pffffttt.. Wall-E doesn't pay as much attention to accurate micro gravity physics.

There is a class action lawsuit in progress against the judges, and like 16 other parties. I don't know if this girl is part of it.

At least it's not the WMD Particle...

Right, Some competition can be harmful. It is specifically harmful when it encourages the restriction of open communication of information and prevents people from having the best available tools for their work/research.

This is slashdot, so that's a question I feel pretty comfortable begging. Compare competition between proprietary software v. competition between open source solutions.

The information associate with these physics projects are open. Heck, once the LHC is up, they are going to be doing crowd computing for the analysis.

While they are competing for resources, somewhat, the tools they are creating do have other purposes so it isn't too wasteful. The information is open and available. This is good competition.

The new version of AVG doesn't actually do that anymore. It's pretty neat.

That wouldn't actually help. You still have to create that power when you are cruising, so it is more efficient just to take it from the engine directly.

You are passing the power through the whole power train, loosing energy at each step, and then convert the airflow back to rotational momentum and then to energy. That's is a lot less efficient than just a belt.

I can't say anything at all about Webshield, but most commercial filtering software also blocks things like game sites and employment resources(job search sites, as well as sites with information about how much people in specific jobs get paid) .

They wouldn't have to pay for an anti-porn blacklist, so that saves them a little money and they probably offer services(or at least could) above and beyond just porn and IP filtering.

of course, by 'actionable' I mean libelous. grrr...

In the United States obvious satire is not actionable. Basically, a reader of normal intelligence would have to expect to believe it, while the person posting it does not have a good faith belief that it is true(which is also required in the US for libel).

So, if I made the statement "Todd Knarr has sex with farm animals!" it would be actionable, because to someone who is farmilar with Todd Knarr it would be believable that he had sex with 'farm' animals, but I don't have a good faith belief that the animals he has sex with were raised on farms.

Windows 7 is a direct result of R&D for Windows Vista. It is being marketed well and computers have caught up with the extra overhead. They've made the UI pretty enjoyable and toned down UAC.

Even the money they wasted on vista, is going to show some pretty decent returns for them. They are going to be selling bits and pieces of Vista's code for, probably, more than a decade.

I know, "woosh". Of course the parent is being satirical, but that doesn't mean they aren't raising a real point.

I don't know, but Japan does a pretty good job of innovation. Most likely it is because individuality can never be fully suppressed. Germany has one of the most oppressive cultures in Western Europe, and they invent their asses off.

I don't think it's a big of an issue as you make it out to be. If they really need it, they can just pick a reasonably wealthy area(middle classish) and let it do it's own thing for a few years.

Bohemian districts will pretty much form on their own, and then it is just a matter of taking the already educated and now free thinking residents and finding them useful work.

Business, for most airlines, is a compromise between first class and steerage. It's actually pretty nice, but it isn't inexpensive.

That's pretty sad. I've met a lot of intelligent and articulate conservatives. I've managed to covert more than a few of them on particular issues, and the Republican Party has managed to drive plenty of people over to our side. At least those ones are demonstrably open minded.

You haven't met one? Your own bias may have a bit to do with that. Folks don't respond well to being insulted and they can pick up on prejudice in other people.

Well, it's kinda nice, you know, open minded liberals don't exist. That's a solid base. Conservative can be convinced to switch sides, and once they become liberals they can be counted on not to change back.

Your ideology seems to be doomed. I'm a little worried about what a lack of debate will do to our legislature, but all that progress will be nice if they don't destroy the country.

Do you have any understand at all of why Hulu blocks based on country?

I like that Hulu exists and is able to afford the licenses to distribute content. Unfortunately, that is not compatible with international distribution, due to the desires of the people who own and control the content.

That's more of a copyright issue than ESPN screwing you over. The league or federation that runs the sport owns the rights to how it is distributed. ESPN doesn't have the rights to distribute the content outside of America, so you get screwed.

Same thing with Hulu and Pandora and all the other great services available here. Y'all don't get to use them, because they would have to purchase additional licensing. Kinda like the BBC's iPlayer here in the states.

It pretty much is the same crap as regioning, and the same folks are to blame, big IP or whatever you want to call them. Not the folks who run the websites.

ESPN is being a bunch of greedy bastards, but that isn't why you can't see the site outside of the US.