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yes but a 4-engine plan can land on just 2 engines. that's one less engine.

>Which is fine if you're setting up a web forum,

Or.. you know, a top 5 website... small potatoes.

Yes, exactly. A glorified web forum serving unreliable data at high speed. Do you have a reading comprehension problem or something?

>Which is fine if you're setting up a web forum,

Or.. you know, a top 5 website... small potatoes.

>but not when you're organizing an enterprise that spans the world and has numerous applications accessing it

Silly me, I didn't realize every tech industry could be summed up so tightly. Everyone that uses mysql must simply be retarded, and everyone that uses PGSQL a genius.

>Not just me... most professionals know this and accept it and know that not every tool fits every scenario.

And yet somehow you insinuate that the only possible use for mysql is a "web forum".

That was Beasley Coliseum.

That was Gold Star Studios.

When the digital clocks came, our children slowly lost the ability to read analog clocks.

Have you ever met a real kid? They can read analog clocks just fine.

Then ubiquitous calculators eroded arithmetic skills.

There is no evidence this is true. Math and thinking skills have been improving for decades.

The with ever acclerating speed GPS killed our map reading abilities

I know several women^Wpeople who would never use a map because it was too difficult to orient and figure out where they are. But by using a GPS, which automatically orients and shows their position, they have become more comfortable using maps and thinking in two dimensions. So GPS has increased their map reading abilities by giving them a shallower learning curve.

and PDAs and smartphones eroded our memory by taking over address lists and phone numbers.

Before PDAs: people memorized a half a dozen numbers and kept the rest in a paper notebook.
After PDAs: people memorized a half a dozen numbers and kept the rest in a PDA.

What we don't use, we lose ...

And Socrates believed that written language would destroy everyone's brains.

Which is no diffferent to the unlabelled Sea of Japan.

And News Corp is owned bya guy who's notorious for interfering in editorial decisions. If Murdoch doesn't like the story, it won't see the light of day in a single publication over which he has control.

The difference is screen size, and it's a huge one. On my phone, I want text from edge to edge. On my desktop, my eyes would be tired in 3 lines... On a phone, one app at a time, always full screen, makes perfect sense. On a desktop, you'd hate every second of it...

Tablets aren't desktops, but they're vastly closer to them than phones. Can you imagine a 3 column mail client like outlook/evolution on your phone? It works on a desktop, and it would work on a tablet... Don't take my word for it... On your desktop, go to http://en.m.wikipedia.com/ and read though a few nice long articles, and tell me how what works wonderfully on a tiny screen is better than the desktop version when you've got a huge screen to work with...

And finally, I've read a few reviews of honeycomb, and they all say it's a big improvement, and the feel of using a tablet os, rather than a giant phone, is a major plus.

The US Mint been fusing nickel to copper for over 100 years.

But it is good to remember that, like everybody, they're only human.

No.

"Only human" is telling an off-color joke with your buddies in the lunch room. "Only human" is maybe getting a little drunk and disorderly at the bar on Friday night after a tough work week. Kidnapping your child and getting into a shoot-out with the cops is not "only human", nor is the behaviour of several other TSO's like this guy, this guy, this guy, or this guy. That's sub-human, and is proof that "We the People" have handed over WAY too much authority to these thugs in the airports. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? and all that.

No, we call those bumpers as well. The fender is the body panel that wraps around the wheel well.

When I am working on a problem, I don't think about beauty, but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful then I know it is wrong - R. Buckminster Fuller

Also. What do you call a virus used to kill bacteria computing?

Synthetic bacteriophage? http://en.wikipedia.com/Bacteriophage

...by making it easier for them to end their enemies' lives. You haven't saved any net lives, just switched which side lost the lives.

Wow, you're deep *rolls eyes*. But wait, maybe killing more enemies ends up saving more lives in the long run? Or maybe one of the saved soldiers goes home and ends up being the next Norman Borlaug and saves millions (and counting)? How do we know this isn't the single most important life-saving technology ever invented, in some "butterfly effect" fashion?

Or you could just silence your snarky pseudo-intellectualism and enjoy the damned article.

Well First I think the summary at least has the name of the TCK wrong. I was under the impression that it was called the Technology Compatibility Kit, but I and wiki could be wrong. In part the TCK puts patent restrictions on the developer. The major restriction that you get is you cant make your JVM that works on a mobile platform, like a cell phone. This is actually the main sticking point but I'm sure there are lots of other restrictions as well.

This sounds like some sort of Harry Potter Cargo Cult.

So here are natural units

Planck units do not use any prototypes at all, not even elementary particles, but instead rely exclusively on fundamental constants. There are also several other similar systems, all of them non-circular, some are even in use.

Chess has a natural limit since the number of pieces monotonically decreases during the game. Shogi lets you drop (add) pieces that you capture, so a game can go on for a long time.

Um no.... The thing that makes computers so good at chess is that it's a game of perfect information. Shogi the same it just has more permutations, specifically because of the drop rule. But there are still only a finite number of plays, Therefore using a lookup table is possible and I would argue even practical.

http://www.en.wikipedia.com/wiki/game_theory

The cost is to Jim's health and sanity - it doesn't show up on any balance sheet. Business love this sort of thing, enough that there is a term for it in economics ; an externality. It belongs in the same category as dumping toxic waste.

I'm suggesting equating standpoints you don't like with holocaust denialism trivializes the holocaust and its unsavoury denialists.

Sure, and personally I wouldn't use the term to describe people who merely have a standpoint I don't like. I would restrict it's use to people who practise denialism, of whatever flavour. Nor is calling a climate science denialist a 'denialist' equating them with a holocaust denialist, though obviously for some people a connotation is raised. Climate denialists clearly do not necessarily deny that the holocaust happened. OTOH, some similarities in their MO, --eg. the quack-chemistry which proves the Zyklon-B could not possibly have been used to gas victims and the quack-climatology which proves that human activity could not possibly play a role in observed climate change, --cannot be ignored.

In any case, what's the hangup with holocaust deniers anyway? They're a harmless enough bunch of nutters. Sure they cause offence, but how many people have been killed as a result of David Irving's writings? Constrast this to the effect of Thabo Mbeki's endorsement of AIDS denialism in facilitating the spread of HIV, at a time when it was perhaps the most critical to take action. And though it is too early to tell, to the best of our current knowledge the human misery to which climate denialists are contributing will be orders of magnitude greater still. Really for a genocidal ;) climate science denialist to complain about comparison to an unsavory holocaust denier seems like a murderer complaining of being compared to a pick-pocket.

Trying to tar your opponents with that particular brush is an unworthy tactic ...

OK, let's recap what's happened in this thread. Someone made a joke which used the word 'denialist,' someone else tried the reverse Godwin "you're calling us holocaust deniers," and I pointed out that denialism is a term which covers much more than merely holocaust denialism. Personally if I hear the unmarked case 'denialist' I assume we are talking climate nowadays. Some people would have us believe they think of holocaust deniers and that they are unable to separate the terms even when the case is marked with "climate science," or "AIDS" or whatever. Twenty years from now when some new species of denialist is properly called a denialist they might well retort "oh you are calling me a climate denialist." Can't be helped.

... which alienates rather than convinces your opponents.

Again personally I'll leave it to the denialists to "convince" with whatever persuasion techniques they choose to employ. Well no I won't leave them, I'll just call a spade a spade. You are free to be offended by that.

Now, 'uncritical skepticism' I might buy as a term. Think about it.

For some odd reason it makes me think of the line from Scott, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive." You would prefer so palpable a contradiction in terms to a clear word which accurately denotes the activity the perpertor is engaged in?!

You see, as a sceptic, it's my time to be offended at the idea that propagandists who spread lies and undermine science should be honoured with this term. Note also that I distinguish climate sceptics from climate denialists.

It seems that there are people out there who simply want to prohibit the use of a particular term with a very clearly defined meaning from ever being employed because of their particular political sensitivities. That's just like Hitler!

Please dont describe obscure brands like Firefox without providing an introduction.

For those of you that haven't heard, please see more at http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Firefox

Like the poster on TR, I recommend this be dubbed the Spindizzy effect..

Yea mean like ketamine-laced robot bees? That would be awesome.

I can see it now... A high-security military installation is equipped with a hive of these sentry bees. News of the security mechanism spreads to a local college campus, and on Monday morning guards at the military installation find their perimeter lined with hundreds of catatonic k-holing college students.

Ignorantia juris non excusat; ignorance of the law is no excuse. Sounds like the leagal system is exactly like the afterlife you describe

Except that in our legal systems, ignorance is sometimes an acceptable excuse. See ignorantia juris non excusat .

Well, to be fair, he also invoked Superman: "...we are Americans, united not by race, or religion, or blood, but to our commitment to freedom, and justice for all."

That is the closer to last phrase of the Pledge of Allegiance. One word is different, "Liberty" is swapped for "Freedom". You didn't pay much attention in grammar school or you're not a US citizen. As the AC says, Superman's line is "...Truth, Justice, and the American way".

The 1720 elevation was recorded directly across from the area where the rockslide occurred. It would seem to me that right in that vacinity the water went up MUCH higher than 100 feet, but that one neaby area took the brunt of it, and the wave that continued on out was much smaller.

In English, we call that a splash, not a wave. Have you Americans simplified the language so much that there is no longer a distinction?

You mean Topfreedom?

Might be NSFW, by the way, I'm not going to check, since I'm at work.

the stereochem of the amino acids found in meteorites is important. Nearly all biological amino acids (except glycine) have a chiral component to them. for those who didn't have the wonderful pleasure of taking organic chemistry, stereochemistry refers to a molecule's physical orientation in space. given a sufficiently complex molecule, you can have different "versions" (enantiomers) of the exact same molecule that have the same physical properties, but are in fact distinct.

all amino acids made by biological sources on Earth are L enantiomers (L= left, referring to the fact that pure enantiomers rotate plane-polarized light to the left or right, depending on which enantiomer it is.) Some meteorites have been found there the mixture of amino acids is racemic (equal mix of L and R). This would be expected from an abiotic chemical reaction in space making these things. Miller and Urey found a racemic mixture of AAs in their famous experiment.

some meteorites have been found to contain an 'enantiomeric excess' of one form or the other. could this be contamination from Earth? well, some of the meteorite AAs are rather unique and not found here in any numbers. when it comes to AAs, it is very difficult to think of a totally physical process that would lead to such an excess. hmmm.

Maybe if it took place as a fulfillment of the http://en.wikipedia.com/Felony Murder if someone wound up killed over it.

Let's say a spammer was selling ads for a potentially dangerous brand of a viagra work-alike. And, the company that was sleazy enough to hire a spammer to push it's product was also sleazy enough to skip clinical trials and other safeguards, and now they are selling a deadly poison.

Let's also say that Joe Sixpack was desperate enough to buy the stuff.

Now, he dies.

First of all, the company that sold the drug is almost certainly liable for wrongful death.

But here's the juicy part.

The spammer, and most likely, the botnet operator, have both committed theft, probably on a felony scale, of thousands of computer systems, and as a consequence of their actions, someone died.

Any judge would hopefully consider that selling your services to the highest bidder is not quite in line with being prudent, which includes selling ads for dangerous products.

In this case, I would support the death penalty according to the Felony Murder rule, which elevates the death of anyone not involved in the commission of a felony, anywhere from tortious wrongful death to manslaughter, to murder.

Part of the issue to is that simply having a source doesn't necessarily make an article more or less reliable. At least 50% of the sources used in wikipedia are at least just as suspect as those without.[ citation needed ]

I'm frankly shocked that the person responsible for bomis.com would stoop to this level! In all seriousness, I don't think Jimmy would be a demi-god if he hadn't surrounded himself by weak-willed yet highly creative staff at Nupedia. I of course base this opinion solely on reading done at my favorite site, http://www.wikipedia.com/

The extensive history of the Sith and their organization practices is all on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/SithThe Sith Basically, the Sith used to be a larger order similar to the Jedi, until one of the many wars, after their loss of which they went underground and started the practice of existing two at a time - and yes, that is two in the entire galaxy. Vader would *never* have taken a Padawan while his master survived. Not to mention, Sith apprentices are not called Padawan Learners.

Exchange rate fixation. Countries do it all the time. Our currency (BGN, Bulgarian lev) is fixed to the euro. Naturally you accomplish it by saying you exchange levs for Euro unrestricted for this fixed prices. China also does it, but it is not only the dollar, but a whole basket of currencies. See http://en.wikipedia.com/Renminbi for more details on the yuan. Moreover, china does it by outlawing all exchanges of yuan except by their central bank, so the chinese currency is not free tradeable.

Why do it? When you have a country which is very important in terms of export or import, you don't want to disturb the economy with price fluctuations (USA/China rings any bell)? The british pound is a very strong example. They don't want to join the eurozone (the countries, that use euro as primary currency) because the dollar/euro is fluctuating very much. If they adopted the euro, now they would have gotten very strong euro vs dollar, which is BAD for exports to USA (the primary export destination). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday is a story about their last attempt to fix the pound to the euro.

Have you ever even looked at an iPhone?

No, because, news flash, $500 for a PHONE? Right.

Why should a window be the arbitrary size of the screen, which has nothing to do with the content in the window?

Because I want to see the window and only the window- no other distractions, plenty of room for the application to show me what it wants to show me. This is especially useful for things which can be expanded to infinitely large size, like certain text and picture-based applications.

Hello and welcome to slashdot. I think you might find this interesting: http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Slashdot

The United States came into existence as recently as the tail end of the 18th century.

you should see the copies made in Orgrimmar (made by slaves in the sewers) or made in Darnassus and you will change your mind immediately my dear traveller!

you should see the copies made in Orgrimmar (made by slaves in the sewers) or made in Darnassus and you will change your mind immediately my dear traveller!

Alas, yes-

Someone has INDEED thought of that before.

His name is goatse (look it up on Wikipedia) and the capacity is apparently phenomenal.

Work has since ceased on the project, as there was problems involving retention of the objects...

If this really is an artifact of the old 'core' of AOL, then it's probably due to the original password functions we put into PlayNET back in 1984-1985. (For those that don't know, AOL was originally a port of QuantumLink to the PC, and QuantumLink was licensed from PlayNET. See http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/PlayNET.)

The original core was all done in PL/1 on Stratus fault-tolerant minicomputers. They continued to run the core up until a few years ago, but much of the design was so ingrained that it continues to exist in places until this day. That was why it took so long to have more than 10-character usernames, and why last I checked (a couple of years ago), the login protocol still 'uses' my old error-correcting protocol from PlayNET, which was designed to allow error-free communication across non-corrected 300 baud modems (sliding windows, piggybacked acks, CRC-16, special tricks to avoid 0x0D/etc (because Tymnet/Telenet/X.25 pads took that as a "forward the string" code).

• Ceremonial dress such as royal robes and full dress military costume
  
• Formal wear such as white tie and black tie
  
• Suits such as those sold by Brooks Brothers and Chanel
  
• Any stiff or very traditional elements, such as highly polished dark leather shoes, or highly creased and pressed shirts and trousers
  

for Gnomeregan!!!!

ps: Oh, I already saw Brooks, Brothers and Chanel (nasty girl sometimes!) in Azeroth, don't buy anything from them,
they are not only against casual, oversized and made in Durotar; but they sell very cheap fakes!

Here's my idea:

They own both the .COM and .ORG version of the WIKIPEDIA name. I've always thought that wikipedia.ORG could remain ad-free, while wikipedia.COM could be set up to use ads. Maybe wikipedia.COM could be read-only, while wikipedia.ORG remains the editable copy. In that way, you can generate some revenue, while still accommodating the contributors who created content under the assumption there would never be ads. Perhaps this could be a workable compromise for people?

I'm not talking about flashing banner ads, either. Google Adsense would seem to be a perfect fit here, and non-obtrusive.

If the other alternative is for wikipedia to die off because they don't have enough money .... well, I think I'd prefer an ad-supported version.

They own both the .COM and .ORG version of the WIKIPEDIA name. I've always thought that wikipedia.ORG could remain ad-free, while wikipedia.COM could be set up to use ads. Maybe wikipedia.COM could be read-only, while wikipedia.ORG remains the editable copy. In that way, you can generate some revenue, while still accommodating the contributors who created content under the assumption there would never be ads. Perhaps this could be a workable compromise for people?

If the other alternative is for wikipedia to die off because they don't have enough money .... well, I think I'd prefer an ad-supported version.

They own both the .COM and .ORG version of the WIKIPEDIA name. I've always thought that wikipedia.ORG could remain ad-free, while wikipedia.COM could be set up to use ads. Maybe wikipedia.COM could be read-only, while wikipedia.ORG remains the editable copy. In that way, you can generate some revenue, while still accommodating the contributors who created content under the assumption there would never be ads. Perhaps this could be a workable compromise for people?

If the other alternative is for wikipedia to die off because they don't have enough money .... well, I think I'd prefer an ad-supported version.

Broodwich

If you're really that dense, maybe you should re-read things a few times until you get it, rather than ask other users to go out of their way to accommodate your lack of observational skills (which like all skills can be improved if you get off your ass and do it).

"Perhaps, if they had done some tours they would have stayed together. Or, perhaps, they would have had more inspiration from contact from the public to create even better stuff."
Perhaps. It might've helped them make more records, at least. But the Beatles had the most insane fanbase in history. They didn't get much contact with their fans when they were touring because the fans seemed ready to tear them apart. (Room-car-room syndrome.) The fans screamed so loud during Beatles concerts that almost no one could hear the band. Even they couldn't hear themselves sing. This was a problem for most of the band.
The 1966 tours were disasters. A careless snub made the Phillipines stop both unprofitable (they had to pay all those concert proceeds to the government before they could leave the country) and outright dangerous. Careless words from John Lennon turned many Americans against the band, creating the possibility that some of the apparent fanbase might harm them for the sake of it. They almost got killed, or thought they would get killed, several times over--a cherry bomb here, an open-air stage in the rain there. The Beatles had to at least take a sabbatical--touring had become too dangerous.
In 1969, Paul McCartney tried to get the band interested in touring again as part of the Get Back project. These efforts turned the rest of the band against him. True, his efforts likely kept the Beatles together for at least an extra year, but it wasn't simple or painless.
Background: http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/The_Beatles
Thanks for the idea. Every fan has to start somewhere.

I read about the Rio case.
The Diamond Rio was allowed to stay on the market as is because it could get its music only from computer harddrives. The AHRA specifically exempts computer harddrives because they are used mostly for things that aren't music.
http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_ Act
Now, the XMp3 radios gets their music from XM broadcasts, which are not explicitly exempted yet. The only uses for an mp3 deck that can only record from a radio are recording music and recording talk, which means that half the uses are ones the RIAA objects to.
So no, this is not open-and-shut...