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Currently the north shore of Africa is about 200 miles from crete, but what they seem to have failed to take into account (or at least mention in the article) is that in ancient times sea levels were much much lower.

True.

This is estimated to be due to deglacification around 7k years ago.

That's the number-one reason on that time-scale.

The National Institute of Oceanography states that in studies the sea level of India's coast were about 100m lower about 14k years ago,

Seems reasonable, and you're using the Indian coast as a proxy for "global sea-level" because you think that have been no significant vertical movements of that part of the coast over that time-scale. Which is OK - we know that the Pakistan and Myanmar coasts are relatively active (Rann-of-Kutch earthquake of a couple of years ago ; the 2006 tsunami) ; it's less well-known that the east coast of Africa is rather wobbly - until you look at the movements further inland on the rift valleys ; looking for coastal stability in the Mediterranean is pretty much a WOMBAT. So yeah, I'd take 100m relative drop in sea level as a first approximation.

so extrapolating (a dangerous game I know =) we could say it may be possible that at some point the voyage to Crete was either walkable, or a very short sea voyage.

As you know, extrapolation is a dangerous game. 100m of sealevel decrease means completely different things depending on the steepness of the coastal regions and seabed. On the west coast of Scotland, you might acquire 50 to 200m of horizontal distance on your coastline ; on the east coast here, you'd acquire tens of kilometers for the same sea level fall. In the southern North Sea you'd change it from being sea to being low, rolling land. (I grew up over 100km from the coast in southern Englandshire, and at an altitude of barely 100m.) What effect you get from a particular fall in sea level depends entirely on how steeply the seabed decreases in your area under study. So you need a bathymetry map. (Greek : bathos = depth ; -metry = measurement) Google Earth has the data you need : explore the coasts of Egypt/ Lybia and the south coast of Crete. You'll find that the 100m depth contour is indistinguishable from the coast along the southern shore of Crete (at least, at the resolutions that I used), but lies around 10km off the coast on the Lybia/ Egypt side. So, by dropping sealevel by 100m (if that's what happened in the Mediterranean ; funny things have happened in the past at Gibraltar), you turn a 360km-odd journey into ... 350km. Big deal.
You may be remembering hearing about the Mediterranean drying up completely. That was (several times) around 5 to 7 million years ago in the Miocene, and the Med dried out several times. A lot of the seabed of the Med has up to a kilometre of salt deposited from that event, below 1.5 to 2 km of water. But the prospect of protohumans crossing the Med during the "Messinian Salinity Crisis" ... not plausible, I think.

Could someone please link the the list of views that qualify as troll?

Here you go.

Have we reched Peak Advertising? You misspelled retched.

The funny part, is the only reason the shuttle program exists is to visit the station, and the only reason the station exists is to have a place for the shuttle to go. Every other purpose had to be removed to save money in budget crunches.

Actually, that's 100% backwards. The original purpose of the Shuttle was to supply and support a space station performing research in space. (The orbital equivalent of an Antarctic research station or something like Sealab.) Which is why it's called a shuttle in the first place.* It was meant to travel back and forth between two points - station and launch/recovery site. All the other capabilities, satellite deployment and recovery, etc... etc..., were added to the Shuttle when the station (and the heavy lift boosters to build it) were axed from the budget in the late sixties and early seventies.**
 
That's why, if you examine the history of Shuttle designs, you see a sudden rise in weight, complexity, and cost*** in that time period. That's why the Shuttle was already moving in a direction that made it (relatively) easy to modify the design to bring the DoD onboard. That's why the Shuttle was marketed as being 'all things to all people'. That's why rising costs lead the Administration and Congress to cap the development budget.
 
The other functions (that shuttle had as built) were steadily cut back not due to budget cuts, but in reaction to the Challenger and Columbia accidents. The former is why NASA stopped lifting commercial satellites and payloads. The latter is why the Shuttle stopped flying independently, except for the controversial Hubble servicing mission.
 
 

No one makes money off a built station that has been budget crunched to the point that it does nothing.

Had the station been budget crunched to the point where it does nothing, you'd have a point. To be sure it's a hell of a lot less useful than it could have been, but does nothing is a bit extreme. You also have to realize that much of the cost of the station (as built) stems from two causes. The first is the constant changes to stations scope and function imposed by Congress in the 80's (leading to multiple expensive redesigns). The second is the decision to shift the station to an orbit the Russians could reach so as to funnel welfare in the direction of their space program and rocket engineers in order to keep them employed and thus unlikely to sell their services to states more interested in weapons than science.
 
* The definition of shuttle, uncontaminated by the current Shuttle, in the Webster's 1913 dictionary makes this even clearer.
 
** The Administration and Congress were actually right in this however - the heavy lift boosters used for station deployment would have had an extraordinarily low flight rate and thus would have been extraordinarily expensive. Which is why I've often thought that we should revisit the original shuttle concept now that heavy lift boosters are commercially available.
 
*** Complexity and cost in particular are strongly bound. When you have to use 'extreme engineering' to meet your performance goals, your costs are going to rise sharply. As Elon Musk is attempting to demonstrate (and already has to some extent) when you can simplify your design, engineering, and manufacturing, launch costs can drop dramatically.

So, it's usually a waste of time to point out the truth, but if you're interested you could look into the proxy temperature record of the Holocene period. Maybe Wikipedia would be an easy place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene

Yes, I know climates change. So what? Nowhere in the wiki article you link to does it say anything about what the CO2 levels were (neither carbon nor co2 even appear in it), or what the rate of change of the climate was. Climate is changing more rapidly than it has previously giving little tyme for ecological systems to adjust to cooler or warmer, and dryer or wetter climates.

Once we came out of the ice 12,000 years ago, we warmed up to a peak temperature about 8,000 years ago. Since then the temperature has been falling (see the graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png [Note: Now is on the left]).

Caveats
Not enough data points,
scientific consensus exists
"Given the limited spatial sampling, it is unclear whether the slightly warmer period during the Holocene climatic optimum corresponds to a statistically significant difference."
"it is more reasonably described as a regional rather than a local temperature measurement."
There are 3 more caveats.

PS. "Deniers" is a reference to holocaust deniers. You can do better than to resort to Godwin.

Of the ten results of googling deniers the first 2 are Holocaust deniers. One of the results is the definition of denier, which lists 6 definitions. And the other 7 results are about climate deniers. Your use of "denier" gets 2 results while mine gets 7. Try a better argument.

Falcon

Oh, BTW I don't mean to support or diminish Holocaust Deniers. I met and talked with a concentration camp survivor, she showed us her tattooed number. I like to think if any such thing were to happen again I'd be one of those helping those being persecuted, if I weren't one myself. In the same way I'd want to be one of those who helped during the genocide in Rwanda, during Pol Pot's horrific reign, or one of those who helped the Maya while they were being massacred in Central America, massacred with US support of the regimes doing so.

... they should just Bagit

bag it Slang
1. To cease discussion of an issue: Finally in disgust I told my debating opponent to bag it.

I think we need a new acronym: RTFS. Oh its already overloaded.

If you spend so much time inside playing video games that you get a case of the rickets, you've got way more problems than just vitamin deficiency.

You don't hear people talk about it much, for obvious reasons, but it's also a cause of the rise in prolapsed anuses in teenagers caused by the support structures weakening from too much inactivity, combined with poor bowel movements.

*spoiler*

While I realise that nothing kills a joke like having it explained...

It's a play on the word "posthumously".

I do apologise for this reply avid slashdot readers but this person is just so rude.

Premium?

Yes. Look it up in the dictionary. Specifically, where it says "a sum added to an ordinary price or charge."

Thank you for the definition , oh look at that it also says
quoted from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/premium

"An unusual or high value" for example ":Employers put a premium on honesty and hard work."

who would have thought that Premium could have a meaning not related to money? That must have been the message I was trying to convey.

To me anything that keeps me healthy and assures me that the plane I am flying in will not drop out of the sky can not have a value put on it.

yes , If you read though it again I appear to be saying that not everything should carry a value.

Actually, it, like every physical object in the world and some that aren't, can, in fact, have a value put on it.

Theres a book I think you should read its called

Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Priceless-Knowing-Price-Everything-Nothing/dp/1565849817

The government is not for profit. Google is completely for profit.

Governments are FOR-profit organizations. Its just that they arent trying to profit from it's citizens (that would be like eating yourself). The semantics get funny because governments print money but in the true sense or the word they certainly do.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Profit -

profit (prft) n. 1. An advantageous gain or return; benefit.

At the risk of sounding like a grammar Nazi ... How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you can't even SPELL the word you're trying to use? It is "ALLUDE" not "ELUDE" (that would be when one is trying to evade capture).

Really. Think about it this way: Try your luck getting a job and saying, "I ain't got no ___ .... " (fill in the blank). Do you really think you're going to get hired?

I sure as hell wouldn't hire you if you made such a basic error. Think about it this way: we have ALL made an agreement that we will communicate in this language called English. If you can't learn the rules, get the fuck out.

Seriously.

At the risk of sounding funny: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/eluding

Tobacco? You're out of date and out of touch. 3 decades ago, tobacco was one of the biggest scams in the US. Today? Not much. They deliver precisely what they say, without being overly hyped. Scam? They tell you right on the package, "This shit can kill you!" How is that a scam?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/scam

scam [skæm] Slang
n
a stratagem for gain; a swindle
vb scams, scamming, scammed
(tr) to swindle (someone) by means of a trick

My recommendation for you, is reading comprehension 101. Somewhere, you've failed.

Today, the biggest scams involve the defense industry, diet foods and drinks, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and the "War on Terra" along with the "War on Drugs". Please, don't allow your obsessive/compulsive hatred of tobacco confuse you.

If by "not regulated" you mean "not regulated by the government"

I suggest you step away from Fox News and actually look up the definitions of words.

1. To control or direct according to rule.
2. To adjust to a particular specification or requirement.
3. To adjust (a mechanism) for accurate and proper functioning.

Unless you mean to tell me that you've never regulated the temperature of a room via means of a thermostat. To regulate dosage is to set a schedule for administration and dosage sizes. To the vast majority of the english speaking world, this is the first thought that comes to mind when talking about regulation.

So all I can say is facepalm, if your first reaction is to blame the government for everything you really should think about isolating yourself from everyone.

that has nothing to do with either science or whether the product works

Huh? So the control of variables has absolutely nothing do with science. OK great, we've cleared that one up.

I'm sorry but you'll have to try better then that, really. You fail at basic science and trolling.

Actually, leaching *does* have medicinal benefits.

Exactly what diseases can be cured by extracting substances with a solvent?

FFS the GP spelled it wright, why can't you?

Now it's becoming clear what globalization is really all about - it's about stealing from the productive countries and giving the theft to the lazy, stupid, and unproductive ones such as - oh, say Venezuela.

Kind of a sweeping generalization of Venezuela. There were other items like that on the site. It reminds me of the nativist movement. On the other hand, Apex's over-reaction created a perfect Streisand Effect.

Nope that distinction didn't find its place until the Intel 80486 line of CPU's. Back during the 80386 days it was only differntiating between 16 and 32 bit handling --> http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/386+DX.

1.) Conforming with, adhering to, or constituting a norm, standard, pattern, level, or type; typical http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Normal 2.) Don't try to claim that normal does not have a definition by saying that you are unique. Humans have a Herd mentality so we cluster into categories that are generally defined as stereotypical. I am not defining normal "via politics" I am using common sense. Ever heard of statistics? Do the math. -net28573

Least Restrictive Means Test

The "least restrictive means," or "less drastic means," test is a standard imposed by the courts when considering the validity of legislation that touches upon constitutional interests. If the government enacts a law that restricts a fundamental personal liberty, it must employ the least restrictive measures possible to achieve its goal. This test applies even when the government has a legitimate purpose in adopting the particular law. The Least Restrictive Means Test has been applied primarily to the regulation of speech. It can also be applied to other types of regulations, such as legislation affecting interstate commerce.

In Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479, 81 S. Ct. 247, 5 L. Ed. 2d 231 (1960), the U.S. Supreme Court applied the least restrictive means test to an Arkansas statute that required teachers to file annually an Affidavit listing all the organizations to which they belonged and the amount of money they had contributed to each organization in the previous five years. B. T. Shelton was one of a group of teachers who refused to file the affidavit and who as a result did not have their teaching contract renewed. Upon reviewing the statute, the Court found that the state had a legitimate interest in investigating the fitness and competence of its teachers, and that the information requested in the affidavit could help the state in that investigation. However, according to the Court, the statute went far beyond its legitimate purpose because it required information that bore no relationship to a teacher's occupational fitness. The Court also found that the information revealed by the affidavits was not kept confidential. The Court struck down the law because its "unlimited and indiscriminate sweep" went well beyond the state's legitimate interest in the qualifications of its teachers.

Two constitutional doctrines that are closely related to the least restrictive means test are the overbreadth and vagueness doctrines. These doctrines are applied to statutes and regulations that restrict constitutional rights. The Overbreadth Doctrine requires that statutes regulating activities that are not constitutionally protected must not be written so broadly as to restrict activities that are constitutionally protected.

The vagueness doctrine requires that statutes adequately describe the behavior being regulated. A vague statute may have a chilling effect on constitutionally protected behavior because of fear of violating the statute. Also, law enforcement personnel need clear guidelines as to what constitutes a violation of the law.

The least restrictive means test, the overbreadth doctrine, and the vagueness doctrine all help to preserve constitutionally protected speech and behavior by requiring statutes to be clear and narrowly drawn, and to use the least restrictive means to reach the desired end.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Least+Restrictive+Means+Test

I really don't believe that the DMCA would pass muster if examined in light of least restrictive means. DMCA is by definition a restriction on the PEOPLE's rights.

I'm not disagreeing with you here.

It was last year. It turned out better than we could have hoped for.

Not only did Google win the ability to attach any equipment to the network (itself as huge a win as the Carterphone decision), but the biggest deal - a nationwide block of 700MHz spectrum was not won by any bidder and still remains available.

So if the incumbent providers won't deal with Google fairly, Google can buy a single block of spectrum and give us what we want - truly open communications capability. Google has the cash to buy it, and the history to back up that if a provider won't give them what they need to meet our desires they'll go around them.

/btw, it's "jive," not "jibe". Jibe is a sailing term that means "To shift a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while sailing before the wind so as to sail on the opposite tack." cite. In the colloquial Jibe! is a command to shift the sails so as to change direction promptly. It is in no way synonymous with "jive" which in this sense would mean "agree".

Ok, I looked at the definition. I don't know what you think it means, but it means end of a species, not a decline in the population. So not only am I correct, but the dictionary agrees with me.

YABA
WTF is ARM?

Greed (also called avarice) in psychology is an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.[1]

[edit] Theology
Greed is the very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of money, wealth, power. It is generally considered a vice, and is one of the seven deadly sins in Catholicism.

[edit] See also
  Look up greed or avarice in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
  Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Greed
Yuppie
Gordon Gekko
Mammon
Miser
Seven deadly sins
Seven virtues
[edit] References

People protesting Greed.^ http://www.thefreedictionary.com/greed

Exactly. Reminds me of the old quote: "There are three types of lies in the world: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Define what you mean by "consume" in this case. If we look at the definitions easily available on the internet, say here, we have several definitions that do not quite fit.

If we assume they mean "To expend; use up", I ask... how does one use up data?

How about "To purchase (goods or services) for direct use or ownership."? I don't know how many of you pay for all the data that comes at you... I certainly do not. This does not seem to fit.

Ah. Here is one that makes a bit more sense: "To waste; squander." I know that I certainly do not make good use of nearly all the data that I take in, and not nearly all of the data that I have access to. But this one isn't what they mean, or if it is they are even more cynical than I.

And then, how is the size measured. Information is difficult to quantify. How is it stored? Is it compressed somehow. Why are books ignored in that graph? (I think I know... but the idea that the average American doesn't read enough to count is depressing) A word on a page in a book is information, how does it relate to how many bits or bytes? How about a picture on the same page, is it worth 1000 of those words?

Statements like "Each American Consumed 34 Gigabytes Per Day In '08" are totally meaningless in the way that statement is delivered. It is devoid of context or content. It definitely fits the definition of "To waste; squander".

45s and MP3s are records, albums are collections of records (like your photo album); LPs and CDs are albums.

album (lbm)
n.
1. A book with blank pages for the insertion and preservation of collections, as of stamps or photographs.
2.
a. A phonograph record, especially a long-playing record stored in a slipcase.
b. A set of musical recordings stored together in jackets under one binding.
c. The bound set of jackets for such a set.
d. A recording of different musical pieces.
3. A printed collection of musical compositions, pictures, or literary selections.
4. A tall, handsomely printed book, popular especially in the 19th century, often having profuse illustrations and short, sentimental texts.

[Latin, blank tablet, from neuter of albus, white; see albho- in Indo-European roots.]

I wish you kids would stop redefining common words just to fit your particular views of the world. If you want to know what a word means, look it up in a dictionary. Don't call your dog a "cat" just because you don't know the difference between a cat and a dog.

And just because a thing sells well doesn't mean it's good, and just because it doesn't sell well doesn't mean it's bad. Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting in his life, and that was to his brother. You couldn't get twenty bucks today for any of the dreck that was in the art galeries in Van Gogh's time. Take an art history class and you'll see how abysmal the art that sold well was.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/commandeer

Same place I get that water is wet, fire is hot, sky (on Earth) is bluish color and other hard to find information.
It is common sense.

Or, you can look it up.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fame

http://www.yourdictionary.com/fame

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fame

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fame

Can't we get someone who's first language is English to proof-read these things?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/definitively

http://www.answers.com/definitely
http://www.lemondrop.com/2009/06/16/the-most-misspelled-word-definitely/

Oh, and "I don't know, I didn't read the terms" is not a valid answer to the question. If you don't know, find out. If you don't know and the answer is "yes, it did", then you're failure to know is your own fault.

This is true. But there is another avenue worth pursuing: even when parties explicitly stipulate what the remedy for a breach of contract is within the contract itself, courts can be persuaded to review it to make sure that the remedy is a reasonable one given the damage caused by the breach. If not, it might be deemed a "penalty clause" which courts do not like to enforce.

[snip]

But a court might also be persuaded to look more closely; typically, they will require that the remedy be tailored to the degree of breach. So the fact that modding for innocent reasons is not distinguished from cheating/piracy might be grounds for no enforcement of the provision.

Judicial scrutiny will be all the more strict because they're looking at an EULA (or, generally, contracts of adhesion) than when the terms were actually bargained over.

[citation not needed]

IANAL; I suspect the parent isn't a lawyer either.

Oh, and "I don't know, I didn't read the terms" is not a valid answer to the question. If you don't know, find out. If you don't know and the answer is "yes, it did", then you're failure to know is your own fault.

This is true. But there is another avenue worth pursuing: even when parties explicitly stipulate what the remedy for a breach of contract is within the contract itself, courts can be persuaded to review it to make sure that the remedy is a reasonable one given the damage caused by the breach. If not, it might be deemed a "penalty clause" which courts do not like to enforce.

So, part of the inquiry will probably be: is being banned from the XBL network a remedy that is appropriately tailored to remedy the damages caused by the breach? Maybe the answer will be "yes" if it can be shown that most modded XBoxes are used to cheat and that kicking cheaters off is a reasonable remedy.

But a court might also be persuaded to look more closely; typically, they will require that the remedy be tailored to the degree of breach. So the fact that modding for innocent reasons is not distinguished from cheating/piracy might be grounds for no enforcement of the provision.

Judicial scrutiny will be all the more strict because they're looking at an EULA (or, generally, contracts of adhesion) than when the terms were actually bargained over.

The free dictionary tells me that " put paid to " means "to consider something closed or completed; to mark or indicate that something is no longer important or pending". And that " canard " means "An unfounded or false, deliberately misleading story." So am assuming the author wants to say that the opening up of SixthSense via an open source license will stop the false stories that open source does not lead to innovation.

The free dictionary tells me that " put paid to " means "to consider something closed or completed; to mark or indicate that something is no longer important or pending". And that " canard " means "An unfounded or false, deliberately misleading story." So am assuming the author wants to say that the opening up of SixthSense via an open source license will stop the false stories that open source does not lead to innovation.

I presume Envy Life used "At the end of the day" as an idiom http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/at+the+end+of+the+day

So my solution is to hand out reading glasses to the older users I support? That doesn't seem like it will go over well...

Should I preface that talk with them by saying "IANAO""?

"Ignorant" doesn't mean you "Ignored" something. It just means you aren't aware of it. It's rather harsh to come afoul of a law you didn't even know about, but the alternative is to just allow everyone who claims they didn't know that murder was illegal to walk free.

Artistic freedom in CS is at its best when it is heavily curbed.

From the Free Dictionary:

tr.v. curbed, curbing, curbs
1. To check, restrain, or control as if with a curb; rein in.
2. To lead (a dog) off the sidewalk into the gutter so that it can excrete waste.

Wonder which meaning the average computer user will think of when interacting with xterm? Let's not make Unix the gutter on the edge of usability again, please. Elitism is always a poor choice.

People who worship money have plenty of it, but plenty is never enough. A Honda isn't good enough for them, they need a brand new Escalade every year. And a Rolls and a Bentley. A house isn't enough, they need fifty rooms.

People who worship money equate a person's worth with how much money they have. I don't know if you fall into that category, but worship doesn't mean blind faith. I don't know where you got that idea, but it wasn't from a dictionary. Worshiping means loving the object of your worship above all else, being willing to sacrifice everything for that. E.g., "he worships his wife".

Alcoholics worship alcohol, drug addiucts worship their drugs. That's where the Evangelicals get the idea that drugs and drink are bad, but it isn't the drugs and drink that is bad, it's valuing them above all else.

worship (wûrshp)
n.
1.
a. The reverent love and devotion accorded a deity, an idol, or a sacred object.
b. The ceremonies, prayers, or other religious forms by which this love is expressed.
2. Ardent devotion; adoration.
3. often Worship Chiefly British Used as a form of address for magistrates, mayors, and certain other dignitaries: Your Worship.
v. worshiped or worshipped, worshiping or worshipping, worships
v.tr.
1. To honor and love as a deity.
2. To regard with ardent or adoring esteem or devotion. See Synonyms at revere1.
v.intr.
1. To participate in religious rites of worship.
2. To perform an act of worship.

Of course I value money; I value all my tools.

The "Joint and Several Liability" legal principle states that even if you are found to be 1% liable for an injury, you can be made to pay 100% of the actual and punitive damages in a lawsuit. This is more commonly known as the "Deep Pockets" principle: always sue the entity with the most money, not the entity most responsible. Yes, I believe it would apply to the provider of free WiFi as well, should the MPAA decide to file a lawsuit.

Yes you are obligated to do such a thing, and if you don't comply you can be dragged to court where you could be sentenced to pay for copyright infringement.

Exactly: not complying, getting dragged to court, and paying is an option. You're not obligated to open the source, you can just suffer the consequences of copyright violation instead.

I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or not, but if you aren't, then how does this not mean that you're obliged to open the source? You're obliged to follow the law, and if you don't you'll get punished for it. Am I misinterpreting the word obliged? Because that to me is a perfect usage of the word obliged. Correct me if I'm wrong but is everybody thinking I'm saying forced? Because I'm not. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/obliged

That is the neutrality issue in that specific case.

This has fuck all to do with net neutrality. Neutrality is about enforcing bandwidth neutrality for traffic passing through your system - The AppStore is an app and expected to be somewhat biased.

No, "Net Neutrality" doesn't mean what I said. That is why I did not use that term :}

Additionally, "that specific case" which clearly means the app store, is not a network issue. So no, I was not speaking of enforcing bandwidth.

As you clearly pointed out, but seem to not understand, the issue of enforcing bandwidth equally is called net neutrality.

Neutrality, the word I used (with no additional qualifiers), is defined as "The state or policy of being neutral"

Not deferential. Obedient. Doing what one is told. He isn't doing something someone else told him to do. You're not correct.

Dictionary disagrees, both are correct:
http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/Obsequious
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/obsequious
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/obsequious
http://www.dictionary.net/obsequious

There was also no theoretical reason for monopoles _to_ exist. If charge exists, and moving electric charges create magnetic fields, who do you _need_ magnetic charges? Making the equations "symmetrical" for both electric and magnetic charges does not make them any more elegant or powerful, any more than not having "negative mass" makes Newton's equations any less valid.

"Discrete units of net magnetic charge" may be a quantum effect of aligned, moving electrical charges. I still see no need for monopoles.

If you have an analysis of Maxwell that explains the quantization of electrical charge without requiring the magnetic equivalent, you should show it to people. Dirac couldn't do it, so if you have it'd be well received. Not only did Dirac's equations require them, he predicted the magnetic charge quanta to be 68.5 times the electrical charge quanta. Proving Dirac wrong would have enormous consequences, since the 1983 theory of electroweak unification required them to exist and have the predicted charge magnitude, and the W+, W- and Z(0) intermediate vector bosons it predicted (based on the theory that required monopoles) have been detected. Not only that, they have precisely the charge magnitude predicted by the theory based on the predicted magnetic charge magnitude. And if you can show where Dirac went wrong, you can also show where t'Hooft and Polyakov went wrong, since they independently not only showed that any such unification theory required them, but also came to the same prediction of magnitude of magnetic charge as Dirac. Three independent theoretical analyses that make specific predictions which have been tested and shown to be correct would seem to be a tough nut to crack. But if you can show where these were all wrong, it'd be worth a Nobel, just as Weinberg, Salam, and Glashow shared one for the electroweak unification predictions that testing had subsequently and apparently mistakenly supported with data. In fact, if you can point to where Dirac et al. were wrong, you could save a lot of people a lot of money, since the search for the Higgs boson is based on symmetry breaking that requires the monopoles to exist and have a specific charge. If you could just point out where Dirac went wrong, say on the page at http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Magnetic+monopoles then we can call CERN and tell them to recalibrate the LHC because they followed Dirac's mistake when they built it. Or should they just trash it? It must really be hosed if it's based on a theory that predicts things, some of which have been detected exactly where they were supposed to be.

Oh, and while you're taking a balanced equation and unbalancing it, the answer to your other question is on that page too. An electrical charge in motion creates a closed magnetic field, so a magnetic charge in motion creates a closed electrical field. You may feel free to not see a need for it either, but by now it should be clear why you don't see these things as necessary. This latter result would seem at second look to be dismissable since it predicts an essentially perpetual motion. However, the perpetual motion machine it describes is available for examination in every electron orbiting every nucleus. This closed electrical current has been detected at a classical scale as a persistent flow such as a superconducting current, in a normal resistive metal ring. This was announced in Science magazine a week ago and mentioned in http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/10/10/1338210

Actually it is understandable that some people don;t see the "need" for monopoles any more than they see the need for scalar waves. This is because it has become common to teach the essentials of Maxwell's equations by arbitrarily ignoring some aspects. this is done by setting some of the necessary variables to zero. While this allows one to examine the isolated na

Does this help?

The relevant portion of the promise would be:

This is a personal promise directly from Microsoft to you, and you acknowledge as a condition of benefiting from it that no Microsoft rights are received from suppliers, distributors, or otherwise in connection with this promise. If you file, maintain, or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of any Covered Specification, then this personal promise does not apply with respect to any Covered Implementation made or used by you. To clarify, "Microsoft Necessary Claims" are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents that are necessary to implement the required portions (which also include the required elements of optional portions) of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not those merely referenced in the Covered Specification.

Emphasis mine.

Greedy maybe, but incomprehensible?

Yes I would say requiring a specific brand of video card for a stand alone PPU to function is quite incomprehensible.

If somebody shipped a browser as crash-prone as Netscape was today, it wouldn't matter if it was three years ahead of the competition. People would play with it for a bit, and then use something stable.

Um, no, you just disproved your own point. Netscape did deliver a browser years ahead of the competition...

Here you go: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/today

Bribe implies something illegal is happening.

Doesn't have to.

You would think so, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, the almighty usage panel (I imagine them to be a group of austere-looking men wearing black judges gowns and white powdered whigs) decided to make "literally" essentially an auto-antonym when used as an intensifier.

That is terribly misinformed. Read about the clinical definition of death: http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Clinical+death The reason people are kept alive is because although some doctors might determine and swear in a court of law that the person is *clinically* dead, the family, the government, or perhaps some other doctor can be found which doesn't accept the clinical definition of death and is able to force matters such that the body is required to be kept on going. It's about people who reject the clinical definition, not an inadequate clinical definition.

If you're going to be a smart ass, you might want to check the dictionary first. In the acoustics industry, the terms are freely interchanged. In my area of expertise, damping is the quantitative measurement of the reduction and dampening is the act of applying the material or technique to effect a reduction.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dampening
1. To make damp.
2. To deaden, restrain, or depress.
3. To soundproof.

"Which is just a form of massage."

A form of massage that doesn't involve massaging? Chiropractic doesn't involve rubbing, it is popping a bone back in place like a dislocated shoulder. If you would call popping a dislocated shoulder back in place a massage you have a warped definition.

According to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/massage

"1. The rubbing or kneading of parts of the body especially to aid circulation, relax the muscles, or provide sensual stimulation."

There is no rubbing, no kneading, no intent to aid circulation, relax muscles, or provide sensual stimulation. There isn't even any interaction with muscles.

"You're telling me that double-blind studies do not work by providing an example of double-blind study"

A double blind study that didn't work...