I can't help hut feel that the insane medical system of my country (the US) is subsidizing the cost of hearing aids in your country. You're welcome, I guess.

I know it's not xkcd, but http://abstrusegoose.com/389">this is obligatory.

My bet is that it's a protection against malware, but that's only a guess. After all, you don't want completely unrestricted sideloading, as long as the restrictions come from the user.

FTFY. Analogy fail. He was looking for a car analogy.

Apple maps strike again!

First, let me say that I've lived in both the US and Brazil, and I'm an Electrical Engineer.

Second, Brazil is on the verge of being considered "developed," if I understand rightly, so I object to calling it third world in the first place. It's actually a great place to live.

Third, from personal experience, Brazil's grid simply isn't better than the US's. For example, the power quality in Brazil is very sketchy. Pay attention to how the lights dim and brighten, for example. That will happen in a US home when the air conditioning compressor turns on, but that's about it. In Brazil, it's the fault of the power grid itself. (But having a large favela nearby didn't help much, either.) I've seen many computers with fried power supplies due brownouts in Brazil's grid; always use a UPS!

Fourth, distance matters when it comes to power generation. Turning on an extra station in the South can help with load problems, but that also introduces other issues due to geography. Much better is to start up another station nearer to where the failed plant is.

Fifth, while the US doesn't have a national grid, the individual grids are very interconnected, with power being transferred between them constantly. If one grid has a shortage, a neighboring grid will sell its extra capacity to them. These interconnections are constantly increasing, to the point that the US effectively does have a national grid.

The fact of the matter is that the US consumes an insane amount of electricity: over 3x that of China and 5x that of Brazil, per capita. More than the entire EU combined. Only Canada and Australia have to deal with such a large per capita consumption and a large, geographically dispersed population. The US grid system works very well, and out of necessity. If it worked as poorly as people think, there's no way the grid would ever keep up with that kind of demand.

Trojans don't count in the same way that moons don't count. Basically, the definition of "cleared the neighborhood" means that anything left is dominated by the gravitational influence of the planet. Moons orbit the planet, Trojans orbit the Lagrange points.

Another similar class of objects are those in orbital resonance with the planet. The Pluto/Neptune system, for example. Or Cruithne/Earth. The planet's gravity dominates in each case, so we're OK there.

The term "cleared the neighborhood" is unfortunately misleading. And purposefully vague, I always thought. When does the neighborhood become cleared? There's a lot of asteroids in our near neighborhood (which result in rather significant accretion events, so to speak).

I ride my bike for two reasons: commuting and fitness. I don't want to wear regular clothes! If I wore my work clothes while commuting, I'd arrive sweaty and hot. Instead, I bring my clothes with me and wear shorts and a thin shirt while on the bike. My recreational riding involve much longer rides, and here again regular clothes fail. They're hot, soak up sweat, and chafe something awful. Biking shorts (I wear loose-fitting shorts with the padded liner) are much more comfortable for long rides.

So, your points 2-4 simply don't apply that well to me. But then again, I don't use my bike to go clubbing ... maybe I'd regret not having a chain case and fenders if I did.

It's the exact opposite of freedom from Nvidia's perspective, that's true. But, on the other hand, it increases freedom for the users of the driver (those that want to modify the code and improve it or make drivers that work slightly differently). And on the third hand, the GPL grants only limited freedom (albeit freedom that might not exist otherwise) of those that would fork or otherwise make derivative works. There's probably more hands involved, too.

Freedom is often a matter of give-and-take, unfortunately.

The theory (whether or not this works in practice is another matter) is that forcing drivers, etc. to be open will improve user experience (more eyeballs, more developers, etc). There's something to it, as well ... closed graphics drivers have been one reason "why graphics on Linux sucks," which has prevented linux devs from fixing the problem in the first place.

Indeed, reading this kind of nonsense makes my blood boil.

Wait, what?

I'm sure there's pearls of wisdom scattered throughout Slashdot, but the moderation system only goes to +5. Maybe if it didn't have a limit, we'd see who the truly insightful posters really are?

I can see it now, Locke (15369) and Demosthenes (16815) rise to prominence through their constant (Score:1500, Insightful) posts.

Ender's Shadow does this very explicitly. Bean figures things out on his own, which mostly "ruins" the surprise twist, but that was never the point of the novel anyway. And yet, there's still that revelation to Ender (and even Bean, if I remember right ... I'd have to re-read it to be sure) at the end. Very well done.

Ok, then. The deposit for the first notice is $1. Every false notice after that adds a zero (or doubles or some other function, probably up to a certain maximum, etc).

This even adds an additional incentive to not file false claims (it'll cost more next time, even if it's the next one isn't false), while providing a range that accessible to individuals yet punitive to the worst offenders.

Hey take this guy seriously. He can identify a white bigot just by reading!

Well, in all fairness, most of Slashdot's readership is white (but I can't find a slashdot poll to confirm that). So we can apply my analysis to your comment as well. But, I'm not going to confirm or deny your assumption about my race, just for fun. All I'll say is that I'm not an illegal immigrant (by the definition of the US government).

I'm going to respond anyway, but only to show other readers that I'm not the bigot ("a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices"). I don't expect you to read this.

For the record, I have no problem with people immigrating to the United States from Mexico or anywhere else.
I think our immigration laws need to be seriously rethought.
I have serious problems with how we do deportations of illegal immigrants. (I have friends caught up in some really stupid deportation proceedings, actually.)
I think that racial profiling of any race is immoral.
I think it's a shame how many more black people than white people are in prison.
I don't think illegal immigrants steal jobs. (On the contrary, I find most Americans to be so entitled and stuck up that they wouldn't take the sort of jobs that immigrants are forced into because of their illegal status. Chew on that for a bit.)

Now, let's look at the sentence that you completely misinterpreted (though I can see why now) and let me explain what I meant by it:

I did not intend to say that there is a problem with the legality of racial profiling. Quite the opposite, in fact. The problem is that the only way to enforce portions of the Arizona law is through racial profiling, which is illegal. If racial profiling were legal, the Arizona law would undoubtedly be effective in finding (and eventually deporting) illegal immigrants, but this would still be immoral for several reasons.

So, let me rephrase my statement to make it clear:

Actually, there's a decent chance he was right, if you're just looking at statistics.

Depending on the source, about 17% of the hispanics in the US are illegal immigrants. I would suspect that the percentage is higher in Dallas (but I don't have numbers on hand to back that up). Compare that number to .3% of whites being illegal immigrants. If you give him a little leeway and include the children of illegal immigrants born in the US (and therefore not illegal immigrants technically), the percentage goes up even further.

Racial profiling may be illegal, but it otherwise wouldn't be a bad place to start if you wanted to find illegal immigrants.

Add on top of that other revealing factors (neighborhood, language, dress, etc), and the odds of being able to pick out an illegal immigrant go up as well. I wouldn't be surprised if you could train someone to "identify an illegal immigrant just by looking at them" with over 50% accuracy.

The problem isn't whether you can find potential illegal immigrants by sight, it's that doing so is illegal.