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Simons countered, saying that Microsoft's data -- obtained from millions of Windows people who agree to provide telemetry on how they use the operating system -- showed that 83% of users run Windows 7 on a widescreen display.

Oh, so this guy is on our side. Using a widescreen display, adding a thick ribbon to the top of every window reduces usable space for the user.

Oh, wait. Here's the full quote.

Simons countered, saying that Microsoft's data -- obtained from millions of Windows people who agree to provide telemetry on how they use the operating system -- showed that 83% of users run Windows 7 on a widescreen display. The new Explorer has been designed to make use of the screen's width and minimize the vertical space it consumes.

What? How does adding a ribbon minimize vertical space consumed? Can someone on the West Coast go up to Redmond and kick this guy in the crotch?

My office rolled out Office 2010 last week, and it's driving me bonkers. Outlook 2010 is a caricature, it's what Mad Magazine might design as a joke UI. I have a menu of folders on the left. I have tasks and upcoming meetings on the right. I have a list of messages on top. And on the bottom I have...I don't know what that thing is. "People Pane?" WTF is a people pane?

What I don't have, is much room left for viewing my EMAIL. You know, the purpose for having Outlook in the first place?

the ribbon approach offered benefits in line with our goals

My goals are to view my email, edit my docs, update spreadsheets, etc. My goals are obviously not in line with MS's goals.

(I did manage to minimize the ribbon and get rid of the task list on the right, so I do have a glimpse to the body of my emails, but I can't hide that damn people pane. Any tips would be appreciated. (Unfortunately uninstalling Outlook is not an option.))

I am part Cherokee, you insensitive clod!

I really resent you lumping me in with a bunch of totally different cultures just because we all have brownish skin and had the same caricature in your children's books.

Do you want to know the Cherokee word for the Grand Canyon? It's two words, actually: Grand Canyon! No idea what the Hopi name is.

And while you're at it, get off my lawn.

If it were my job to keep people from dying in hurricanes in addition to the general welfare of the people, I'd be making a lot of noise, too.
 
It's probably not a bad idea to push the squishy sad sack couch potatoes out of their comfort zone every once in a while. We spend so much time worrying about the best coupon deal to have pizza delivered to our houses, the "survival" portion of their brain has atrophied so badly that if some minor inconvenience like a tropical storm didn't roll through once a decade, we might actually end up like those caricatures in the pixar movie Wall-E.
 
Cue the wistful waxing poetic about when men were men, and John Wayne was simply "average"...

To answer your question the best that I can...

A complete by-chance, creation-free belief in existence (as best I understand it) still has the problem that if you go back far enough, something had to come from nothing, or its existence has to be taken as a given in order to progress. It also assumes that the laws of physics that created the Big Bang were in force before matter came into existence, so at some point the fundamental mathematical principles of the universe had to 'always exist'. To me, the difference between that and a Supreme Deity isn't all that far of a stretch. I've also yet to see (and it could simply be that I haven't looked in the right places yet) an observable, measurable, repeatable method by which live could stem from non-living matter. Even a belief completely independent of God has some challenging questions that science has yet to answer. Is it not still faith to say "there is an answer...we just don't have it yet"?

While I'm aware of some very minor translation errors, my understanding is that the scribes of antiquity were EXTREMELY painstaking when they copied their manuscripts. While a few minor translation errors set in over the millenia, I'd consider it analogous to having a miniscule scratch on an iPhone and thus completely discarding the phone as unusable. If you're asking which parts are factual vs. metaphorical, you'll ask 10 different Christians and get 20 different answers, but here's mine: Certain areas (Job, Psalms, etc.) are written in a highly poetic, highly metaphor-driven tone. It doesn't take too far to read them to see that there is plenty of metaphor in those verses. The laws of Leviticus, for example, were given to Moses for the expressed intent of governing the nation of Israel with them. While their role in the lives of the 21st century Christian is an internal debate, it was safe to say that at the time of their writing they were intended to be taken literally by the people to whom they were writing. With regards specifically to the four gospels, what is metaphorical (the parables) is generally pretty clearly contrasted to the recordings of the life of Jesus.

Where do I stand on the Genesis account with regards to metaphor vs. literal? My answer is probably going to kill my Slashdot karma (lol), but them's the breaks...It doesn't matter much to me. I believe that an all-knowing, all-powerful God created everything in the observable universe. Does it matter to me much whether the creation took place in six periods of 24 hours, or whether it was six lengthier periods of time? Ultimately no, because my faith in my Creator isn't contingent upon my understanding of His methods. I know that I don't have the mental capacity to fully understand how God managed to start with nothing and end up with a whole lot of something. I do my best to pick up tidbits whenever I can, but if I believed in a God small enough to be completely understood, then by definition I'd be believing in a God who wasn't worth worshiping. I don't have to understand or comprehend every facet of God in order to have faith in Him. Also, your post seems to make a very easy mistake that I myself have wrestled with over the past few years (in part due to Slashdotters like yourself) in that God and the church are two different things. God is a being beyond my understanding. The church is a group of human beings who bear His name. Sometimes, they do things that are perfectly in line with what God has called us to do (more on that in a bit). Other times though, the church acts in a way that is contrary to how God calls us to act. A disbelief in God due to the errs of humans who state that they're acting in His name despite not doing so is disingenuous.

Unfortunately, it seems that the general Slashdot consensus is that everyone who is a Christian, by definition, is either a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, considers Sheldon's Mom from the Big Bang Theory to be a good example of our faith (instead of a caricature of extremism), and consider it our duty to make the five minutes you're

Maybe, the Brazilians you talked to didn't know what they were talking about, and the regrowth isn't at all the same as virgin rainforest?

The undergrowth that thrives in cleared areas is a caricature of a forest." ... "Twenty percent of the deforested areas are recovering."

Nevertheless, Almeida is not issuing a general all-clear signal for the rainforest. "Within no more than five years, most of the secondary forests will be burned down or cut down again," he says. Cattle ranchers use the fallow fields as pasture, while farmers plant soybeans or cereal crops.

Once the virgin rainforest is cut down, it might not be tracked any longer as virgin rainforest, even if it grows back. However, most of what grows back is being burnt again every few years. Meanwhile, other people (i.e. not the ones you talked to) are burning additional virgin forest, resulting in a huge net loss.

I think, perhaps, they did. If I'm reading your pasted quote properly, the ecologist speaking (Lawrence?) states that 20% of the cleared areas could be considered "forest" again by his standards. That's a total, debilitating loss for the rancher who wanted to use it for his cattle. Even the "caricature of a forest" Lawrence mentioned first is likely unusable for grazing. It may not be old-growth, virgin forest any longer, but Nature has certainly taken it back from Man. The only disparity I see between the farmer's perspective and the Naturalist's is the definition of "forest". Your quote, in fact, reads like a Naturalist agreeing with the layman's assessment I heard when I was there.

That being said, and granting to you the point that unnecessary clearing of "virgin forest" is wasteful, why is the use of forest land for ranching or farming per se intolerable? Putting it another way, why is it OK for a Kansas farmer to clear his property for planting soybeans but it's not OK if the farmer lives in Manaus? Is the Amazon basin so sacrosanct that it's a sin against Gaia for humans to live there? This attitude among environmentalists is insulting to the dignity of the Brazilian people, and coming from fellow Americans hypocritical at best. Citizens of the United States have little right to tell Brazilian farmers to starve or find other work based solely on gut-instinct protectionism for a specific forest.

Sorry if I'm coming across a bit harsh, but your response resonated with the "ZOMG BURNING TREEZ IS THE SUXXORZ!!!ONE!!" tuning fork; not helpful.

Maybe, the Brazilians you talked to didn't know what they were talking about, and the regrowth isn't at all the same as virgin rainforest?

Laurance fears that Wright is downplaying the destruction of virgin rainforest. "The conditions in the small country of Panama cannot be generalized. In the Amazon, cattle ranchers and the agricultural industry are destroying the jungle on a large scale. The undergrowth that thrives in cleared areas is a caricature of a forest."

...

The Sao Paulo agronomist is studying secondary vegetation throughout the entire Brazilian Amazon region. Using satellite images, he selected 26 locations that were cleared years ago and eventually became overgrown with new vegetation. Then he spent two months driving from one location to the next. His conclusion? "Twenty percent of the deforested areas are recovering."

Nevertheless, Almeida is not issuing a general all-clear signal for the rainforest. "Within no more than five years, most of the secondary forests will be burned down or cut down again," he says. Cattle ranchers use the fallow fields as pasture, while farmers plant soybeans or cereal crops.

Once the virgin rainforest is cut down, it might not be tracked any longer as virgin rainforest, even if it grows back. However, most of what grows back is being burnt again every few years. Meanwhile, other people (i.e. not the ones you talked to) are burning additional virgin forest, resulting in a huge net loss.

It's a goddamned shame that this bigoted post is ranked insightful.

I'm not a Tea Party supporter. On the contrary, I dislike the movement quite a bit, and especially dislike their political leaders.

But to call a teapartier fascist, or to accuse the party of being dominated by -- not preferred by, but dominated by -- racists, etc., is shameful. Let's treat our political opponents with basic respect. Let's try to encourage frank but respectful discourse.

Indeed, this is one reason I dislike the right wing: they are loathe to treat their opponents with basic decency and respect. But the proper response is emphatically not to emulate them.

I know it's a desperate and silly thought, but wouldn't it be nice to return to disagreements over ideas rather than caricatures?

No, they are forcefully making someone else responsible for their well being via theft.

I don't see how "theft" makes "someone else responsible for their well being". If taking something isn't being responsible, how can the capitalist who takes the product of his employee's work be responsible? Stealing isn't legal, moral, or ethical, but I can't see how it's not self-interested. I can see how it may end up being self-destructive (for example when a person gets caught and sent to prison) but they are definitely taking actions to improve their own situation. Not smart actions, not moral actions, but actions none-the-less.

Actual capitalists rely on voluntary cooperation for their gains. Once they resort to violence, they've given up on the free market.

That's the "No True Scotsman" fallacy right there. Capitalists are human, they resort to violence when stressed. Only Ayn Rand's caricatures of businessmen are free of anger, hate, and violence. The more competitive the businessman the more likely he is to cheat, lie, and steal to win. Hiring goons to injure, kill, or destroy your competitors has fallen out of favor because it's so easy for the police to follow the trail right back to the businessman's door.

Capitalists rely on a societal agreement concerning the use of violence, and the coercive nature of the scarcity of resources to compel their employees to work. They pay their employee a fraction of the value of the goods and/or services that they produce, use a fraction to pay the business costs and then pocket the rest. Increasingly these capitalists have forgotten about the societal agreement on the use of violence and it's critical importance to the entire machine. They have steadily diminished the fraction that the employees get paid while greatly increasing the fraction they take for themselves. Most do not understand that if the majority does not prosper, the compact against the use of violence (which is what allows capitalism to work in the first place) can and, most likely will, be revoked. Corruption and greed are eroding the foundations of capitalism.

But that's just my interpretation of recent history.

There is a real problem with assigning the term "free market capitalists" to be people who do thing you like and then removing anyone from the group who does something you don't like. It can create a fairy tale of the mind where your beliefs are sheltered from disappointment by willful disregard for reality. In my experience, disregarding reality is a surefire recipe for disaster.

I love you Dr. Zaius!

Dr. Zaius!!
Dr. Zaius!!

I watched it also and hought that it was worthy of recommendations. There actually are unexpected things that happen and they work well. The biggest flaws, as the reviewer points out, is that the off plot characters were caricatures of the "annoying" peope that we all know.

As we have seen the Republicans and the TEA Party are working hard to take things away from you.

Yea, that's it. Those evil "Tea Party" people don't want people to have jobs and want to legalize rape. They are evil, scheming people who hold secret meetings on how to destroy America and must be stopped at all costs. They are ignorant, racist bigots who are probably inbred who must be stopped before they enslave America!

Or not. You know what the problem is in America? People like you, who instead of listening and understanding the other side simply demagogue people into caricatures that you can hate as easily as a Comic Book villain. You would fit right in blaming the Jews in Germany in the 30s or Tutsi in Rwanda in the 90s. Politicians love people like you because you are so easy to control and manipulate. You think you are different because your side is "right" and the other side is "wrong", but you in many ways are no different from the Rush fan who believe all Democrats are plotting to destroy capitalism.

This isn't a football or baseball game. We have an extremely complex set of problems to resolve that we cannot fix without some form of cooperation between both sides. Change begins at an individual level. Start by understanding and trying to relate to the other side, even if you feel like they are not giving you the same consideration. Don't pin yourself down into a simplistic label like liberal or conservative--look at each issue individually, look at both sides, and think for yourself. But don't degrade yourself by relying on inane one-line talking points.

Northern Han emigree? Let's see. Chauvinism? Check. An inability to accept even indirect cultural criticism? Check. A willingness to whine about racism? Check. An inability to articulate a contrary thought without reducing it to violence or swearing? Check.

FhnuZoag, you are a caricature of the Ugly Chinaman. Look in the mirror. You are what Bo Yang was warning of.

The prosecution's theory in this case is that using Twitter to criticize a public figure can be a criminal act if the person's feelings are hurt.

Why do I get the feeling that the above isn't how the prosecution describe it? Seriously, this reads like a ridiculous caricature of whatever their argument actually is, which is fine for the EFF in trying to persuade the court (who already knows the other side of the story) but absolutely stupid in an article supposedly helping us to discuss and/or form opinions. What is the point of this?

It was much worse in the Wategate days. You could tell Nixon was a meglomaniac who might start a nuclear war or conduct a coup d'etat to stay in power.

Congress pretty much rallied together to rid the country of this madman.

This sounds a lot like the Nixon depicted in Futurama - apparently the caricature is closer to the original than I thought. Funny how clueless one can be about recent history. Clearly not being a U.S. citizen and not being born at that time doesn't help, but still, it's recent history...

Very misleading that the cover photo from the gizmag article has nothing to do with the report, or even with the Internet. It's a photo of earth taken from space:

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1438

The caption on the photo is:

Akamai's State of the Internet report provides a global snapshot of global Internet use

And the photo does appear to be a snapshot of the globe, so it doesn't seem all that misleading. I think it's fair to say that where the light appears in their photo is where the internet users are. What if they had included a hand drawn caricature of the globe? Would that also be misleading?

I started to write a comment about being glad that Murdoch is finally getting what's coming to him... then I realized that I didn't know why I felt that way. I have a generally negative opinion of him... but all that comes to mind when I think of him is a caricature assembled from various stories I've come. I gather that he's been consolidating several media markets into near-monopolies and there's controversy about him forcing editorial opinions onto his reporters... but is he the guy who single-handedly broke the news business, or just a businessman who got in over his head with yellow journalism?

I think the imagery is supposed to evoke a sense of the human-drawn caricatures and pseudo-cartoons in Time and The New Yorker, to give the article an illusion of boldness/seriousness/elegance/grandeur/something ("delusion of grandeur" might be more appropriate---I could probably come up with more innovative uses---and just to give it a shot:
1) Campus bookstore for a school famous for engineering or aeronautics.
2) Set for a science-oriented education+news show starring former astronauts.
3) Large, manned environmental test chamber, akin to Biosphere-2 but less geared toward ecological studies.
There's three. Who else has ideas?)

Why are you insulting everyone who has a Google + account? How is having a Google + account necessarily sad, trendy, or hopeless? Why is giving social network information to a company that makes money indexing other people's data silly? Is it possible that people think that Google having that information is an acceptable price to pay for all of the services Google provides? Can you see how you are just being another jerk on the internet? Seriously, you just ignorantly insulted over 10 million people due to some caricature of them you have in your head. Bad form, mate.

Basically Star Trek is a mixture of the idea that we will colonize space in roomy and luxurious spaceships without any real effort (even the cocktails are magically created by the replicator) and socialist propaganda (just look at the Ferengi, they could be a caricature right out of a German 1930s (or Soviet 1950s) propaganda cartoon, the only thing that's missing is them sucking children's blood).

The attitude of the average Treckie toward space exploration is to wait until all technical problems solve themselves magically through "progress". They are the embodyment of lazyness and stupidity - basically the prototype of the "useful idiot" that all socal engineers want to create in their social programs (too bad for them that the idiots bred by the welfare state turned out not to be useful...).

In my "EU landia" the 1. would be easily challenged in the "market court" which is a special court for violations in marketing, bidding, contracts and so on. 2. is endemic in here too in more technical areas where the administrations really have no expertise or even standard "commercial level" bidding skills. 3. is partially a result of the vicious cycle of lobbying both from the companies involved and the insurance providers, and partially from the general business values taught to young from the very first jobs they have. Small business owner is the villain here, an enemy of the socialist dreamland where there are only big companies and everybody is an employee, and for the love of Tor, don't own a piece of land (caricature, a shadow from the past). 4. here applies only in the very smallest of bids which are not even forced to announce for bidding by the EU and national law.

Then again, why the established players win the bids can also be explained simply by reciting know your customer, know your market a few times.

7000 kWh per what? You use 1200 kWh per what? I think you need to learn the difference between "energy" and "power", and either get more accurate numbers, or learn to read charts.

Per year of course. Or what would you *guess*??
Where do I have the info from? From my power bill, rofl.

Regarding europe and your climate comparison: no one doubts that the USA are huge. But seems you only saw a tiny part of europe ;D After all scandinavia belongs to europe, so does russia, and italy, spain, greece ... We have the same temperature spans you have.

Your usage of kWe is only interesting in power yield of power plants where you want to differentiate between total power production, thermal and electric.

Anyway, I don't want to answer to all the points you made ... however I did not picture you as "oppulent american" but as "ignorant towards modern energy creation".

Do you actually know any Americans, or have you just formed a caricature based on the same pseudogreen propaganda that's motivated your government to ditch nuclear?)

Yes I do. And no, that is no propaganda. I fought 30 years against nuclear power in germany. Most germans far far longer. No one wants it, no one ever wanted it, only big business and the government did. That is absolutely not pseudo green ... it is a reaction to the really bad bad press the (ex) government(s) got due to a lot of different things happening the last 5 - 10 years.

BTW, the always upcoming capacity factor. Must be an american invention or? From those propaganda guys that claim wind and solar have no future, or?

We don't really use capacity factors in power plant yield definition. If a power plant yields 1GW then it does that on "average" there is no hidden capacity factor to be taken into account. Ofc it is "planned bigger" to get that "planned average yield" and ofc you need to know the capacity factor.
However if you read a european publication about a win farm yielding 400MW then you don't have to scale it down with your self invented capacity factors.

Final hint, learn to use the html snippets that are allowed in /. posts, my quoting I did with blockquote ...