Slashdot Mirror

(1) the research demonstrating the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard is sparse and methodologically suspect; (2) a sizable body of work suggests that in fact the Dvorak offers little practical advantage over the QWERTY; (3) at least one study indicates that placing commonly used keys far apart, as with the QWERTY, actually speeds typing, since you frequently alternate hands; and (4) the QWERTY keyboard did not become a standard overnight but beat out several competing keyboards over a period of years. Thus it may be fairly said to represent the considered choice of the marketplace.

It fails to mention that The Lion King is not Disney's original story, but was instead plagiarized from Kimba the White Lion.

"Lion King" (which was not originally planned to be such a big hit!)

The Lion King wasn't planned to be a big hit but it was, of course it wasn't really their movie at all, just a prettier version of someone elses, likely.

Read Cecil's take.

Seriously though, I've been against giving calculators to grade school kids for a long time. It's all part of the dumbing down of our society. Let them learn how to do math properly, [I]then[/I] teach them how to use a calculator when they start studying higher maths that actually

2 years ago, when I was still in college, My roommate (we'll call him Alvin) and I were helping out another roommate (lets call him Adam) with math. Pre-Calc, to be exact. Now, Adam is having trouble and keeps reaching for the frigin calculator so Alvin gives Adam a simple problem. If X-2=5, what is X. Adam immediatley starts to reach for the calculator. He had become so dependant on the calculator that he didn't seem to be able to do any math without it. [interesting enough, Isaac Asimov wrote a short story about this where people forget how to do math because the calculator does it all [and I mean all] for them).

Oh, and the original problems we were trying to help him with? They were along the lines of y=x^2+5x-7, find the max/min point.

Calculators are becoming the new "new math".

"everyone knows that unless the Beatles continue to make money from recordings made fifty years ago"

Actually everyone knows that Michael Jackson owns the right to those songs...

There are even talks that he might loose all of those rights in order to pay for his debts.

Dude, WTF are you talking about? Micheal Jackson owns the publishing rights to a large number of Beatles songs, though he may be at risk of losing the catalogue due to recent financial troubles.

Since Michael Jackson owns the rights to the beatles, he would like to make more money from them so he can pay off his legal fees and expenses.

Michael Jackson owns the publishing rights to a nice chunk of beatles music. If Michael plans on holding out for a few more child molestation lawsuits before he dies he really needs that revenue source to be maintained.

Think of the children! If this musical copyright expires there will be no money for the children to extract from Michael.

1. Buy Beatles Album
2. Sue Michael Jackson
3. Profit!

Hurting the copyright means hurting Michael Jackson means hurting the children!

No, I really do think he meant blankets.

You might want to check out this thread on the very same topic. It's an interesting conversation if I may say so myself. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php ?t=310547

IIRC, the Nazi-era laws that defined Jewishness specifically exempted only two people by name -- Jesus Christ and Adolf Hitler. This, combined with other factors, led to speculation that Hitler had some Jewish ancestry.

I support copyright distribution rights but not 100% complete control of when and how I watch, listen, view, or enjoy a copyrighted work. If copyright violations were the ONLY issue at hand, I would understand your point. IMHO, the media companies want complete control beyond what copyright laws give them and want the easiest method (ie laws) to blanket the entire population with controls disguised as copyright protections when a lot of technical people can see there is more then the copyright laws that is being controlled. DMCA comes to mind here as well as many attempted bills like the copy bit in digital TV that take away your rights to copyrighted material. Heck, look at some of the one sided statitics the RIAA/MPAA/BSA put out about how much money they are losing due to copyright violations in an attempt to get these laws and new regulations passed or expanded. Ever hear of payola? Price fixing? How about designated play lists? Basically the way I view the whole thing is the media companies want laws and power to restrict more then just your ability to redistubute their copyrighted material without authorization. There is way more to the story then your one liner about a collective group of people on a forum against copyright. The only thing I find amazing (to use your words), is your lack of ability to see the real issues that are frustrated with.

But if you want to know how many calories there are in sperm, you'll have to ask Uncle Cecil.

German. Oll Korrect.

reference

The similarities with New Gods is interesting, but Star Wars also grew out of Lucas' desire to remake Flash Gordon:

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mstarwar.html

Here it is, straight from Lucas' first Hollywood boss and fellow USC graduate, Francis Ford Coppola: "George wanted to do Flash Gordon ... he met with the people who owned it, and they didn't take him at all seriously. So he took the Flash Gordon trailers -- the diagonal titles that talk about the universe at that point [he means the opening story synopsis that seems to recede from the viewer as it scrolls up] -- and sort of combined it with a Stanley Kubrick '2001' world and created his own 'Flash Gordon.' " Lucas says the characters of "Star Wars" are not originals but "tributes."

There! There!

Sorry, it looks like you are the dope this time. ;)

Ironically, the song is about a cockroach not being able to walk because it's missing a leg.

Aha, you seem to agree with me. I suggest you check out this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php ?t=310547 I think you'll enjoy it.

Oh, and according to this thread the attrition rate from first year subscribers to second year was a whopping 33%.

The forums at The Straight Dope moved to a subscription system last year. They claim that it was necessary given the costs involved with maintaining a forum and bandwidth. According to Cecil, they're actually losing money on the forums, even with subscriptions, but the subseciptions to help to minimize the loss.

Plus, what's $20 a year, compared to the $15 a month you pay for online games like WOW or COH?

The Straight Dope Message Board has gone to a subscriber-only setup. I no longer post there. This is a particularly interesting move given that Cyril still states in the Ask a Question submittal form that one should start by posting to the MB. I'm definitely not commenting on the columns anymore even if there are errors. (Which I sometimes wonder was why they implemented subscriptions...)

The Straight Dope Message Board has gone to a subscriber-only setup. I no longer post there. This is a particularly interesting move given that Cyril still states in the Ask a Question submittal form that one should start by posting to the MB. I'm definitely not commenting on the columns anymore even if there are errors. (Which I sometimes wonder was why they implemented subscriptions...)

The Straight Dope Message Board has gone to a subscriber-only setup. I no longer post there. This is a particularly interesting move given that Cyril still states in the Ask a Question submittal form that one should start by posting to the MB. I'm definitely not commenting on the columns anymore even if there are errors. (Which I sometimes wonder was why they implemented subscriptions...)

The US has been living beyond its means - that is, it has a huge current account deficit: net capital inflow to the US far outweighs capital outflow. In and of itself that isn't necessarily bad, and is certainly no reason to panic: it has happened before, and will likely happen again.
...
This drop hasn't yet caused a turn around in the current account deficit - it has continued to grow apace.

Ignore what the other guy said who replied to your message. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

The reason the name for "Germany" varies so much in different languages mainly has to do with which Germanic tribe the country in question had the most contact with (but not always.)

The French knew them mainly through the "Allemanic" tribes of Western Germany. (Keep in mind that "France" comes from "Franks", another tribe of western Germans.)

The Finns call Germany "Saksa", related to the "Saxon" tribe. The Scottish word for Germany is similar.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_162.html

It's amazing that this giant of an airplane is actually bigger than the legendary Spruce Goose. It's amazing how technology has progressed from a rudimentary wooden substructure to this bleeding edge aluminum/steel airframe.

It should be noted that the technology existed to build a plane out of aluminum when the Spruce Goose was created. The reason that it was made out of wood was so as not to deplete the metals that were used to make weapons in World War II due to shortages of supplies. Later Hughes' stubbornly refused to change to aluminum when the metal shortage was lessoned. Check out this site for the story.

"...the British thought geting pure water to measure 0 degrees (ie. 0) was too difficult."
no prize for you!

Hmm, a link would be nice. Good one funk, you poof. My bad.

I suppose this is analogous to Henry Ford's philosophy for why he paid his workers well, in some respects, but Henry Ford didn't throw his weight behind legislation and bills for workers, did he? More like how Henry Ford started a newspaper to publish anti-semitic crap, like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

One of the first widespread uses maybe but not first purpose. It was used in medical means over 20 years after its invention.

Pasted from the straight dope

"Super glue, Krazy glue, Eastman 910 and similar glues are all a special type of glue called cyanoacrylates. Cyanoacrylates were invented in 1942 by Dr. Harry Coover of Kodak Laboratories during experiments to make a special extra-clear plastic suitable for gun sights. He found they weren't suitable for that purpose, so he set the formula aside. Six years later he pulled it out of the drawer thinking it might be useful as a new plastic for airplane canopies. Wrong again--but he did find that cyanoacrylates would glue together many materials with incredible strength and quick action, including two very expensive prisms when he tried to test the ocular qualities of the substance. Seeing possibilities for a new adhesive, Kodak developed "Eastman #910" (later "Eastman 910") a few years later as the first true "super glue." In a now-famous demonstration conducted in 1959, Dr. Coover displayed the strength of this new product on the early television show "I've Got a Secret," where he used a single drop placed between two steel cylinders to lift the host of the show, Garry Moore, completely off of the ground.

The use of cyanoacrylate glues in medicine was considered fairly early on. Eastman Kodak and Ethicon began studying whether the glues could be used to hold human tissue together for surgery. In 1964 Eastman submitted an application to use cyanoacrylate glues to seal wounds to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Soon afterward Dr. Coover's glue did find use in Vietnam--reportedly in 1966 cyanoacrylates were tested on-site by a specially trained surgical team, with impressive results."

Malt Liquor is not a type of beer

I know. That's why I pointed out that it was a Malt Liquor.

It's not a stupid term, but an actual definition for how it is brewed.

Perhaps the parent poster knows this. But this is for the benefit of anyone who didn't. Please help stamp out that bogus meme! http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_334.html http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_marie_ant oinette.htm http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxletthe.htm l

Technically, the Challenger did not explode.

Once the fuel ignited outside of the tanks, the shuttle itself slid sideways, and given that the orbiter was not intended to withstand lateral force, it broke into pieces. There are photographs floating around that show what many to be the cabin, intact, falling back towards the earth.

I decided to test two of my favourite search engines - Teoma and Vivisimo. And guess what - they both outperform Google, returning 4 out of 4 relevant results with the answer. Clearly, at least for this one topic, they are both better than Google (and the rest of the pack).

Teoma

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010518.html Contains Answer
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Flamingos/home.h tml Contains Answer
http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/flamingo.html Contains Answer
http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/7.html Contains Answer

Vivisimo

http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/flamingo.html Contains Answer
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010518.html Contains Answer
http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/7.html Contains Answer
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Flamingos/home.h tml Contains Answer

I decided to test two of my favourite search engines - Teoma and Vivisimo. And guess what - they both outperform Google, returning 4 out of 4 relevant results with the answer. Clearly, at least for this one topic, they are both better than Google (and the rest of the pack).

Teoma

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010518.html Contains Answer
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Flamingos/home.h tml Contains Answer
http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/flamingo.html Contains Answer
http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/7.html Contains Answer

Vivisimo

http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/flamingo.html Contains Answer
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010518.html Contains Answer
http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/7.html Contains Answer
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Flamingos/home.h tml Contains Answer

Corn isn't a fruit you fool! ;)

Technically, you are not correct.

A fruit is the matured ovary of a flower, containing the seed
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mveggie.html
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/teach/msg0 11956409905.html

Here is AllTheWeb.com's top 4 results - all contain the answer:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010518.html
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/nov98/9113122 69.Ot.q.html
http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/flamingo.html
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/nov98/9113122 69.Ot.r.html

(The last is the answer to the 2nd.)

On a note of that, I've been told that the social security act banned certain uses of the SSN as ID.
Is that really really true?

Yes.

If so, where does it say that?

On the back of your social security card, "Not to be used for identification." At least they used to.

I would love to actually take a university to court and make them change. Why hasn't anyone done this?

Because it only applied to the card, not the actual number.

Read the straight dope about it for more details.

Think about the case of the "Happy Birthday" song played by Mozart centuries ago. You don't hear it in restaurants much anymore (oh, they have "Happy Birthday" songs but they are not THE "Happy Birthday" song). The reason? Some guy copyrighted it and the Copyright Office was stupid enough to give him the copyright. Even though the Copyright Office's own rules state that anything that pre-existed before the copyright laws went into effect could not be copyrighted!

Cecil Adams begs to disagree with you. (Well. Cecil doesn't beg. Rather the opposite, usually.)

All software is tangible. It resides within a computer, floppy disk, hard drive, etc.... Therefore, your definition of intangible versus tangible is flawed.

Do you have ANY idea what "tangible" or "corporeal" means? Any at all?

All software is tangible.

Just wanted to repeat that again, because it's about the stupidest thing I've read in nearly 4 months. (This is the 2nd most stupid thing)

Incorrect again! Damn!

No, I was correct. Nothing you wrote refutes me, or even makes approximate sense. It's true that Superman and Luke Skywalker are covered by both trademarks and copyrights, but copyrights are by far the more important consideration. If Luke Skywalker was only trademarked and not copyrighted, then many comic-book authors would be happy to use that name inside their works without paying George Lucas.

Further, the books for both Superman and Luke Skywalker allow an extension of the copyright laws which deal with protecting specific instances of names.

Ok, that doesn't parse too well as an English sentence. But it appears to be an agreement with me, which makes your recent usage of "Incorrect again!" even less comprehensible.

. This isn't legal class 101 - it's just a chat board and the quote was taken, literally from the article.

No. It was a direct quote from USC copyright law, which you completely misinterpreted. And if you somehow thought that the text of an ancient, preexisting law somehow came "out of the case"... well, that suggests why nobody else bothered to reply to you.

Thus, if you have a problem with what he has said - maybe you should go discuss your differences with Mr. Eric Grimm himself.

Maybe if you practice coherent HTML formatting a little, you'll commit less accidental plagiarism.

And while we are on the subject of copyright and what is or is not protected I would like to draw your attention to BattleStar Glactica.

Maybe there's an interesting story behind that, but what you just wrote is too incoherent to allow me to make any guesses. WHY did Lucas decide to sue? What was his percieved grievance? You need to at least allude to details like that for an anecdote to be at all useful.

Given your handle (you have to be in your late 20s to 30s to have watched that show the first time) and your report of a mark after an innoculation, I'd guess that you had a smallpox vaccination. They were designed to leave scars so a doctor could tell if someone were vaccinated or not. In the United States, compulsory vaccination ended in 1971 which is why I have a scar and my younger brother does not.

Oh, that and something about ye shall know the followers of the beast by his mark, or something like that.

But no worries.

This article sort of looked like bullshit to me, especially the cold fusion part. Notice how they hint that cold fusion has been replicated, but don't actually go out and say so. Then they quote an "Engineer" saying the evidence is strong, like they couldn't find any scientist that would support their claim. So I asked at the Straight Dope Message Board about the cold fusion, and got some interesting answers. What I learned basically confirmed that (to the knowledge of that fairly well informed board), yes, cold fusion still is unlikely and unreplicated.

Here is a pretty complete answer.

Not necessarily.

Jet-A can be burned, more or less, in a Diesel engine.

If the car expects gasoline.... well.. that's a problem.

IIRC if you have a 50/50 mixture of gas and diesel, that's the perfect recipe for a fuel-tank explosion.

He would post as many dupes as a slashdot editor would post if a slashdot editor didn't check for dupes."

There. DONE.

From Hamlet. (Good thing Shakespeare didn't get language patents back then or Mickey Mouse perpetual copyrights.)

"What right did they have?" said Capt.Yossarian

"Catch-22." said the old woman

"What?" Yossarian froze in his tracks with fear and alarm and felt his whole body begin to tingle. "What did you say?"

"Catch-22," the old woman repeated, rocking her head up and down. "Catch-22. Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Capt. Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest.

"Didn't they show it to you?" Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. "Didn't you even make them read it?"

They don't have to show us Catch-22," the old woman answered. "The law says they don't have to."

"What law says they don't have to?"

"Catch-22." The old woman said.

n 1897 the General Assembly of Indiana, USA enacted in Bill No. 246 stating that Pi was de jure 4.

A bill in the Indiana General Assembly setting 3.2 and 4 as official rational approximations of Pi was passed by the state's House but tabled in the Senate.

That said, my favorite rational flavor of Pi is 355/113.

Well, they do quite a lot of 'good' things, apparently:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_096.html

Dug