact it explicitely goes on to state "in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives".

I'm not being offensive, but did you even read the linked article, or just decide you didn't like what it was saying and skim over a few words of it?

"number 10 (haven't seen troops breaking up strikes lately)"

Granted, this doesn't apply too strongly to the US, but then the "labour vs. bosses" fight was largely over many years ago, and workers now have certin rights enshrined in law. In reaction, corporations are simply off-shoring jobs to third-world countries with no such labour laws (and cheaper expenses), as fast as they can. Several Bush economic policies have also eased this flood, not stemmed it.

"The rest could conceivably be argued by some radicals."

Hehehehe, are you serious? I'd have said the following

Are you seriously telling me that you think a game where the sole point is to raise a dog using a handheld system with a touch screen and microphone ISN'T INNOVATIVE? It may not be your cup of tea, but it is innovative, at the very least.

Innovative? You can call this game anything but original.

It may please you to know that cromulent is, now, a perfectly cromulent word.

Easy:

http://investor.google.com/conduct.html

Slogan=Motto (according to http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=sloga n anyhow)

DugUK ;)

1. A phrase expressing the aims or nature of an enterprise, organization, or candidate; a motto.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Google Code of Conduct
Our informal corporate motto is "Don't be evil."