I checked my deo, but no aluminum so I googled around and apparently it's an ingredient in antiperspirant which is in some deodorants (mine's the plain kind). Interestingly this turned up some debate on the safety of aluminum use :

"A small study in 17 women with breast cancer was quite widely reported in the news in 2007. It found higher levels of aluminium in the part of the breast nearest the skin, and the authors speculated that aluminium in deodorants might cause breast cancer. But the design of this study was not strong enough to draw that conclusion." From cancerresearchuk

And from wikipedia : "Aluminium, present most often in antiperspirants, but not usually present in non-antiperspirant deodorants, has been established as a neurotoxin in very high doses."

From what I can tell smearing it on your skin is probably OK and ingesting it in more than trace amounts should probably be discouraged :-) Thanks for the tip.

Linux Kernel 2.6 Local Root Exploit - February 10 2008
New Linux Flaw Enables Null Pointer Exploits - July 17, 2009

Better?

My point was that the ISC was created in response to a virus that had an impact on Linux. More to the point, that "Linux" ( much like "Mac" ) does not mean "invulnerable". Any competent system admin will tell you that.

This has less to do with existence of exploits and more to do with competency doesn't it? Tell you what, if you can tell my mother-in-law how to apply this decade old fix to a Linux system correctly, without excusing yourself for a moment to go outside and bang your head against the wall, I'll concede.

What about Windows 98 is outdated? It has faster boot times, a simpler UI, and is not encumbered by active DRM. It's sometimes slow but a faster processor will still result in a instantaneous response times. I think the primary disadvantage of Windows 98 is that adding new industry-standard features would be so costly as to be impractical. It has security holes, and it tends to get bogged down over time, but in terms of OS quality Windows 98 is still extremely good.

Windows 98 is "outdated" because Microsoft wants to sell Windows 7. Lean and fast is sexy. And XP sold like crazy back when its stability was dramatically inferior to Windows 98, and it took them two service packs to catch up.

*** ... Now, obviously I'm being overly dramatic, but I think you can see my point. Yes, CRTs are useful, but they're not industry-standard anymore. You yourself pointed out one of the biggest reasons LCDs won out - high-resolution widescreen CRTs are impractically large.

But even if I were to concede that CRTs are inherently superior to LCDs, there have been many instances in recent history of apparently inferior technology being adopted as standard, while superior versions are left in the dust (e.g. VHS vs Beta).

The point is, you can't get mad at anyone for not supporting Beta tapes, even though you still have a Beta tape player at home; you can't get mad at Microsoft for not supporting Windows 98, even though you have a computer with Windows 98 running on it; and you can't get mad at someone for not supporting CRTs, even though you have a CRT at home.

Sure, CRTs have some inherently better qualities. LCDs have some too. Companies don't have infinite money, and guess what? They won't make money supporting CRTs, so they're not going to do it.

411 can give you directions without GPS now. It's something people don't realize. You're billed by the call too, so it's pretty darn nice. Goog 411 can help you find the place, and regular 411 can do the rest.

Meanwhile, trusting in your GPS when you don't have cellphone reception can, you know, lead you off a cliff.

Nothing beats simply planning your route *BEFORE* you leave.

It seems to me they're only going to be doing this for public buildings,and only the areas where the public is welcome. Why would they publish the interiors of non-public buildings? If you need security clearance to get into an area, you probably aren't going to have to look online for a map of the place. They're not going to be mapping the private rooms of the whitehouse, because if you're in those areas you undoubtedly know the place.

I'd expect a big use of this would be airports, which your first reaction would be security yes. But dollars to doughnuts they're going to map out just the terminals since those are the only maps people are going to care about. They wouldn't map out the secure areas or maintenece since the only people who would care about that are people who are authorized to go there and presumably know their way around. And the airports wouldn't let them.

Actually, I'll be suprised if the airports don't claim some security issue to prevent these guys from making this product, while they themselves try to think up ways to sell their maps.

Win95 product keys did not involve activation nor hardware locking, they were simple CD keys (i.e. serial numbers). MS didn't implement Product Activation (which is the concept behind this patent) until Windows XP's release in 2001. This infringement lawsuit apparently occurred in 2003. Knowing the pace at which legal proceedings move, and the likely event Richardson attempted to negotiate/settle with MS prior to going to court, 2 years for the lawsuit to happen doesn't sound that unreasonable.

Bullshit. It is an open protocol. In fact, I plan to run my own wave server whenever code for it is released. If this takes off like google hopes, every company/institution will be running its own wave server just like today it runs its own email server.

"The reason for telling the truth is: not because lying is wrong; when you lie all the time, you'll be unable to know when someone is telling the truth."

Google may mine the data for personal gmail accounts but were you aware that they explicitly state that they do not in their apps for domains service?

The terms specifically state that the only thing they go through your data for is so they can index it so they can provide a functional search service within the domain for authenticated users.

well, call me a conspiracy theorist or not but that's what i believe happened on 9/11, just like the Lavon Affair... They want Iran and will do anything to get it. I think American's are sick and tired of Israel deciding its middle eastern affairs, people need to realize that they're being played. I'm seriously afraid of Ahmadinejad going any further with Nuclear Energy research because the further he gets, the easier it is for somebody to frame them. My suggestion would be to dump nuclear ambitions and use most of their desert to harness the Sun's energy, not sure how it fairs during dust storms or if there are much there but give Israel something new to look for -- next thing they'll be complaining about if they drop the Nuclear ambition is 'Iran is spiking world oil with carcinogens.' -somebody sick and tired of hearing the word "anti-semite" everywhere.

It doesn't say that the 331 days were all in a single year.

He spent his days surfing porn and chatting with webcam girls when he was supposed to be working. It was well known to all who worked under him. He knew damn well that what he was doing was wrong, which is why he "retired" as soon as he got caught.

Iran is clearly building nukes, and will succeed unless stopped.

That is what they want you to think!

I'm serious. They do want you to think that, just as Saddam wanted you to think he had nukes.

When analysing what countries have done and might do, you have to first look at the politicians who make the decisions. At the end of the day, this has nothing to do with religion or ethnicity: it is all about Power. IE in order to understand what a government is thinking, you must first understand the internal power struggles of that country.

Iran's ruling elite are currently in a state of civil war. The Right, which controls the government, currently has the upper hand, but only by a fragile margin. If the the Right withdraw on the one of their main principals, the principal that everyone is out to get them and that a strong military is needed for their protection, then that might just tilt the scales in the other direction. So to counter any possible suggestion that they are retreating on that principal, they are touting it louder: announcing 2nd reactor, missile tests, etc. I suspect the Right are also hoping that Israel will attack them, thus giving them the we-told-you-so card to play, but they won't attack first because that would tilt the scales the other way.

Israel currently is using the threat to attack Iran as a bargaining chip to keep the US off their back in regards to the settlements, which are needed as ammunition in their own internal power struggles. Attacking Iran would cause Israeli civilian casualties, because Iran will respond and large casualties from a war you started does not go down well at the polls.

President Obama currently lacks the ammunition to force Israel's hand, because all his political capital is caught up in the Health Care battle. Resorting to sanctions is probably a temporary measure until he has capital he needs to threaten Israel's funding.

Russia has its own internal struggles, which I won't go into in detail, but let me just say this: if you think Iran's government is in chaos, that is nothing compared to what is happening behind the scenes in Moscow.

In conclusion: Relax, there will be no war between Israel and Iran, because neither country wants to start one, but they both want everyone else to think they do due internal power struggles.

My prediction: In the long term the Iranian government will fall, the question is when. Sooner with sanctions, later without them. Russia is the key, China - the wild card.

PS You have to hand it to President Obama though. In just a few months his administration has managed to destroy most of the political power the Iranian Right spent decades building, they must really hate him now.

"The upshot of this is that people sometimes have to be... nudged in the direction they "should" be going (whatever that means), and one way of doing that is taxing things that are bad for them."

BULL. SHIT.

See, *you* (or your favorite government entity) doesn't GET to decide what direction anyone "should" be going.

Don't you understand that the SAME logic could apply to someone establishing a new tax on people that (for example) don't go to church, since studies are generally consistent that religious people are happier than nonreligious? Would you seriously be OK with that? But shouldn't people be happy?

Once people are grownups, they are not only responsible and entitled to make their own decisions, they are REQUIRED to do so. If they make stupid choices THEY HAVE TO LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES. The moment that you insert a safety net for people's choices, you warp the entire society in subtle and far-reaching ways.

Fat? Smoker? Lazy slob? Drive too fast? Any of these things are CHOICES. And the moment that you try to claim that they have costs that impact others (ie medical costs 'borne by the system') you are simply reinforcing my point - remove artificial safety nets that protect people from their choices.*

* for that matter, get rid of the ones that protect companies from their stupid decisions, while you're at it.

They're rare because it's seldom that a team finds itself in that position, not because of the difficulty. Teams lose ground all the time and if a team is starting on the 2 yard line, I'd say a safety really isn't such a difficult thing for the other team to achieve. Contrast that with the opportunity to drive for a touchdown which happens 20-30 times per game but is successful much less often.

Devon