Yeah, but at least Zicam had to withdraw its Zinc Gluconate nasal sprays and nasal swabs after enough people lost their sense of smell to it.

Actually, the most common problem with standard HFS drives had nothing to do with file forks. There was no backup of the structures necessary for the integrity of the filesystem in standard HFS. With the not at all uncommon hard lock ups and reboots in MacOS 7.5* to 8.1 one structure is bound to get corrupted, especially if the caching policy for the write cache on the hard drive is set to write-back.

At any rate, the type of problems present in standard HFS are no longer a factor, backup superblocks and backup records are written to the filesystem on recent computers. Filesystem corruption is even less of a problem with journaled filesystems also now in use. The version of HFS+ filesystem used in MacOS X is far more reliable than a standard HFS filesystem on the classic MacOS.

* System 7.1.2 never happened, it was a bad dream, just like 7.5.2 and 7.5.3 Revision 2. Then again, System 7.5.4 was pulled within minutes of release upon discovery of a nasty filesystem corruption bug.

I always like the "Delayed Write Failed - data loss has occurred" pop up that shows up in the notification area after I hot unplug a removable NTFS volume even as much as a minute after copying files to it and with the drive set up for "quick removal." Yes, there is journaling in the NTFS filesystem, but that only guarantees the consistency and integrity of the filesystem, but not the contents of the files themselves. My response would be to use EXT2, except for a 3GB FAT32 partition containing the required drivers necessary for various OSes so that if you encounter a computer that can't read the EXT2 filesystem you can install drivers for it. If by some chance you are unable install drivers on the computer, hopefully 3GB is enough storage for what you are transferring. Also, consider using an external drive case with what ever ports you might normally like with Ethernet support as well. Carry along a USB ethernet adaptor that uses a reasonably common chipset and a crossover Ethernet cable as well, for those cases when installing EXT2 drivers is not an option, but using SMB over Ethernet is an option.

This assumes that your GPU can perform (or that you can deal without) double precision operations, can carrying out renormalization, offer rounding as well as chopping, and properly handle "Not a Number" or Infinity values by following the IEEE754 standards.

We'll see about that in 2Q10, the earliest that Fermi could be released. This assumes nVidia avoids bankruptcy and can get the steaming pile poo known as Fermi to actually work acceptably and reliably enough for general release to "consumers".

The classic MacOS had a feature similar to this, but it was abandoned by MacOS X. One type of metadata present for each file in the classic MacOS had a four character creator code and another four character file type code. The FourCC codes used currently in audio and video files were originally derived from this system. At any rate, unless the file type was "APPL" or "CNTL" it wasn't going to execute from the Finder unless the file type code was changed, a nontrivial, but not an impossible task for a user aiming to do something stupid. "APPL" and "CNTL" were obviously not file types assigned to files by any web browser by default unless the browser decoded the .hqx or .bin file automatically and determined the resultant file was an application. Executables in the Classic MacOS needed to be encoded specially due to the unusual structure of executable files. Files had two forks, a resource fork and data fork and each fork had critical parts that were needed for an executable to run as well as being separate, distinct structures in the filesystem. A file downloaded from the internet would be stored entirely as a data file with all of the data in the data fork and without any data in the resource fork and thus impossible to execute on its own without some sort of rearrangement by another application. Granted the file could still have a trojan, and while a file freshly downloaded off the internet with a .mp3 extension could be double clicked the file would be opened by iTunes. Assuming or course that the filetype codes were set by the browser automatically after detecting the file extension, but iTunes would puke on the file after realizing it was not mp3 audio. An enterprising idiot could still decode the same trojan into an application with StuffIt even if the file contained a .mp3 extension to the file name and run it, but you really would have to work hard to be that stupid.

Currently however, one operation that might be useful that could be performed by a browser or a real-time scanner would be to check the contents and structure of the file to make sure it at least appears to match the a file of the same extension that matters to the OS and throw up a warning if the file is bad. Finding and alerting the user when the string "This program cannot be run in DOS mode" in a file in Windows or when the signature of an ELF or Mach-O binary appears unexpectedly in a file, might help. The problem I see is that while there are some techniques that could be implemented from the classic MacOS to improve the security of downloaded files, the changes would require reworking of the ABI (Application Binary Interface) among many other changes to both Windows and Linux to be workable. The compatibility issues that would crop up due to any major changes would be no fun either.

Meh, my preference would be that laws (and law makers) recognize the reality of a situation as well as the general long and short term goals of the society at large, but not to the exclusion of individuals. This does not imply a hands off approach in all cases or the necessity of laws in all cases. In other words, some in our society seem to like the idea of shaping society, and give quick, easy solutions. However, these individuals often do not seem to understand the technical problems that make implementations of their solutions complicated and annoying for legitimate users. These implementations end up impeding the product's usability for legitimate users but do not significantly impede illegitimate users, like commercial pirates. I'd also like to come out and say that selling an infringing copy of a copyrighted work for monetary gain is a far worse act than noncommercial copyright infringement.

All and all I'm not sure that creating a film board that handed out grants for film making would be a bad thing, assuming it was shielded from political pressures. While PBS doesn't produce a great deal in the way of dramas or comedies, news programs on PBS like "Frontline" and science programs like "Nova" are far superior to similar counterparts by the commercial US news media and shows on the "Discovery Channel", respectively. I also find it hard to compare the programming on commercial talk radio favorably to the programming on NPR. By contrast, how many PG-13 movies were released in the last year that would have improved if non-gratuitous scenes that would have elevated it to an R rating had been added? Or for that matter, how many movies were obviously neutered to comply with content restrictions set by other countries? Don't count movies released at the end of the year that are blatant self-indulgent attempts by Hollywood to receive an Academy Award. My point is that the output from commercial interests are not inherently better than output from government sources. With that in mind, government output is not necessarily better in all cases than output from commercial interests either.

Also, do you remember a couple of years ago when the Bush administration sparked an outcry when it attempted to neuter "Frontline" and make PBS programming more conservative? The problem was that PBS was supposed to have editorial independence and not be interfered with in a politically motivated manner by whoever occupied Congress or the Presidency. It is why PBS is not supposed to be state controlled media, but instead, state funded media, but independent of the government, like the BBC.

No, I was thinking of something more like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

It also details several possible solutions. Public and private grants are options, there are still others. I wouldn't mind government funding of movies, it would probably mean less output of abysmal quality from Michael Bay, like Transformers 2. In any case, the problem is that movies and other video recording have the same barriers to exchange as they once did. They are no longer scarce goods, unless there is an attempt to make them scarce through DRM. However, DRM will never entirely secure information. When DRM does its half-assed job it ends up decreasing the utility of the product for for legal purchasers

In any case, would you say that you worship Ayn Rand or do you prefer to just say "Heil Hitler"?

The another option might be having the government fund the movie industry and accepting that movies will be copied and traded. The idea would be treating movies and music like a public good like the military, law enforcement, health insurance in some countries, or the Park Service, for instance. A public good is something that everyone can derive utility from, and does not disappear when utilized. As a result, public goods do not suffer from issues related to scarcity as a traditional scarce good. However, public goods are something that is difficult for some of its users to be willing to pay for outright. The government through taxes comes to mind as a source of money. In the case of movies, the low cost of hard drive space, faster computers, and higher internet speeds along with the ability to make perfect copies has resulted in a situation where movies are no longer the scarce good that they once were. Additional law enforcement directed at those committing small time not-for-profit copyright infringement is unlikely to work, and not even likely to be tolerated by the population at large. On the other hand, the government could also fund movie production, either directly or indirectly through funding non-profit non-partisan funding organizations. I realize that government funding may sound unpalatable now, but lets talk in 15 to 20 years after your energy is worn down by fruitless attempts to make movies a scarce good again. (Hint: DRM is entirely incapable of solving the problem. If a movie needs to be decrypted in order to be played, someone will figure out how to decrypt the movie using a separate unauthorized method and then will have an identical unencumbered copy.)

Fast motion like a quick pan usually end up looking like jerky poo at the 24fps used in 35mm film. The frame rate is too low and one no longer sees the action as a smooth continuous motion, but as more of a slide-show kind of effect occasionally seen on some 3D computer games with substandard hardware. The 60i that NTSC offers is an improvement, but the 60p available with HTDV is better. Interpolation of frames can make fast motion on 24p films appear less jerky, but it is still no substitute for having actually filmed more frames to begin with. If you'd like we could also argue about the relative color gamuts available to the initially recorded film or the digital sensor. Then there is the actual color gamut of the film used edit the movie and the film used for master print for the movie. Then there is the color gamut of the mass produced copy of the film of moderately crappy quality that is sent to the theaters. For home viewing, the color gamut used for recording to DVD format and Blu-Ray format, and the color gamut of the LCD, CRT, DLP, or Plasma display used to display the movie in a home are also points to consider.

Show me a graph with the volume of ice over time as well and I might care. If there is 16*10^6 km^2 that averages say 1 m (a random number) in thickness or if another situation involves the same amount of area, but now the ice is 10 m thick, there is a huge difference. With 10 m of ice a warm summer will leave more surface area of ice behind than 1 m at the end of the summer, obviously. Obviously having thicker ice that stays around reflecting heat due to the high reflectivity of ice for more of the year would make the global climate cooler. However, that information is not present in that graph, and a trend towards thinning ice is something that would indicate a warmer climate and would also indicate that less ice may be present in the future, with more warming.

Also, an animated map showing the age and thickness would also be useful as well, but I would like a pony as well. Or perhaps you could submit to a beating with a cluestick, but I don't expect any of this out of you or any other AGW deniers who are not climatologists.

Also, try reading this link so that you might understand the frustration that many of us with physical science degrees have with the uneducated:

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Myths/Myth_Science.html#Education

Just because a consensus group of scientists cannot simplify a conclusion into terms that you already understand is not a valid reason for you to reject their conclusion. Attacking their methodology as being politically motivated without some concrete statement or evidence, cherry picked e-mails are not evidence. Of course, attacking their methods with ignorant, irrelevant complaints is not valid. If you want to make informed criticism of the evidence they are using, then why aren't you in graduate school right now studying to become a materials engineer or a climatologist?

I hear enough about the "perspective" of Fox News to know that it isn't worth my time to listen to them, the "reporting" mixes in opinion blatantly, an actual news organization at least tries to appear neutral by attempting to be aware of their bias and tempering it. On the other hand, Fox revels in its bias and seems to even try to amplify it. The denial or omission of easily proven facts by Fox News because these facts don't fit with the Fox News view of the world makes the network lose credibility as well. I guess that it would not be so bad if their reporting at least tried to explain the context of a situation, but instead, the editors allow what can only be intentional errors. Having opinionated commentators separate from the reporting is fine in a news organization, but the anchors at Fox News often add their own bias and opinion into the mix or instead parrot the biases and opinions that they are given. If any of their commentators were actually intelligent and interesting I might have a different opinion, but instead are blatantly ignorant and try to avoid increasing their level knowledge and understanding. There is perhaps some contextual information in the statements to be made by those on Fox News. Which, I suppose means that at least that they aren't just running SCIgen on a new vocabulary list of words each day. Still the statements fall short of actually being reasonable, rational, factual, and reflecting the real world. When Fox News announces that it is reforming itself in an acceptable fashion, I may check it out again. However, until that time I just don't care.

Seriously, in terms of credibility, I would consider Fox news less credible and informative, in general, than the "People's Daily" at http://english.people.com.cn/ which is an organ of the Chinese Communist Party. Hell, Fox News makes Aljazeera look unbiased. Even without a direct comparison to Fox News, Aljazeera is still reasonably credible, truthful, and has a fair degree of editorial independence.

There are still people making moonshine, illegally, these days. However, I don't think that the marijuana plant after it has been bred to contain more THC is very "natural" any longer. Currently, coming up with a dangerous combination of caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol is not easy. Add THC into the mix and if one uses it carelessly with alcohol, it is a recipe for death from the synergistic effects of the two chemicals or for extremely impaired driving. It also doesn't help that long term abuse of THC can cause psychosis. Both of these outcomes are good reasons why marijuana should not ever be legal. There are probably prescription drugs with fewer side effects and interactions than THC that would be less harmful if legalized.

And you will receive Social Security at retirement age regardless of the whether or not you need payments from Social Security to support yourself. In fact, the amount of one's payments from Social Security are based mostly on one's income before retirement, so the more money you make, the more money you receive. I suppose this is better than using those funds to improve the lives of those living in poverty in a rural areas without indoor plumbing. One might think that someone with twenty million dollars in assets might be able to support themselves without Social Security until they were 140 years old, assuming they retired at 65 years of age.