But hey maybe I am odd, I don't say "don''t wear that" I say "don't forget your knife"

Because its true, she shouldn't ever have to use it, and I hope she never does.... but if it ever happens, I hope she spills entrails on the sidewalk.

100% agreement. Well said.

Although there might be no shortage of self-employed Republicans, they don't really call the shots for the party. It's the very deep pockets who do.

In that way, both major American political parties are quite similar.

Figured I'd respond to the AC in this little sub-thread just for the heck of it.

Somthing that I've found to be extraordinarily interesting over the years of watching the police state in America continually ratchet up their insanity, vindictiveness, and brutality is that it's being noticed in all quarters.

YOu see comments about the police killing chihuahuas on sites dedicated to political disccussion on both the left and right. Over the past ten years I've watched a major political discussion site on the conservaitive side go from having huge contingents of "cops can do no wrong" brigades, to those posters being a very, very tiny (though vocal) minority.

It has been fascinating to watch.

Kids in the USA, DO NOT try and be a white hat unless you can do it untraceable and anonymously. You will be severely punished for doing something good here.

Damn. I had mod points yesterday. This is absolutely true, and I would hope that everyone understand that by now. Sadly, many don't see the police state until it's boot is stomping them.

Thanks for the link to the Bacon and Hobbes. That rocked.

It's stressful continually failing to do a job you're just not able to do, and it's painful working with these guys, trying not to get completely frustrated. Meanwhile onshore workers get dumped on and we end up doing more work to cover for the offshore guys while salaries drop and it's hard to move because a lot of the big guys are going with the management fad... Code quality is visibly dropping worldwide.

I've been noticing that the offshore 'resources' I've been dealing with have been getting worse and worse over time. In recent years the level of incompetence of both the offshore 'resources' and the H1B folk I've been dealing with has reached levels I'd have never thought possible.

I see Mate and Cinnamon editions.

Will there be a KDE spin that is LTS?

This sounds so reminiscent of things like the Mandelbrot set, where there are always adjacent points with different outcomes, no matter how far down you go. Who knows if it really is related?

Good point, and yes, it probably is.

The notion of a spherical earth dates from around 400 B.C.

Indeed.

Eratosthenes (276 BCâ" 195 BC) did a pretty good job of calculating the actual size of the Earth. The wikipedia article on this is pretty well done. Given the tech he had at his disposal, I think his assumptions and calculations are pretty amazing.

Brazil is considered one of the world leader in ethanol, the country with the most successful alternative fuel program, one of the cheaper (if not cheapest) ethanol technologies and, by using sugar cane, one of the most energy efficient. All cars here can easily handle up to E40, and most cars can handle any mix of gas and ethanol. Oh, and the flex fuel technology for any kind of mix? Mostly developed here also.

I'm not one of those gaia worshipping eco-nuts but I've long thought that we should be producing more flex vehicles that will run on just about anything from e-0 to e-100, then we should let market economics deal with pricing. Making alcohol out of corn is stupid. Sugar cane, as you mention is one of the more efficient ways to do it. From what I understand saltgrass is pretty good for it too. The basic problem is, none of this is really based on economics. It's all politics and power, with a rather unhealthy dose of religious zealotry thrown in the mix.

I would love if if I had a choice of what kind of fuel to power my vehicles with. If instability in muslim lands cause the price of gas to skyrocket, which seems to happen occasionally because death and destruction seems to be built into their religion, then we'd be able to switch to other alternatives. You'd take a hit on mileage, because as has been discussed here up thread, there is nothing you can do about the energy density of alcohol vs. petrol. However, you'd know that up front and be able to make intellegent decisions about it. As it is, with government mandating this and that, and making sure their political buddies are paid off in the front-loaded primary states, we're living with the worst of both worlds, we're still hostage to those muslim nut-jobs, and at the same time are subsidizing inefficient methods of alcohol production.

I don't give a crap about carbon. what I care about is that you need energy to run an industrialized society. We should be going about it intellegently, rather than the haphazard ways we are.

Well done. If I had mod points, you'd have 'em.

Rather than 'plant haters', I think the term 'floraphobic' would be more apt these days.

It does make it unsolvable, but anyone who knows what they are doing with a cube can pretty quickly determine that it has been 'hacked' in this way. First thing I do when solving the cube is to check the corners. It's obvious that something is wrong if certain combinations come up. If you do the same kind of thing with one of the middle cubes it's a little less obvious, and is similarly unsolvable.

Yes, there is generally a difference between an 'arm' and 'ordinance', however it was clearly not something the founders would have cared much about. At the time, it was perfectly legal to own ordinance such as cannon. In fact it was formally recognized as such, in the Constitution itself. Article 1, Section 8, specifically refers to the "grant letters of marque and reprisal" as a power of Congress. Letters of Marque are issued to private warships, among others. In the day a private warship would pretty much require the private ownership of cannon.

My Dad won't read Wikipedia either. He gets his information from Fox News.

Wikipedia is useless for anything political unless you happen to agree with the political slant of the article.

Want information about metalurgy, great. Wikipedia rocks for that.

Want formation about anything where there is political finger pointing? Not so much.

Hypocrites .. that's what I think those that support gay marriage are. They don't give a flip about equality, they only want to force their moral beliefs on those that disagree, and enable a very small group of select people to get benefits. If they truly wanted equality, they would fight to ELIMINATE all benefits tied to being married. Tax laws could be changed to allow for household incomes to be used. Social Security survivor-ship benefits could be simply modified to allow for one person to receive them, and set several rules (such as living together for a number of years while working and paying social security taxes). D

Well said. While I don't agree with everything you had to say, I agree with the sentiment almost entirely.

What we are seeing is a repetition of the pathologies that have driven witch hunts in the past. I think it's amazing how much power the press has given such a tiny percentage of the population to demand that they be obeyed lest bad things befall the dissenters. It's astounding to watch it in action, and mirrors many dark times in the history of our civilizations.