I am very new to video encoding, but was very happy to see that the h.264 codec is freely available for both noncommercial and commercial use, according to the licensing agreement. Took me a second to find the page again, but here it is:
https://helixcommunity.org/2002/intro/commercial-l icense/client
I was stuck using a half-functional BBEdit Lite that BareBones software refused to update at all. Including major, major bug fixes. SubEthaEdit is the text editor I needed all along, and I may even throw them a few bucks in the future, just because their program is free for noncommercial use.
The bit about grammar was only a side note. Jesus, I appreciate it when someone points out where my syntax is unclear. But maybe everyone else thinks their grammar is immaculate. All I wanted to do was point out the error, suggest a change that would make the sentence more comprehensible, and move on.
I think the subject-verb agreement is much more important than keeping all the tenses straight. Tiger still "looks good" even if it "looked good" at the Macworld keynote. Would you have such a problem with the tense agreement if I said that I saw a woman yesterday and that I thought she looks good?
And more importantly, what do you think about Core Image? Gimp killer or not?
Having seen the Macworld Keynote, Tiger looks very good.
It was you that saw the Keynote, not the Tiger. How about: Having seen the Macworld Keynote, I thought Tiger looks very good.
Anyway, you say you like the way Dashboard looks. I like the way that Core Image looks. I'll bet we see an Aqua-native photo editor better than the Gimp in short time.
They're too late for me to bother.
I really like SubEthaEdit, and it's been free for longer (for non-commercial use). I was using BBEdit Lite, but it had a horrible bug (at least on my PowerBook G4 with every version of OS X) in which if more than one file was open, the "Save" function would randomly overwrite one of the open files. Very nasty, lost me some data.
If the article (and test) is accurate, almost nothing's good about this Tweel
I'm replying because I don't know if I should classify "didn't read the article" as Troll or Flamebait. Maybe both? If you did read the article, you seem to have missed the point. Have you ever had a blowout on a busy freeway? Not fun. Not safe. Eliminating blowouts is a very big deal in terms of public safety, and the tests mentioned in the article are still in the research phase.
The other big deal is handling. For a prototype wheel to have such an impact on handling is impressive to me. But maybe you're just hard to impress.
If lobbysts have their way, a new noise-reduction pad and better suspension will be "invented" so that problems like noise and feel of a coarse road surface (introduced by this Tweel) can be eliminated.
What lobbyists are you talking about? These tires are made by Michelin, so any "inventions" like noise-reducing pads would be necessary to get anyone to even consider using them. When we are all required to use Michelin Tweels (TM) then your comment will be relevant.
Sounds a lot like one of those urban legends along the lines of "An undercover cop has to tell you he's a cop if you ask him, 'Are you a cop?'" I've heard that vice cops and FBI organized crime agents get a lot of mileage out of that one...
Still, there are effective ways to sniff out a cop. I have heard from multiple people that prostitutes (and sometimes other criminals) demand that their customers pull down their pants before any transaction can occur. The rationale is that although cops are allowed to lie (not illegal), they are not allowed to expose themselves (definitely illegal). Likewise, some drug dealers insist their (untrusted) customers sample their wares before finalizing a sale.
Sorry, I can't divulge my sources for any of this information, since they broke the law. It is also true that cops can just break the law, bust you, and deny everything afterwards. No law can really protect you from police corruption.
Maybe I'm on the wrong track, but I really fell that the biggest threat here is not random criminals trying to steal your data or abduct you (as others have suggested); I think it's government entities with which we should be more concerned.
I don't think you're on the wrong track at all. I don't see any real reason why people should be questioned at all when travelling within the country; our possessions and persons are already searched, we already walk through metal detectors, so why is it so important for governments to know and monitor where we travel? The situation gets trickier when travelling abroad.
I thought it a bit amusing that you mentioned all the scrutiny your male relatives of Israeli descent undergo, since I've heard Israel is more invasive than anywhere in the world, and certainly more prejudicial, when it comes to interrogation at airports. Of course, there is no reason to assume you agree with those prejudicial policies simply because you have Israeli ties.
This book
by Haruki Murakami, about the sarin gas attacks in Tokyo, indicated to me that the current security would do NOTHING to prevent a dedicated crazy person from killing thousands of people. A plastic bag of sarin is not detectable at all and could be easily concealed.
In the states where I've had licenses (Texas and Colorado), they store a digital photo, signature, and a scan of your right index fingerprint in the state driver's license database. Since I have a CDL, that info is also associated with my SSN, and put into a nationwide shared database that any state (and the federal government) can access.
I have a TX license. No fingerprint required. I think it's only because you have a CDL instead of a normal class C license. And in case you're curious, I got my license renewed in summer of '02. Things may have changed in the past two years.
The Church (and you know which one I'm talking about) had a good solution to the problem of unconventional thought: burn the heretics at the stake. Consolidate all the power and information in the church, then the king-priest rulers can completely dictate who talks to whom.
Any attempt at comprehensive surveillance is a joke in this day. If I've met with a person even a single time, I can just converse via innocuous post-cards or emails using code words for the sensitive pieces. If spies can publish sensitive data in magazines and newspapers with the expectation that only the intended recipient will actually understand the message, what chance does any government have of monitoring the "dark alleys"? I mean, those people talking in dark alleys could be speaking in code, as well.
A war on terrorism is going to turn out the same as the war on drugs, except that drugs always have a market, but the US government is creating a market for terrorism. And what a perfect time, since former Soviet satellites are selling off their weapons at Low, Low Prices! Both battles are against decentralized, self-organized groups. No one ever wins those kinds of wars by fighting, although hegemony works pretty well. Assimilate the competition to disarm them, like the Romans did, and The Church, to a large extent. But it's too radical a strategy for most governments.
>>I fail to see how a successful cloning experiment completely disproves the idea (of the soul).
The reason that successful cloning sheds light on the idea of the soul is that the soul is supposedly the thing that makes us specially human - it (the soul) derives from the concept of the animus, or "spark of life". The church teaches that a soul can only be created by god, not humans. So, the successful cloning of a human, resulting in a living, thinking person, created by people by human ingenuity instead of the usual way - fscking - means that either people don't need a soul to live and think (which completely undermines the basis for positing a soul in the first place), or the lab techs whipped up a soul in the closet and didn't put it in the report (in which case a soul has been created by other than god, which opens up a whole other can of worms for the church to explain away... eg, whence consciousness, and whence animus)
I wonder if you realize that you started out saying "The church teaches . .." without even saying which church. Catholic? Protestant? Christian? Judeo-Christian? Buddhist? Hindu? You're making a lot of assumptions there, buddy.
The soul is a cultural construct. It has weight as long as people believe in it. When people stop believing, it's over.
And as a cultural construct, it could (in some culture) be constructed in a way that was, in fact, TRUE. In which case people could stop believing in that definition of a soul but it would nonetheless continue to be true.
When you posit something which has infinite capabilities and unknowable motives . . .
I think that right there you posited your version of God. That's not what I choose to believe. I think it makes more sense to talk about how someone believes in God (even if only to negate that God) rather than if they believe in God. Then you can always define God to be something you really do believe, rather than letting God be a nonsensical entity that you have to dupe yourself into believing (a. k. a. "faith").
Disclaimer: I wouldn't be replying to your post if I didn't respect what you had to say.
Justice maintains peace, any other meaning will not hold up to slight examination, much less to a thorough examination.
I liked a lot of what you said, but your hard-and-fast definition of justice will not hold up to thorough examination, either! What kind of justice maintains peace? Legal justice? What about poetic justice? Could you really say "poetic justice maintains peace" with a straight face?
You were originally replying to an anti-abortion apologist, though. And for issues like abortion, utilitarianism is really the only way to set policy. Where life begins will always be an arbitrary determination; I support the right to abortion because the alternative (back-alley abortions--though still abortions) causes even more suffering (in my opinion).
But you should have properly framed your response a bit more specifically. Making blanket statements about very, very personal words such as "justice" or "freedom" -- or especially "God" -- without giving more qualifiers will not win you arguments. In any context outside of a courtroom, justice is a subjective creature.
I know this is/. and I can't expect anything from anyone; I'm just telling you what would have been more convincing to me. After all, you do want to be persuasive, right? Otherwise your comments were just flamebait.
Of course, it could be worse. I love SP2 for the fact that as soon as somebody installs it I can immediately shut off Norton "Internet Security" also known as Norton never works right, Norton constantly breaks itself on updates, Norton randomly decides to block port 80 and 25, and - oh by the way - Norton doesn't offer tech support so have fun supporting our product ISPs!
Sorry, that just isn't true about Norton not having tech support. I know because I used to DO tech support for Norton AntiVirus, Internet Security, and a few other Norton products. I will wholeheartedly agree that NIS is a piece of crap. The most frequent call we got was about Internet Security's "Administrator Issue," wherein the computer would spontaneously lose a password file even if you'd never created a password. The Administrator password is supposed to be for people who want to control their kids' access to the internet, but a lot of people without kids fell victim to the bug.
Oh, and by the way, if the bug was not the user's fault, then the tech support call was free. We did have to send some people to their ISP or OEM vendor if they received an OEM copy of the Norton suite. Also, some stupid ISPs require installation of buggy software (often written in, say, Visual Basic) which actively broke other network programs. And anyone with spyware installed had to call back once they'd disinfected their machine.
Huh? Insult? You are aware that ^H indicates backspace and therefore indicates an attempt at humour, right? Not everyone is out to get the americans.
Yeah, I'm aware of ^H. It's come in handy on several occasions when I was stuck using some screwy terminal where the backspace didn't work. What's funny is that I'm aware of ^H solely because of jokes. I actually have no problem being referred to as a "colonial."
It appeared to me that the "'s" usage was common American usage. The fact that last book on punctuation I read ("Eats, Shoots and Leaves", unsurpisingly) claimed that it was "American English" to write "CD's"
Your joke is a lot funnier now that I know you were serious about Americans using apostrophe-s for plurals of acronyms. I thought that was a continuation of an insult, as if you'd said The colonials^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAmericans have different rules for math. They use "22/7" for pi.
If I were a foreigner right now I'd probably have a fairly low opinion of Americans. The sad part is that people have really tried to pass legislation declaring pi equal to 22/7. There are many, many idiots in this country. I guess I'm a bit touchy when I perceive I'm being lumped together with those people. The same ones who voted for Bush. The same who want to redefine pi. The ones who say "Ham and egg's" when the mean eggs. I am out to get those people, even if you are not, because they've taken the USA backwards far enough.
The colonials^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAmericans have different rules for apostrophes. They use "'s" for plural of abbreviations.
That comment might make sense if I weren't American. Or maybe it's just a general insult directed towards Americans because you think all of us are inbred Bible-beaters that voted for Bush.
I was referring to American English. If English elsewhere uses the apostrophe for plurals, then I'll ignore it in the future, just like when I see "color" spelled "colour" and so on.
The first thing I thought when I read the question, when will some one hack it to play Ogg?, was "as soon as the iPod gets a floating point processor." I didn't even consider someone might have made an integer OGG player.
Thanks to Setup Weasel for getting the syntax right. I'm fucking sick of people always using apostophe-s for plurals. I've even seen this written on a whiteboard in a diner: Ham and egg's - $3.00
And people, the plural of "CD" is "CDs," NOT CD's.
I can only think of one exception to the rule: if you are talking about more than one "A," such as getting straight A's, omitting the apostrophe makes it looks like "As" which would be very confusing.
For all you programmers: you don't like reading spaghetti-code, so why write spaghetti English?
The Chinese government must be pretty insecure if they're making such a big deal out of a video game.
Exactly. China is becoming more Westernized every day, at least as far as its economy is concerned. From what I've heard, China nowadays is communist in name only. The government is very scared, and is saber-rattling about Taiwan to stir up nationalist sentiments as a last resort.
But Bush did the same thing here in the US, and it seems the American public (at least half of them) totally bought the BS. Nationalism is a very powerful and terrible force. I just hope if China does attack Taiwan, then the UN or US or someone will step in to defend them. But the US doesn't officially recognize Taiwan as a country either . . .
Many of these have been mentioned, but not necessarily in the detail that might have helped me when I was making a switching decision.
Inability to tab between buttons
(i.e., Save vs, Don't Save vs. Cancel)
This is a specific case of keyboard accessibility problems, but in general I can do what I want via keyboard. Expose is awesome for switching windows, though I usually do use my mouse for that. My mouse is a Logitech with scrollwheel, I might add. I wish the builtin mouse on this Powerbook had a second button.
More shareware, less freeware
But the shareware is often pretty awesome stuff.
AudioHijack is one I actually paid for ($32 for the Pro edition). Amadeus (sound editor, much like SoundForge etc.) is one I may purchase in the future. Another side effect of this is that I've had to teach myself some rudimentary shell scripting to do certain tasks. Like using YoSucker! (perl-based, I think?) to download Yahoo! mail messages. Just getting Perl working properly familiarized me with using CPAN's interactive shell to get modules.
MS Office Incompatibilities
Two in particular annoy me: recipe files I received in a Windows.doc format garbled the fractional characters (1/2, 1/4). And Word for Mac occasionally freaks out and loses all my menu preferences, or forgets how to properly open documents so that there is gibberish spewn in between coherent text. Often this goes away if I close Office and reopen it again.
UNIX inconsistencies
In many ways, the Darwin underbelly is almost exactly like FreeBSD, but certain differences are invisible until after you mess something up. One example: adding a user from the CLI doesn't work right. I tried to do that remotely once, but the permissions were screwed up somehow and I had to delete the account and add it from the GUI when I got home. Certain utilities that are usually installed on shell accounts I've had are absent. I just installed lynx. The "talk" program is buggy or broken. Other programs will not install properly unless you use the -no-cpp-precomp flag. I shouldn't have to know that, because a config file should detect OS X and add the flag, but a lot of developers forget about OS X. Certain Windows FTP programs (Filezilla?) have trouble dealing with the OS X filesystem.
No good free text editor
That is, until SubEthaEdit, which I've been using as of very recently, and enjoy. BBEditLite had a horrible bug where if more than one window was open, the "Save" and "Close" feature might indiscriminately close the wrong window, without (!!!) saving temporary data. And the BBEdit folks never fixed the freeware version, though I hear TextWrangler is nice (see above comment about shareware on Mac). Until Panther, X11 was a messy and unpredictable install, so emacs wasn't a real option. From the CLI, pico is functional but the cursor doesn't change position with a mouse click. I have to have that feature in a text editor. For me, vi is not even thinkable.
The Notorious RAM Issue
I have one point to add to the discussion on this topic: There are two slots for RAM in my laptop. Apple RAM is overpriced, but if I wanted 1GB total RAM, I'd still have to get 512MB RAM from Apple. The other option would have been getting 256MB RAM, then selling that on eBay and getting two 512MB sticks. I don't have time for that. And you can't buy a laptop with no RAM.
When a laptop screams 'I'm being stolen! I'm being stolen!' and no one can here it, is it really making noise?
Actually, what caught my attention was the part after that, "as the janitor walks out the door with it." Does the submitter have a problem with janitors? Or perhaps he had a bad experience in the past? In my office there have been thieves who stole people's lunches (among other things) and one of the thieves was a white-collar employee. I wouldn't automatically suspect the janitor if something were missing.
My
web site is definitely under construction (damn cascading stylesheets--the links on the left and right side are not clickable for some reason), but I recently wrote about this very subject on
October 26th.
Briefly, I've wondered the same thing, and came across someone actually using "amn't" in The Crying Game when I saw it again awhile ago. I'm all for contractions.
Slashdot Mirror
I am very new to video encoding, but was very happy to see that the h.264 codec is freely available for both noncommercial and commercial use, according to the licensing agreement. Took me a second to find the page again, but here it is: https://helixcommunity.org/2002/intro/commercial-l icense/client
Research & Development Use License
RPSL: No cost
RCSL: No cost
Commercial Use License
RPSL: No cost
RCSL:
h.264 kicks ass.
I was stuck using a half-functional BBEdit Lite that BareBones software refused to update at all. Including major, major bug fixes. SubEthaEdit is the text editor I needed all along, and I may even throw them a few bucks in the future, just because their program is free for noncommercial use.
I think the subject-verb agreement is much more important than keeping all the tenses straight. Tiger still "looks good" even if it "looked good" at the Macworld keynote. Would you have such a problem with the tense agreement if I said that I saw a woman yesterday and that I thought she looks good?
And more importantly, what do you think about Core Image? Gimp killer or not?
Having seen the Macworld Keynote, Tiger looks very good.
It was you that saw the Keynote, not the Tiger. How about: Having seen the Macworld Keynote, I thought Tiger looks very good.
Anyway, you say you like the way Dashboard looks. I like the way that Core Image looks. I'll bet we see an Aqua-native photo editor better than the Gimp in short time.
They're too late for me to bother. I really like SubEthaEdit, and it's been free for longer (for non-commercial use). I was using BBEdit Lite, but it had a horrible bug (at least on my PowerBook G4 with every version of OS X) in which if more than one file was open, the "Save" function would randomly overwrite one of the open files. Very nasty, lost me some data.
It seems like Apple can also be at the receiving end of a lawsuit, too
I'm replying because I don't know if I should classify "didn't read the article" as Troll or Flamebait. Maybe both? If you did read the article, you seem to have missed the point. Have you ever had a blowout on a busy freeway? Not fun. Not safe. Eliminating blowouts is a very big deal in terms of public safety, and the tests mentioned in the article are still in the research phase.
The other big deal is handling. For a prototype wheel to have such an impact on handling is impressive to me. But maybe you're just hard to impress.
If lobbysts have their way, a new noise-reduction pad and better suspension will be "invented" so that problems like noise and feel of a coarse road surface (introduced by this Tweel) can be eliminated.
What lobbyists are you talking about? These tires are made by Michelin, so any "inventions" like noise-reducing pads would be necessary to get anyone to even consider using them. When we are all required to use Michelin Tweels (TM) then your comment will be relevant.
So is that a confirmation that cops are not allowed to actually expose themselves in the course of an undercover investigation?
BTW, interesting to know about the fake phallus technique. I was not aware.
Sorry, I can't divulge my sources for any of this information, since they broke the law. It is also true that cops can just break the law, bust you, and deny everything afterwards. No law can really protect you from police corruption.
I thought it a bit amusing that you mentioned all the scrutiny your male relatives of Israeli descent undergo, since I've heard Israel is more invasive than anywhere in the world, and certainly more prejudicial, when it comes to interrogation at airports. Of course, there is no reason to assume you agree with those prejudicial policies simply because you have Israeli ties.
This book by Haruki Murakami, about the sarin gas attacks in Tokyo, indicated to me that the current security would do NOTHING to prevent a dedicated crazy person from killing thousands of people. A plastic bag of sarin is not detectable at all and could be easily concealed.
only 14 comments, and site's down already.
Any attempt at comprehensive surveillance is a joke in this day. If I've met with a person even a single time, I can just converse via innocuous post-cards or emails using code words for the sensitive pieces. If spies can publish sensitive data in magazines and newspapers with the expectation that only the intended recipient will actually understand the message, what chance does any government have of monitoring the "dark alleys"? I mean, those people talking in dark alleys could be speaking in code, as well.
A war on terrorism is going to turn out the same as the war on drugs, except that drugs always have a market, but the US government is creating a market for terrorism. And what a perfect time, since former Soviet satellites are selling off their weapons at Low, Low Prices! Both battles are against decentralized, self-organized groups. No one ever wins those kinds of wars by fighting, although hegemony works pretty well. Assimilate the competition to disarm them, like the Romans did, and The Church, to a large extent. But it's too radical a strategy for most governments.
Disclaimer: I wouldn't be replying to your post if I didn't respect what you had to say.
You were originally replying to an anti-abortion apologist, though. And for issues like abortion, utilitarianism is really the only way to set policy. Where life begins will always be an arbitrary determination; I support the right to abortion because the alternative (back-alley abortions--though still abortions) causes even more suffering (in my opinion).
But you should have properly framed your response a bit more specifically. Making blanket statements about very, very personal words such as "justice" or "freedom" -- or especially "God" -- without giving more qualifiers will not win you arguments. In any context outside of a courtroom, justice is a subjective creature.
I know this is /. and I can't expect anything from anyone; I'm just telling you what would have been more convincing to me. After all, you do want to be persuasive, right? Otherwise your comments were just flamebait.
Oh, and by the way, if the bug was not the user's fault, then the tech support call was free. We did have to send some people to their ISP or OEM vendor if they received an OEM copy of the Norton suite. Also, some stupid ISPs require installation of buggy software (often written in, say, Visual Basic) which actively broke other network programs. And anyone with spyware installed had to call back once they'd disinfected their machine.
If I were a foreigner right now I'd probably have a fairly low opinion of Americans. The sad part is that people have really tried to pass legislation declaring pi equal to 22/7. There are many, many idiots in this country. I guess I'm a bit touchy when I perceive I'm being lumped together with those people. The same ones who voted for Bush. The same who want to redefine pi. The ones who say "Ham and egg's" when the mean eggs. I am out to get those people, even if you are not, because they've taken the USA backwards far enough.
I was referring to American English. If English elsewhere uses the apostrophe for plurals, then I'll ignore it in the future, just like when I see "color" spelled "colour" and so on.
The first thing I thought when I read the question, when will some one hack it to play Ogg?, was "as soon as the iPod gets a floating point processor." I didn't even consider someone might have made an integer OGG player.
Ham and egg's - $3.00
And people, the plural of "CD" is "CDs," NOT CD's.
I can only think of one exception to the rule: if you are talking about more than one "A," such as getting straight A's, omitting the apostrophe makes it looks like "As" which would be very confusing.
For all you programmers: you don't like reading spaghetti-code, so why write spaghetti English?
Exactly. China is becoming more Westernized every day, at least as far as its economy is concerned. From what I've heard, China nowadays is communist in name only. The government is very scared, and is saber-rattling about Taiwan to stir up nationalist sentiments as a last resort.
But Bush did the same thing here in the US, and it seems the American public (at least half of them) totally bought the BS. Nationalism is a very powerful and terrible force. I just hope if China does attack Taiwan, then the UN or US or someone will step in to defend them. But the US doesn't officially recognize Taiwan as a country either . . .
Inability to tab between buttons
(i.e., Save vs, Don't Save vs. Cancel) This is a specific case of keyboard accessibility problems, but in general I can do what I want via keyboard. Expose is awesome for switching windows, though I usually do use my mouse for that. My mouse is a Logitech with scrollwheel, I might add. I wish the builtin mouse on this Powerbook had a second button.
More shareware, less freeware
But the shareware is often pretty awesome stuff. AudioHijack is one I actually paid for ($32 for the Pro edition). Amadeus (sound editor, much like SoundForge etc.) is one I may purchase in the future. Another side effect of this is that I've had to teach myself some rudimentary shell scripting to do certain tasks. Like using YoSucker! (perl-based, I think?) to download Yahoo! mail messages. Just getting Perl working properly familiarized me with using CPAN's interactive shell to get modules.
MS Office Incompatibilities .doc format garbled the fractional characters (1/2, 1/4). And Word for Mac occasionally freaks out and loses all my menu preferences, or forgets how to properly open documents so that there is gibberish spewn in between coherent text. Often this goes away if I close Office and reopen it again.
Two in particular annoy me: recipe files I received in a Windows
UNIX inconsistencies
In many ways, the Darwin underbelly is almost exactly like FreeBSD, but certain differences are invisible until after you mess something up. One example: adding a user from the CLI doesn't work right. I tried to do that remotely once, but the permissions were screwed up somehow and I had to delete the account and add it from the GUI when I got home. Certain utilities that are usually installed on shell accounts I've had are absent. I just installed lynx. The "talk" program is buggy or broken. Other programs will not install properly unless you use the -no-cpp-precomp flag. I shouldn't have to know that, because a config file should detect OS X and add the flag, but a lot of developers forget about OS X. Certain Windows FTP programs (Filezilla?) have trouble dealing with the OS X filesystem.
No good free text editor
That is, until SubEthaEdit, which I've been using as of very recently, and enjoy. BBEditLite had a horrible bug where if more than one window was open, the "Save" and "Close" feature might indiscriminately close the wrong window, without (!!!) saving temporary data. And the BBEdit folks never fixed the freeware version, though I hear TextWrangler is nice (see above comment about shareware on Mac). Until Panther, X11 was a messy and unpredictable install, so emacs wasn't a real option. From the CLI, pico is functional but the cursor doesn't change position with a mouse click. I have to have that feature in a text editor. For me, vi is not even thinkable.
The Notorious RAM Issue
I have one point to add to the discussion on this topic: There are two slots for RAM in my laptop. Apple RAM is overpriced, but if I wanted 1GB total RAM, I'd still have to get 512MB RAM from Apple. The other option would have been getting 256MB RAM, then selling that on eBay and getting two 512MB sticks. I don't have time for that. And you can't buy a laptop with no RAM.
That's all I got.
Actually, what caught my attention was the part after that, "as the janitor walks out the door with it." Does the submitter have a problem with janitors? Or perhaps he had a bad experience in the past? In my office there have been thieves who stole people's lunches (among other things) and one of the thieves was a white-collar employee. I wouldn't automatically suspect the janitor if something were missing.
My web site is definitely under construction (damn cascading stylesheets--the links on the left and right side are not clickable for some reason), but I recently wrote about this very subject on October 26th.
Briefly, I've wondered the same thing, and came across someone actually using "amn't" in The Crying Game when I saw it again awhile ago. I'm all for contractions.