Metal wheels on metal rail have significantly lower rolling resistance than rubber tires on asphalt or concrete, though. And, the infrastructure for rail is better suited to providing electricity to a train (partially because there's already metal to metal contact) than the infrastructure for roads.

Maybe Toxoplasma gondii merely causes its hosts to engage in higher risk behaviours. In the wild, for small prey animals such as rats and mice, that is likely to be lethal and result in being eaten by a suitable carrier, but in this artificial environment we live in, perhaps it manifests in other ways. For example, flouting controlled substance laws to gamble 20-30 IQ points against a little temporary euphoria - then bragging about it - that sort of thing.

The Republicans here in the US are often approaching Europe's right-wing terrorists, actually.

Literally, a lot of the right-wing rhetoric that gets spewed wouldn't look out of place in Breivik's manifesto.

Trust me, you wouldn't think that way if you heard them snorting and grunting and growling in the middle of the night!

The clerk actually prevented HIMSELF from violating the law, too, as he would be personally liable, knowing that she was going to export it.

Of course, he opened Apple up to a civil suit for discrimination, most likely. Damned if he did, damned if he didn't.

Or you die.

Wonder how long before there's mass suicide to discharge student loans.

There's actually another way to do it, that GEOS and webOS's Enyo framework did. Actually, even Windows Mobile's implementation of .NET did this to an extent, IIRC. Android half-asses it, but it at least tries - there's separate phone and tablet UIs in the same application.

Don't let programs draw their UI, make them give a list of tasks to the OS, and make the OS draw the UI that's appropriate for the device you're on. (GEOS, at least, had hinting of sorts, IIRC, to note the priority of tasks.)

Use the same binary across all devices.

So, on a phone, you get a simple UI that lets you do stuff that's appropriate for doing on a phone.

On a tablet, you get a more fully fleshed UI, but still touch-friendly.

On a desktop, you get a full desktop UI.

The added benefit of this is, the UI can never be inconsistent with system standards.

And, there were consumption device-class tablets back then, too.

They were basically the "internet appliances", shoved into a resistive tablet form. And they all failed miserably. Part of it because of performance, part of it because there wasn't a strong software ecosystem, part of it because they didn't have a strong premium consumer electronics brand attached to them (that is, part of the reason why Apple is so good at launching products is because they're Apple, and people will buy Apple stuff, and due to network effects, a platform needs to be successful to be successful (it also didn't hurt that Apple started with a phone OS that was already successful)).

And I'm sure the reality is that the future of this device is somewhere between your two hyperbole-laden extremes - but that's not quite as exciting now, is it?

Although Catleap et. al. shows that there is a market for defective displays.

(That's how they get their panels so cheap, FWIW.)

Nope, not in history either. Teach creation myths in sociology, where they may actually be relevant to the way cultures behave and what values they have adopted.

N/T

Oh, come on now - Razorback was alrig-



I'm sorry, I can't even keep a straight face while typing that!

This. Well, for subjective values of "no one", anyway.

IME, the thing that Diaspora needs more than anything is massive optimization.

When it's taking 30-60 seconds per page load from a 1.1 GHz P3, and it's not due to swapping, but rather sheer CPU load...