That was my thought on it. They aren't "capturing" it. They're looking at refracted light. It's a very fancy prism. They spent a lot of money on water drops. Otherwise, they should be able to quantify the photon dust on the bottom of their apparatus. :) ... and I was just making a joke about the photon dust, but I googled it, and it's theorized to exist. Well, kinda. :)

    I guess there's gotta be something at the bottom of a black hole from all that light that can't escape, right? :)

Folks, this is a very irresponsible headline at slashdot. The Microsoft articles does NOT say hotfix breaks power save and it doesn't even mention turbo, but that it is an either or solution. Microsoft always offers workarounds as an ALTERNATIVE to the hotfix for people who don't want to apply hotfixes. The Microsoft KB article even tells you if you want to keep using those power states, then run the hotfix and make a certain modification to the registry.

This post makes it sound like some kind of cover up and that the fix causes major CPU slowdowns, and that it's on the level of the AMD Barcelona TLB bug where the fix actually did cause a significant performance drop. This does not appear to be true. The real story is that all CPUs have hundreds of errata, and it's the job of the software maker to work around it, and that is what Microsoft is doing with their hotfix and registry hack. They're also telling you if you aren't experiencing any problems, don't bother applying the hotfix.

Absolutely. With automated controls I can set up.

Except that is actually not at all the results they got. They studied weight, etc. *after* they had babies.

They did not find that slimmer women end up having more babies. To do that, they'd have to take all of these measures *before* women had children and compare that to their future success. Because of the way they measured, what they *actually* found was that women who have more children end up fatter.

That doesn't sell the papers, though.

GW-BASIC is an evolution of MS-BASIC. IBM didn't remove BASIC from the PCs, it was included in ROM even in the IBM PS/2 (I know because I used it a lot). BASICA is the IBM-branded interpreter that relies upon the in-ROM BASIC and adds disk, graphics andsome more "features". GW-BASIC is the MS "version" of BASIC for IBM-compatibles that has all of the interpreter in the file, so it doesn't need the one in ROM.

As for who invented what, I think we'll never know for sure but if they didn't create the interpreter (history says they did, but it has a tendency of reflecting the opinion of whoever is writing it) at least they introduced "pirating" into the PC field (if we conveniently ignore that it was "prior art" on other platforms already).

"They don't understand that if they start to tax me so that I'm paying 60%, 55%, I'll stop."

Top marginal tax rates were around 90% during the 1950s, and 50% or higher during most of the 1980s.

The economy, and the nation, survived.

It's time to restore taxation on the aristocrats. Raise the top marginal rates, restore the inheritance tax, and tax capital gains the same as earned income.

Who is John Galt?

He's a fictional character in a sophomoric novel that takes place in a fantasy world with less relevance to our own than Tolkien's Middle Earth.

"It seems that 99.9% of drivers drive the speed limit, and engine-break to lights."
Do they really expect anyone who isn't already driving a hybrid or electric and/or driving super-energy conscious will be interested in helping a project like this and send in Data? How people really commute: They drive 10-20 miles over the speed limit on highways, and 5-15 miles over the speed limit on city streets. They speed up to get in front of a slower (but still over the speed limit) car, just in time to brake hard for the stoplight. The data they collect will say regenerative braking is pointless, but the common-knowledge data will say that regenerative braking is the bee's knees.

...that is the question implicit in TFS. Godwin's law does not apply if comparison to Nazis/Hitler/etc. is appropriate. TFS appropriately summarizes an inappropriate comparison of that type made in TFA.

Godwin, not Godwin. Goddamn.

Mind you, TFA is hilarious, in its own way. The archbishop does not appear to grasp the meaning and implications of genetics, or the related arguments made by Dawkins.

Yet if MS tried the same tactic of requiring MS branded hardware, the whole world would cry foul. Sounds like monopolistic tendencies in the EULA.

You should have elected the Republican. He was a businessman who, even in Michigan's power economy, managed to succeed and had plans to use his contacts to bring more business to Michigan, so everyone could get jobs.

Instead you re-elected Granholm, who had done nothing her first four years and hasn't done anything the second four years. She's just perpetuated the "do nothing and government will take care of you like a big daddy" welfare state. She's encouraged sloth not industriousness.

I got the remedy for that

aptitude install gnome-theme-aqua; gnome-terminal

Then, in gnome-terminal

aptitude install [program...]

I don't have a link handy for this one, but rail costs far less to lay per mile than asphalt. It also requires far less maintenance. I believe that is enough reason to call it easy in comparison to other infrastructure projects.

They aren't. I've never been forced to help anyone, for example. If you're referring to taxes, that's simply society not recognising your right to that money, and by your own arguments they can't be *forced* to...

I can't speak for everyone, but in my own case it's not that I don't enjoy helping those around me with their problems. I genuinely do enjoy helping them. The problem is that a lot of people who ask me for help fall into one of three categories at some time or another.

a) The willfully ignorant: I don't mind helping people out, but when you've called me three times about the same problem and refuse to remember anything I told you the last two times, my patience starts to wear thin.

b) The impatient: I am competent enough with computers to deal with most run-of-the-mill problems my friends and family call me about, but I am not a professional or walking encyclopedia on every possible problem. Some things take time for me to fix, and others are beyond my capabilities. You called me for help, all I'm asking for in return is a little bit of patience and understanding.

c) The know-it-all: I don't like spending hours trying to help you with something just so you can turn around and take your PC to Geeksquad when you don't like what I have to say. If you thought you knew better, why did you bother asking me in the first place. I have better things to do with my time.

I took a class in neural networks almost 20 years ago. One project was to get a small network to "learn" how to recugnize handwritten numbers. On a 486/33 running overnight it got to the point where it could recognize a number right over 90% of the time, just with a a few dozen neurons. However, it would probably be impossible to determine *why* that network was able to recognize the numbers.

Consciousness (however you want to define it) is almost certainly an emergent property, and if it can emerge in a toddler it should be able to emerge in a properly designed piece of hardware. And even you can you can do a core dump on that hardware, you'll *never* figure out why it's conscious.