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"Virtue Signalling" is from, at the latest, 2004. It's a version of "Karma Whore" specific to Social Justice and politics.

If you haven't seen the term before, it's because you live an information echo chamber, where you avoid any non-Leftist posters. It's been in use anywhere that the feel-good talkers that never do anything are discussed - which means anywhere not Salon, HuffPo, Jezebel, or their ilk.

Try going out and visiting the rest of the world some time. You might find that a lot of reality isn't what you expect, and isn't something you can dismiss as "Infowars" either.

Textbooks in Academia are very often subject to the now normalized purposeful practice of being embiggened with useless redundancy and other such non essential and pointless filler to give them a high "thud factor", id est, a physical quality exhibited by a bound set of printed manuscript as its conversion of potential to kinetic energy -- most commonly expressed as free-fall -- ends abruptly upon colliding with the approximately parallel planar surface of a coffee table, desk or other such platform, such that the humanoid observer will cromulently valuate the manuscript as having a higher value due to this property being associated with other well respected volumes of physical information conveyance.

Yes, this from your 'best and brightest'. Your race is doomed.

When you see a tram with an aerodynamic front puttering along the street at 20MPH then you know that the aero front was all for show

Nope. There is a reason for that smooth, sloped nose. Idaho Stops.

Huh? What's that got to do with the price of fish?

When you see a tram with an aerodynamic front puttering along the street at 20MPH then you know that the aero front was all for show

Nope. There is a reason for that smooth, sloped nose. Idaho Stops.

Right-sizing is usually the evolution of the word down-sizing on the euphemism treadmill:
http://www.wordspy.com/words/rightsizing.asp

I guess the guy is just using it wrong.

This is called Wikiality, and it's how Stephen Colbert caused an increase in the African elephant population (which, as it turns out, is absolutely true).

I actually worked in the lab where they developed the machine. UMIST in Manchester.

They did commercialise it. The technology is used all over the place.

http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/30/suppl_1/i252
http://www.wordspy.com/words/noseonachip.asp

Of course, I'm sure Caltech can patent it can sue the bastards into oblivion.

Never heard of hoplophobia? Most people haven't. The made-up word to describe people who fear guns hasn't caught on. Not even longtime gun enthusiasts are familiar with the term.

"We lead the state in sales, but we've never heard that," said Norman Van Wagenen, whose family has been in the firearms business in Provo since 1958.

The Utah Shooting Sports Council is trying to get hoplophobia into the local vernacular as well as the often bitter gun rights debate.

Usually? I've never heard that before. 'Usually in your circles', you mean. The term didn't come into wide use until we hit the year 2000, and now it is a common abbreviation for years beginning with 2001. If you read '2k' as 'two thousand' you get two thousand seven from 2k7.

http://www.wordspy.com/words/2K1.asp

How did you make it to 2007 without knowing this, anyhow?

2700 would be 2.7k in any other field, btw. 2k7 is an odd way to say it.

2) How many "cities" are built on permafrost?

Quite a few apparently. Not talking about New York type metropolis centers but still, when you add all those little villages and towns, that's quite a few inhabitants. Try driving on a road that used to be permafrost and now it is melted, that should be fun.

Again another reference for you enjoyment: Sinking Alaska

Have you heard of Dowson city? Well here it is then.

This applies even more so to Siberia probably, it's just that we don't hear about it in the American media as much. It is understandable that our scientists and journalists are concerned with our continent first. I was surprised when Slashdot picked up a story about Siberia here

Have you actually BEEN to northern Canada?

Have YOU BEEN to Siberia?

Finding a million examples of folks misusing any common phrase is not difficult. It doesn't make them right, either.

The top results from a quick Google search back up the description of drinking the kool-aid as an act of self-destructive or blind faith:

http://www.wordspy.com/words/drinktheKool-Aid.asp
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/92/debunk.html
http://www.wordorigins.org/Words/LetterD/drinkkool aid.html
Also, see the "Hacker Slang" section of the page at http://www.answers.com/topic/kool-aid

The only dissenting explanation is far more pithy, and evidences less research:
http://www.clichesite.com/content.asp?which=tip+19 48

The HTML entity for the symbol is , while the HTML entity for ® is ®. On a Microsoft Windows computer with American keyboard layout, alt+0153 types , while alt+0174 makes ®. On Macintosh computers, opt+2 for and opt+r for ®, and their Unicode encodings are 2122 in hexadecimal/8482 in decimal for and 00AE in hexadecimal/174 in decimal for ®.

Charming and amusing paragraph. This certainly is the encyclopedia made by Slashdot.

On Feb. 22, 1983, by refusing to grant certiorari, the Supreme Court let stand a decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that invalidated the trademark registration of the term "MONOPOLY" for Parker Brothers' ever-popular real estate board game. The 9th Circuit declared that the term "MONOPOLY" had become generic, i.e. had become a common descriptive name for that type of board game and thus no longer afforded trademark rights to Parker Brothers, the owner of the "MONOPOLY" trademark registration. ...

Many years ago there was a mass suicide where most everybody in a cult drank poisoned punch. What ever the punch was, it was associated through re-telling with an American product called Kool-aid.

http://www.wordspy.com/words/drinktheKool-Aid.asp

Kool-aid is a brand of punch which comes in a little envelope with coloring and some artificial flavor. You mixed it with a ton of sugar and water. Many kids drank the stuff.

Those science geeks over at Harvard need to devote their time to studying a much more debilitating form of RSI...namely, Nintendonitis (also known as Nintendo Thumb) ^_^

from The Word Spy:

Earliest Citation:
Christmas decorations around Tampa Bay started going up in late October, and business has been brisk since then. And while Friday - known as Black Friday for the legendary hordes - will be the biggest shopping day for many area stores, others ring up the greatest sales the Saturday before Christmas.
--Marilyn Marks, "Retailers expect good sales this Christmas," St. Petersburg Times, November 27, 1986

haven't found anything better. everything else seems to just point to the currently adopted usage of the term. Rather Orwellian, but such is life.

> modern, plugged in, brilliant, and utterly uninspired people

That is the best description of /.'s luddites I've read in a long time. Well put. It's really interesting (not!) to watch them crawl out of the woodwork every time there's a story on Space and do their sad little dance: "we ought to be spending money on AIDS research"; "we ought to be eliminating poverty"; "we've done it all before".

As for the GP -- Pathfinder is worth getting excited about because the Moon and Mars are problems on two wholly different *scales*. Saturn outwards is yet another scale (Sure, the physics involved in the same, but the level of engineering accomplishment necessary to pull it off successfully is dramatically different. Yeah, it's not necessarily as exciting to watch on your 60 inch plasma, but if you bother to dig in you'll be excited all right. And as for practical applications: remote-manipulation tech (which was key in Pathfinder) is making life more 'exciting' in lots of other Earth-bound areas, like deep-sea sub rescues and telesurgery.

One other point: another poster wrote In this day and age NASA can't afford to 'screw up' any more

I don't think that is true (think private enterprise), but if it ever became true it would one of the reasons behind the decline of (Western) civilization. No one ever won big without taking risks. Luckily for the human race, you'll see countries like China willing to take on BHAGs.

This service is totally worthless for earworms!

Wal-mart isn't the only store that has workers in China

It may not be, but walmart's "low prices" slogan is considered by some economists to be a prime element in controlling inflation during the recent economic slowdown.

If walmart was no longer able to obtain cheap chinese goods and was required to raise their prices, the effect on the US economy might make the SUV-driving crybabies complaining about oil prices look just like SUV-driving crybabies.

Bubba in his 4x4 might wave his shotgun, have the bumper stickers, and talk real big about America, but if you want to lose the presidency for your party, you make the housewives of America go out and spend 10% more on their kids' school clothes.

Never soccer though except for in gym class and I grew up in the 80s, born in 77. Granted I grew up in rural America and not the suburbs, and they are always behind the times.

I do think you're estimating the growth of soccer in America to be too early, but it doesn't matter. If you grew up in the 80s, you're still only 30, meaning the majority of adults never played the game and just don't appreciate it because of that. I don't mean to imply that little kids soccer isn't as well coached as anything else little kids play. But before a certain age, they don't really teach them how to play the game. Football, soccer, basketball, all little kids games look exactly the same. There are a bunch of kids all clumped around the ball and one kid at the end of the field picking his nose. If that is a person's only experience of a game, they will never appreciate it.

http://www.wordspy.com/words/soccermom.asp

Well of course they're being attacked. They have THE established technology. They enjoy a level dominance that you'd be hard pressed to find in any other major industry. Established technologies always come under attack from disruptive technologies. In this case, Microsoft is the established technology. Now what they've done a good job in the past is embrace disruptive technologies, like web browsers, and re-establish themselves as unchallenged kings. They are finding it more and more difficult to do that. Personally I don't think that has as much to do with Google being so great, it's just that Microsoft is finally started showing its age in the last five years.

Look at the whole desktop search "race." It wasn't like there weren't lots of niche companies who already offered something pretty similar. And it's not like this hasn't been on Microsoft's radar for a very long time -- Gates was talking about it before Jobs was talking about Spotlight. Yet they still got beat to the punch by Google.

That's not really that big of a deal though. Microsoft has never been known for being first. But the "old" Microsoft would have rolled out a new version of Windows in Q1 2005 and it would have had its "MSN" desktop search fully integrated into Windows explorer. There would have been a search box (of some sort) in the freakin' Start menu! Any kind of search would show both desktop results and web results from MSN, probably including paid listings. By Q2 of 2005 there would have been a new version of Office that included search features. There would be ads with kids writing a paper for school (in Word of course), doing research (performing a search) right there in Word, and then getting an A on their paper. That would have been what the old, classic "embrace and extend" Microsoft would have done. The "new" Microsoft tries to innovate on its own (WinFS, Avalon, etc.) but just flounders in the process, then is unable to change directions quick enough when others innovate.

The word seems to be an obscure military jargon term. The earliest citation seems to be in 1986. Though I seem to recall the word being used in texts dating back to WWI.

I was thinking, "Wow, what a dumb way to spell 'sheep'." So I googled it: http://www.wordspy.com/words/sheeple.asp
I feel like a dork. But the beer is helping!

Oh sure, sounds like a good idea at first, but do you have any idea how hard it is to keep a beer lit?

Perhaps you might care for a Nicotini instead?

Except for with faulty brakes, you could end up killing someone. Has there been a case where faulty software killed someone?

Faulty software can make you a proud owner of a zombie PC. Zombie computers are often used to federal crimes - from DoS attacks to storing child pornography. When Al Quaeda learns to use them, your can end up killing someone (unwillingly, of course, but the same is with faulty brakes).

My experiences parallel the author's in one important way:

Yes, most user friendly distros will manage a forehead install, but invarably there will be at least one critical function that doesn't work. In my experience that has been Palm hotsync (always), printing over the Windows network (usually), and wireless networking (most recently).

I know from hard experience that trying to find a solution for any of these will involve hours if not days of trolling newsgroups, forums, and that special hell called man pages.

I'm not afraid of command prompts, or of learning new things, but I simply cannot afford to waste a whole day trying to print, or sync my calendar.

It's called directed sound. There was also a big deal made about it for the Republican convention (e.g., here and here). as a crowd control measure.

That's America for you. If you're rich, (most) people think you must be really smart. Sometimes this may be true, but often it is not. But the sheeple don't care; they want to look up to, emulate, and lap up the pearls of wisdom put forth by the rich folks.

That's America for you. If you're rich, (most) people think you must be really smart. Sometimes this may be true, but often it is not. But the sheeple don't care; they want to look up to, emulate, and lap up the pearls of wisdom put forth by the rich folks.

Heh. This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "Google Bombing"

Doesn't seem like it would be all that efficient to google for email addresses. You'd have to do some parsing on the other end to dig them out of the rest of the page content, maybe a little work to make sure they weren't spam armored. Of course, I guess if you've hijacked some poor slobs computer, CPU cycles aren't really your problem anymore.

Do you know much of the many Nyssas which the Gods Osiris and Dionysus founded -- and that "Dionysus" itself means "God of Nysa" meaning that He was born there? Googling "Nysa Osiris Dionysus" makes for interesting reading! (Since everybody can Google I'm not gonna bother with links.)

According to Religions, the first Nysa was in Egypt. Osiris went a-touring the world. He founded a Nysa in Arabia Felix, and one in India that some think is today's Peshawar.

Dionysos (I alternate spellings religiously) was from the Nysa in Arabia Felix. Or maybe a Nysa in what is today NE Iran, to the SE of Caspian, on the road from Tehran to Balkh in Bactria. The Persian legend says that He first cultivated the Vine in these mountains around their Nysa, producing His entheogen, Wine.

The Nysa of Dionysos is also placed in Libya or Ethiopia. And here we meet an interesting concept, "(A)Ethiopia." The Greek means "Burning Eyes" and it's easy to see why sub-Saharan Africans might be so called. The "Aeth" can, however, also refer to "ethereal" and as such is the root of our English "ether." It refers to the "upper air" a realm of Gods.

It is the root of the name of Aeetes King of Colchis, Son of Helios the Sun, and father of Medea. Colchis is the region to the east and southeast of the Black Sea, it's where the Golden Fleece was kept for Jason to fetch. There are maps showing this region to be called "Ethiopia!" Herodotus records the presence of woolly-haired people there, and it has been guessed that a Pharoah Sesostris (I forget which) founded a colony there.

(The Royal Family of Persia claimed descent from Aeetes through Medea. If biblical Jesus is a descendant of biblical Esther and her husband a King of Persia, then biblical Jesus might actually be the descendant of a God: Helios!) St. Helena mother of Constantine "the Great" ("the great what?" is my question) was from a Balkan Nysa, though whether this be the same as Drepanum later Helenopolis I don't know.

There is a Nysa in Greater Syria that is also associated with Dionysus.

Strangely, the Nysa in Anatolia was founded much too late to be a birthplace of the God Dionysos, like 3 centuries before Julius Ceasar. The Religion of Dionysus was imported to Greece from Anatolia, but not from Anatolian Nysa.

All of this is Googled and approximate, the reader is urged to good sources like pantheon.org for more accurate and useful stuff.

Be sure to use the apostrophe correctly, as in:

Pats Donut's and Computer Repair Shop

Thank God they when they way they did, I'd hate to see them go commando.

> Well, my problem is... what does Kerry define as middle income?

RTFG. Household incomes over 200,000$.

> I think we could spend a whole lot less in welfare, and govt. assistance programs.

Common Right-Wing Myth #18712: Cutting Welfare Can Help The Budget.

TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) has an annual budget of around 26 billion dollars, when you combine federal and state contributions. 16.5 billion dollars are federal. TANF has work and education requirements, which vary from state to state, and grant durations are highly limited.

The annual federal budget's total is over 2 trillion dollars. Consequently, TANF is under one percent of the federal budget. Wiping it off the board wouldn't even dent spending.

> I think the medicare bill needs to be immediately revamped, to let the govt. bargain with the pharm. companies

Then vote Democrat. They're supporting that, and the Republicans are opposing it. It's pretty clear cut.

> The decicit as related to the GNP isn't actually that bad
Interest on the debt is our third biggest expenditure. At 7.2 trillion dollars. As far as ratios of GNP to debt, we can only get away with that because we're America; we're worse than a number of third world nations.

> Considering all that's happened to the economy ...

According to the GAO, the number one cause of the deficit is the tax cut. Even by the Bush admin's predictions only call for the *deficit* merely halving in 5 years, and that's *IF* they don't get the further tax cuts that they want and using their very suspect numbers (including a lack of Iraq appropriations funds).

> ... is to dry up the sources

This is known as Starve The Beast

> There is a ton of waste in the govt.. we need to make govt., in general, smaller

Is "not having the government involved in people's lives" the reason that the best healthcare systems in the world are socialized? The average American pays more than 4,500$ a year for healthcare quality that is only minimally better, in overall disease prevention and longevity, than Cuba's. The next most expensive system in the world is Britain's, which is under 3,000$. These numbers include all expenses - up front, company supplied, govt. supplied, etc.
> ... and not as a wealth redistribution system as I see them now There was a time in which we had unregulated capitalism and flat or regressive taxation systems. It was known as the "industrial revolution". It wasn't too popular with everyone but the plutocrats at the top. That's why we now have graduated tax brackets, antitrust legislation, etc. Wealth inherently concentrates itself, because it takes money to make more money. Certainly, you don't want to go too far - but if you don't do anything at all, you end up with a slave-labor-level poor class and a small amount of people with riches beyond anyone's wildest dreams. A government in-between is critical. > But, saying giving tax breaks based on your lifestyle Like focusing a tax cut on the top few percent, and giving a pittiance to everyone else?

Naw... thats called the Internet.

The term "Darknet" is cited in this sense frequently. It was first used by Patrick Ross in Nov. 2002

Thanks, though.

Word Spy Definition

I like his new word. It seems to me he's angling for a spot on wordspy, but it's a good word and I think it deserves a spot alongside kiddiot and packet monkey.

I like his new word. It seems to me he's angling for a spot on wordspy, but it's a good word and I think it deserves a spot alongside kiddiot and packet monkey.

I like his new word. It seems to me he's angling for a spot on wordspy, but it's a good word and I think it deserves a spot alongside kiddiot and packet monkey.

Thy shall not be a Saddam and try a google bomb

Yes, I noticed your attempt at humor but will answer your first question anyway:

No, it's not legal. It's called cookie jar accounting.

Not that Microsoft would let the illegality of it stop them from doing it. They actually forced their chief of internal audits to resign because he wanted to report it to the authorities. He then sued them under the Whistleblowers Protection Act, but of course Microsoft settled it out of court (read: gave him a bunch of money to go away and be quiet.)

Just like with every other wrong thing they've been caught doing, Microsoft refused to admit or deny they ever did it, but promised to stop doing it-- something that only makes sense in the American legal system.

its been around some time:
word spy
how stuff works

"We are focused on achieving high volume applications featuring the unique benefits of HSS directed sound. --"To the Shareholders of American Technology Corp." Business Wire, March 25, 2002

Although now they're "the smarter way to send money".

People oughtta update their links. Most of us know that Google bases result rankings largely on how people link to that site with the relevant keywords (that is why Google Bombing is possible).

Apparently many sites still link to xoom.com with 'free web hosting' or similar. Just Google www.xoom.com then click the "Find web pages that link to www.xoom.com/" link.

SCO is rapidly using up their nine lives; even if they have now ceased to be, their stock price is still subject to dead cat bounces.
This will probably continue to rebound until they get really on the nose, and finally end with a splat.

fell 38 cents yesterday to $6.80 ... but now it's at 7.96

I think that's what professional investors call a Dead cat bounce.

I like to call them "eyes".

Yeah, but yours are the outdated Mark One Eyeballs and can't compare to the newer model.

Which reminds me of a joke seen on snopes' mailing list recently:

Alex had an artificial eye which he always leaves in a glass of water overnight. One morning he accidentally swallowed it which resulted in stomach pains. He went to the doctor about it, but before he could explain the doctor had him on the examination table without his clothes and was peering into his backside with some sort of an instrument that had a bulb on it.

That's the setup without the original punchline, to which another contributor added:

The one I'm familiar with has the doctor telling the patient repeatedly, don't worry, and practically fighting with him to get his clothes off and get him on the table. The doctor then begins the examination, still hushing the patient's protests. He raises the sheet, adjusts his light, and sees -- the eye looking back at him.

He lowers the sheet, puts down his instruments, walks to the head of the examining table, and says to the patient, "look, you just gotta trust me."

Got Glurge?

So, in closing. Downloading software is illegal. Fucking consumers is immoral.


Correction: Downloading illegally available software is illegal.

Case in point: I have a free, free-to-download test program available at my site (see sig) that checks if the PC you run it on is capable of running my retail program that is available for purchase there.

zerocool complains about high-priced (overpriced) software as is his/her right in the USA under the First Amendment to the Constitution Of America.

The reality: Software development costs MONEY and should be compensated for if desired by the creators of said software.

The facts....

The computer(s) the software is developed on costs money (unless said computer(s) were donated for free).

The electricity powering the computer costs money (unless it is being generated from a free and/or donated source).

The programmer(s) who programmed the software cost money (unless they are donating their time and skills for free).

The advertising for the software costs money (unless it is being done for free somehow).

The distribution expenses to distribute the software to the recipients cost money (unless it is being done for free somehow).

Companies and individuals have invested lots of time and money in the software they create and sell. They found needs/markets for certain kinds of software and wrote the software to fill those needs/markets. Big companies have to sell software for big bucks to recoup the expenses in creating, maintaining, and distributing said software. They also are entitled to profit from their software which should be reinvested back into the company--not wasted.

For example, look at the 'gross profit margin' on a retail CD copy of Windows: $179.00 or so for a round thin sandwich of plastics and metal that has an intrinsic value of maybe $1.00. That $179.00 Windows CD allowed everybody, from the end user/customer up to Microsoft itself, to profit and benefit from the manpower and technology invested in it to create it and to benefit from its power as a computer operating system.

Ok, let's cut to the chase....

Windows is a kludge, based on code dating back to the dawn of the PC era.

Microsoft is a monopoly.

Even in this environment, the customer STILL has alternatives such as Apple and Linux -- SCO problems with commercial Linux use aside (which can be resolved.

If you want to avoid paying for high-priced software, use cheaper/free software or buy/legally get for free the necessary software tools to write your own custom programmed software solutions.

To address the second part of zerocool's comment, I offer the the following as some of the societal results of 'people as consumers -- not customers'. This has created a desparate, adversarial environment in which commerce and 'consumers' meet in an inevitable clusterfsck....

Wal-Mart, their business practices and its consequenses.

Ad creep. Even on the Internet. a technique coined and first implemented in 1996.

Email spam.

They pick up the stock the next day on the assumption the cooler heads will prevail and the stock will regain some of its dramatic loss.

It's called a dead cat bounce

Drop a cat from enough height and it will bounce.

See the word spy entry.

Fonzie jumping the shark was not 'very very lame', but when the show clearly reached its peak