You know, even a condom does not prevent pregnacy 100%. Neither does the pill. (My neighbors half year young daughter is a perfect example of the latter; which does not mean she is not loved by her parents, quite the contrary!) Same with anty virus programs. Of course you CAN get infected dispite running them. It is just less likely...

If I would have to make decisions in a company, I would block Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and a few other sites which are popular but not necessary for company life. I am aware that a certain amount of private activity is fine in corporate environment, but certain sites draw just far too much time on them on a regular basis.

I for myself do not have a Facebook nor a Twitter account. And I use the Leechblock extension on Firefox to keep me of unnecessary sites during work hours which I otherwise would visit far too often. I know my weaknesses and from some of them I have to protect me myself...

Any ISP who will forward me any such kind of harassment letter will get from me a reply which will tell them that the allegations are completely unjustified (and that I want to see any proofs of them supporting their allegations). I will warn them that if they continue to harass me, that I will with out further notice cancel my contract with them and move to an other ISP. If I receive another letter I will cancel my contract without any further warning. If they refuse to accept my cancellation I will sue them for harassment and I doubt that they will have any evidence whatsoever that I did anything wrong. So they will lose in court (and meanwhile I do have other means to get to the internet if things really go bad)...

Where the centre of the mass is. And this is definitely not here.

I think the technology is out there, it's called zero-energy buildings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_building

John Best can take as many photos as he likes, geotag them and upload them to Picasa.
However, as I have declined Google the right to store or publish images of my house or car for the use of street view. It doesn't matter, if you can take as many such pictures as a private person and upload them, Google is not allowed to include them along the street view service (here in Germany that is).

So it really doesn't matter whether John Best wants to behave like a small tiny upset boy. Soon we will have forgotten about him again ;-)

SCO didn't die in a day, either. Neither was Rome build in a day...

Well...

1) I am not an English native speaker
2) I have Dyslexia (not anymore as bad as in my childhood but still)

Considering these two handicaps I would not consider myself doing so bad. Especially, compared to most of the UK undergraduate students I teach here: there are so many native speakers which cannot even formulate a proper English sentence, it is horrifying!

well, as I just posted a few minutes later (see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1753446&cid=33239814) I made a technical mistake while posting. Slashdot did discard the "<=>" signs as it thought it were non-allowed HTML tags.

What I have meant to post was

"4+3+2=x+2 <=> 4+3+2-2=x <=> 4+3=x <=> 7=x"

which is not the same as "4+3+2=x+2; 4+3+2-2=x; 4+3=x; 7=x".

Well, your statement is the following:

In case x statisfies the equation "4+3+2=x+2" then x must be equal to 7.

But your statement does not state: 7 is a solution to the equation "4+3+2=x+2"; in symbols this statement would be: x=7 => 4+3+2=x+2

This is why the equivalence signs "<=>" are essential. Without them you do not make the statement that 7 is a solution and is the only solution to the equation.

Even more, it is actually the "<=" direction which is the most important one. If you are only asked to find SOME solution to the equation, then it is enough to show that "x=7 => 4+3+2=x+2". So in your answer you have actually left out the essential answer of the task.

Sometimes when I try to tell this to my students they seem not willing to try to understand this. Well, it might be picky, but then as soon as it comes to more complicated mathematical proofs it becomes very important in which direction the implication signs go and the argument "you should just put in the implication signs such that it is right and give me at least some points" doesn't work anymore.

In the above post it should have displayed:

  "4+3+2=x+2 <=> 4+3+2-2=x <=> 4+3=x <=> 7=x"

The if-and-only-if signs "<=>" got "eaten up bu accident. Mea culpa.

Well, it should actually be:

4+3+2=x+2 4+3+2-2=x 4+3=x 7=x.

Which then means: x=7 IS a possible solution of the equation "4+3+2=x+2" and actually it is the ONLY possible solution to this equation.

Whereas "4+3+2=x+2; 4+3+2-2=x; 4+3=x; 7=x" is a lose collection of statements of which each is true if and only if x=7 is true.

When I teach maths students here at my university it seems sometimes nearly impossible to teach them that a collection of lose statements does not consist a proper proof.

SEC was explicitly alarmed by H. Markopolos on November 7th, 2005, that the world’s largest hedge fund is a fraud. The original 19 pages paper can for example be seen here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/9189285/Markopolos-Madoff-Complaint

This paper tells straight that Bernie Madoff was committing fraud. Crowd sourcing would never have helped here as SEC was just refused to accept the evident proof of Madoff's wrongdoing.

I heard the first time about this paper in a talk given by Prof. Paul Embrecht. His very interesting talk notes can be found here: http://www.actuaries.org/ASTIN/Colloquia/Helsinki/Presentations/Embrechts.pdf

Well ... maybe you need to get new glasses before you enter a university next time? ;-)