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Comment Re:DOS version? (Score 3, Informative) 101

The current firmware update ships as a bootable ISO. Burn it to a CD/DVD (or a flash drive if you can work it out), hold down "option" at boot, and you'll be looking at a DOS prompt in no time. I verified this two days ago when I misread the firmware version on the website and downloaded an updater for the version I already had.

Comment Re:Government Dictionary (Score 1) 239

Words have multiple definitions in dictionaries and in ordinary speech, which definition is assigned depends entirely on context. For example "feet smell and noses run". Scientists and lawyers have one thing in common, they are very careful about definitions, they tell others which definition they are using upfront, it doesn't have to be interpreted through context. It's an exacting and fully transparent tradition in Science and Law. Clinton's lawyer debating the definition of "is" for 15min is a fine example. The quantum property of "colour" is another one from the Scientific world.

Using the same rules for a state and a person ignores the basic nature of political power and leaves brute force as the only method of arbitration. The existing state would lose any and all authority and instantaneously collapse (re: looting of Iraq after US sacked entire public service), the power vacuum left behind would very likely be filled by the kind of people you fear most, heavily armed 18-25yo males who have just one rule for everyone - "might is right". Like Humpty Dumpty, they have no use for dictionaries, to them a word means whatever they say it means, and they will execute and torture as many people as it takes to demonstrate their point.

Aside from that the very thing you suggest happened on a smaller scale when I was at HS. The largest internal migration in US history was in the early 70's when hippies left cities in droves and started up communes on shared private land, a similar social phenomena occurred here in Oz. They had the same "no one is in charge" ideology, rules were simply "discussed" by the group rather than defined and enforced by the group. Very few of these communes survived more that 2yrs.

The most common cause of commune collapse was not financial woes or lack of soap, in almost every case the commune collapsed when the "natural leader" in the group filled the power vacuum and basically bullied everyone else out of their legal share of the land. By the mid seventies the migration had gone full circle and the hippies were mostly back in the cities, albeit older, poorer, but a lot wiser about human nature.

Comment Re:How does it secure against spoofing? (Score 1) 121

No, there is no guarantee that the user will not use a mobile phone to access his online banking (and the idiocy of some banks pushing out mobile apps for online banking doesn't actually improve security in that area either).

You can't make the user secure. You can only offer it to him and hope that he's intelligent enough to accept it.

Comment Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? (Score 3, Insightful) 786

A womans contribution requires 9 months, during which time any distraction, disruption or stress can cause the "person creation" process to fail catastrophically.

If that were true, the human race would have become extinct long ago. Pregnant women are actually pretty robust and remain capable of just about anything (except becoming pregnant again) for the great majority of the 9 months.

At the end of the day, the problem is people like you...

That's not the best way to start a sentence in which you care to make a point.

Comment Re:I don't understand (Score 1) 91

Oh, come on: I totally qualified that remark with uncertainty. You really have to go right to impinging my integrity? Sad.
"(of course I realize you still don't believe I never vote for him)" I take everyone at face value with regard to who they say they vote for, or not.

You're actually carrying the persecution complex your heard about on FOX.

Who watches that noise? I take in HGTV and a little NBC News 4. For a total of 1-2 hours/week.

The light bulb has to want to change...

In two weeks, the fatal flaw of majority rule will once again show its monstrous face (with you and d_r, and various others here being perfect representatives)

Oh! The light bulb! Of course! If only we could just incentivize that godforsaken light bulb!
If only the light bulb could defeat that majority rule bugbear!
Does the light bulb have to break itself and stab the majority rule bugbear in some critically vulnerable area, so that the bugbear bleeds to death? Or is the bugbear just light sensitive, and the proper wavelength from the light bulb will make it whither?

tl;dr: We're all doing what we can. How about something substantive, and a little less mumbo-jumbo?

Comment 80s movies? Really? (Score 3, Interesting) 786

So it's also the 80s movies to blame that women are not interested in careers like soldier, spy, pilot, policeman (apology, -woman), archaeologist, exorcist, karate fighter,...

Has anyone ever looked closer at the 80s? The 80s were not a geek decade. The only movie I can remember where geeks were not just the comic foil (ok, even in that one they were) was "Revenge of the nerds". The whole "engineering geeks" were no role model in 80s movies, and even less so in TV series. Whenever they were in some prominent role, they were the little sidekick of the actual hero. Be it Automan's creator Walter, who was mostly a comic sidekick (ok, the show wasn't that memorable, but the special effects were great for its time) or Street Hawk's Norman who was some timid, beancounter-ish scaredy-cat. The geek roles were at best meant to make the hero shine some more.

Actually, the only engineer role I can remember that was allowed to be superior in areas to the hero and be more than a nuisance to him was that of Bonnie in Knight Rider.

A woman.

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