But GMail does, to my understanding, use a personalized filter, in addition to the global filters. I get some legitimate email in a foreign language (not Chinese, but one with a non-latin alphabet), and some spam in that language as well. GMail gets them 100% right. Alphabet is just another feature that you perform Bayesian analysis on.

What any big message processing service has that a single user won't, is access to the content of messages across users, and the collective action by its users. So, for example, if a new spam campaign starts up, once the 10th (or so) user has clicked "this is spam", the rest of the recipients' versions of that same message get automatically re-classified. I used to be responsible for fighting spam at a mid-sized social networking site (that no longer exists, unfortunately), and believe me, simply looking for multiple copies of a given message is a strong tool for fighting spam. The back-end service operators get access to that, the users don't.

I have found that essentially every time I give my email to a legitimate retailer, they automatically assume that this means they can send me marketing email on nearly a daily basis. However, most retailers also honor the unsubscribe requests, and if you are vigilant about clicking through unsubscribe and marking real spam as such, GMail does a really very good job. Also, I've found that when I unsubscribe to lists that I really don't read (including marketing email that I might have thought could be interesting but no longer want), the total volume of spam goes down.

I cannot explain the OP's experience, as it runs completely counter to mine.

A course in a large C shape then with two short arms 0.25 of the distance, and a long middle arm of 0.5 the distance, with prevailing wind down the long arm. Start and finish are 0.5 apart. Extra runners act as a wind shield on the appropriate side during the short arms, and the record challenger has the wind at their back for the long arm. Might work.

I'm curious about the assertion that start and finish have to be so close together. That's certainly not the case in Boston, one of the most famous marathons in the US. Do race times established in Boston not count for world records?

Now that I think about it, it wasn't the case in the Athens Olympics either. Those are the only two races that I'm personally familiar with. Which courses meet that start/finish requirement?

Whoops. Right. Would be great to be able to edit posts, eh?

s/minimize/maximize/

The summary implies that the front triangle of runners will be necessary to cut the wind generated from the athletes running through the air, and thus, that the air is still.

Wind at the runners' backs, on the other hand, obviates that issue entirely.

Also, just above freezing is probably too cold because it requires extra clothing (and thus weight) to protect the extremities. Ideal running weather is in the 50s F / 10s C.

The summary further posits that a flat, straight course is best without citing any evidence. Do we know that sustained, constant exertion is more efficient over a two hour period than exertion that has a cyclic component? Yes, a course that has gentle ups and downs will probably take more energy to run (as the runners need to lift themselves up each hill, and don't generally get that energy back), but is there empirical evidence that it will always be slower? Consider the extreme of a course that starts out at a higher elevation than it finishes, but is strictly linear in altitude between the start and finish lines. It will surely be faster than a straight, flat course without any change in elevation.

The limiting factor, it would seem to me, is that the ideal course to minimize speed has not been constructed.

Sure, once now. And then again in a month when something breaks. Or when Comcast comes by and installs a new modem. Or the hardware dies because the roof leaked and you need to buy new access point. I don't own a business that provides internet service to the public as a marginal offering to their main service, but if I did, I'd establish a relationship with some consultant on a fee-for-service basis so that I could concentrate on the main service, and let the consultant take care of the wireless offering.

That said, the OP's my-packets-are-more-important-than-yours attitude is a sure-fire way to piss off a lot of people and goes against the open-for-all ethos he thinks he's promoting. If he were enlightened, instead of performing vigilante justice, he might offer his services to configure the access points of the places he frequents for free, to ensure everyone has access. Stomping on someone else's bandwidth isn't the right way to do it.

And, again, if access is so critically important to him, then he should buy it rather than freeload.

Exactly. The problem here is the owners have not configured their access points as well as they might to serve the broader public good. In an ideal world, each of the restaurants, cafes, airports, bus terminals, subway station, etc., owners would be fully technologically savvy, and be able to prevent the ill that the OP feels has befallen the public.

That mythological world is not the one we have, where the owners of such establishments just buy an off-the-shelf solution and plug it in. They are business owners, not IT specialists, and many (most?) are not big enough to support someone like that on salary. Nor should they. The corner mom-and-pop coffee shop should be concentrating on making a good cup of joe.

If the OP really needs such connectivity, he should buy it. Lots of companies would gladly take his funds, and these days, globally available wireless internet in most cities in the developed world just isn't that expensive. Especially if your lifestyle, or income, depends on it.

I agree, but replace the words "bad programming" with "lazy programmers".

It is really no different than instances of "you have 1 message(s) waiting". Back in the day, when bytes and cycles really counted, saving the execution of a statement, and the program code space associated with checking for 1 or more-than-1 was understandable, maybe even desirable, but now? The only reason is a lazy programmer.

The disturbing part of this is that you see status text like this all the time, even in decidedly new code; there are lazy programmers everywhere.

Has the OP ever tried to run Windows on a minimum-spec'd system? Even XP on a system with those specs frequently goes into pauses long enough to make the operator (me) ask, "did it crash, or what?"

To paraphrase what others have posted, the operating system is the means, not the end. It should be small and lightweight. And it should bloody well not require beefier hardware than necessary. I've found that even generously spec'd systems still bog down under Windows as unknown processes kick off to do who knows what sort of housekeeping.

Fast and resource non-intensive should be an uncompromiseable goal of an OS.

I'm surprised to learn that the other parts of guns aren't also tracked with issued serial numbers. Heck, if you were to use matching numbers, it would create a secondary market for higher-valued all-original guns, based on what happens in the automobile enthusiast circles.

So, please explain how producing more food where it's needed -- like through crops that are higher yield without fertilizers, like these students demonstrated -- isn't addressing the problem.

There will always, always be a resource inequity. We have between 6,000 and 10,000 years of human history to demonstrate this observation. No magic wand is going to evenly distribute resources, and there are plenty of people who would say it's an ill-formed idea in any case.

So if, for the sake of argument, you accept that there will be resource inequity, transporting food is a really bad idea as it spoils quickly, moreover, the costs of transportation to locations where it is needed roughly increases with the amount of need, as such areas are typically away from infrastructure.

If you can't transport food, and there isn't a magic wand to even out everyone's access to resources, why, exactly, is producing more food locally not a good idea?

Certain technology can be declared illegal. Like guns in certain countries. Radar detectors in some US states. Blue lights on non-police cars in most US states. Mechanisms for counterfeiting printed money. Cloning of human embryos. Et cetera. It's perfectly plausible for a society to declare some particular technology illegal.

Heck, even certain knowledge is illegal for the general public to own, let alone internalize, like plans to make nuclear bombs.

"Dude, you punched a f-ii-sh."

Frelling awesome!

The real point is, though, that although some of those redubbed conversations are like Jabberwoky, some exchanges are reasonable (and some are spot-on visual homonyms, like the fish interpretation above), demonstrating that lip reading is wildly underconstrained.

Excoriated --- here are a few choice excerpts (there was some positive language, but the panel really did come down hard in this report):

"The panel viewed this as a poor science return for such a large investment in a flagship mission."

"Despite identification of two EM1 science objectives, the proposal lacked specific scientific questions to be answered, testable hypotheses, and proposed measurements and assessment of uncertainties and limitations."

"It was unclear from both the proposal and presentation that the Prime Mission science goals had been met. In fact, it was unclear what exactly these were. "

"After the presentation and subsequent discussion within the panel during executive session, other questions were formulated and then presented to the Curiosity team. Unfortunately the lead Project Scientist was not present in person for the Senior Review presentation and was only available via phone. Additionally, he was not present for the second round of Curiosity questions from the panel. This left the panel with the impression that the team felt they were too big to fail and that simply having someone show up would suffice. The panel strongly urges NASA HQ to get the Curiosity team focused on maximizing high-quality science that justifies the capabilities of and capital investment in Curiosity."

"As Curiosity is a flagship mission, the panel was surprised by the lack of science in the EM1 proposal ..."

"In summary, the Curiosity EM1 proposal lacked scientific focus and detail."

Ah, let's get one thing straight here. The notion of a byte did not appear before computer science. Anything that measures bytes is ultimately CS-derived, even if marketing folks like to confuse people.