I've seen a huge increase in both spam and particularly spam that makes it past my spam filter.
It's an arms race. They come out with a new message that tricks the filters into thinking it's real. The filters update and adapt. They rethink things and come out with a new junk message which sometimes succeeds, sometimes doesn't. When they find one that works, I start getting spam again until the filters adapt. Ad nauseum.
I've got my SpamAssassin filters set to update on a daily cron job, and it's always the same... Every week or two, I get a handful of spam messages getting past the filters. They're all basically the same. And it lasts for about a day before I stop getting spam again. So it comes in bursts for me, every time the spammers rethink the message they send out.
I've had my domain, and the same e-mail address for half a decade. My IP address did recently change when I moved into a new colo, but all of the DNS has updated already, so the spammers still know who I am. It's annoying. But it is manageable.
In computer terms, *Windows 95* is some kind of ancient history... An XT is the bronze age, and earlier stuff like the DEC PDP is the stone age. Charles Babbage's Difference Engine is early single-celled organisms floating in pond scum.
But I was referring the comment about "amber screen if you were lucky"... I still remember playing Police Quest 1 on an amber-scale hercules monochrome, having to use the siren to go through traffic lights because you couldn't tell whether they were red or green. And that was on an XT.:)
Back in my day, we had green-on-black text. If you were really lucky, you had AMBER on black. Now, those were the days
And that IBM XT booted uphill, both ways? Oh, that sucker was a speed demon, with its whopping 4MHz processor and 640KB of RAM! Why! That was enough for anything!
Well that's great but what do you do with all the spent batteries? Then there's the range problem. What are they getting now...40 miles to a charge? Is that really enough? Even if they triple it?
Depends on what you are using your car for. For me, 40 miles to a charge would be barely enough... I'm 23km each way. So a total of about 30 miles commute per day, leaving me 10 miles to play with for errands or trips to the gym (which is on the way home from work). Could I use that for my daily commute? Yes. Could I use that for things like a road trip? Nope. I drove to Toronto last weekend, for example. Put on just over 1,000 km, most of that being the actual drive to/from the city.
But there's nothing to stop me from owning an electric car for my daily use, and renting a gas car for those road trips. Or from taking the bus. Or the train, for that matter... there *are* taxis in that city. Except, of course, that there aren't any electric cars available on the market around here.... Well, and Canada has been known to get cold, which isn't very good for electric cars' efficiency.
"zero configuration" so linux for the people that miss the whole point of running linux desktop?
"zero configuration" so that you don't have to spend hours finding and installing drivers and tweaking everything so that you can use your hardware. It all works out of the box, and the only one you may possibly need to install is the binary blob driver for your video card, and that only if you want 3d acceleration, as the open source drivers which come with it are perfectly adequate for running 2d or using a screen saver.
All of the configuration options are there. None of them are hidden from the user at all. There's even a control panel app which provides direct access to some of the more obscure settings on a system. "Zero configuration" means that you don't need to, not that you can't, or that it's in any way difficult.
The difference is in the compilation options. Just because it's the same software doesn't mean it's the same build, and anybody who's compared performance/benchmarks under Gentoo as opposed to Ubuntu can tell you what a huge difference it can make.
Gentoo can be faster than Zenwalk (though in some benchmarks isn't), but Zenwalk is much easier to install and maintain, and they're both *hugely* faster than Ubuntu.
Having said that, can you tell me a bit more about Zenwalk and how easy it is to maintain? I briefly checked out the web page and couldn't tell if it was based on the Debian system, like Ubuntu. If it's not too far off from Ubuntu and it's able to benefit from ports to Ubuntu, then I might check it out. Because I find that one necessity in a Linux distro is the existence of a strong package maintenance institution, so that I can be confident that new software will be packaged and made available for (and compatible with) my distro.
It's Slack-based. But unlike Slack, it has a package-management system with dependency checking, and uses a modern 2.6 kernel. It still uses the same.tgz package format as Slack, meaning it's essentially a tarball and you can install Slack packages, as well as coming with utilities that let you convert rpm and deb packages to tgz so they can be installed, and installs packages very quickly. I can't fault apt... it is a very good tool for system management. But Zenwalk's netpkg brings all of that functionality to a Slack-based system. Like Ubuntu, Zen has restricted packages for drivers like NVidia and ATi, as well as DVD playback and MP3 encoding (which aren't actually needed most of the time). I have not yet run into a software that I use which isn't in the repo, but unlike Ubuntu, I didn't have to configure *anything* on my laptop. Everything worked out of the box (well, for performance reasons I did choose to install the NVidia binary blob driver: I play games). Even MP3 and DVD playback, and the wireless card (Intel 8945g) worked out of the box without any need to be installed or configured.
That did mean that I had to accept a non-GPL license at install time (if you decline, the non-GPL blobs and software are uninstalled), but the idea is simplicity for end users. It's designed around a one-app per task, zero configuration philosophy, and it achieves that *very* well, choosing apps that are both stable, and lightweight, and coming with driver functionality out of the box that you simply don't see on any other distro. And it's got software out of the box for everything the average user does with their computer. Finally, it's a smaller ISO, so a faster download, as well as being faster to run in general.
Bottom line: It's better for desktop linux than Ubuntu.:)
Does their marketting team have anything to do with their success?
Certainly. In my mind, Zenwalk is, hands-down, a better distro. Faster, lighter, equally compatible, large library of pre-built software, easy to maintain. Running Zenwalk makes Ubuntu feel like Windows... it really *is* that much zippier. And there's probably other distros that are of the same calibre, but I simply haven't felt any need or desire to go looking.
But Zenwalk doesn't have nearly as large a marketting weight, nor does it have the collection of fanbois touting how great it is to anybody who doesn't tell them to fuck off. As a result, an overrated distro is the big dog in town, while a better product is underappreciated. *shrugs* all things come to an end, eventually. Something will eventually topple Ubuntu, and something else will eventually topple that.
Interesting sideline... athletes who go the other direction (male to female) actually produce *no* testosterone, and are at a disadvantage versus genetic females, because normal female physiology produces a small amount of testosterone. (just as normal male physiology produces a small amount of estrogen)
I find it quite difficult to grok japanese humour and I think German humour may be as difficult for non Germans
Japanese humour, like German humour, and indeed, everybody else's humour, has multiple levels. There's more intellectual stuff which relies on cultural knowledge, but you also do see slapstick, absurdity, and other genres of humour. Lots of people like to moan about how high brow British humour is, for example, but that's the same nation that gave us Benny Hill and Red Dwarf. Not exactly high brow. Japanese humour isn't really any different.
Take, for example, the Japanese comedy Ping Pong Bath Station (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169126/). Absolutely hilarious. And one of my favourite Japanese movies. It's about a hot spring resort that decides to rejuvinate its business by hosting a ping pong tournament. The thing is that alongside cultural reference humour that you may or may not get, one of the characters is transgendered, and used as comic relief. There's still some cultural humour in that character, but it is a level of humour that's much closer to what an American audience will be used to.
Ultimately, it's a question of where you go. Some German humour, you'll get. Some you won't. The same can be said for the rest of the world.
Anyway... no real point. Just felt like mentionning that you can't lump it all together. And obligatory disclaimer: my mum's family is Scottish/Irish, my dad's family is German, and I studied Japanese in University. It's American "humour" that I don't appreciate....
Only time I ever eat anything that's been toasted, it's hamburger buns that've been toasted on the barbecue. Propane.
No fans, or rice cookers, or blow driers?
Central A/C, it's a microwave cooker, and no point with curly hair.
a mixer, or a blender,
Hand whisk.
a vacuum cleaner
Have one of those, but it's cordless.
table saw, or your skillsaw, or that drill, or the hedge clippers
Nope. Cordless. Cordless. and Nope. Bought into that DeWalt 18.2V cordless dealey where the battery packs are interchangeable between devices, and you charge them at a central station. And my lawnmower is gas.
So no. Good examples. But it is entirely possible to have a house without a single device which uses 120VAC natively. My point, however, wasn't that I haven't got a single device which doesn't have a transformer, it was that we *all* have something in the house that *does*. Because we all have at least one of: a radio, a TV, a CD player, a DVD player, a computer, a fridge, an oven, a clock or clock/radio, etc.
I wonder how many households are breaking that law.
Probably all of them. The law prohibits owning/operating a transformer... how many appliances do you have that actually run on 120VAC? In my house, the only ones I had until fairly recently were incandescent lightbulbs. Now that I've switched to compact fluorescent, I replaced the last incandescent last week, and don't actually have a single device in the house which uses 120VAC natively for all components. In other words: they've *all* got a transformer.
SHe was talking to right winger who was "educated" (told) by a talk radio host that global warming is a myth created by anti-capitalist environmental whackjobs.
Even if it was created by anti-capitalist environmental whackjobs, how do they explain away the fact that reducing emissions is about reducing waste, which in turn improves efficiency? Running efficiently is good for your bottom line. Even if it is a crazy idea cooked up by enviro-nazis, it still makes good economical sense to be conscious about the waste you're producing.
There's other methods for securing a wireless network that many of us have seen... You can:
- use MAC filtering. Easy to get around, but is as much of a deterrent as using WEP or WPA, and so I'd say equally secure. - force all traffic through authenticated proxy. many many hotels use this method. - require domain login - require VPN - require access to come from terminal servers, providing open wireless access only so that you can log in to a terminal via rdesktop or xdmcp, or ssh w/ X forwarding (any of which can be configured to require an encrypted connection)
there's a host of other methods to secure a wireless network. Just because you're using an unencrypted wireless net does *not* mean that you're insecure.
TFA does imply that the exploit takes advantage of an assumption at the OS level that.NET objects are automatically safe, and gives them the same privileges as the browser itself. It also says that the exploit takes advantage of a multi-homed attack using different scripting methods. Given that information, I'd venture a wild-assed guess that the exploit most likely uses JAVA and/or ActiveX to load a downloaded/forged.NET object which in turn loads arbitrary code as described.
If there's truth to the assumption about.NET objects, then it's a monumentally stupid decision on Microsoft's behalf. But there is a (temporary) fix that can be patched into the OS by requiring a signature. Yes, those can be forged. Yes, it's a stop-gap measure. But if you require authentication from online servers (remember, this is a drive-by online exploit, so it's safe to assume that anybody who needs to validate a signature like this has Internet access), then it is an improvement until it can be fixed properly.
See... I checked your link, and then I started doing some mental math as to how much you must've spent to get that 204" 1080p display. It's a lot more money than most people are going to spend on their entertainment. Even if they are going to try to build something even close to your rig, they aren't going to buy it all at once...
Now, I've got a very nice 42" 1080p HDTV made by LG. But I'm still feeding it with OTA 1080i broadcast TV rather than a set-top HD box from my local cable or sattelite provider, and I'm still watching regular DVDs on it. Most of the use it sees is actually play time on the Nintendo Wii. I expect that the next optical drive I buy will be a BluRay, but honestly, I'm happy enough with DVD. I care more about substance than I do glitz, and looking at my list of the top 5 movies ever, half of them aren't even in colour, let alone HD. So for me, switching to BluRay simply isn't worth it. When I buy/build a new HTPC (it'll probably be one of those new Dell Studio Hybrids... when I saw the specs on it my first thought was that if it came with a TV tuner it'd be the perfect HTPC), I will quite likely go with BluRay and HDMI on it. But that'll be because I can, not because I feel any need to.
I can't argue that HD doesn't look better. It does, even on my piddly little 42" 1080p display. When I tune into a 1080i broadcast, the picture quality is gorgeous. But it just isn't worth the added money at the moment. I have other priorities.
As a person who has long used a PC attached to a TV as what it's now called a "Media Center", I can say the text quality on a CRT television is absolutely horrible, totally unusable for browsing or programming.
That does actually depend on the TV you're using, as well as the method you're using to connect. I have 3 TV's, and have had the same HTPC hooked up to all 3 of them, using different connection methods. The oldest is a 21" Samsung 16x9 CRT that was bought in 1998, and the TV was connected using RCA. Yes. It was illegible.
The second is a 26" Panasonic GAOO CRT (800x600 resolution), connected via S-Video. On that, the text isn't great, but it *is* legible. The biggest annoyance on that, really, is that when I close the media center, the desktop spans beyond the edges of the screen.
The third is a 42" LG 1080p HDTV, connected via HDMI. On that, there's no problems at all.
YMMV, but the usability for different functions depends an awful lot on the display.:)
And this would be the same Jesus who said: For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always. Sounds like a charitable guy.
Y'know... I've never really liked it when people use the word "ye" to mean "you"... it means "the". And it's actually supposed to be pronounced that way, too... The letter 'y' in that place replaces a thorn, and started doing so with the introduction of moving type. It does so because the French-made printing presses didn't have that letter in their character set, because it's of Anglo-Saxon origin, not Latin, and so the letter Y was used in its place. Over time, the letter simply fell out of use in the English alphabet, and was replaced with the combonation "th", which had started appearing about 100 years earlier.
Wonder if there's a way to bring charges to bear using organized crime laws? Most countries have laws allowing the leaders of organized crime organizations to be held responsible for the actions of their subordinates, regardless of whether the subordinates are pining for the fjords....
(and for those that missed it, that last line should indicate that this is intended to be tongue-in-cheek....)
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It's an arms race. They come out with a new message that tricks the filters into thinking it's real. The filters update and adapt. They rethink things and come out with a new junk message which sometimes succeeds, sometimes doesn't. When they find one that works, I start getting spam again until the filters adapt. Ad nauseum.
I've got my SpamAssassin filters set to update on a daily cron job, and it's always the same... Every week or two, I get a handful of spam messages getting past the filters. They're all basically the same. And it lasts for about a day before I stop getting spam again. So it comes in bursts for me, every time the spammers rethink the message they send out.
I've had my domain, and the same e-mail address for half a decade. My IP address did recently change when I moved into a new colo, but all of the DNS has updated already, so the spammers still know who I am. It's annoying. But it is manageable.
In computer terms, *Windows 95* is some kind of ancient history... An XT is the bronze age, and earlier stuff like the DEC PDP is the stone age. Charles Babbage's Difference Engine is early single-celled organisms floating in pond scum.
But I was referring the comment about "amber screen if you were lucky"... I still remember playing Police Quest 1 on an amber-scale hercules monochrome, having to use the siren to go through traffic lights because you couldn't tell whether they were red or green. And that was on an XT. :)
And that IBM XT booted uphill, both ways? Oh, that sucker was a speed demon, with its whopping 4MHz processor and 640KB of RAM! Why! That was enough for anything!
Depends on what you are using your car for. For me, 40 miles to a charge would be barely enough... I'm 23km each way. So a total of about 30 miles commute per day, leaving me 10 miles to play with for errands or trips to the gym (which is on the way home from work). Could I use that for my daily commute? Yes. Could I use that for things like a road trip? Nope. I drove to Toronto last weekend, for example. Put on just over 1,000 km, most of that being the actual drive to/from the city.
But there's nothing to stop me from owning an electric car for my daily use, and renting a gas car for those road trips. Or from taking the bus. Or the train, for that matter... there *are* taxis in that city. Except, of course, that there aren't any electric cars available on the market around here.... Well, and Canada has been known to get cold, which isn't very good for electric cars' efficiency.
"zero configuration" so that you don't have to spend hours finding and installing drivers and tweaking everything so that you can use your hardware. It all works out of the box, and the only one you may possibly need to install is the binary blob driver for your video card, and that only if you want 3d acceleration, as the open source drivers which come with it are perfectly adequate for running 2d or using a screen saver.
All of the configuration options are there. None of them are hidden from the user at all. There's even a control panel app which provides direct access to some of the more obscure settings on a system. "Zero configuration" means that you don't need to, not that you can't, or that it's in any way difficult.
I did. :) It's still sluggish, and takes about twice as long to boot up. :)
The difference is in the compilation options. Just because it's the same software doesn't mean it's the same build, and anybody who's compared performance/benchmarks under Gentoo as opposed to Ubuntu can tell you what a huge difference it can make.
Gentoo can be faster than Zenwalk (though in some benchmarks isn't), but Zenwalk is much easier to install and maintain, and they're both *hugely* faster than Ubuntu.
It's Slack-based. But unlike Slack, it has a package-management system with dependency checking, and uses a modern 2.6 kernel. It still uses the same .tgz package format as Slack, meaning it's essentially a tarball and you can install Slack packages, as well as coming with utilities that let you convert rpm and deb packages to tgz so they can be installed, and installs packages very quickly. I can't fault apt... it is a very good tool for system management. But Zenwalk's netpkg brings all of that functionality to a Slack-based system. Like Ubuntu, Zen has restricted packages for drivers like NVidia and ATi, as well as DVD playback and MP3 encoding (which aren't actually needed most of the time). I have not yet run into a software that I use which isn't in the repo, but unlike Ubuntu, I didn't have to configure *anything* on my laptop. Everything worked out of the box (well, for performance reasons I did choose to install the NVidia binary blob driver: I play games). Even MP3 and DVD playback, and the wireless card (Intel 8945g) worked out of the box without any need to be installed or configured.
That did mean that I had to accept a non-GPL license at install time (if you decline, the non-GPL blobs and software are uninstalled), but the idea is simplicity for end users. It's designed around a one-app per task, zero configuration philosophy, and it achieves that *very* well, choosing apps that are both stable, and lightweight, and coming with driver functionality out of the box that you simply don't see on any other distro. And it's got software out of the box for everything the average user does with their computer. Finally, it's a smaller ISO, so a faster download, as well as being faster to run in general.
Bottom line: It's better for desktop linux than Ubuntu. :)
Certainly. In my mind, Zenwalk is, hands-down, a better distro. Faster, lighter, equally compatible, large library of pre-built software, easy to maintain. Running Zenwalk makes Ubuntu feel like Windows... it really *is* that much zippier. And there's probably other distros that are of the same calibre, but I simply haven't felt any need or desire to go looking.
But Zenwalk doesn't have nearly as large a marketting weight, nor does it have the collection of fanbois touting how great it is to anybody who doesn't tell them to fuck off. As a result, an overrated distro is the big dog in town, while a better product is underappreciated. *shrugs* all things come to an end, eventually. Something will eventually topple Ubuntu, and something else will eventually topple that.
Simple minds, simple pleasures?
Interesting sideline... athletes who go the other direction (male to female) actually produce *no* testosterone, and are at a disadvantage versus genetic females, because normal female physiology produces a small amount of testosterone. (just as normal male physiology produces a small amount of estrogen)
Japanese humour, like German humour, and indeed, everybody else's humour, has multiple levels. There's more intellectual stuff which relies on cultural knowledge, but you also do see slapstick, absurdity, and other genres of humour. Lots of people like to moan about how high brow British humour is, for example, but that's the same nation that gave us Benny Hill and Red Dwarf. Not exactly high brow. Japanese humour isn't really any different.
Take, for example, the Japanese comedy Ping Pong Bath Station (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169126/). Absolutely hilarious. And one of my favourite Japanese movies. It's about a hot spring resort that decides to rejuvinate its business by hosting a ping pong tournament. The thing is that alongside cultural reference humour that you may or may not get, one of the characters is transgendered, and used as comic relief. There's still some cultural humour in that character, but it is a level of humour that's much closer to what an American audience will be used to.
Ultimately, it's a question of where you go. Some German humour, you'll get. Some you won't. The same can be said for the rest of the world.
Anyway... no real point. Just felt like mentionning that you can't lump it all together. And obligatory disclaimer: my mum's family is Scottish/Irish, my dad's family is German, and I studied Japanese in University. It's American "humour" that I don't appreciate....
space heaters
Gas furnace.
tea kettles, electric frying pans,
Gas range.
toasters
Only time I ever eat anything that's been toasted, it's hamburger buns that've been toasted on the barbecue. Propane.
No fans, or rice cookers, or blow driers?
Central A/C, it's a microwave cooker, and no point with curly hair.
a mixer, or a blender,
Hand whisk.
a vacuum cleaner
Have one of those, but it's cordless.
table saw, or your skillsaw, or that drill, or the hedge clippers
Nope. Cordless. Cordless. and Nope. Bought into that DeWalt 18.2V cordless dealey where the battery packs are interchangeable between devices, and you charge them at a central station. And my lawnmower is gas.
So no. Good examples. But it is entirely possible to have a house without a single device which uses 120VAC natively. My point, however, wasn't that I haven't got a single device which doesn't have a transformer, it was that we *all* have something in the house that *does*. Because we all have at least one of: a radio, a TV, a CD player, a DVD player, a computer, a fridge, an oven, a clock or clock/radio, etc.
Probably all of them. The law prohibits owning/operating a transformer... how many appliances do you have that actually run on 120VAC? In my house, the only ones I had until fairly recently were incandescent lightbulbs. Now that I've switched to compact fluorescent, I replaced the last incandescent last week, and don't actually have a single device in the house which uses 120VAC natively for all components. In other words: they've *all* got a transformer.
What do you expect from Chinese knockoff hardware?
Even if it was created by anti-capitalist environmental whackjobs, how do they explain away the fact that reducing emissions is about reducing waste, which in turn improves efficiency? Running efficiently is good for your bottom line. Even if it is a crazy idea cooked up by enviro-nazis, it still makes good economical sense to be conscious about the waste you're producing.
There's other methods for securing a wireless network that many of us have seen... You can:
- use MAC filtering. Easy to get around, but is as much of a deterrent as using WEP or WPA, and so I'd say equally secure.
- force all traffic through authenticated proxy. many many hotels use this method.
- require domain login
- require VPN
- require access to come from terminal servers, providing open wireless access only so that you can log in to a terminal via rdesktop or xdmcp, or ssh w/ X forwarding (any of which can be configured to require an encrypted connection)
there's a host of other methods to secure a wireless network. Just because you're using an unencrypted wireless net does *not* mean that you're insecure.
I tended to prefer Asshole to describe that practice....
TFA does imply that the exploit takes advantage of an assumption at the OS level that .NET objects are automatically safe, and gives them the same privileges as the browser itself. It also says that the exploit takes advantage of a multi-homed attack using different scripting methods. Given that information, I'd venture a wild-assed guess that the exploit most likely uses JAVA and/or ActiveX to load a downloaded/forged .NET object which in turn loads arbitrary code as described.
If there's truth to the assumption about .NET objects, then it's a monumentally stupid decision on Microsoft's behalf. But there is a (temporary) fix that can be patched into the OS by requiring a signature. Yes, those can be forged. Yes, it's a stop-gap measure. But if you require authentication from online servers (remember, this is a drive-by online exploit, so it's safe to assume that anybody who needs to validate a signature like this has Internet access), then it is an improvement until it can be fixed properly.
See... I checked your link, and then I started doing some mental math as to how much you must've spent to get that 204" 1080p display. It's a lot more money than most people are going to spend on their entertainment. Even if they are going to try to build something even close to your rig, they aren't going to buy it all at once...
Now, I've got a very nice 42" 1080p HDTV made by LG. But I'm still feeding it with OTA 1080i broadcast TV rather than a set-top HD box from my local cable or sattelite provider, and I'm still watching regular DVDs on it. Most of the use it sees is actually play time on the Nintendo Wii. I expect that the next optical drive I buy will be a BluRay, but honestly, I'm happy enough with DVD. I care more about substance than I do glitz, and looking at my list of the top 5 movies ever, half of them aren't even in colour, let alone HD. So for me, switching to BluRay simply isn't worth it. When I buy/build a new HTPC (it'll probably be one of those new Dell Studio Hybrids... when I saw the specs on it my first thought was that if it came with a TV tuner it'd be the perfect HTPC), I will quite likely go with BluRay and HDMI on it. But that'll be because I can, not because I feel any need to.
I can't argue that HD doesn't look better. It does, even on my piddly little 42" 1080p display. When I tune into a 1080i broadcast, the picture quality is gorgeous. But it just isn't worth the added money at the moment. I have other priorities.
Finally... a modding score for bad jokes....
That does actually depend on the TV you're using, as well as the method you're using to connect. I have 3 TV's, and have had the same HTPC hooked up to all 3 of them, using different connection methods. The oldest is a 21" Samsung 16x9 CRT that was bought in 1998, and the TV was connected using RCA. Yes. It was illegible.
The second is a 26" Panasonic GAOO CRT (800x600 resolution), connected via S-Video. On that, the text isn't great, but it *is* legible. The biggest annoyance on that, really, is that when I close the media center, the desktop spans beyond the edges of the screen.
The third is a 42" LG 1080p HDTV, connected via HDMI. On that, there's no problems at all.
YMMV, but the usability for different functions depends an awful lot on the display. :)
Y'know... I've never really liked it when people use the word "ye" to mean "you"... it means "the". And it's actually supposed to be pronounced that way, too... The letter 'y' in that place replaces a thorn, and started doing so with the introduction of moving type. It does so because the French-made printing presses didn't have that letter in their character set, because it's of Anglo-Saxon origin, not Latin, and so the letter Y was used in its place. Over time, the letter simply fell out of use in the English alphabet, and was replaced with the combonation "th", which had started appearing about 100 years earlier.
Off topic, I know. But *shrugs*
Wonder if there's a way to bring charges to bear using organized crime laws? Most countries have laws allowing the leaders of organized crime organizations to be held responsible for the actions of their subordinates, regardless of whether the subordinates are pining for the fjords....
(and for those that missed it, that last line should indicate that this is intended to be tongue-in-cheek....)
As informative as your post is, I think it qualifies for a "Whoosh".
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gldlyTjXk9A