Not all blurs feel a strain. Out of focus blurs do it a bit. I think "slight double vision" blurs are worse for me.
Anyway, that's why artificially blurring a scene or 3D in a big screen movie can be counterproductive.
I can understand its use in when the movie maker wants to emphasize a certain object/person/point in the scene. But I find nowadays many movies use it excessively.
That's actually the movie maker's fault not a fault of the technology. You can get this problem with 2D movies too. Whether intentionally or because they just couldn't film the whole scene in focus.
For something like Avatar 3D, _everything_ in the rendered scenes can be in _perfect_ focus. They actually have to intentionally make those bits out of focus.
I suspect many movie makers (for 2D and 3D) think it's a good idea to restrict what viewers should look at. And they think motion blurring is cool[1].
They miss the point that I paid $$ to watch their movie on BIG SCREEN for a reason - I want to see "everything" and not have to deal with out of focus crap for a significant part of the show.
Otherwise maybe I should just stay home and play a computer game where the picture is HD, 60fps, perfectly in focus. The ending might be a bit more unpredictable too (esp if you play PvP and are just "average" like me:) ).
[1] Unless it is crucial to the plot/scene, motion blurring is a FLAW. In real life, if I focus on a moving object it starts becoming sharp (and the background becomes blurrier), if you use motion blurring, when I focus on the moving blurry object, it stays blurry and my eyes start hurting. Whereas if instead render/film the whole scene in focus at a high FPS, and you have a fast moving object, if I'm not looking at the moving object, it might seem blurry to me, whereas if I look at the moving object it's sharp.
I've watched many 2D movies where certain parts of the picture are out of focus, or stuff is blurred due to motion, and my eyes hurt trying to focus on stuff. Heck I even think something is wrong with my eyes - since normally if I look at a moving object, it stops getting blurry, whereas the background gets blurred, but in many movies when I look at a moving object it stays blurry (hey video, movie and game makers, artificial motion blur sucks OK?).
At least with Avatar 3D, my eyes got more cues on where the director intends people to focus on. So it was less annoying than watching Avatar 2D (yes I watched BOTH versions and 3D was easier on my eyes), or other recent 2D movies where the studio thinks motion blurring is cool, or just having one small bit of the picture in focus all the time is cool (I'll bear it if you're doing it a few times for good reasons, but use it a lot and it gets annoying).
Nowadays the tech _is_ better, and we're still stuck with 24fps blurry crap.
Yes, there's more than one unicode hyphen and dash! There are plenty of confusing characters like that too.
So for programming you're still going to have to stick to a subset for keywords and symbols, and not use the full "tons of glyphs". Or at least you're going to need an entry system that allows you to switch.
Maybe that Poul guy just wants a few extra symbols for some stuff. Good luck with that, many already complain about perl:).
I personally find it hilarious that it's often the same people who think that voters aren't voting for the right parties and yet think those same voters would be able to vote "correctly", regularly and consistently with their wallets.
Note: I'm not saying the voters aren't voting correctly. To me the US voters have been voting for what they want and getting what they voted for. The Two Parties have got the votes of more than 95% of the voters. If the voters really get that pissed off with both parties, they could actually vote for someone else. Even if that someone else doesn't win, if 30% of the votes go elsewhere, the Two Parties might change accordingly. Or the other voters might say "hey that party might actually have a shot, I'll vote for them in the next election if the Two Parties are crap".
Well they might have anti-stalking laws that may apply depending on what the guy does and how he does it.
If the Gov can jail someone who persists in coming close to someone despite being told to stop doing so, it doesn't really seem that different if someone is told to stop posting offensive stuff on a wall (whether real or virtual), and when that someone persists that someone is jailed.
Now if the person disagrees that it is offensive or that it is wrong, that person should appeal in Court. Not ignore the court's judgement.
Of course in this case it appears this chap wasn't given a formal warning first.
I've a few remote controlled helis. In terms of tech, they're rather pathetic compared to a housefly - which can navigate by itself, manage slight breezes, find its own fuel, even reproduce. They can fly for quite a lot longer than most battery powered RC helis.
All in a very tiny package. Fruit flies are even tinier...
So we've certainly got a long way to go in terms of technology.
From a cold-calculative POV, it's not actually that bad for the USA to buy stuff from China that's "too cheap" till Chinese workers are dying etc, and made from stuff that's bad for China to mine etc.
Furthermore it's not even bad for the USA to buy some of it using US dollars _borrowed_ from China. Especially if the USA can create those US dollars at anytime (big deal - the US has already created trillions in the past 2 years!).
The real problem is what is the USA doing with the resulting savings and advantage? Pissing it away with cheap toys and expensive wars? Or investing it for the long term?
Yes, China's bad but people should stop blaming China for the US's problems when the USA is screwing itself the most.
Currently you're more likely to lose your entire laptop, bags etc to a thief at a cafe.
Anyone in IT security or who attends stuff like defcon has known about this problem for years, but nothing much has happened in normal cafes (despite people getting embarassed at defcon year after year).
But the malware bunch have never bothered because it was not really worth it. They have no big difficulty getting people to run malware - they don't even have to be in the same country much less the same cafe. The spammers still send spam, the worms still spread, the zombies still get installed.
It'd only be a big problem if someone (whether whitehat or blackhat) develops a nice tool/lib to do it, then the cost to the malware people goes down, and then it becomes another method for spreading.
My guess is if the authors and proponents of firesheep never kicked up a fuss about it, it would have been many more years before it would have become a problem, if at all.
The "easiest" solution actually is not to get everyone to use https - since lots of sites including slashdot don't use it.
To quote myself: "with the current WiFi standards you cannot have an easy way for a Cafe/Hotel/Conference to provide encrypted wireless connections to guests in a way where they cannot snoop on each other's connections. if you use preshared key users can decrypt each other's traffic. If you use username and password, it's far more inconvenient for the user and the service provider."
Yes in theory "people should use https, vpns etc all the time blahblahblah", but this requires ALL parties involved to support encryption. That'll happen about the time Duke Nukem Forever gets released.
Whereas things would be much safer if people running cafe systems could unilaterally provide secure wifi just the way a site could unilaterally provide https. It takes some tweaking to the wifi standards and coordination with the OS makers, so that users don't have to do very much extra work.
But no, with the current way way users have to enter correct usernames and passwords.
Yes I know, MITM attacks would still be possible (assuming the users "click through warnings", or can't tell the difference between a legit starbucks cert and a fake), but that's the same for https as well.
Furthermore if you _add_ more "ssh style" _sanity_[1], then operators could use "autogen self-signed" keys and still users could be safe because the first time they go to a cafe they just recognize the key and say its ok (risk is low after all), if the next time an attacker tries to MITM, the user gets a warning.
If the first time you go to a cafe and notice a few people are grumbling to the cafe "hey why's there this warning popping up, why two SSIDs with the same name", you can wait for things to be sorted out first;).
[1] Current https/ssl stuff is insane. As long as a cert is signed by any of the CAs installed in your browser it's regarded as OK. Trusting a self-signed cert is actually safer- since you'd get a warning if the cert changed due to a MITM. Whereas if a CA in Turkey/China/etc signed a fake Bank of America's cert, you wouldn't get a warning at all when being MITMed by them! (unless you use plugins like certificate patrol). So a combination of CAs and ssh style would be better.
Or extinct before we manage to even get the tech to leave.
We're not even building decent space stations. To me the priorities should be to build a space station that humans can live on "indefinitely". Not waste money on going to Mars.
When you have developed space stations on which people can live on indefinitely, you don't have to rush to Mars. In fact Mars becomes a lot less important economically. The asteroids would be more interesting- build space colonies from the asteroids. From that point you would be closer to having the tech and resources to leave the solar system.
You don't have to bankrupt companies, nor is that a good way to achieve desired change, in my opinion.
All you need to do is say: "If stuff like this happens again, the people responsible are jailed for years". "Sorry, limited liability is only for 'civil' stuff, persistently taking money that isn't yours and been told you should stop taking comes under 'criminal'".
If you're a billionaire and your company gets bankrupted or closed down by the Gov/regulators it's not as bad as you sitting in prison for a number of years.
After all with the former you can still sail around the world with your multi-million dollar yacht (while pretending to be sad about the resulting thousands of job losses), whereas with the latter, a significant percentage of your expected lifespan is spent in a prison cell (while the next person in line takes your job).
Which hurts more? Which is more likely to deter a rich intelligent sociopath?
Why shouldn't people who persist in "taking millions that isn't theirs" not go to prison? Maybe the first time it's a mistake (hard to believe of course:) ), but after that, you better get your whole company toeing the line.
If a small-fry has been negligent and "making millions" for the company in defiance of the regulator's orders, the small-fry goes to jail, unless he can prove a boss told him to do it. If the boss can prove the CEO told the boss to do it, the CEO goes to jail.
AND if the amounts involved make up a significant amount of the company's revenues/profits (say 10% or more) the CEO goes to jail anyway. If you are that ignorant/incompetent as a CEO to not know that >=10% of the money your company makes is illegal you deserve to go to jail anyway. No second chance for this case, the first time we catch your company doing that, you go to jail.
I'm sure someone smarter can improve this further, but my point is, jailing the bosses often works better than taking money from the companies they run.
The US might have pwned itself more than it pwned China: the US not using its advantage wisely for the long term benefit of the US people but instead spending it on cheap toys and wars (and making a few people very rich) is not China's fault.
But that's probably wrong in terms of units in existence. There are lots of Linux servers out there because it's free. When you need an extra one, you install one and that's it. No need for licenses.
The fact that people are actually buying Linux servers and they make up 20% of the sales (as per the IDC numbers) indicates to me that there could be more Linux servers installed than Windows servers, because the ratio of nonpurchased Linux servers to purchased Linux servers is very likely to be higher than 4:1. Many places do buy and use Redhat, but guess how many Centos servers they would also have installed and used. Many companies have installed many free Linux servers without _ever_ buying any at all. A previous workplace had lots of such free Linux servers scattered around the world. And they weren't "desktops", Windows was the standard for desktops there.
I'm not including stuff like linux based APs, DSL routers etc. I'm talking about those towers and rack stuff.
Microsoft doesn't have a dominating presence in the server market. They do have stuff like AD, Exchange and Sharepoint. But the way I see it, if the OSS bunch start moving up the ladder it's going to get ugly there for MS.
The desktop market will probably remain Microsoft's for years to come, unless someone finishes something like ReactOS soon (and even so they'd probably get tied up in court).
You can also go to the ballot box, and vote for "none of the above".
Yes that's a "spoilt vote". But if there turned out to be a lot of spoiled votes (assuming they show up in the results as spoilt), then some people who are better potential candidates than you are, might get encouraged by that and run for office.
I think you do underestimate how fast the molecules travel. Buman noses only require a small number of molecules to detect some scents.
Simple test. Do the same thing, but block your nose and hold your breath this time. Can you smell stuff with your hands.
If you still can perhaps you do have smell receptors in your hands.
BUT to be sure try it blindfolded with random items (someone else will have to help) to see whether its in your mind. Or even some sort of synaesthesia.
you can type Alt+F2 (the SAME SHORTCUT AS WINDOWS) on Ubuntu and get a command line, too.
1) I think you're missing the point. Assuming alt-f2 even works for Joe's distro (which is quite a big assumption!), say "Joe Sixpack" is on the other end and says "his nephew installed leenooks for him" what do you tell them to type?
gnome-terminal? terminal? konsole? rxvt?
So same problem. Extra time and cost to support some moving target "fringe desktop OS".
2) Same as windows? Doesn't seem to work on my windows machine "alt f2" doesn't show any hits on site:microsoft.com while "alt f4" does. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449
As for pressing "r" being redefined in Windows, they can click on "run" instead. It's still there. Or if the caller knows what "windows key" means, "winkey+r" (but in real life I think more time would be spent trying to get them to find the winkey:) ).
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting, I don't feel strained by 2d blur.
Not all blurs feel a strain. Out of focus blurs do it a bit. I think "slight double vision" blurs are worse for me.
Anyway, that's why artificially blurring a scene or 3D in a big screen movie can be counterproductive.
I can understand its use in when the movie maker wants to emphasize a certain object/person/point in the scene. But I find nowadays many movies use it excessively.
Maybe you eyes don't feel strained when you look at blurry 2d stuff, but mine do.
Examples:
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/images/type/effects/light-burst/blurred-text.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__e75oHvC5rk/SQB11qe8d_I/AAAAAAAAAIM/DRtUohJMzrA/s400/First+Try+Ss.jpg
And the rest of my points are still valid even if you don't read or understand them.
The "blur"/out-of-focus effect is not specific or even required in a 3D movie. You can have everything perfectly in focus in a 3D movie.
That's actually the movie maker's fault not a fault of the technology. You can get this problem with 2D movies too. Whether intentionally or because they just couldn't film the whole scene in focus.
:) ).
For something like Avatar 3D, _everything_ in the rendered scenes can be in _perfect_ focus. They actually have to intentionally make those bits out of focus.
I suspect many movie makers (for 2D and 3D) think it's a good idea to restrict what viewers should look at. And they think motion blurring is cool[1].
They miss the point that I paid $$ to watch their movie on BIG SCREEN for a reason - I want to see "everything" and not have to deal with out of focus crap for a significant part of the show.
Otherwise maybe I should just stay home and play a computer game where the picture is HD, 60fps, perfectly in focus. The ending might be a bit more unpredictable too (esp if you play PvP and are just "average" like me
[1] Unless it is crucial to the plot/scene, motion blurring is a FLAW. In real life, if I focus on a moving object it starts becoming sharp (and the background becomes blurrier), if you use motion blurring, when I focus on the moving blurry object, it stays blurry and my eyes start hurting. Whereas if instead render/film the whole scene in focus at a high FPS, and you have a fast moving object, if I'm not looking at the moving object, it might seem blurry to me, whereas if I look at the moving object it's sharp.
The problem does exist in 2D too.
I've watched many 2D movies where certain parts of the picture are out of focus, or stuff is blurred due to motion, and my eyes hurt trying to focus on stuff. Heck I even think something is wrong with my eyes - since normally if I look at a moving object, it stops getting blurry, whereas the background gets blurred, but in many movies when I look at a moving object it stays blurry (hey video, movie and game makers, artificial motion blur sucks OK?).
At least with Avatar 3D, my eyes got more cues on where the director intends people to focus on. So it was less annoying than watching Avatar 2D (yes I watched BOTH versions and 3D was easier on my eyes), or other recent 2D movies where the studio thinks motion blurring is cool, or just having one small bit of the picture in focus all the time is cool (I'll bear it if you're doing it a few times for good reasons, but use it a lot and it gets annoying).
Nowadays the tech _is_ better, and we're still stuck with 24fps blurry crap.
How about screw the android girlfriend instead?
There's some treatment at research stage that might help your case, but there are some minuses...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy
So how are you going to tell the difference between:
a) a hyphen
b) a dash
c) a minus sign
And worse the different unicode versions of hyphens and dashes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphen#Unicode
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Common_dashes
Yes, there's more than one unicode hyphen and dash! There are plenty of confusing characters like that too.
So for programming you're still going to have to stick to a subset for keywords and symbols, and not use the full "tons of glyphs". Or at least you're going to need an entry system that allows you to switch.
Maybe that Poul guy just wants a few extra symbols for some stuff. Good luck with that, many already complain about perl :).
I personally find it hilarious that it's often the same people who think that voters aren't voting for the right parties and yet think those same voters would be able to vote "correctly", regularly and consistently with their wallets.
Note: I'm not saying the voters aren't voting correctly. To me the US voters have been voting for what they want and getting what they voted for. The Two Parties have got the votes of more than 95% of the voters. If the voters really get that pissed off with both parties, they could actually vote for someone else. Even if that someone else doesn't win, if 30% of the votes go elsewhere, the Two Parties might change accordingly. Or the other voters might say "hey that party might actually have a shot, I'll vote for them in the next election if the Two Parties are crap".
Well they might have anti-stalking laws that may apply depending on what the guy does and how he does it.
If the Gov can jail someone who persists in coming close to someone despite being told to stop doing so, it doesn't really seem that different if someone is told to stop posting offensive stuff on a wall (whether real or virtual), and when that someone persists that someone is jailed.
Now if the person disagrees that it is offensive or that it is wrong, that person should appeal in Court. Not ignore the court's judgement.
Of course in this case it appears this chap wasn't given a formal warning first.
No thanks, I'm actually hoping they wipe out blood-sucking mosquitoes/flies.
Why so few posts?
:)
First they came for the trolls...
Then it was a lot quieter?
I've a few remote controlled helis. In terms of tech, they're rather pathetic compared to a housefly - which can navigate by itself, manage slight breezes, find its own fuel, even reproduce. They can fly for quite a lot longer than most battery powered RC helis.
All in a very tiny package. Fruit flies are even tinier...
So we've certainly got a long way to go in terms of technology.
When you heat water, and then allow it to cool, it is just the same as water that was never heated.
If you boil tap water and let it cool down, it normally has less air in it than before. When you freeze that water it will have fewer bubbles.
This concept can be useful in some cooking recipes if you don't want the final product to have so many bubbles, e.g. steamed egg/chawan mushi.
From a cold-calculative POV, it's not actually that bad for the USA to buy stuff from China that's "too cheap" till Chinese workers are dying etc, and made from stuff that's bad for China to mine etc.
Furthermore it's not even bad for the USA to buy some of it using US dollars _borrowed_ from China. Especially if the USA can create those US dollars at anytime (big deal - the US has already created trillions in the past 2 years!).
The real problem is what is the USA doing with the resulting savings and advantage? Pissing it away with cheap toys and expensive wars? Or investing it for the long term?
Yes, China's bad but people should stop blaming China for the US's problems when the USA is screwing itself the most.
Currently you're more likely to lose your entire laptop, bags etc to a thief at a cafe.
Anyone in IT security or who attends stuff like defcon has known about this problem for years, but nothing much has happened in normal cafes (despite people getting embarassed at defcon year after year).
But the malware bunch have never bothered because it was not really worth it. They have no big difficulty getting people to run malware - they don't even have to be in the same country much less the same cafe. The spammers still send spam, the worms still spread, the zombies still get installed.
It'd only be a big problem if someone (whether whitehat or blackhat) develops a nice tool/lib to do it, then the cost to the malware people goes down, and then it becomes another method for spreading.
My guess is if the authors and proponents of firesheep never kicked up a fuss about it, it would have been many more years before it would have become a problem, if at all.
The "easiest" solution actually is not to get everyone to use https - since lots of sites including slashdot don't use it.
The easiest solution is to fix secure wifi: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1578784&cid=31435914 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1578784&cid=31437480
To quote myself: "with the current WiFi standards you cannot have an easy way for a Cafe/Hotel/Conference to provide encrypted wireless connections to guests in a way where they cannot snoop on each other's connections. if you use preshared key users can decrypt each other's traffic. If you use username and password, it's far more inconvenient for the user and the service provider."
Yes in theory "people should use https, vpns etc all the time blahblahblah", but this requires ALL parties involved to support encryption. That'll happen about the time Duke Nukem Forever gets released.
Whereas things would be much safer if people running cafe systems could unilaterally provide secure wifi just the way a site could unilaterally provide https. It takes some tweaking to the wifi standards and coordination with the OS makers, so that users don't have to do very much extra work.
But no, with the current way way users have to enter correct usernames and passwords.
Yes I know, MITM attacks would still be possible (assuming the users "click through warnings", or can't tell the difference between a legit starbucks cert and a fake), but that's the same for https as well.
Furthermore if you _add_ more "ssh style" _sanity_[1], then operators could use "autogen self-signed" keys and still users could be safe because the first time they go to a cafe they just recognize the key and say its ok (risk is low after all), if the next time an attacker tries to MITM, the user gets a warning.
If the first time you go to a cafe and notice a few people are grumbling to the cafe "hey why's there this warning popping up, why two SSIDs with the same name", you can wait for things to be sorted out first ;).
[1] Current https/ssl stuff is insane. As long as a cert is signed by any of the CAs installed in your browser it's regarded as OK. Trusting a self-signed cert is actually safer- since you'd get a warning if the cert changed due to a MITM. Whereas if a CA in Turkey/China/etc signed a fake Bank of America's cert, you wouldn't get a warning at all when being MITMed by them! (unless you use plugins like certificate patrol). So a combination of CAs and ssh style would be better.
No. Firesheep hijacks/copies sessions.
After logging in on https facebook redirects you to http, firesheep gets your session. pwned.
The risk is actually very low until stuff like firesheep becomes common enough amongst wifi cafe users (whether via malware or pranksters).
Currently you're more likely to lose your entire laptop to a thief at a cafe.
Or extinct before we manage to even get the tech to leave.
We're not even building decent space stations. To me the priorities should be to build a space station that humans can live on "indefinitely". Not waste money on going to Mars.
When you have developed space stations on which people can live on indefinitely, you don't have to rush to Mars. In fact Mars becomes a lot less important economically. The asteroids would be more interesting- build space colonies from the asteroids. From that point you would be closer to having the tech and resources to leave the solar system.
For many companies, QA is unleashing the product to unsuspecting customers.
You don't have to bankrupt companies, nor is that a good way to achieve desired change, in my opinion.
:) ), but after that, you better get your whole company toeing the line.
All you need to do is say: "If stuff like this happens again, the people responsible are jailed for years". "Sorry, limited liability is only for 'civil' stuff, persistently taking money that isn't yours and been told you should stop taking comes under 'criminal'".
If you're a billionaire and your company gets bankrupted or closed down by the Gov/regulators it's not as bad as you sitting in prison for a number of years.
After all with the former you can still sail around the world with your multi-million dollar yacht (while pretending to be sad about the resulting thousands of job losses), whereas with the latter, a significant percentage of your expected lifespan is spent in a prison cell (while the next person in line takes your job).
Which hurts more? Which is more likely to deter a rich intelligent sociopath?
Why shouldn't people who persist in "taking millions that isn't theirs" not go to prison? Maybe the first time it's a mistake (hard to believe of course
If a small-fry has been negligent and "making millions" for the company in defiance of the regulator's orders, the small-fry goes to jail, unless he can prove a boss told him to do it. If the boss can prove the CEO told the boss to do it, the CEO goes to jail.
AND if the amounts involved make up a significant amount of the company's revenues/profits (say 10% or more) the CEO goes to jail anyway. If you are that ignorant/incompetent as a CEO to not know that >=10% of the money your company makes is illegal you deserve to go to jail anyway. No second chance for this case, the first time we catch your company doing that, you go to jail.
I'm sure someone smarter can improve this further, but my point is, jailing the bosses often works better than taking money from the companies they run.
There's a big difference with you borrowing US dollars from the bank and the US borrowing US dollars from China.
The US can legally create US dollars and already has created trillions (more than what it owes China):
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=armOzfkwtCA4
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/AR2009031802283.html
You can't.
The US has pwned China.
The US might have pwned itself more than it pwned China: the US not using its advantage wisely for the long term benefit of the US people but instead spending it on cheap toys and wars (and making a few people very rich) is not China's fault.
Actually, MS is huge in the server market. There are certainly more Windows servers in existence than ones running Linux, for example.
Share in terms of sales that's probably right: http://blogs.computerworld.com/16263/windows_widens_lead_over_linux_in_the_server_market
But that's probably wrong in terms of units in existence. There are lots of Linux servers out there because it's free. When you need an extra one, you install one and that's it. No need for licenses.
The fact that people are actually buying Linux servers and they make up 20% of the sales (as per the IDC numbers) indicates to me that there could be more Linux servers installed than Windows servers, because the ratio of nonpurchased Linux servers to purchased Linux servers is very likely to be higher than 4:1. Many places do buy and use Redhat, but guess how many Centos servers they would also have installed and used. Many companies have installed many free Linux servers without _ever_ buying any at all. A previous workplace had lots of such free Linux servers scattered around the world. And they weren't "desktops", Windows was the standard for desktops there.
I'm not including stuff like linux based APs, DSL routers etc. I'm talking about those towers and rack stuff.
Google alone has quite a number of Linux servers. http://gizmodo.com/5517041/googles-insane-number-of-servers-visualized :).
I doubt they'd do so well if they had to resort to paying for say Win2K8 R2
Microsoft doesn't have a dominating presence in the server market. They do have stuff like AD, Exchange and Sharepoint. But the way I see it, if the OSS bunch start moving up the ladder it's going to get ugly there for MS.
The desktop market will probably remain Microsoft's for years to come, unless someone finishes something like ReactOS soon (and even so they'd probably get tied up in court).
You can also go to the ballot box, and vote for "none of the above".
Yes that's a "spoilt vote". But if there turned out to be a lot of spoiled votes (assuming they show up in the results as spoilt), then some people who are better potential candidates than you are, might get encouraged by that and run for office.
Genetics certainly play a significant role.
I doubt my neighbour's dog is going to do that well in matters requiring significant intelligence no matter how hard he tries.
Similarly I'm never going to beat Usain Bolt's record.
I think you do underestimate how fast the molecules travel. Buman noses only require a small number of molecules to detect some scents.
Simple test. Do the same thing, but block your nose and hold your breath this time. Can you smell stuff with your hands.
If you still can perhaps you do have smell receptors in your hands.
BUT to be sure try it blindfolded with random items (someone else will have to help) to see whether its in your mind. Or even some sort of synaesthesia.
you can type Alt+F2 (the SAME SHORTCUT AS WINDOWS) on Ubuntu and get a command line, too.
1) I think you're missing the point. Assuming alt-f2 even works for Joe's distro (which is quite a big assumption!), say "Joe Sixpack" is on the other end and says "his nephew installed leenooks for him" what do you tell them to type?
gnome-terminal? terminal? konsole? rxvt?
So same problem. Extra time and cost to support some moving target "fringe desktop OS".
2) Same as windows? Doesn't seem to work on my windows machine "alt f2" doesn't show any hits on site:microsoft.com while "alt f4" does. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449
As for pressing "r" being redefined in Windows, they can click on "run" instead. It's still there. Or if the caller knows what "windows key" means, "winkey+r" (but in real life I think more time would be spent trying to get them to find the winkey :) ).