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I wonder what they'd to if someone made this set up:

You speak into a microphone and a speach-to-text program IMs the words to your friend's computer which then reads them aloud. Is that voip? Taxable?

-Grey

Errr... That was the gender-neutral 'guy'. :)

-Grey

Curiously enough the head project architect, Donna Clare of architectural firm, Cohos Evamy was also the head project architect for Edmonton's highly acclaimed Winspear Centre, a concert hall designed specifically to enhance acoustics.

What's curious about that? If you want a quiet building, I'd think you'd want to hire a guy who's an expert in sound and architecture.

-Grey

The government is like windows: it needs to be rebooted from time to time.

-Grey

As any Slashdot nerd who's been to camp (or gym class, or any other instance where 8-to-18 year olds are thrown together) there is a lot of pranks, hazing and other forms of humiliation that goes on in these environments.

Right, so shouldn't the camps work to stop the hazing that occurs rather than blame myspace when people find out? People are being snide because the camps are only interested in covering their asses, not doing anything about the real problem.

-Grey

Thank you, single data point! You always end any argument.

-Grey

Amazon is only attempting this with nonperishables like peanut butter, potato chips, and canned soup

What other kind of food is there? I know not of this 'perishable' food.

-Grey

The EC has also committed to putting new measures in place to halve exclusion rates in skills and digital literacy by 2010.

The only people I ever hear use words like 'digital literacy' are the people most clueless about computers.

-Grey

I think both examples are very symbolic.

You must be an english major, looking for symbolism among the coincidences. Do you know how small the search space for three letter acronyms is? 26*26*26 = 17,576. That's pretty damn small when you compare it to the size of the english language (about 300,000) so there's going to be some overlap on RMS. Besides, if it wasn't RMS, you would have found some other 'meaningful' acronym.

-Grey

So how long before I can license my work CC-BY-YOU-CAN'T-BROADCAST-THIS-IN-THE-US-3.0?

-Grey

Would colonizing space really solve the basic problems that could cause mankind to die out on Earth?

Of course not, but that's not the point. Look, no matter how many health-and-safety lessons the human species attends, there will always be a small probability of a planet-destroying event. If you live on one planet, no matter how safe you make it you will eventually be destroyed.

Trying to solve all of Earth's problems before going into space is the same as cleaning your whole house before starting your homework.

-Grey

Well then we'd better learn how to travel to other galaxies, fast.

-Grey

Well, hopefully only the smart people will go. The smart people and their nurses.

-Grey

Second Life is a sort of 3D web browser.

So is first life.

-Grey

Whatever happened to the virtual reality, 3D world of the Web?

As long as the screen on my computer is 2D I don't think the 3D web will really take off. Now, if you can get me some cheap VR glasses and gloves, that's another matter.

-Grey

from the kind-of-a-crappy-superpower dept

And how many superpowers do you have Zonk? If it could be made safer (I'm a science teacher and have a few magnets in the lab that could rip this out of my finger) I'd get one in a second.

-Grey

I took a trip to Phoenix to have Haworth implant a magnet in me last September. Because body-mod artists are not medical practitioners, ice was the only anesthetic available.

And you didn't think to get really, really drunk before why...?

-Grey

Don't forget to tell the doctor before you go in for that MRI.

-Grey

Oh. So you're saying it was a bad idea for me to register ElectronicHezbollah.com then?

-Grey

I don't know how things are like overseas, but Americans take a lot of pride in their jobs. "What do you do?" is one of the first questions asked after an introduction to another person.

Is there anywhere in the world where this isn't the first or second question you ask someone? People always complain that it's a shallow question, but I think you learn a lot about someone by knowing what they do for 1/3 of their life.

-Grey

Comments? How can there be comments already? Clearly these people didn't LTTFP :)

-Grey

That's it. I'm sending in the ninjas.

-Grey

50 policemen?! Why so many? Were they trying to take down Neo?

-Grey

Real hackers would pick up the money on a skateboard.

-Grey

I spoke with my oldest daughters teacher about the experiments they would be doing this year, sadly they cant even make a potato battery or pickle light due to the threat of fire or something goofy.

No kidding! In my school we have a model steam engine that I used several times as a how-does-this-machine-work kind of lesson. I let all the kids (about 12-13yrs) poke at it and try and play with it to make it go. As they had never seen such old technology they had lots of fun trying to figure it out.

However I got reprimanded by the school for allowing the kids to handle the engine. According to health and safety it can only be used behind a thick safety screen -- incase it explodes or whatever. Now I'll never use it again, because behind the screen it's a boring, lifeless demo.

-Grey

Why was my comment modded troll? Is it at all suprising that people are less interested in science and teaching when a man like Bush is in charge? This administration expresses active hatred for scientific knowledge. You may be interested to know that I'm an American and a physics teacher, but I work abroad and have no intentions of ever trying to teach in America after I had a friend fired in New York for mentioning the existence of evolution in a class.

-Grey

Michael Padilla, a professor at the University of Georgia who is president of the National Science Teachers Association, said that the problem is not that universities are failing to train sufficient numbers of science majors or that too few opt for classroom careers, but that about a third of those who accept teaching jobs abandon the profession within five years.

Wow! I've just finished my first year as a teacher. Only four more to go before I'm filled with apathy and burned out on my chosen profession. I can't wait.

-Grey

The falling average science test scores among high school students, announced Wednesday, appeared certain to increase anxiety about American academic competitiveness and to add new urgency to calls from President George W. Bush

Yes, if anyone can save science education in the US it's going to be Dubya.

-Grey

Adversarial games are not worth playing. If you need to be adversarial, you're doing something seriously wrong with your life.

Shall we play a game?

How about Global Thermonuclear War.

Wouldn't you perfer a nice game of chess?

-Grey

Does philosophy have a role in computer science?

No. And even if it did, you philosophy majors still wouldn't get a job.

-Grey

iShoe!

Bless you.

-Grey

The wiki solution to every problem: add more idiots.

-Grey

what on Earth can we do so stop the spread of garbage like the above? To put it another way, will reducing the amount of potential "suckers" out there dissuade the bad guys from coming up with ever-more elaborate ideas such as this latest scam?

Clearly there isn't enough evolutionary pressure on the heard. What the good guys need to do is build computers that explode when the user does something stupid.

-Grey

Remember that funny (and accurate) web page that shows the Apple product cycle?

You mean this one?

-Grey

"Estella thinks I'm a nosey busybody," said Ms Havisham. A 97-year-old fan of the channel and who hasn't left the house in years. "But I've seen her walking on the street holding hands with a boy, and I'm not about to take advice from a whore."

-Grey

Reminds me of the This American Life episode, Spies Like Us. Check out act 1, the lobby channel.

-Grey

Jan Ashby, 57, a resident who previewed the scheme before yesterday's launch, said: "I wouldn't say it was spying, but it is nice to see what's going on. Look, there's my local pub."

She also added "I like to keep an eye on the pub to make sure that my husband does not go there. I'm not intruding on the little bit of a life that he has outside of me, I'm just looking out for his best interests."

-Grey

Computers at schools and libraries shouldn't be used for chatting or whatever those 'social networks' expect you to do, right?

So make sure never to chat up a cute librarian while you're supposed to be doing your homework.

-Grey

"DOPA would prohibit sites that enable users to create their own content and share it."
Wouldn't this cover any web-hosting service?

Hell, isn't a school a site that enables users to create their own content and share it?

-Grey

The idea? Keeping kids and teens off potentially dangerous sites, at least on public school and library time -- not to mention keeping would-be offenders from using library terminals for nefarious deeds.

"Nefarious deeds," added Fitzpatrick "like thinking."

-Grey

Conallen, of Fitzpatrick's office, says that the bill is intended as "just a start" for shielding kids when they're away from home supervision.

His office then said they are looking to build a "Walled Garden on the internet" where only government aproved thoughts are allowed.

-Grey

Either change both the CSS and the Icons or change neither. As much as people bitch about the look of Slashdot, I think it's so old that it now has a pleasing retro look. But on the new layout the old icons look like garbage. So either fix everything or fix nothing.

-Grey

Nice to see they all followed taco's rules: change nothing meaningful.

-Grey

Perhaps that's related to who's goofing off at workthe most.

-Grey

So they're going to start eliminating blatant spam when it's reported? Kewl!

Can I report blatant misspellings as well?

-Grey

Why is "Chuck Norris" the #1 search term in Poland?

Because Chuck Norris has already roundhouse kicked all the people in the important countries and the Poles know they're next.

-Grey

How could you leave out legs, where both of our countries agree.

-Grey

It is not clear what military purposes the Octarms will be used for

My guess is some variation on the 'killing people' theme that seems so popular with the military.

-Grey

One can only imagine the affect this will have on the rate of recruitment of Japonese school girls into the armed forces.

-Grey

The number of secret subpoenas the Bureau filed last year reached 3,501.

Wow! I bet they have a lot of terrorists to show for all that work. Right...?

::crickets chirping::

-Grey