hy-po-cr-isy |hipäkris|
noun ( pl. hypocrisies )
the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.
For EA to be upset about Zynga copying its games is pure hypocrisy. It wasn't upset when Zynga copied Tiny Tower... in fact, it followed suit with its own clone called Monopoly Hotels. I mistakenly downloaded the game on my iPad thinking it was some new variant of Monopoly... it turned out to be the unholy love child of Farmville and Tiny Tower with a Monopoly facade. Instead of plants growing, money falls from the sky and you have to catch it to build up your hotel... or you could pay them money to build faster to... who knows what... feel better about yourself because you have a bunch of imaginary useless hotels?
On the other hand, we can't give them too much flack for The Sims Social, because EA used it to inject a "dislike" function into facebook (see screenshot on their site of a user b*tch-slapping her real friend's avatar, which I interpret to be the opposite of clicking the "Like" button).
Consider how many people are served by Google's services. Gmail alone has approximately 425 million users, the vast majority of whom pay no money for the service. Despite what they may think, they are not "customers," they are a "resource." Google's customers are the advertisers who want access to Google's resource. Therefore it is reasonable to expect that Google has staff devoted to answer the questions of its customers, but not the people who make up its resource. It could not afford to pay a support staff to be available to speak/write to each of those people on-demand, so it doesn't. Similar large, non-paid services are the same.
In fact, years ago when I was paying Yahoo for Web hosting and mysteriously lost access to my account, a Yahoo CSR told me I wasn't paying enough money for the privilege of talking to someone and hung up on me after I listened to hold music for three hours. I got an email form letter three days later telling me there was nothing they could do. And that was for a paid service. I was a little fish in a big pond. With non-paid services, you're not even a little fish. You're a speck of bacteria living on the algae in the pond. That's not to say that these services are bad, but you have to understand what they are, who you are to them and gauge the risks before you invest too much in them.
Wait, what now? Slashdot's summaries are starting to get quite childish. Microsoft is scared, really?
Normally I would agree with you, in the name of professionalism and all. However, in this case the greater issue is that Microsoft is actually not scared, so the statement is factually incorrect. What TFA actually states is (no joke, paragraph 2):
Microsoft's hair is on fire about it
Obviously this is not a cause for Microsoft to be "scared," because its fearless leader doesn't have hair. It would be more accurate for the summary to state, "Microsoft execs are laughing themselves to sleep tonight after a pointless attempt by Apple to set Steve Ballmer's hair on fire."
Realistically, even if Ballmer had hair, this wouldn't set it on fire. Microsoft has a long history of doing things that either land it in court (bundling, monopoly abuse, etc.) or result in throwing huge sums of money away (Windows Phone 7, Zune, 5 billion lost on the Xbox, Ultimate TV, Actimates, BOB, SPOT, Kin, etc.), but none of those things set his dome on fire because Wall Street doesn't care as long as the majority of the world's personal computers are running Windows. I'm not saying Wall Street is correct in doing so, but stock prices rarely have much to do with a company's actual performance, and most public companies teams are focused on "shareholder value." And the shareholders always let Microsoft come out of this stuff unscathed. If this were something that materially threatened Windows or Office, Ballmer's dome might be on fire. But we're not likely to see that show until the new Surface is released and the strategic partners Microsoft just blew off decide what they want to do about it.
I can see the winner posting a series of YouTube videos:
feverishly unwrapping it
documenting the unboxing
inserting it into his NES
playing it for six hours
saving
coming back to find that his save is lost because the 25-year-old battery is dead
throwing a tantrum involving a lot of yelling and smashed ABS plastic
a sad, drunken admission that the only reason he bought it was because the battery in his old cartridge had died and he assumed a new one would have a fresh battery
“When police departments are laying more sworn personnel, they can do more with less."
I would never have thought to try that. If you get more personnel laid, they can do more with less? Just think how much more productive programmers could be under such a system!
I hear this is working pretty well for them. They've already discovered that people who don't use facebook are mass murderers in training. The real challenge is trying to figure out who these people are, what they look like, what they are doing, and how much gold they have in Farmville, because the software is currently only able to figure this out for people who are on facebook. This is also made more difficult by the fact that people who don't use facebook are more likely to be intelligent, self-aware, exhibit behavior that does not conform to the patterns of the pack and exhibit a phenomenon known as "free will," which wreaks havoc on their predictive models.
I would add that if you set up a system of making fun of people's violations, you're going to find it used against you in court one day (or at the very least, in front of an administrative law judge in an unemployment hearing) as glaring evidence that you as a manager didn't take harassment seriously and even encouraged everyone to mock it. If your company has a harassment policy, print a copy for each member of your team, and have them read it and sign it. Let them know that this is serious stuff with legal and financial implications for the company and for them, so you will be enforcing it. If anyone reports harassment (even if it's that they witnessed someone else being harassed), investigate it and document everything. You can lose a harassment case simply by not having notes of your investigation, even if it isn't determined that there was harassment, because you can't prove that you addressed it properly.
If your company does not have a policy, get a lawyer or a firm that specializes in this to draft one for you.
Usually the worst harassment cases don't arise from one employee making one stupid comment. It's when the company tolerates or ignores an environment where harassment is ongoing that the stuff really hits the fan, and it sounds like that's what you're setting yourself up for.
non-violent triggers to mimic the rush of pleasure gamers feel when firing guns.
It's called an orgasm, produced by a hand motion similar to squeezing a trigger.
Developers have already come up with a video game that simulates the excitement of violence without guns. It's called Angry Birds.
Interestingly enough, it is a fair approximation of this orgasm thing you mentioned:
"Aww... How the hell am I supposed to hit that when you don't even give me a clear shot at it?! You want me to get creative on your ass?! Bounce it off the what now?" (thirty minutes later) "I hit it?! Bam! That's what I'm talking about! Now I'm just going to do my little dance and act like I knew what I was doing all along. I'm ready to take this to the next level! Hey, I need to buy something to continue? I'm just getting started."
They patented VOIP wiretaps so no one else could do it. You can sleep soundly tonight knowing that if anyone* even tries to wiretap your calls, they'll slap them so hard with a patent infringement suit their grandkids will still be indebted to Microsoft.
*The term "anyone" does not include government agencies, Microsoft business partners, affiliates or Microsoft itself.
The chicken. Because eggs don't make... wait. No. The egg. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The real question is who watches the person watching whatever is making the robots? Eh?
Up until recently I never really worried about artificial intelligence, because we haven't yet figured out how to make computers really think.
You know, for just as long as we've been trying to figure out how to make computers really think, computers have been trying to figure out how to make people really think. Think about it.
well it looks like the robots are taking over the humans work force, will the robots be buying the robot made products....Humans wont be buying the products they'll have no money....
A good point, but consider this:
Human workers are also consumers. The money earn goes back into the economy when they make purchases to maintain themselves (groceries, recreation, healthcare, etc.) so they can continue working. This creates jobs for other humans.
Robot workers are also consumers. The money they "earn" goes back into the economy when their owners make purchases to maintain them (oil, fuel, replacement parts, upgrades, service calls, etc.) so they can continue working. This creates jobs for humans.
Feicháng ganxiè Mr Roboto (Domo arigato Mr Roboto) Thank you very much Mr Roboto
Wo xiang zhidào ni de mìmì (Himitsu wo shiri tai) I want to know your secret
Thank you very much, Mr Roboto
For doing the job nobody wants to
Thank you very much, Mr Roboto
For helping me escape just when I needed to.
I predict these will start showing up in corporate parking lots. "Ooh! Look, someone dropped a power strip! I've been telling my boss I need more outlets in my cubicle since he won't let me charge my phone by plugging it into the computer anymore... this will do nicely! And is that a USB stick on the ground? Oh, almost got me there. I know better than to plug that in."
So when browsers claim to be fully HTML5 compliant, will that even have any meaning anymore?
About as much meaning as sunglasses that say "100% UV" on them. Does that mean they block 100% UVA (400-314nm)? 100% UVB(315-280nm), 100% UVC(280-100nm), 100% of two out of three? Or perhaps it means they allow 100% of UV radiation through. The label effectively means nothing, but it makes you feel better! Perhaps the sticker on the lens should say, "this label blocks 100% of UV radiation. No ultraviolet light can pass through this label."
Sex Party Candidate: "Is google imposing it's own sense of morality onto Australian politics?"
No, but if you keep confusing "it's" with "its" you may find people imposing common standards of grammar on you. That can't be good for your credibility. As if being a self-proclaimed mouthpiece for a sex party wasn't bad enough.
Whaddaya wanna bet that there are no more than 15 billion distinct faces in that collection?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that those 31 billion faces represent less than 3 billion individual people. The other 28 billion faces represent the various faces of about 150,000 politicians. These days it's no longer sufficient to be two-faced in politics. You have to be at least 170,000-faced to get into office and get re-elected.
"RepRap is humanity's first general-purpose self-replicating manufacturing machine."
I know what you're thinking. Prior art, right? Of course your mind thinks about prior art first... This is slashdot. You're thinking "didn't mother nature already create a general-purpose self-replicating manufacturing machine?" Sort of, except rabbits aren't really general purpose. They are specifically bred for the purpose of breeding again, like Tribbles. What about lawyers, you ask? Again, they are specifically manufactured for the purpose of manufacturing demand for more lawyers. The key here is that "general purpose" means RepRap can be useful for other things. Even good things. That's why it's exciting.
The fact is that it is difficult to get people to register to vote. In California, we encourage voter registration at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The reason is because when you're stuck somewhere with masses of brain-dead people, and you don't have a choice in the matter, you're more receptive to the idea that voting empowers you to make choices... (segue to flashback of last DMV experience)
Zombie: "Hi, you called my number. I lost my license because I was doing 65 in a 25, but it wasn't my fault because I was almost out of liquor and the store closes at midnight. But I really need to get my license back because the liquor store near my house charges too much and I'm almost out of money, and if I run out of money I'll run out of liquor." DMV: "Sir, your number is H376. The number we called is J." Zombie: "But H is a lower number than J in the alphabet." DMV: "Not at the DMV. The numbers go in whatever order the TV says they do. Please go sit down and we'll call you soon." Zombie: "Really? You'll call me soon? Because I'm in a hurry." DMV: "I don't know if it will be soon. I just do what the TV tells me."
(And we're back)... In fact, 72% of people visiting the DMV feel "strongly" that they could run it better than the idiots running the state, and if they could replace the idiots running the state, they would never have to ensure this again. Ergo, they are more likely to register to vote.
I assume Washington found that the DMV route wasn't working for them because the DMV experience is not as awful in Washington as it is here (there just aren't that many people, and that's really the key to a crummy DMV experience), so the closest approximation they could find was Facebook. This still incorporates the lack of choice and masses of brain dead people, but they're able to use technology to import them from the rest of the world.
I assume it's just a cosmic coincidence that NOAA's Space Weather Alerts and Warnings Timeline chart looks like a cross between Space Invaders and Missile Command? Big yellow bars of light barely missing pixelated aliens as they descend from the sky?
Re:Nuclear waste will be the crude oil of the futu
on
A Million-Year Hard Disk
·
· Score: 4, Funny
In a few years, we'll be drilling for nuclear waste to power our flying cars! Just like how the cave men buried dinosaur waste, which we now pump out as petroleum to power our driving cars.
Thag: "What we write so no one dig here?" Ugg: "Thag crap here. No one go near it." Thag: "You funny." Ugg: "What? Like it matter in 1825 sunrises!" Thag: "OK, How you spell crap?" Ugg: "Don't know. Just put small 9 after your name." Thag: (Draws in the dirt with a stick, then notices his friend's feet) "Hey, where you get boots?" Ugg: "Made them from fake dead animal."
Incidentally, a lot of keyboards can't handle a large number of simultaneous keys being pressed due to what's called "ghosting". Try typing "THE QUICK RED FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG" with both shift keys held down. You'll be disappointed. (This is one of the reasons gaming keyboards cost so much.)
This sounded familiar, and I was intrigued, so I attempted it on the built-in keyboard on my MacBook Pro. I was disappointed, but not in the keyboard, which performed as expected. I was disappointed in my inability to touch type while holding down both shift keys: THE QUICK RED FOD JUMOS IVER THE LSZY DOG. Same results on the built-in keyboard on a 2008 MacBook, only I hit different wrong keys. Then I tried again on the Apple bluetooth keyboard and saw what you were talking about. Apple's wired USB keyboard failed as well. Interesting...
Traditional Story
In the Old Testament, Moses told the Israelites not to leaven their bread, and subsequently led them safely across the Red Sea. When the Egyptians pursued them, they drowned.
What Really Happened
Obviously, Moses had someone go around and collect all the baking powder (which these days is made from sodium bicarbonate, tartaric acid and cornstarch). Some kid started asking a bunch of questions that irritated Moses, such as, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" He explained that they were leaving Egypt. When the child asked, "Why are we eating unleavened bread?" Moses replied, "uh, because we're in a hurry, kid. Stop asking questions!" He then had the Israelites' baking powder dumped into the sea so his people could run across it. However, since it wasn't pure cornstarch, it was unstable and collapsed by the time the Egyptians tried to cross.
It all makes sense now. God I love mixing science and religion. It's a lot like mixing water and cornstarch. Anything holds up surprisingly well if you run through it fast enough.
Slashdot Mirror
hy-po-cr-isy |hipäkris|
noun ( pl. hypocrisies )
the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.
For EA to be upset about Zynga copying its games is pure hypocrisy. It wasn't upset when Zynga copied Tiny Tower... in fact, it followed suit with its own clone called Monopoly Hotels. I mistakenly downloaded the game on my iPad thinking it was some new variant of Monopoly... it turned out to be the unholy love child of Farmville and Tiny Tower with a Monopoly facade. Instead of plants growing, money falls from the sky and you have to catch it to build up your hotel... or you could pay them money to build faster to... who knows what... feel better about yourself because you have a bunch of imaginary useless hotels?
On the other hand, we can't give them too much flack for The Sims Social, because EA used it to inject a "dislike" function into facebook (see screenshot on their site of a user b*tch-slapping her real friend's avatar, which I interpret to be the opposite of clicking the "Like" button).
Consider how many people are served by Google's services. Gmail alone has approximately 425 million users, the vast majority of whom pay no money for the service. Despite what they may think, they are not "customers," they are a "resource." Google's customers are the advertisers who want access to Google's resource. Therefore it is reasonable to expect that Google has staff devoted to answer the questions of its customers, but not the people who make up its resource. It could not afford to pay a support staff to be available to speak/write to each of those people on-demand, so it doesn't. Similar large, non-paid services are the same.
In fact, years ago when I was paying Yahoo for Web hosting and mysteriously lost access to my account, a Yahoo CSR told me I wasn't paying enough money for the privilege of talking to someone and hung up on me after I listened to hold music for three hours. I got an email form letter three days later telling me there was nothing they could do. And that was for a paid service. I was a little fish in a big pond. With non-paid services, you're not even a little fish. You're a speck of bacteria living on the algae in the pond. That's not to say that these services are bad, but you have to understand what they are, who you are to them and gauge the risks before you invest too much in them.
Wait, what now? Slashdot's summaries are starting to get quite childish. Microsoft is scared, really?
Normally I would agree with you, in the name of professionalism and all. However, in this case the greater issue is that Microsoft is actually not scared, so the statement is factually incorrect. What TFA actually states is (no joke, paragraph 2):
Microsoft's hair is on fire about it
Obviously this is not a cause for Microsoft to be "scared," because its fearless leader doesn't have hair. It would be more accurate for the summary to state, "Microsoft execs are laughing themselves to sleep tonight after a pointless attempt by Apple to set Steve Ballmer's hair on fire."
Realistically, even if Ballmer had hair, this wouldn't set it on fire. Microsoft has a long history of doing things that either land it in court (bundling, monopoly abuse, etc.) or result in throwing huge sums of money away (Windows Phone 7, Zune, 5 billion lost on the Xbox, Ultimate TV, Actimates, BOB, SPOT, Kin, etc.), but none of those things set his dome on fire because Wall Street doesn't care as long as the majority of the world's personal computers are running Windows. I'm not saying Wall Street is correct in doing so, but stock prices rarely have much to do with a company's actual performance, and most public companies teams are focused on "shareholder value." And the shareholders always let Microsoft come out of this stuff unscathed. If this were something that materially threatened Windows or Office, Ballmer's dome might be on fire. But we're not likely to see that show until the new Surface is released and the strategic partners Microsoft just blew off decide what they want to do about it.
“When police departments are laying more sworn personnel, they can do more with less."
I would never have thought to try that. If you get more personnel laid, they can do more with less? Just think how much more productive programmers could be under such a system!
I hear this is working pretty well for them. They've already discovered that people who don't use facebook are mass murderers in training. The real challenge is trying to figure out who these people are, what they look like, what they are doing, and how much gold they have in Farmville, because the software is currently only able to figure this out for people who are on facebook. This is also made more difficult by the fact that people who don't use facebook are more likely to be intelligent, self-aware, exhibit behavior that does not conform to the patterns of the pack and exhibit a phenomenon known as "free will," which wreaks havoc on their predictive models.
Every place on earth that has gun control, also has illegal weapons sales.
Exactly! I've been saying for years that we never had a problem with illegal weapon sales until we had gun control. Now it's everywhere!
I would add that if you set up a system of making fun of people's violations, you're going to find it used against you in court one day (or at the very least, in front of an administrative law judge in an unemployment hearing) as glaring evidence that you as a manager didn't take harassment seriously and even encouraged everyone to mock it. If your company has a harassment policy, print a copy for each member of your team, and have them read it and sign it. Let them know that this is serious stuff with legal and financial implications for the company and for them, so you will be enforcing it. If anyone reports harassment (even if it's that they witnessed someone else being harassed), investigate it and document everything. You can lose a harassment case simply by not having notes of your investigation, even if it isn't determined that there was harassment, because you can't prove that you addressed it properly.
If your company does not have a policy, get a lawyer or a firm that specializes in this to draft one for you.
Usually the worst harassment cases don't arise from one employee making one stupid comment. It's when the company tolerates or ignores an environment where harassment is ongoing that the stuff really hits the fan, and it sounds like that's what you're setting yourself up for.
It's called an orgasm, produced by a hand motion similar to squeezing a trigger.
Developers have already come up with a video game that simulates the excitement of violence without guns. It's called Angry Birds.
Interestingly enough, it is a fair approximation of this orgasm thing you mentioned:
"Aww... How the hell am I supposed to hit that when you don't even give me a clear shot at it?! You want me to get creative on your ass?! Bounce it off the what now?" (thirty minutes later) "I hit it?! Bam! That's what I'm talking about! Now I'm just going to do my little dance and act like I knew what I was doing all along. I'm ready to take this to the next level! Hey, I need to buy something to continue? I'm just getting started."
They patented VOIP wiretaps so no one else could do it. You can sleep soundly tonight knowing that if anyone* even tries to wiretap your calls, they'll slap them so hard with a patent infringement suit their grandkids will still be indebted to Microsoft.
*The term "anyone" does not include government agencies, Microsoft business partners, affiliates or Microsoft itself.
Who makes the robots?
The chicken. Because eggs don't make... wait. No. The egg. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The real question is who watches the person watching whatever is making the robots? Eh?
Up until recently I never really worried about artificial intelligence, because we haven't yet figured out how to make computers really think.
You know, for just as long as we've been trying to figure out how to make computers really think, computers have been trying to figure out how to make people really think. Think about it.
well it looks like the robots are taking over the humans work force, will the robots be buying the robot made products....Humans wont be buying the products they'll have no money....
A good point, but consider this:
Human workers are also consumers. The money earn goes back into the economy when they make purchases to maintain themselves (groceries, recreation, healthcare, etc.) so they can continue working. This creates jobs for other humans.
Robot workers are also consumers. The money they "earn" goes back into the economy when their owners make purchases to maintain them (oil, fuel, replacement parts, upgrades, service calls, etc.) so they can continue working. This creates jobs for humans.
Feicháng ganxiè Mr Roboto (Domo arigato Mr Roboto) Thank you very much Mr Roboto
Wo xiang zhidào ni de mìmì (Himitsu wo shiri tai) I want to know your secret
Thank you very much, Mr Roboto
For doing the job nobody wants to
Thank you very much, Mr Roboto
For helping me escape just when I needed to.
I predict these will start showing up in corporate parking lots. "Ooh! Look, someone dropped a power strip! I've been telling my boss I need more outlets in my cubicle since he won't let me charge my phone by plugging it into the computer anymore... this will do nicely! And is that a USB stick on the ground? Oh, almost got me there. I know better than to plug that in."
So when browsers claim to be fully HTML5 compliant, will that even have any meaning anymore?
About as much meaning as sunglasses that say "100% UV" on them. Does that mean they block 100% UVA (400-314nm)? 100% UVB(315-280nm), 100% UVC(280-100nm), 100% of two out of three? Or perhaps it means they allow 100% of UV radiation through. The label effectively means nothing, but it makes you feel better! Perhaps the sticker on the lens should say, "this label blocks 100% of UV radiation. No ultraviolet light can pass through this label."
Sex Party Candidate: "Is google imposing it's own sense of morality onto Australian politics?"
No, but if you keep confusing "it's" with "its" you may find people imposing common standards of grammar on you. That can't be good for your credibility. As if being a self-proclaimed mouthpiece for a sex party wasn't bad enough.
Whaddaya wanna bet that there are no more than 15 billion distinct faces in that collection?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that those 31 billion faces represent less than 3 billion individual people. The other 28 billion faces represent the various faces of about 150,000 politicians. These days it's no longer sufficient to be two-faced in politics. You have to be at least 170,000-faced to get into office and get re-elected.
What the heck is RepRap?
"RepRap is humanity's first general-purpose self-replicating manufacturing machine."
I know what you're thinking. Prior art, right? Of course your mind thinks about prior art first... This is slashdot. You're thinking "didn't mother nature already create a general-purpose self-replicating manufacturing machine?" Sort of, except rabbits aren't really general purpose. They are specifically bred for the purpose of breeding again, like Tribbles. What about lawyers, you ask? Again, they are specifically manufactured for the purpose of manufacturing demand for more lawyers. The key here is that "general purpose" means RepRap can be useful for other things. Even good things. That's why it's exciting.
...never have to ensure this...
Endure! Stupid S key next to the D key...
Zombie: "Hi, you called my number. I lost my license because I was doing 65 in a 25, but it wasn't my fault because I was almost out of liquor and the store closes at midnight. But I really need to get my license back because the liquor store near my house charges too much and I'm almost out of money, and if I run out of money I'll run out of liquor."
DMV: "Sir, your number is H376. The number we called is J."
Zombie: "But H is a lower number than J in the alphabet."
DMV: "Not at the DMV. The numbers go in whatever order the TV says they do. Please go sit down and we'll call you soon."
Zombie: "Really? You'll call me soon? Because I'm in a hurry."
DMV: "I don't know if it will be soon. I just do what the TV tells me."
(And we're back)... In fact, 72% of people visiting the DMV feel "strongly" that they could run it better than the idiots running the state, and if they could replace the idiots running the state, they would never have to ensure this again. Ergo, they are more likely to register to vote.
I assume Washington found that the DMV route wasn't working for them because the DMV experience is not as awful in Washington as it is here (there just aren't that many people, and that's really the key to a crummy DMV experience), so the closest approximation they could find was Facebook. This still incorporates the lack of choice and masses of brain dead people, but they're able to use technology to import them from the rest of the world.
I assume it's just a cosmic coincidence that NOAA's Space Weather Alerts and Warnings Timeline chart looks like a cross between Space Invaders and Missile Command? Big yellow bars of light barely missing pixelated aliens as they descend from the sky?
In a few years, we'll be drilling for nuclear waste to power our flying cars! Just like how the cave men buried dinosaur waste, which we now pump out as petroleum to power our driving cars.
Thag: "What we write so no one dig here?"
Ugg: "Thag crap here. No one go near it."
Thag: "You funny."
Ugg: "What? Like it matter in 1825 sunrises!"
Thag: "OK, How you spell crap?"
Ugg: "Don't know. Just put small 9 after your name."
Thag: (Draws in the dirt with a stick, then notices his friend's feet) "Hey, where you get boots?"
Ugg: "Made them from fake dead animal."
Incidentally, a lot of keyboards can't handle a large number of simultaneous keys being pressed due to what's called "ghosting". Try typing "THE QUICK RED FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG" with both shift keys held down. You'll be disappointed. (This is one of the reasons gaming keyboards cost so much.)
This sounded familiar, and I was intrigued, so I attempted it on the built-in keyboard on my MacBook Pro. I was disappointed, but not in the keyboard, which performed as expected. I was disappointed in my inability to touch type while holding down both shift keys: THE QUICK RED FOD JUMOS IVER THE LSZY DOG. Same results on the built-in keyboard on a 2008 MacBook, only I hit different wrong keys. Then I tried again on the Apple bluetooth keyboard and saw what you were talking about. Apple's wired USB keyboard failed as well. Interesting...
Traditional Story
In the Old Testament, Moses told the Israelites not to leaven their bread, and subsequently led them safely across the Red Sea. When the Egyptians pursued them, they drowned.
What Really Happened
Obviously, Moses had someone go around and collect all the baking powder (which these days is made from sodium bicarbonate, tartaric acid and cornstarch). Some kid started asking a bunch of questions that irritated Moses, such as, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" He explained that they were leaving Egypt. When the child asked, "Why are we eating unleavened bread?" Moses replied, "uh, because we're in a hurry, kid. Stop asking questions!" He then had the Israelites' baking powder dumped into the sea so his people could run across it. However, since it wasn't pure cornstarch, it was unstable and collapsed by the time the Egyptians tried to cross.
It all makes sense now. God I love mixing science and religion. It's a lot like mixing water and cornstarch. Anything holds up surprisingly well if you run through it fast enough.