"Mule" is kind of a Kleenexed term these days. It's probably what kids today call a "UTV".

Funny story, a friend's dad had an old M274 out in the barn. We never managed to get it running. I guess that wasn't much of a story.

When you play a bridge tournament, you play as part of a 4-person team. All the cards are dealt and placed in boards such that once they're played, they're replaced back as the North, South, East, or West hand.

Now your team of 4 is split into two partnerships, one playing all the N/S hands, one playing all the E/W hands. For any given hand of N,S,E,W, what counts isn't what your partnership does on your cards (either N/S or E/W), it's the delta between what your other partnership scored and what you scored. So, if you and X are playing North/South, and your other team members are playing E/W, then for every hand its your score - their score becomes your team score for that deck of cards.

In this way, there is no element of luck. Every team plays the same cards, every team plays both pairings (N/S and E/W), and only the difference matters. It's pure skill, both in bidding what you will make, and then playing the cards to actually make your bid. You can "win" the deck by causing someone who bid a grand-slam to lose a trick, and get the maximum points for that deck to your team.

Bridge is a truly excellent game. Simple rules, but incredibly challenging to execute correctly every time.

Simon

There are rules. Either you have environmental protection laws or you don't. If you have them, don't start making exceptions to them because anyone who didn't get an exception and lost money as a result can (and should!) sue the everlasting shit out of you. If there's a problem with your laws, repeal them and replace them with more sensible ones.

bittorrent is used for lots of legitimate distribution outside of WoW, too. Just another case of a carrier selling a level of service they had no intention of supporting. "We'll advertise 'unlimited' [chuckle] data and leave the floodgates open for a few months so people think we're serious about service. We'll get a ton of new customers, then bring down the hammer as soon as we hit our subscriber target."

One time, he got the chore of painting his aunt's house. He went to the store, bought the paint, prepped the house, and painted it pink. His aunt was the only one who didn't think it was a hilarious way to find out about being colorblind.

...any time Microsoft has tried to pass itself off as reasonable and interoperational, it was a springboard attempt to find out who in the industry wants that from them, and then apply thumbscrews, handcuffs, hookers and blow as required to get those companies to see the world its way. That is, the Microsoft-centric, homogenous and locked-in up to their eyeballs, way.

Never. Ever. Ever. Ever.

EVER.

NEVER EVER trust Microsoft. They are the most self-interested company in the history of companies. Even Oracle looks shiny compared to Microsoft.

Why was this modded down? It's insightful.

Verizon is just plain psychotic. When they were advertising the upcoming 4G LTE service years ago, their advertising copy said users would be able to stream video and download HD movies. All kinds of wonderful things that weren't possible with the new caps they'd put on 3G. Then they rolled out LTE with the same caps as 3G. So, sure you could download Air Bud in HD but that'd be your data for the month.

Now they're all excited about XLTE doubling (or more) the speed available thru Verizon's network. I've seen those speeds and they're amazing. Absolutely freaking amazing. And totally useless to anyone without an unlimited account. WTF is a new customer supposed to do with 80 Mb/s down and 40 Mb/s up? That's the kind of speed I saw near Atlanta. Holy Hell, that's fast. Faster than any wired service I've had. And totally useless if you can only move 2 gigs a month. Why are they spending all this money speeding up their network when it's wasted on their customers. It's crazy.

And the numbers Verizon is throwing around don't make a lick of sense. (Of course, I can't find the exact numbers now so I'll guestimate.) They say around 20% of their customer base still has unlimited data. They say 95% of those people use less than 5 gigs of data per billing cycle. If those two statements are true, why is Verizon upset? They should be ecstatic. They cut off unlimited data in 2010 so they're claiming an amazing retention rate. And the vast, vast, vast majority of those people are overpaying for what they use. And they're paying full MSRP for unsubsidized equipment. Why on earth would Verizon want to rock that boat?

Yeah, because Apple didn't use an uncommon, DRM-enabled format. Nope.

Oh, wait. I'm being told that's exactly what they did. They sold their music in a format unsupported by any other portable player. And the first ipods only worked with Macs which, at the time, had a tiny percentage of the personal computer market.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say Sony's choice of format had nothing to do with their inability to corner the new portable audio market.

As far as I can tell, the Slashdot discussion styles always run about a year or two ahead of what happens in the more mainstream political areas. As a result, the political section being added was a symptom, not a cause.

Before 2004 it wasn't political? Seriously, that only means that you started watching politics around that time and are a republican. Slashdot had ALWAYS been political. In 2001, it was full of rah rah go US, US sucks and Bush sucks sentiments. Before that, political flamefests were less regular, but that's because the political scene in the US was less political.

That's like suing the contractor that built a freeway because the freeway was used to transport drugs. Even if, by some absurd chance, you win, there are a thousand other torrent sites out there and your movie was on them within hours. Knocking out a couple of those sites will have absolutely no effect on piracy. If you want to stop leaks go after the leaker. If you've got any sense at all, each of your DVD screeners has unique watermarks and can be traced to the person to whom it was issued. Fire that person, sue that person, and blacklist them. That at least would have a chance of reducing future leaks.

I remember the first time an employer realized that I had access to everything . She froze for a few seconds while she processed the idea, shrugged, and went on with her request.

You're going to learn things you don't want to know and see things people don't expect you to see. My least favorite experience was someone who had an email stuck in their outbox. "Subject Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: My widdle wuvvy bear From: Not His Wife" And thank you so much, preview line, for confirming the content. So, with a straight face and chipper tone, "Next time a message gets stuck, you can just select it and hit delete." I didn't add, "And you, of all people, should know better than to use company email to conduct that sort of activity because we archive everything. I just did an archive search for you last month."

My most favorite was when I was helping someone with some simple thing and minimized her browser to discover that her desktop wallpaper was a picture of her frolicking in a bikini. Again, just go on like it's nothing out of the ordinary. Heck, if I looked like that, I'd want to look at me all day, too. Oh, and there was an intern who, when she finished her assignment, cleared everything off her desktop except a topless pic of herself.

If I'd seen evidence of blatant criminal activity or harassment, I would have reported it to the person's manager and my boss and let them deal with it. But politics and gossip and salaciousness were ignored. I was employed to keep the equipment running, not be the morality police.