If they can't afford someone to reply to the correct article, they can still afford a $5 wench.

ROT-10 is safer, especially when used on ancient wooden chests.

Wow! That's the combination to the staple holding the energy source to my battery-powered equine robot -- the right one, not the wrong one.

Perhaps "wouldn't mind" is the wrong word.

We get it, NSA. You're going to break into my computer, spy on everything I do, 24/7, keep me under your microscope. For "national security." Got it. But as long as you're fucking me in the ass...Jesus Christ could you nail the assholes who are holding schools for ransom? Do the whole "at least the trains run on time" thing?

(I know Mussolini's trains didn't, but...try.)

Incidentally, the only reason I have a FB account is to coordinate art/music projects. However, FB chat is just too unreliable to use for anything too intense. I guess I could go back to the likes of ICQ, which I used to use with the less techy friends back in the day.

This wouldn't be an issue for the typical /.er, but it's hard to "sell" IRC with all its quirks when they see something like FB chat working without any extra config. Even basic IRC usage needs some setting up with the servers, and running the client on a separate shell account (aka 1960 tech, why would anybody use text terminals in the age of bling) would be rather hardcore.

Of course, the main problem is really about trust: you can receive messages offline only if you choose a third party like FB to store them. My non-techie friends basically need something more reliable than FB, so I guess I could go back to the likes of ICQ, or whatever is the closest equivalent today.

I haven't checked the latencies -- there's probably nothing wrong with SMTP itself, but the practical implementations are wildly different, due to different application realms. Email is more like a replacement for snailmail letters, and the infrastructure with multiple server routes and technologies (such as IMAP at the receiving end) is not optimized for simplicity and speed. Conversely, IM is closer to face-to-face talk, and the speed/simplicity is usually realized by minimizing different layers of software, at the expense of flexibility and independence (e.g. Facebook chat).

I guess you could make an email client with an IM-like interface and do some tweaks to minimize latencies, but there are good reasons why these are separate technologies.

This weekend I saw a guy apparently picnicking across the road from my house. After a while I went over to see WTF, and turns out he was working for a mapping company (and the company drone was flying overhead, snapping photos). He told me that their maps are accurate to within 1/8th inch.

Often river embankments are grassy mounds, but they're more for seasonal flood control than tsunamis. The tsunami walls I've seen along beaches are very much concrete walls, and while they do have a roadway along the top and sloped sides with steps at intervals and the occaisional roadway leading up to them, they are anything but attractive.

It's my understanding that the flight deck by international regulation is a "no alone" zone, meaning that when the pilot left, a flight attendant should have entered the flight deck so that the copilot was not alone. This rule is why it made sense to have a "Locked" position on the door.

The real question, to me, is, why was the flight attendant not on the flight deck while the pilot was away?

Tried Mosh instead of ssh? Supposed to be better over dodgy links.

No, no mockery implied. I actually am Catholic and believe in the fairy tales.

My question was rhetorical, though. Non-believers, like most of /., would reject God even if they believed he existed because they don't agree with his words and actions. They don't like him. My point was the main example we have of one sentient being creating another, the creations don't seem to like their creator much.

I've never thought of Facebook messenger as anything more than a random web chat, a bolt-on feature of the whole antisocial media site. However, email isn't really a fair comparison, as it doesn't allow actual realtime chat. That's what IRC is for, and you get to keep your logs as you please on your own machine. I guess the same applies to any of the newer IM protocols, as long as it's an independent application you control.

BTW, what would you guys suggest to wean non-technical friends off FB chat, given that IRC might be a little too much hassle with all the servers and keeping their computer on all the time?

A collective entity is sometimes treated like a plural in sentences, as explained in The Economist style guide. I agree that Reuters should be singular, for several reasons, but it's understandable that people sometimes overshoot with the pluralization.

I guess "Reuters" looks explicitly plural, but it was founded by a chap called Reuter, and once called Reuter's Telegram Company, so the current name is probably just a typographical contraction. IMHO, it's obvious that a business entity should be singular, even if it represents a collective effort, that's pretty much the idea behind corporations.

Scientists discover this thing called neuroplasticity.