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golomb20

Seriously. This is the type of thing you expect to see at cs.foo.edu/~golomb20

Hey, I guess even mathematicians use aol. Well, ONE does, and maybe 19 other golombs before him.

gears are for wussies

Vel Satis has been awarded the maximum 5-star rating from Euro NCAP, an independant consortium. It is now the safest saloon in the executive-car segment.

gears are for wimps

These quotes seem to suggest it's unconstitutional for anyone other than Congress to declare war.

Congress still has (and did have) the right to declare war, and they turned it over to Bush to use at his disposal. (In theory, at least, I don't think he actually declared anything.)

Why not a collection of quotes about how Congresspeople are lemmings?

gears? we don't need no stinking gears.

First of all, we won't be be able to crack any encryption.

Private-key encryption will still be just as safe (most likely).

Public key encryption based on factoring will be the first casualty.

Given the fact that patches, fixes, and reimplementations are developed and administered all the time, there's no reason to think that fixing vulnerable systems won't be a fairly trivial re-implementation of some sort. Even if a bunch of systems are left unpatched, it's a long way from IBM labs to some script kiddie's Quantum iPod.

There will be market-hyped hysteria, and a massive cottage industry of re-implementations of security protocols. Think Y2K but worse.

gears? we don't need no stinking gears

You:

The blonde woman with at least 2 tattoos, one on your lower back and one on your stomach. You allowed your boyfriend to use his cell phone camera to take many seductive photos and videos of you and him engaged in various sex acts. How did he get you to pose naked with the new rims he bought for his civic? I'm willing to bet that when he showed his buddies those pictures, this enraged you enough to smash his cell phone on the ground, shattering it to pieces.

Me:

The one who found the smashed cell phone near Armitage and Western and picked up the flash card full of images and videos.

Don't worry baby, I'll treat you right. I don't even own a cell phone.

it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
this is in or around Bucktown

gears? we don't need no stinking gears

His point is probably more from a scientific point of view; that is, is the tradeoff between weight, cost, and performance worth it?

Serious cycling is an excellent book by a former US Olympic cycling coach that addresses this. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it goes something like this:
-a one pound reduction in bike weight will save a cyclist 2 seconds over the course of a kilometer
-a simple reduction in aerodynamic drag, such as replacing 36-spoke wheels with disc wheels will save a cyclist 40 seconds over a kilometer despite the considerable weight penalty

So spending $x on a titanium seat bolt is usually a waste of money, in terms of performance. Or in otherwords, you might make it to the top of your hill quicker, but over the course of the ride, the more aerodynamic bike may get to the hill well before you.

Disclosure: the author of this post has a titanium seat bolt on his sub-fifteen pound single speed.

You could simply ride fifteen pounds of funk.

One gear -> stronger legs, more distributed workout, less to maintain, fewer parts to fail, just mo' fun

Every once in a while someone spends a crapload of money trying to change the fundamentals of the bicycle, but really, other than the derailleur, not much has changed in over 100 years.

You should be able to find one on ebay for $100.

The theory is, if there's nothing valuable on the bike, nobody will bother stealing it. Use a front brake til you get your skills together.

It might be tricky to learn how at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be forever hooked, and won't be happy until you build fifteen pounds of funk.