I'm know that the KFC recipe http://www.newsday.com/business/coca-cola-and-kfc-s-secret-formulas-are-safe-for-now-1.886055 and big mac Secret sauce http://www.walletpop.com/specials/closely-guarded-trade-secrets?icid=200100397x1210050216x1200602328# are trade secrets, not copyrights or patents. This technique means that they will never have their patents or copyrights expire on their items (haha, like copyrights really expire anymore...). They would also of course trademark the _name_ of these items. So it is not exactly that the recipes are copyrighted, just that they are secret and you aren't allowed to call something else by the same or similar name.

I'm know that the KFC recipe and big mac Secret sauce a href="http://www.walletpop.com/specials/closely-guarded-trade-secrets?icid=200100397x1210050216x1200602328#" are trade secrets, not copyrights or patents. This technique means that they will never have their patents or copyrights expire on their items (haha, like copyrights really expire anymore...). They would also of course trademark the _name_ of these items. So it is not exactly that the recipes are copyrighted, just that they are secret and you aren't allowed to call something else by the same or similar name.

In Canada I learned to think of right of way as being more like responsibility to yield. So in the crosswalk example, if cars see you at the crosswalk ready to cross, they should stop, however that doesn't mean you should just run into traffic if they aren't stopping. Same for stop signs and order of movement of cars. You may have the right of way, but if the other guy goes out of turn and you just drive into him, you are still going to be held liable, because _there was something you could have done to avoid the accident_.

Dog-Cow: Despite the fact that you are right, there really is no need for adding insult to the correction. Simply stating that the parent is incorrect and giving a correction is enough for rational discourse. Furthermore, you really don't have enough evidence to assert that the parent isn't bright; you only know that they were talking about something they didn't know about. Maybe they are very knowledgeable in other areas. Maybe they aren't very old and haven't had time to learn a lot of things. Adding insult only hurts someone else and does not add anything of value to the discussion. Perhaps this is a needlessly long post on something most don't care about. However some people love to toss in ad hominem attacks, and they only go to weaken the argument being presented (if one reads it critically) and increase hostility between parties.

Yes, UAE is very progressive. Anybody who chooses to expatriate and live in such a slave-state really can't complain if things go against them after a time. I would never trust a contract to work in Dubai, not only because it would violate my own moral code, but because anybody who chooses to live there is probably not someone I should trust.

There, fixed that for you

I see it as important to note that the parent's suggestion that an impartial body should be put in charge before an abuse of power can happen is not similar enough to the concept of "thought police" to bear the reference. The concept of "thought police" refers to an individual being punished for a crime that is entirely intellectual. In this case the parent is referring to the concept of replacing a provider of a service for an ostensibly more reliable provider of the same service. This is not a punishment. It would be like switching to a web hosting company that you think is going to be more reliable than your current one despite not having any troubles with the current one. It is not the same as throwing someone in jail because they don't like the government (1984) or throwing someone in jail because they might commit a crime (punishment preceding crime).

I am not going to comment as to whether I feel the current provider (US) is a better or worse choice than the UN or some other international, I just wish to point out that there is no 'punishment' and the reference to 1984 is out of place.

GNU/Linux can also do something similar to superfetch, using a daemon called preload: http://sourceforge.net/projects/preload. From linked website:

I have been using this daemon for a while now and have found it a) to speed up the loading of commonly used programs (since idle time is being used to load them into memory) b) not to cause any noticeable slowdown in system responsiveness (since it runs at such a low priority).

In the *really* *real* olden days it was missing teeth in the gears.

I have seen both myspace and facebook and would suggest that myspace is significantly worse than facebook in terms of crud. Of course youtube comments trump both of them.

Haha..yes well the idea is that when you are down to a quarter cup a day or something you just quit...

I find that the best way to get away from caffeine addiction is to cut back. If you halve your intake every day, then you likely won't experience any withdrawal symptoms, but will have a logarithmic recovery time. Another option is to consume half a cup (or less) of coffee when you start to feel withdrawal. It doesn't take much caffeine to clear up the effects.

Actually, w3m (with w3m-img extension) is great for some things. For example, if you are looking through technical documentation then w3m is fast and discards most of the crap that you didn't want to read anyhow. I also like how it brings you into vim when you edit a multiline textbox. That said, I usually use firefox, since it supports javascript, flash, plugins and real page rendering.

Hello Kitty.

I don't like to be on this side of the argument, but here goes. The critical difference is that there is a reasonable purpose to the mythbusters having and using the substance. I'm sure they went through all the proper channels/licensing required to do the experiment. If a farmer buys a bunch of "enriched" manure, I doubt that would be a problem either. If some guy buys a bunch of stuff that can be used to create explosives and has no discernible purpose for it, then it is reasonable to be suspicious and investigate (not assume guilt, not jail, not ransack their place, just take a look and see why). The way things work is far from perfect and there are huge problems with the patriot act and the general 'they might be terrorists' rationalization, but in general it makes sense to be more suspicious of activity without explanation than activity with a reasonable explanation.