We can not run a single experiment to prove it. Nor can we "prove" evolution, in that same sense. We cannot test for single variables in a system as complex as the entire earth. Once we've established that a simple experimental proof is out of the question, the question becomes, "What can we do? What experiments can be performed? What experiments have already been performed?"
Finding out the answers to those questions is the beginning of education and the foundation of knowledge.
AGW is pretty simple. Postulate two systems, equal in all respects except relative abundance of CO2. Apply equal amounts of solar radiation to each, and the system with a greater abundance of CO2 will retain more heat. The 'A' part of AGW is simply based on emissions data, which you can argue with as you like, but beforehand, you should really come up and visit here in Alaska. Take a trip out to Shishmaref, which will be counted with the polar bear as the first victims of global warming. Hell, just compare any photo of any glacier with one fifty or a hundred years older. Do you know we have a lot of those here? The effects of AGW are felt first at the poles; my advice would be to avoid beachfront real estate. Halting the engines of industry at this point is somewhere between foolish and futile; we're going to learn the lesson of sustainability good and hard.
Hidave, it sounds like you have some PEBKAC issues. It is recommended that you wipe your system with a liveCD and start from scratch (installing windows, then office etc). Assuming the data on your discs are still intact, this should return you to a working state. Otherwise, download a new windows ISO and go from there. Your system will probably be pwned thirty seconds after you connect it to the internet, so delay that step until your system has its bum-cover (AV) on.
You have learned why backups are important: they let you return to a known-working state. Once you have a working system again, make one. You may also have learned something about trusting microsoft updates, but I doubt it.
Firefox has a keyboard command to increase text size. Keyboard commands are generally faster than GUI elements, but YMMV. The cool thing about firefox though is that there are add-ons so you can enhance that sort of functionality. There is an add-on to give you a GUI button to zoom. Also, Adblock Plus is indispensible, NoScript is highly recommended, and Firebug is essential for web development.
There's nothing quite so pathetic as an entrenched Windows user. Its flaws engender hopelessness and despair, for what alternative action can be taken? "Why?," the user asks, "Why is this happening to me?" Well, not that we blame you for your past indiscretions, but here's a nickel.
Re:What functionality are we BSD users ...
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 3, Informative
Welcome to Unix. You seem to be confused about a great many things. I'm not more than a novice myself, but I must recommend Eric S. Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming, because for better or worse Unix and F/LOSS count most of your complaints as strengths. Core principles, even.
Your view of the One True Unix implies that there is only one correct way to implement an OS. If there's only one way to implement an OS, doesn't that imply that all computer usage is pretty similar? Perhaps we can optimize for all use-cases at once? Or do you just think that you know better than everyone else how they should spend their coding time?
It's likely that if you've raised this argument here before that people have mentioned the UNIX certification process as well as the Linux Standard Base. In what way do these entities fall short in defining a common standard?
Oh, fuck it. Don't have this argument with me. Don't have it with anyone on slashdot. Go have it out with Theo de Raadt, Linus, Eric Raymond, and RMS. If you want to change the world and change people's minds, start at the top. Alternately, close your mouth, open your mind, and start with the first chapter of that book.
Your OS and all your software (you're running linux, right?) can fit into a 4GB SSD, which should cost less than $40. A large, cheap HDD provides adequate access speeds for media even over USB or LAN.
I don't know about you, but most people's desktop use probably involves very few programs. How much data do you use or generate in a day? A few tens of gigabytes, perhaps? Almost all workloads benefit from a decrease in access speed to disk, and in specific the boot process can be sped up significantly.
MeeGo Linux (sreadahead), Fedora (systemd), and Ubuntu (Upstart,ureadahead) are all working on various techniques to speed up boot, and to various degrees these are targeted for SSDs. Two years ago, Arjan Van der Ven (Intel, Moblin/Meego) had an early ssd netbook (eee 900?) booting faster than the fastest consumer systems. MeeGo remains netbook-targeted, but still provides an incredibly fast user experience. Probably all linux users can look forwards to performance gains over the next year, with SSD systems heading towards the realm where BIOS initialization takes up as much time as the boot sequence. Until then, BeOS fans can continue to feel smugly superior.
You can probably look forward to purchasing a small SSD within the next couple of upgrade cycles. It may eventually be integrated into consumer systems; Apple seems to have a bit of a lead there, but they've priced themselves out of the mass market. Windows users will continue to be left in the cold.
Let's talk about you actually getting the trillion dollars you need to compete with those businesses, and the actual, real-world issues you'd have laying that much fiber. Infrastructure is usually not something the private sector does well, as far as we've seen they just like taking your money instead. Barriers to entry are inherently anticompetitive (by definition), and expecially when combined with high exit barriers, leads almost inexorably to monopoly control. The telecommunications industry is a textbook example---you may remember Ma Bell.
The FCC doesn't have a huge amount of power here, and it's not necessary that they do. We simply say that it's illegal to discriminate against network traffic based on end-point, and open up Comcast to class action lawsuits if it's determined that they violate the law. Why does this need to be more complicated?
If you think this economy is heavily regulated, read the NYT article 'The Reckoning' concerning the 2008 banking scandal, and then read TARP and the Dodd Act. Yes, it's a lot of reading, and if you start from the position that regulation is the root of all evil you're probably going to read many things that you won't believe. Try instead to read with an open mind. Once you're done with all that, tell me if there's enough market regulation. I would be most gratified to hear from an informed and presumably opposite viewpoint.
We knew this was coming. We paid---twice, and handsomely---for improvements to our national infrastructure. Gave hundreds of billions to the telecoms. They pocketed the bonus and thumbed their noses all the way to the bank. Citation.
We're not asking for government oversight, we're asking for the right to sue the shit out of Comcast when we determine they are slowing or blocking traffic based on end-point. I don't see much of a difference between the FCC taking action and a class-action suit, but the former will probably be cheaper.
Enforcement would probably mean that when people figure out that the networks are fucking them, they sue and win. As opposed to the current situation, where we *and* the content providers are getting fucked. It probably does mean additional load on the legal system, but our legal system would really be much less overburdened if we stopped treating marijuana possession as a crime. Shame about the private prison industry though.
The Intel team behind what has become MeeGo Linux made an Eee 900 boot Fedora in five seconds. This took advantage of the SSD in the 900, but there are a number of generally-applicable things you can do to speed up boot times; it's as good an excuse as any to compile your own kernel.
I know everyone secretly wants to compile their own kernel for fun and profit. Chicks dig it.
You clearly missed out on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It postulates an expanded version of your statement, namely that for any event there are an infinite number of rational hypotheses to explain it. Our search for absolute truth must be infinitely infinite; we must explain an infinite amount of observations and an infinite number of theories for each. Given that we don't have infinite time to evaluate them, Science can not completely describe the universe. What is scientific truth, then?
So let's take your example of relativity. It's a hugely well-tested theory, which makes a lot of predictions, and almost all of them match up with the observed universe. There are a couple large exceptions, one being that we observe galaxies to be spinning at the wrong rates relative to how much visible matter they contain. So obviously, based on your philosophy and this one prediction, all of relativity is bullshit and we should go back to wondering whether things fall up or down.
Relativity itself can be described as adding a term to the equation of newtonian physics. It is currently the equation that best fits the data set, the highest truth T as a function of time. It will be superseded or disproved. That is science. Look to religion for absolute truth.
Let's not look at Taiwan, because it's living proof of how easy it is for Chinese people to take advantage of Americans. I would easily believe that the Communist Party would continue to be quite popular; the previous government wasn't worth the name and the current alternatives are what, nonexistent?
America has never known peaceful development. Apparently wars make too much money. We'll even fight wars against our own citizens: cf War on Drugs, War on Terror. Honorable mentions go to fighting unions in the 19th century, and the genocide of Native Americans. We can talk about how we secretly run the tables with every country in our hemisphere, we can talk about Iran in the 1950s, we can talk about Hawaii and Guantanamo and the Philippines and the famous 'shores of Tripoli' and Korea (still at war there, technically, right?). That'll be a nice warm-up for the Gulf of Tonkin and the First World War. If we're not fighting a secret war, it's one based on lies and naked greed.
The idea of America laying down arms at this point seems pretty fuzzy-headed. The Cold Warrior mentality is detestable, but so is American history: we're fucking awful people and we always have been. I'm not sure that I can argue against its efficacy. I can only hope that if it's not going to work against China, we figure that out real quick.
Windows users still get viruses. Most of them still use XP, and are leery about switching to anything else, especially if they have to buy a new computer in order to run it smoothly. I don't go out of my way to promote linux, but when I'm reinstalling XP for my friends I let them know that if this is going to be a repeating problem, they're getting ubuntu instead. Honestly, most people I know are using their smartphones to do everything except web browsing; no one cares whether photoshop runs on anything if they can get Angry Birds on it instead.
I grew up in Valdez, where the Exxon spill happened. The beaches were black for months, although I don't remember a whole lot from the time. These days I like to go kayaking and boating there as much as I can, and although I have no scientific training along those lines, I have never as an adult seen any evidence of the spill. It seems like here, if people remember it at all, they're only upset that the settlement was reduced to $500m. Exxon is a name that doesn't get spoken a lot here though, and generally not in pleasant terms when it comes up.
BP actually has a much stronger presence in Alaska than Exxon these days, and their reputation at the moment is plummeting. We've most of us seen what an oil spill looks like, and there's no reason to be happy about one that size. Whether or not our government agrees, those involved in this disaster should be held responsible. We as citizens should probably investigate ways to make that happen, I suppose.
You seem to be conflating many different concepts here. Evolution is a mathematical concept, and again, it does not require either death (though it helps) or violence. Evolution can and will happen in bacterial monocultures, without any selective pressure, simply due to genetic drift. I recommend some remedial study of the subject; you might begin with the wikipedia article.
For what it's worth, I live in rural Alaska and haven't watched television in years. Your ad hominem remarks are quite amusing.
I must point out, however, that in attacking me you are quite straying off your subject matter, which is the necessity of violence in the human condition. I am increasingly convinced of your inability to mount such an argument. If you choose to do so, you may contact me at the email address attached to this post at any time.
Evolution does not require death, merely successive generations. Violence is not remotely necessary.
The rest of your post is incoherent and senseless. The debate you are attempting to incite is a rather old one, and you have a great deal of literature to draw from in your arguments. If you are not incapable of logical argument you should attempt one, for your puerile and toothless "challenge" is worth no more notice than a graffito on a toilet stall.
There's huge amounts of sexism in Geekdom; at least as much as anyplace else. The article was about Open Source, which is a hair more professional an environment than Slashdot. If you are around here for more than five minutes you will also note a significant amount of humor referring to negative male stereotypes of all kinds. One of the most popular is the idea of the fat, cheeto-eating virgin geek. Just as common are examples of actual racist, sexist, or otherwise ignorant and hateful drivel.
Welcome to the Internet. So far as it goes, this is probably one of the nicer sites you'll find. I do recommend a more relaxed sense of humor if you plan to stay, but at the very least you should not get too upset at what other people do find funny.
Insofar as the actual content of the comment goes, it was original in the sense that anything is, and sexist by inference only. If you're looking for demonstrable harm, you may want to find a better example.
You've given an example of a somewhat flawed password scheme. You've never tried to brute-force a password, have you?
Most people, left to themselves, will have a password that consists of all lower-case letters, and maybe a couple of numbers at the end. This gives you 36^8 possible choices for a password. Adding uppercase and numbers gives you 62^8 choices, making the password take approximately twice as long to crack.
Most people will choose very bad passwords, usually dictionary words. There are by most accounts less than a million words in the English language; you're reducing the keyspace by a factor of millions if you can use a dictionary attack.
Your password scheme is better than a simple 8-character lowercase password by many orders of magnitude even assuming that the lowercase password is randomly generated. In reality, that will rarely be the case. The upshot is basically that without a password scheme such as yours, any password will likely be broken in seconds or minutes, and with your password scheme, breaking the password within weeks may be infeasible.
The court ruled to close the barn door after the horse had fled, and then burn down the barn for good measure.
There's no way to undo that email, court order or no. There's no guarantee that deleting the account did any good at all; it could have been replicated without limit by now, and propagated around the globe. That data should be assumed to be public at this point; any sensitive information should be changed.
It is not a crime to possess information; the email account holder is blameless in this matter, unless he used that information with malicious intent. The fault lies entirely with the bank, and the second thing that those 1325 people should do is to sue the bank for allowing this to happen. They are harmed by this action, not helped. Their rights and privacy have been violated, and the bank gets to sweep it under the rug. It's entirely likely that most of them will never know about it. This was a stupid decision done for the worst of intentions.
You use a PC because the next update may remove that ability.
What you're saying is that the PC is more versatile; it has abilities that this media player lacks. That's likely to continue to be true for a very long time. The PC is where software innovation happens. Hardware innovation seems to happen in laboratories. Consumer electronics in the US nets you convenience and 'polish' (variously defined) at the cost of being many years behind the cutting edge.
All people are occasionally idiots; this is forgivable. Being an asshole is not.
You would do well to learn some humility and respect. People here are most likely to be bright and honestly mistaken than they are to be stupid or lying. The appropriate response is not to flame them, but to educate them. Consider at all times the impact of your words.
Slashdot Mirror
We can not run a single experiment to prove it. Nor can we "prove" evolution, in that same sense. We cannot test for single variables in a system as complex as the entire earth. Once we've established that a simple experimental proof is out of the question, the question becomes, "What can we do? What experiments can be performed? What experiments have already been performed?"
Finding out the answers to those questions is the beginning of education and the foundation of knowledge.
AGW is pretty simple. Postulate two systems, equal in all respects except relative abundance of CO2. Apply equal amounts of solar radiation to each, and the system with a greater abundance of CO2 will retain more heat. The 'A' part of AGW is simply based on emissions data, which you can argue with as you like, but beforehand, you should really come up and visit here in Alaska. Take a trip out to Shishmaref, which will be counted with the polar bear as the first victims of global warming. Hell, just compare any photo of any glacier with one fifty or a hundred years older. Do you know we have a lot of those here? The effects of AGW are felt first at the poles; my advice would be to avoid beachfront real estate. Halting the engines of industry at this point is somewhere between foolish and futile; we're going to learn the lesson of sustainability good and hard.
Hidave, it sounds like you have some PEBKAC issues. It is recommended that you wipe your system with a liveCD and start from scratch (installing windows, then office etc). Assuming the data on your discs are still intact, this should return you to a working state. Otherwise, download a new windows ISO and go from there. Your system will probably be pwned thirty seconds after you connect it to the internet, so delay that step until your system has its bum-cover (AV) on.
You have learned why backups are important: they let you return to a known-working state. Once you have a working system again, make one. You may also have learned something about trusting microsoft updates, but I doubt it.
Firefox has a keyboard command to increase text size. Keyboard commands are generally faster than GUI elements, but YMMV. The cool thing about firefox though is that there are add-ons so you can enhance that sort of functionality. There is an add-on to give you a GUI button to zoom. Also, Adblock Plus is indispensible, NoScript is highly recommended, and Firebug is essential for web development.
There's nothing quite so pathetic as an entrenched Windows user. Its flaws engender hopelessness and despair, for what alternative action can be taken? "Why?," the user asks, "Why is this happening to me?" Well, not that we blame you for your past indiscretions, but here's a nickel.
Welcome to Unix. You seem to be confused about a great many things. I'm not more than a novice myself, but I must recommend Eric S. Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming , because for better or worse Unix and F/LOSS count most of your complaints as strengths. Core principles, even.
Your view of the One True Unix implies that there is only one correct way to implement an OS. If there's only one way to implement an OS, doesn't that imply that all computer usage is pretty similar? Perhaps we can optimize for all use-cases at once? Or do you just think that you know better than everyone else how they should spend their coding time?
It's likely that if you've raised this argument here before that people have mentioned the UNIX certification process as well as the Linux Standard Base. In what way do these entities fall short in defining a common standard?
Oh, fuck it. Don't have this argument with me. Don't have it with anyone on slashdot. Go have it out with Theo de Raadt, Linus, Eric Raymond, and RMS. If you want to change the world and change people's minds, start at the top. Alternately, close your mouth, open your mind, and start with the first chapter of that book.
Your OS and all your software (you're running linux, right?) can fit into a 4GB SSD, which should cost less than $40. A large, cheap HDD provides adequate access speeds for media even over USB or LAN.
I don't know about you, but most people's desktop use probably involves very few programs. How much data do you use or generate in a day? A few tens of gigabytes, perhaps? Almost all workloads benefit from a decrease in access speed to disk, and in specific the boot process can be sped up significantly.
MeeGo Linux (sreadahead), Fedora (systemd), and Ubuntu (Upstart,ureadahead) are all working on various techniques to speed up boot, and to various degrees these are targeted for SSDs. Two years ago, Arjan Van der Ven (Intel, Moblin/Meego) had an early ssd netbook (eee 900?) booting faster than the fastest consumer systems. MeeGo remains netbook-targeted, but still provides an incredibly fast user experience. Probably all linux users can look forwards to performance gains over the next year, with SSD systems heading towards the realm where BIOS initialization takes up as much time as the boot sequence. Until then, BeOS fans can continue to feel smugly superior.
You can probably look forward to purchasing a small SSD within the next couple of upgrade cycles. It may eventually be integrated into consumer systems; Apple seems to have a bit of a lead there, but they've priced themselves out of the mass market. Windows users will continue to be left in the cold.
Why does Malda let him push it?
Let's talk about you actually getting the trillion dollars you need to compete with those businesses, and the actual, real-world issues you'd have laying that much fiber. Infrastructure is usually not something the private sector does well, as far as we've seen they just like taking your money instead. Barriers to entry are inherently anticompetitive (by definition), and expecially when combined with high exit barriers, leads almost inexorably to monopoly control. The telecommunications industry is a textbook example---you may remember Ma Bell.
The FCC doesn't have a huge amount of power here, and it's not necessary that they do. We simply say that it's illegal to discriminate against network traffic based on end-point, and open up Comcast to class action lawsuits if it's determined that they violate the law. Why does this need to be more complicated?
If you think this economy is heavily regulated, read the NYT article 'The Reckoning' concerning the 2008 banking scandal, and then read TARP and the Dodd Act. Yes, it's a lot of reading, and if you start from the position that regulation is the root of all evil you're probably going to read many things that you won't believe. Try instead to read with an open mind. Once you're done with all that, tell me if there's enough market regulation. I would be most gratified to hear from an informed and presumably opposite viewpoint.
We knew this was coming. We paid---twice, and handsomely---for improvements to our national infrastructure. Gave hundreds of billions to the telecoms. They pocketed the bonus and thumbed their noses all the way to the bank. Citation.
We're not asking for government oversight, we're asking for the right to sue the shit out of Comcast when we determine they are slowing or blocking traffic based on end-point. I don't see much of a difference between the FCC taking action and a class-action suit, but the former will probably be cheaper.
Enforcement would probably mean that when people figure out that the networks are fucking them, they sue and win. As opposed to the current situation, where we *and* the content providers are getting fucked. It probably does mean additional load on the legal system, but our legal system would really be much less overburdened if we stopped treating marijuana possession as a crime. Shame about the private prison industry though.
The Intel team behind what has become MeeGo Linux made an Eee 900 boot Fedora in five seconds. This took advantage of the SSD in the 900, but there are a number of generally-applicable things you can do to speed up boot times; it's as good an excuse as any to compile your own kernel.
I know everyone secretly wants to compile their own kernel for fun and profit. Chicks dig it.
You clearly missed out on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It postulates an expanded version of your statement, namely that for any event there are an infinite number of rational hypotheses to explain it. Our search for absolute truth must be infinitely infinite; we must explain an infinite amount of observations and an infinite number of theories for each. Given that we don't have infinite time to evaluate them, Science can not completely describe the universe. What is scientific truth, then?
So let's take your example of relativity. It's a hugely well-tested theory, which makes a lot of predictions, and almost all of them match up with the observed universe. There are a couple large exceptions, one being that we observe galaxies to be spinning at the wrong rates relative to how much visible matter they contain. So obviously, based on your philosophy and this one prediction, all of relativity is bullshit and we should go back to wondering whether things fall up or down.
Relativity itself can be described as adding a term to the equation of newtonian physics. It is currently the equation that best fits the data set, the highest truth T as a function of time. It will be superseded or disproved. That is science. Look to religion for absolute truth.
Please don't feed the APK
Let's not look at Taiwan, because it's living proof of how easy it is for Chinese people to take advantage of Americans. I would easily believe that the Communist Party would continue to be quite popular; the previous government wasn't worth the name and the current alternatives are what, nonexistent?
America has never known peaceful development. Apparently wars make too much money. We'll even fight wars against our own citizens: cf War on Drugs, War on Terror. Honorable mentions go to fighting unions in the 19th century, and the genocide of Native Americans. We can talk about how we secretly run the tables with every country in our hemisphere, we can talk about Iran in the 1950s, we can talk about Hawaii and Guantanamo and the Philippines and the famous 'shores of Tripoli' and Korea (still at war there, technically, right?). That'll be a nice warm-up for the Gulf of Tonkin and the First World War. If we're not fighting a secret war, it's one based on lies and naked greed.
The idea of America laying down arms at this point seems pretty fuzzy-headed. The Cold Warrior mentality is detestable, but so is American history: we're fucking awful people and we always have been. I'm not sure that I can argue against its efficacy. I can only hope that if it's not going to work against China, we figure that out real quick.
Windows users still get viruses. Most of them still use XP, and are leery about switching to anything else, especially if they have to buy a new computer in order to run it smoothly. I don't go out of my way to promote linux, but when I'm reinstalling XP for my friends I let them know that if this is going to be a repeating problem, they're getting ubuntu instead. Honestly, most people I know are using their smartphones to do everything except web browsing; no one cares whether photoshop runs on anything if they can get Angry Birds on it instead.
Where in Alaska are you? Someone needs to round up the local /.ers...
I grew up in Valdez, where the Exxon spill happened. The beaches were black for months, although I don't remember a whole lot from the time. These days I like to go kayaking and boating there as much as I can, and although I have no scientific training along those lines, I have never as an adult seen any evidence of the spill. It seems like here, if people remember it at all, they're only upset that the settlement was reduced to $500m. Exxon is a name that doesn't get spoken a lot here though, and generally not in pleasant terms when it comes up.
BP actually has a much stronger presence in Alaska than Exxon these days, and their reputation at the moment is plummeting. We've most of us seen what an oil spill looks like, and there's no reason to be happy about one that size. Whether or not our government agrees, those involved in this disaster should be held responsible. We as citizens should probably investigate ways to make that happen, I suppose.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
You seem to be conflating many different concepts here. Evolution is a mathematical concept, and again, it does not require either death (though it helps) or violence. Evolution can and will happen in bacterial monocultures, without any selective pressure, simply due to genetic drift. I recommend some remedial study of the subject; you might begin with the wikipedia article.
For what it's worth, I live in rural Alaska and haven't watched television in years. Your ad hominem remarks are quite amusing.
I must point out, however, that in attacking me you are quite straying off your subject matter, which is the necessity of violence in the human condition. I am increasingly convinced of your inability to mount such an argument. If you choose to do so, you may contact me at the email address attached to this post at any time.
Evolution does not require death, merely successive generations. Violence is not remotely necessary.
The rest of your post is incoherent and senseless. The debate you are attempting to incite is a rather old one, and you have a great deal of literature to draw from in your arguments. If you are not incapable of logical argument you should attempt one, for your puerile and toothless "challenge" is worth no more notice than a graffito on a toilet stall.
There's huge amounts of sexism in Geekdom; at least as much as anyplace else. The article was about Open Source, which is a hair more professional an environment than Slashdot. If you are around here for more than five minutes you will also note a significant amount of humor referring to negative male stereotypes of all kinds. One of the most popular is the idea of the fat, cheeto-eating virgin geek. Just as common are examples of actual racist, sexist, or otherwise ignorant and hateful drivel.
Welcome to the Internet. So far as it goes, this is probably one of the nicer sites you'll find. I do recommend a more relaxed sense of humor if you plan to stay, but at the very least you should not get too upset at what other people do find funny.
Insofar as the actual content of the comment goes, it was original in the sense that anything is, and sexist by inference only. If you're looking for demonstrable harm, you may want to find a better example.
You've given an example of a somewhat flawed password scheme. You've never tried to brute-force a password, have you?
Most people, left to themselves, will have a password that consists of all lower-case letters, and maybe a couple of numbers at the end. This gives you 36^8 possible choices for a password. Adding uppercase and numbers gives you 62^8 choices, making the password take approximately twice as long to crack.
Most people will choose very bad passwords, usually dictionary words. There are by most accounts less than a million words in the English language; you're reducing the keyspace by a factor of millions if you can use a dictionary attack.
Your password scheme is better than a simple 8-character lowercase password by many orders of magnitude even assuming that the lowercase password is randomly generated. In reality, that will rarely be the case. The upshot is basically that without a password scheme such as yours, any password will likely be broken in seconds or minutes, and with your password scheme, breaking the password within weeks may be infeasible.
The court ruled to close the barn door after the horse had fled, and then burn down the barn for good measure.
There's no way to undo that email, court order or no. There's no guarantee that deleting the account did any good at all; it could have been replicated without limit by now, and propagated around the globe. That data should be assumed to be public at this point; any sensitive information should be changed.
It is not a crime to possess information; the email account holder is blameless in this matter, unless he used that information with malicious intent. The fault lies entirely with the bank, and the second thing that those 1325 people should do is to sue the bank for allowing this to happen. They are harmed by this action, not helped. Their rights and privacy have been violated, and the bank gets to sweep it under the rug. It's entirely likely that most of them will never know about it. This was a stupid decision done for the worst of intentions.
"Unlike a mouse I can't lift it..."
Incorrect; almost all tablet drivers support both absolute and relative cursor positioning.
"What I would like to see is a large tablet with a screen underneath."
Google 'Cintiq'. Then go win the lottery in order to pay for one. They are a dream to use, however.
You use a PC because the next update may remove that ability.
What you're saying is that the PC is more versatile; it has abilities that this media player lacks. That's likely to continue to be true for a very long time. The PC is where software innovation happens. Hardware innovation seems to happen in laboratories. Consumer electronics in the US nets you convenience and 'polish' (variously defined) at the cost of being many years behind the cutting edge.
All people are occasionally idiots; this is forgivable. Being an asshole is not.
You would do well to learn some humility and respect. People here are most likely to be bright and honestly mistaken than they are to be stupid or lying. The appropriate response is not to flame them, but to educate them. Consider at all times the impact of your words.
If you really must rant, post anonymously.