The problem is that you're not used to certain kinds of philosophical jargon.

The author is asking: Given that there are no aliens and that nothing which exists could have been (counterfactually) an alien, what would make the sentence "There could have been Aliens" true?

It's abstruse philosophy about the problems of what could make a sentence that "X is possible" true, given that X is in fact false, as I understand it. (Perhaps my move from "there could have been..." to "...is possible" is not an equivalence on this view, so read with a grain of salt. I'm not familiar with this theory.)

Unfortunately for pedants like us, this is just not historically so. The word "less" has applied to countable objects from the beginning. Only relatively recently (1770, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less).

While I share your pet peeve over less/fewer, we have to admit that this rule was arbitrarily added to the conventions. It's not that people began breaking a rule formerly honored — it's that the rule was made up later.

You're not supposed to chant it as if you're cheering kiddie porn on in a football game.

I don't see how that follows. If the government gives money to the telcos to lay wires, ownership depends on the agreement between gov't and telco. It may be that the gov't retained some ownership or control over the wires, but maybe not. It all simply depends on what was decided at the time (and I don't know about that).

If I give you money to purchase a car (slashdot analogy), then I don't own that car unless we decided so at the time. I can't later restrict your use of that car unless this was a precondition of the subsidy.

Maybe his argument is fallacious, but you sure as hell didn't prove so.

He didn't argue that net neutrality is bad for the internet. He argued that laws requiring net neutrality violate the fifth amendment. Your response is utterly irrelevant.

I'm not saying he's right. I don't know constitutional law, but I do know that, to refute his argument, you need to actually address his claim. You didn't do so.

Thanks. According to http://www.java2s.com/Tutorial/JavaScript/0380__Window/windowonBlur.htm, onblur is triggered whenever focus is lost, so it seems to me that moving focus to another window would similarly work for this phishing attack.

I don't think this solution fixes anything. As near as I can figger, the guy that uses multiple windows (instead of tabs) is just as vulnerable to this issue as the tab user --- assuming that his top window(s) block the view of other browser windows entirely. The only real issue I see in the article is that, when your attention is diverted from a page and it is hidden from your view, its contents may be changed.

So, tabs are, as far as I can, a red herring here. It's not really about tabs at all. (Someone may correct me if I've missed something.)

Thank goodness that your loyalty to UI principles does not restrict my browser's features. I don't want a dozen browser windows, taking up space on the screen and making it difficult to find what I want. I want one window with tabs that have visible icons and (partially visible) titles, so that I can pick the right tab quickly.

Maybe it is an inconsistent use of the ideas of tabs, but it's damned useful nonetheless.

In any case, your primary criticism about tabs has nothing to do with this security issue.

As far as I can tell, the script merely waits a while (hoping that the user's attention is diverted) before changing the contents. Surely, the same idea works about as well if the user uses multiple windows rather than multiple tabs. Just as soon as attention is diverted from the appropriate browser and it is covered by other windows, the content could be changed without the user noticing.

The only difference is that, with multiple windows, a portion of the window may still be visible when the user is looking at another window. In my limited experience, folks tend to maximize windows anyway (I *hate* that!), so that's not a significant issue.

Am I missing something?

Er, citation please?

"Duck tape" might be the original name of duct tape. Some folks who have presumably actually looked into the history of the term believe that "duct tape" is a mispronunciation of the original term, rather than the other way around.

See, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape#Etymology.

Aside from the cost, how would this edition differ from other Windows releases?

Wesnoth does not have ranged attacks in any reasonable sense of the term. Units must be adjacent to attack. Civ V adds the capability of ranged attacks between unengaged units.

That's not to say they do it well. Since when do archers fire over ponds and farmers' fields in order to hit city units? How far can these archers shoot? Somehow, that image bothers me.

In any case, I'm certainly not intending to disparage Wesnoth with my comments. Wesnoth is, as far as I've seen, the hands-down best totally original open-source strategy game out there. I'm also not trying to compliment Civ V, since I haven't played the commercial version of Civilization since Civ II.

Charles Caleb Colton, 19th century English cleric, was a Zen master?

Or perhaps he just lifted the saw from a Zen master.

If authors believe that Google's project is in their interests, then they can explicitly allow Google to use their works. This is perfectly consistent with copyright law.

It seems to me that you want to decide what's good for the author, regardless of his own wishes. The only paternalism I see here is in your proposal, not in copyright law.

We can all agree that there is much wrong with copyright law, but the basic idea that the author controls distribution of his work for a limited time seems a good one. Allowing one company to proceed with the assumption that the author agrees (until he opts out) is a violation of the basic idea of copyright law (and, in this case, seems to grant an inexplicable favor to one company).

Yes, that will be interesting.

The researchers didn't suggest that their model can or should be used to identify terrorists. You seem to be sliding down a slippery slope.