I think ClimateBalmer sounds better.

Are you saying you don't care if your yard is contaminated by petroleum? You would welcome it? That's interesting..

While I agree with you that substance is very important, it is definitely not always the most important thing (or, at the very least, cannot be separate from how you present). While the content is ultimately what will survive, the presentation of something is what captures the attention, makes people take a second to listen a bit more. Heck, even Apple takes advantage of this with the beautiful designs of their hardware. Usability and presentation matters. And, of course, as Jeff Atwood points out: "Pretty things work better." (Not-so-much as they actually work better, but people give them more leeway and are more prone to their ideas.)

Let me ask you - why do you capitalize, use punctuation, and utilize HTML tags in your Slashdot post? That stuff shouldn't matter if the content is there (at least based on your argument). To some extent, you do the same thing.

Theres a few sites on the net that look at the corporate backgrounds of most of Fox's "Experts". Almost all of them are in some way linked to the corporations they comment positively on ...

Given that the way you become an expert in something is to do a lot of it, and these corporations are the ones that do it, it's hardly surprising that the experts in the subject tend to have ties to the companies in question.

And it's also hardly a surprise that the "experts" who testify against the companies in question tend to either have little experience in the field or to be government funded academics - both of which have similar conflicts of interest. The former get support from others opposed to the corporations' activities, the latter have an incentive to keep their government sponsors happy, which involved promoting the expansion of their power.

Expertise - real or perceived - comes with life experience that tends to create conflict of interest and always creates the perception of it.

This is similar to the phenomenon of "regulatory capture" - where the governmental organizations with oversight authority for an industry hire experts in the industry - and end up with people who have ties to the companies and/or an incentive to regulate in their favor to avoid crashing their own careers and/or to get a cushy payoff job once they leave the regulatory organization.

Because you'll always find the perception of conflict of interest when dealing with an "expert" you'll have to make your own determination whether any given one of them has the integrity to tell the truth rather to look out for his own interests, and has the knowledge to know what the truth is.

If you use Thunderbird, you must see this:
GMail Conversation View

"Almost" as responsive as VNC? So it sucks even more?

It depends on the quality. Dragon Quest VIII is an excellent 80+ hour game. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is an awesome 15+ hour game. Sonic 2 is a perfect 2 hour game. After Burner Climax is a great 15 minute game.

I would love to see more vampire analogies here on Slashdot. Now, if someone combines a vampire analogy with a car analogy I believe we'll have reached 'analogy panacea'.

Why is the "classic" menu so much superior for you? For most tasks, the ribbon is able to accomplish the same tasks in the same or less number of clicks. It doesn't really take up much more screen real estate then a couple traditional bars. I don't understand whats to "really really hate".

Yeah, were really screwing them with the mere $95k they made in the first day. How ever could someone survive on more than $13k a day.

I see your joking and sarcasm comprehension is at a 4th grade level.

I'll simplify it for you.

(ahem)

I... WAS... FUCKING... JOKING!!!

The city I moved from last year upgraded all their meters to electronic ones. When you arrive you punch the spot number into a machine that takes coins or credit. You can also add money from your phone, so you don't need to return to fill up the meter. Enforcement is by a Google Streets-style car that drives around and records license plate numbers. There's no discretion. If your car is there when they go past and you haven't paid, you get a ticket.

I've never heard of a meter maid covering up a parking signs. I'm not American though. Perhaps you have more corruption than we do.

To answer your first question, it seems good for Intel to make the CPU the bottleneck again, that way we finally feel the need to buy new CPUs. As for home use, my MiL's current, C2D 3.06GHz, iMac does not seem appreciably faster than my C2D (Merom) 2.33GHz Macbook Pro which I have had since October of 2006. My informal Handbrake benchmark (crunching video is my only real use for fast computer gear these days) is out of whack due to a recent switch to 64bit Handbrake and 64-bit nightly build of VLC, but they seem to be in the same league, definitely not worlds apart as a 3.5 year difference in tech should have yielded.

All because 1st semester calc never, ever transfers.

I had a similar problem when I transferred from a state school to a private school. They didn't want to credit any of my classes and despite me already having 3 years, didn't even get me to sophomore by credits.

I didn't want to take the classes again, so I figured I would just spend 15 minutes per day at the Registrar's Office arguing. I figure I had the whole year to go there every day but they had a lot of work to do in their 8 hours that they wouldn't get done.

They finally got so tired of me wasting all their time that they just asked me for a full list of what I thought was fair and then just approved it.

You can try FreeBSD 8-STABLE today for ZFS.