Whats the big deal, are you so sure that over the thousands of years these civilizations existed, nobody ever made a boat trip across the atlantic?

They weren't about to paint their tombs with farm records. I'm sure all kinds of cross pollination happened all over the planet in the thousands and thousands of years these large trading civilizations existed. Why is that so amazing, unbelievable or even that interesting?

Just because some young civilization that now claims to have done everything first (europe) wants to be remembered as FIRST to cross the oceans, doesn't make it so. I'm sure the Egyptians, in all their many many years, could build some ships to make the journey. Entire Egyptian dynasties came and went in a time span dwarfing the few centuries that europe has been out of the stone age.

I am going to use whatever options are available to me, not just the "proper" ones that you have decided are ok because some corporation told you it is the correct route.

I have no problem downloading content, especially if it "harms" Tom Cruise.

I most definitely WILL make my own mind up on what is right and wrong. I behave in society according to the rules I have about right/wrong, not what I am told to do.

I DO purchase media, when I WANT the producer to receive my money. I can choose who my money goes to, I can also choose to view for free things I want to view even when I do not want the producer to make money from it.

There are a great many laws I do not agree with, and also disobey. I am not a sheep, I can and will do as I see fit, too bad you are so shackled with rules and bullshit to see that you actually are an individual that can make his own choices. I do not harm people. I do not hurt others. I do not steal THINGS. Just because my actions violate some bizarre broken business model, means nothing to me. Give me a reason to give you my money, and I will. Otherwise go away.

Of course, I am so bad and evil and the problem with society. Because I do not walk the line, praise the powers and worship the dollar. And you know what? There is NOTHING you can do about it. NOTHING.

Ok, then your solution is? Piracy isn't going away, if its a real problem then the solution is to change the business model. Its the only solution. You cannot stop piracy. It doesn't matter how wrong, immoral, whatever you may think it is, the fact remains it is not going away.

So now what? Piracy is bad, mmkay? Thats not gonna work.

Honestly I do not think it is near the problem folks make it out to be. I know many many people with computers who cannot figure out how to pirate movies, books, mp3's, etc. They try, and get a huge pile of RAR files, and stare blankly. Or they get a "dvd" in divx format and have no idea what to do with it. We are talking a tiny portion of the media buying public who actually can and does pirate. The less tech savvy also infect themselves with trojans and malware instead of downloading some new game. How many people out there are modding their consoles to play downloaded games?

The tiny fraction of the market that can pirate will continue to do so, regardless of the measures taken against it.

By purchasing a single share, you are forcing them to print and mail you all their shareholder material, which costs far more than the profit you earn from that single share. If everyone on slashdot bought a single share, it could put a serious dent in their asses.

You have to shame the idiots buying crap from spam. If spam didn't make money, their would be no spam. Its not the spam that is the problem, its that it is a viable business model. You can't stop people from making money from something that works, and obviously works really well.

Obviously you haven't been to mardi gras lately. Nothing has change, absolutely NOTHING. Cameras have been flashing as often as girls in New Orleans for many many years.

The "lovely era" of girls flashing people in the street during Mardi Gras is more lively than ever. Last year, as often as I pulled out my camera there were untold girls turning around showing their tits, its what drunk youngins do during Mardi Gras. Pictures be damned.

I'm not even an old perv, just a tourist freaking out on the spectacle. Mardi Gras sucks, believe me, but its the puke and piss filled streets that really bring you down. Tits just do not make up for that.

Thats funny because all the CFL's I have at home have lasted for YEARS. The only one that has ever burned out is the one in my fridge, after 4 years. They have lasted far far longer than any other bulb I have ever used, with a huge savings in electricity usage.

I don't know what kind of crap CFL's you buy but the ones I have work perfectly, with vast lifespans. I just bought them at home depot or wherever.

Study up on the terrorists who founded this country then. They are at war with us, they are POW's if anything. Which means they have rights and are to be treated a certain way according to the geneva convention.

If we are at war, then who are we at war with? An enemy, which means they are POW's.

Keep calling it a war, and keep calling "them" terrorists. Words mean everything, read your Orwell.

Do you expect the people living in a country we invaded and are occupying to sit idly by?

What would you do if chinese troops marched down your street and tried to "free" you? Would you defend your friends and family in any way you could? Try to put yourself in their shoes for once.

Again, read up on the tactics used by american revolutionaries, or the underground resistance in nazi occupied europe, or the vietnam war. Its war, bad shit happens.

Or you could stop calling it a war.

As for the despicable acts committed against innocent civilians - read up on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Want to talk about bombing schools, churches and women and children?

You know, I have a friend who was imprisoned in Afghanistan during the 70's/80's. A "terrorist" nation.

He was never tortured or treated improperly EVER. When the soviets invaded and took over the prison, THEY never tortured nor harmed him, in fact treatment got even better. 20 years in a foreign prison and the only bad thing to happen to him was an opium addiction.

Its funny hearing his story, because he was a good american boy, afraid of the bad guys and especially of the soviets. When they marched through the prison he freaked out, only to find they were genuinely interested in his well being. The soviet general who toured the place stopped specifically at his cell and talked to him, because he was american. He received medical treatment, fresh clothing and good food, plus a promise that his sentencing would be looked at and he was released a few years later, from a life sentence (for smuggling hashish.) I've never seen somebody more changed by an experience, going from good ol' american boy to seeing the truth: the USA is the biggest fucking fascist state on earth. All from being locked up in a foreign country. You can tell a lot about a society by how they treat their prisoners. He never once saw anybody raped or tortured. Now, american prisons on the other hand...

Most people would be very very surprised to know the stats on prison violence and rape in the US versus the rest of the world. We have the most inhumane conditions for prisoners of almost anywhere on the planet. Not to mention the fact we have the highest per capita prison population on earth.

The America people believe exists from watching tv, does, in fact, not exist except on tv.

Not to mention nuclear weapons, oh yeah baby. We have used them. On innocent civilians. Twice. Nobody else can claim that prize.

Oh well. Just bomb more brown people. That will fix your life so you can buy more video games in which you kill brown people.

What "terrorists"? What, exactly, have the "terrorists" done? Who do they rape, kill and murder? Where and when is this happening?

Well, ok, the us army rapes and murders people based on religious and political beliefs. We call it war.

But these people in cuba? Do you know what they have done? What have they been charged with? What crimes did they commit? Do you even know who they are, where they come from, or what is being done to them?

NO, you dont. But its ok, they are "terrorists." Because the tv told you so.

Bush IS a war criminal. By any modern, humane definition of the term, by the UN's own definition. We hung Saddam. We hung the war criminals tried at Nuremberg.

I just love this new term, "terrorist" it is so meaningless and vague. Lets hope someday you are tagged with it and then we'll see where you stand.

You see, murderers and rapists are tried and sentenced, in any country. These poor people are not charged with any crime, are not sentenced to any punishment.

Yet sick stupid motherfuckers like you continue to sit by while it happens. Hopefully someday you will know what its like. Hopefully.

Sorry that you have such a huge gap in your understanding of chemistry. Simply because you denigrate the science with snide remarks doesn't mean in makes no sense. What makes more sense, that some magical creature snapped its fingers (or tentacles) and all life appeared?

Ok, so you reject the formation of cellular life forms from simpler molecular structures.

Rejecting speciation on the other hand is simply ignorance. The fossil record is there for all to see. It shows in a clear, highly detailed, step by step nature, in chronological order, how life evolved. From single cells to human beings and redwoods. The slow formation of jaws, backbones, arms, legs, fins, lungs, etc. etc. is all there, every single step. You know how we know it took a very long time? Because we can SEE that it took a very long time! On smaller time scales we can even see bacteria evolve, in our life times.

You believe your fairy tales, based on pure ignorance and silly analogies, and I'll believe the science. The formation of complex hydrocarbons from simpler structures that has been seen in the lab, right before our very eyes. I don't need your fairy tales to take away the beauty of nature and the amazing feat that we are here discussing this. Just because it is beautiful and wondrous doesn't mean it can't be understood.

BTW, do you reject time in the same way as for planet formation? Formation of heavy elements in stars?

I mean, come on, how can a single fertilized cell smaller than you can see, turn into a blue whale?

How can simple transistors power machines that let us communicate?

Magic, it must be, because YOU don't understand it. How sad.

Billions of years and random molecules is exactly what is needed to allow for the creation of self-replicating cells. Even cells didn't just appear one day. Small collections of hydrocarbons came together and did something, for instance make copies of themselves. Any highly complex molecule that could make a copy of itself would be far more abundant than a structure that did not. So we have stable molecules that are not highly reactive and can mechanically make copies of themselves. At this scale tiny changes and imperfections in the structure would have profound impact on its abilities. Some of these would be beneficial and would quickly dominate. Eventually we had molecules that could create other types of molecules, if these other types of molecules proved beneficial to the surrounding environment they would expand in number, else the negative effects would cause them to dwindle or their creation mechanism to cease. It goes on and on and on from there. It is not so hard to grasp when looked at from these tiny scales. The creation of a protein from an mRNA molecule's blueprint is not nearly as complex as the creation of an automobile. It is quite a simple and understood process actually.

We are talking great amounts of time for this chemistry to take place. It does not violate the second law of thermodynamics because "life" generally needs an energy source once it had grown beyond simple Brownian motion to achieve the chance occurrences that allowed self-replication. Life eats. It reduces complexity.

We had a chain of complex, random processes. Eventually nucleic acids were produced with the right sequence to replicate, etc. etc. with millions and millions of steps and much time to do this in.

Google macromolecules, phospholipids and evolution for a start. It is quite a fascinating process and takes no leaps of faith and follows all modern laws of physics. Just because you don't understand it doesn't it makes no sense.

Oh yea... Check out this link: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/index.html

Yes, these are easter eggs on almost every single type of IC device known.

Sorry your job is so unfulfillable and you are unable to leave your mark on the world. For the above engineers, such is not the case.