I want an implant that makes it so keeping me drunk will be as simple as eating a donut.

Leading to a new national chain of "Drunkin' Donuts"

I know this is the AF joke for this year, but to be honest, I'm Type A, and achievements tickle me. Hence this completely unnecessary post, to get the April Fool achievement.

I used to be a teacher, and it bothered me when students fell asleep in class. Sometimes I would get right in their face and wake them up, so the first thing they see is my angry face and scary big eyes. They'd jump and the rest of the class would laugh.

And then I realized: I could only think of two reasons why they would fall asleep in class.
1) They were tired.
2) My lesson was boring.

If they were tired, who was I to wake them up? Maybe they had a part time job, or maybe they had trouble at home. Whatever. I don't know what's going on in their lives.

If my lesson was boring, was that their fault? No, it was mine. EVEN if they were tired, if my lesson were interesting enough they would stay awake for it.

I stopped waking up sleeping students, and instead worked on improving my lesson plans. The fewer snoozers, the better the lesson. (I also got a lot louder and more energetic, which also helped keep them awake/attentive)

By my third year as a teacher, I never had a student fall asleep in class again.

It was handled by one sentence: 'It's surprising there was no dissension' -- it sure is!

This is a technique called Lampshade Hanging. Here is a recent Dinosaur Comics about it.

I really wanted to like the finale, but this ruined it. I could no longer identify with the characters.

Abandon all technology? Frak. That. Felgercarb.

If you RTFA,

I see where you went wrong there.

OK, so now I've read the article (I don't know whether to go "What? I posted before reading the article?" or "What? I've read the the article?"), and it says:

Oil based hydraulic devices are said to be safer, but most such chairs on the market today use gas cylinders; naturally these tend to be made in China, where this accident occurred.

(emphasis mine)

Is this true? All (three) of my desk chairs use springs. ....how old is my furniture? I know I've had to replace the cushions a couple of times...

Per this story from the '80s:

The problem has cropped up with adjustable office chairs fitted with
nitrogen gas cylinders in place of the conventional springs in their height
control mechanism. Preliminary findings suggest that metal fatigue cracks
can develop in the cylinders, possibly caused by the poor chairs being asked
to cope with more than they can bear.

In short, if your chair uses a spring (most likely), then you are in no danger. You can sit easily now.

You got a bad lawyer fired. That was a week well spent.

An IP address is not like a street address (which is fairly permanent). It's more like a hotel room number (transitory). The identity of the occupants of room 128 are not public knowledge like in a phone book, but must be obtained through a 3rd party (the hotel's front desk).

Do police need a warrant to look at the front desk's guest log?

The hotel room analogy also explains why IP addresses are insufficient evidence of criminal activity. If they know that criminal activity took place in room 128 last week, and arrest whomever is staying in that room this week, they don't necessarily have the person responsible. Could it in fact be the criminal? Sure, it's possible. But hotel rooms change occupants on a regular basis.

Oh, I dunno. If you lost your sense of smell, you could always build a robot to smell things for you. That's the Slashdot way!

I would like to thank the mods for not upmodding the MANY bean- and politics-related "wind" puns that appear to be dominating the posts so far.

Stand fast, men. I fear it is only going to get worse.

Do YOU understand the issue?

Java installs the Java Quick Starter extension in Firefox. That's pretty much EXACTLY THIS SAME ISSUE. It can't be uninstalled like other extensions either.

It is exactly an example of software updating an independently installed third party program without giving and easy way of uninstalling.

You have a problem with autogenerated bull-honky? This site may have the answer!

Yup.

I didn't particularly care for Gnome when was into Linux a few years ago (ahhh Mandrake 7.0; why didn't I stick with your defaults?). My friends convinced me that Gnome was the future, but it fought with me the whole time.

I tried using KDE and it was great, so I switched.

Fast-forward to Kubuntu 8.04 and its KDE4 option. After all, if it's in a main distribution, it should be ready for prime-time, right?

Disaster. WHY would they put something out with such reduced functionality compared to KDE3.5?

Recently I reformatted my computer, and instead of returning to the comforting familiarity of KDE, I thought I would take another look at my options.

I tried using Gnome and it was great, so I switched.

Maybe if Gnome screws up big in the future, I might try KDE again, but for now I see no reason to.

I don't remember the final score, but Dante wrote a detailed review.

Thanshin wins the thread.