Fascinating! You seem to be implying that there is more than one!! And I had always thought they were just a myth. What truly amazing times we live in, where such people live right alongside the rest of us, and we don't even know they're there!

Tell me, is it true that you all have fingertips as pointed as sharpened pencils, which allow you to actual use the OS? Or is it, like my friend believes, that you are all atoning for some great, and unspeakable crime? Perhaps you were AOL developers in your past life?
:-P

Maybe people's heads have just been getting smaller? It would sure explain a lot.

I hope your medical insurance will help you if you are insured. If you did military service they may pay as loud noise and combat or certain positions often result in hearing issues. If you can get Medicare a supplemental plan may cover your issues. You might even try for a disability check as deafness just might be a qualifier.
              I do not know your age but you are only seeing the tip of the ice berg. We need national health care. There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to even consider the cost of hearing aids. This is a medical issue and everyone deserves the best care available at all times. Money should never set care limits.
              Good luck and God bless you.

will it hurt their business though? the chinese can still access google.com at the end of the day, and they aren't even closing their offices. this all seems like some pointless politcal dick measuring contest.

Good thing we never invented the automobile, that would have put all those buggy drivers out of business. I can't imagine what would happen if people started making things better. Status Quo is the way to go!

I live in one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas of the US, so I am not a hillbilly (not that I would mind). No, I hated the fact that the government created the telephone monopoly that it later broke up.
I do dislike health insurance, because it isn't really insurance and the fact that it exists is one of the factors contributing to medical costs rising faster than inflation (Medicare and Medicaid are the main factors in that).
Personally, I preferred when people helped those less fortunate than themselves out of the goodness of their hearts rather than at the point of a gun.

Oh so you're the lunatic that acts first thinks later - the next time you swerve watch out for the kid on a bike you did not see the first time you looked.

The cost is ridiculous

You people keep on saying this, but it is absolute bullshit. Have you ever tried comparing the cost of manned spaceflight with... well... just about anything else the government does? It is damned cheap.

My son is currently at the age where he wants to start learning to program. The thing is, other than Basic or similar entry-level languages, he just can't wrap his 11 year old mind around C++ or other more complex languages to start. And I can't exactly drop him straight into SQL or Linux either. He has to start somewhere, and simple languages fill this gap very well for the young. It's also the same reason why I hope that they never stop making those ###-in-one electronic kits. The basics may be old and useless to most of us here, but to our kids and grand-kids someday, it'll make the difference between being a good engineer or technical person versus just another brainless repairer who swaps parts without knowing why.

Learning out of a book in high school or college isn't obviously the same as hands-on building and programming.

Going back as far as Windows 2000 it's a hopeless mishmash of conflicting GUI elements.

That's a really weird attitude to have, compared to most other options. Maybe MacOS is more 'unified' in appearance. Certainly none of the freenixes are. Let's see. I'll open up Xfig and sketch something to include in my LyX document.... Wow. Those 'GUI elements' don't match at all.

Now, if you pick some 'Modern Linux Distro' that has 1% of the desktop market, you might be correct. But to get a robust collection of apps for it, you need to grab in apps from all over, which are compiled with a huge ugly cluster of widget varieties.

No, I'm afraid the ugly Kludge GUI is X11. Which I happen to like, but I use a classic X11, i.e. I run FVWM and reference the O'Reilly X11 User Manuals (the 'official' ones, i.e. Volume 3 is the Users Guide) to maintain my X systems. You know, X resources, etc.

Right, that's why I say "more-or-less".

It is true that the useless people tend to die faster than useful people. To pull some numbers out of my ass, perhaps life expectancy is 45 for useless people and 90 for useful people. We're forced to accept that a few useless people will make it past 100, and a few useful people will die at 20.

The ER isn't everything. Lack of early cancer detection and lack of early heart surgery are among the many things that play a role in killing off the useless.

Depending on one's hierarchy of values, one can redefine fairness to mean enforced equality at the expense of others. That's hardly fair by any reasonable definition. Fairness rightly means that you get the share that you deserve, no more and no less.

>Can you show a citation supporting your view?

Sure, how about my own?

5+ years deli, qualifies me for deli manager ($50k/year).

3+ years liquor retail, qualifies me for liquor salesman ($35k/year, plus commission, and relocation - read: california).

Point being, what does 4 years at college qualify you for?

I'm looking at something else. But suffice to say, $25/hr for slicing meat is not a bad fallback option. What fallbacks to college grads have?

Typist? I've done that.

The operative word here is nearly.

And why, do you think, do K and C share the same interval size?

(seriously though, I always found 28 C = 82 F the easiest to remmeber. everything below is too cold and everything above is just right.)

By the very nature of the law it should be applied all of the time indiscriminately, anything else is corruption.

Nonsense. Separation of powers has a purpose. If the legislature passes an odious law, the executive has a duty to not enforce it, and the judiciary has a duty to not convict under it. "I was only following orders" is not excuse, even if that order comes from the legislature in the form of a law.

No, there is no requirement that the 2nd version do the same packet format or versioning.

And how is a checksum going to help you find the page header? All a checksum could do is help you verify the header once you've found it!

The article made a lot more sense in its criticism of OGG than any criticism of the article I've yet seen.