I did not ruin the joke. I merely provided a missing punchline. And I did not ask for or expect two informative mod-points for it. The other half of my up-mod points were funny -- points the AC would have received in the first place if he had added the punchline.

That doesn't sound like your complaint about ruining a joke by explaining it, but anyway...my post is the one that got modded down eventually. Whatever. I'm here for the banter with my fellow nerds, not mod-wars. I'd say I'm the old slashdot.

That's why they're called Microsoft.

And here are their research centers which are analogous to institutes.

Its mission may not be pure research, but it implicitly self-identifies as a research institute (among other things) on its website:

A good track record of insightful contributions to public discourse.

Or at least a better track record than most of us who post to slashdot.

The Gruber brothers were (separately) in the first and third Die Hard movies. They didn't appear in the second. That was the one about mercenaries taking over the Dulles airport.

Huh? Bond drinks vodka martinis. Shaken, not stirred.

[Han's mom walks in]
Mom: That's no moon!

Agreed.

Still, you have to admit that it brings new meaning to the phrase: "Do you want fries with that?"

From the pictures in TFA, it appears the oil and the servers are contained in tanks that are about the size and shape of a small dumpster. Swapping out a server would entail removing it vertically via its handles. So, it would seem the ickiness is kept to a minimum. Certainly no wading through 100 m of oil.

http://rlv.zcache.com/earth_wi...

Well, speaking of strawmen...

First of all, gstoddart didn't conflate people who "whine" about the restrictions of the GPL (whether they violate the license or not) with those who respect it and avoid GPL code on principle and in good faith. He only spoke of the former, who indeed want to "steal" GPL code whether or not they actually do.

Second, compiling your code with GCC does not infect your source-code, or the compiled binary, with the GPL. Unless you static-link to a GPL library, but that's avoided easily by linking dynamically.

That was exactly my point, per my speculation:

Doh! And I thought you needed a toner refill kit. Who knew?

I wish I could find something on their website that states what they actually do with the returned toner cartridges. All I could find is this:

My emphasis. This is not a commitment to recycle. It's feel-good corporate-speak.

Do they actually dismantle and recycle them? Do they refurbish them, or sell them to a refurbisher? Or do they just dispose of them so that they stay out of the after-market?

I'm sorry to be cynical. Brother may very well be acting as a good corporate citizen. But when I don't see explicit mention of their actions, I start to wonder what they are.