Class Action Suit filed in PA.

Good luck getting company in Ukraine to cough up any money. It's not like they're part of the EU or something....

So they're going to settle on the most restrictive member nation's copyright rules?

Or require every nation but one to change their copyright laws? Yeah, that'll be interesting.

>> Wednesday's test was conducted at Cape Canaveral in Florida, and saw a test vehicle - carrying no humans, only a dummy - hurled skywards by a set of powerful in-built thrusters.

Strange. I don't remember reading anything about there being a member of Congress on board..

Now that's just insulting to crash test dummies everywhere!

Eventually, the doctor will give up and bill the patient....

At which point, you challenge the bill, ask both doctor and insurance company to prove that the bill isn't covered by insurance, and argue about it for a couple more years....

I call up my doctor and dentist and make a reservation and am in with a few days and at a time I want, never fails.

Oddly enough, that's just how it works here. Last time I came down with something (two weeks ago, still not quite over it, since it's a two-week+ disease), I called my GP, got an appointment later that morning...

This was never about self-driving cars. This was always about wiping out an entire employment sector and piping even more profit up to the top. And yes, that is a bad thing.

Yeah, and all those combines and harvesters were invented to wipe out farmers and sharecroppers and such. And it WORKED!! There are hardly any sharecroppers left anymore. And not a damn lot of farmers.

Okay, everyone raise their hands who thinks we should disallow that sort of thing, and go back to the early 19th century way of doing things, with one person in three being a farmer?

It should also be noted that most of us are programmers. Once upon a time, "computer" was a job description. Which we, collectively, have put out of business. What's worse, "computers" used to be one of the few technical field dominated by women...so, should we go back to the old days of women "computers" and no electronics? Really?

Face it, progress happens. And removing the need for unnecessary jobs is a good thing. Unless you're a Luddite, of course (you remember the Luddites, right? they objected to machinery taking away the jobs of regular guys)....

Yup, if it wasn't Microsoft, all kinds of other companies could have dominated the desktop market. IBM (OS/2), Quarterdeck (DESQview/X), Apple (Mac OS), NeXT (NeXT), any number of *nix companies (X11), and others.

Microsoft got big because they got the consumers interested, and questionable deals with vendors.

Plenty of people only know the tunnel-vision version of computer history and they believe Microsoft is it. They either don't remember (or are too young to have seen) software boxes (ahh, the good ol' days) had logos to indicate which OS they worked on so you could pick the right one.

Saying "We're sure he had..." without evidence is not evidence. They have to have the evidence that he actually *did* have what is claimed.

That's the hard part. They have to gather the evidence to get the conviction. Without evidence, they can't get a conviction. At least if you have a competent attorney. If you have a crappy one, you'll get the 5 years because they talked you into taking a pre-trial plea agreement. That's how innocent people go to jail.

One of the authors thinks the problem may have been due to a leak at a storage tank on the surface. Emphasis on the "may".

Plus there's the concentration issue - parts per trillion doesn't make for much of a problem in any case. Even the authors didn't make this out to be a health problem....

Of course, I could be mistaken, and the companies involved could be part of a massive conspiracy to slaughter Pennsylvanians by the millions.

Yeah, on second thought, I'll have to go with the conspiracy thing. After all, everyone knows that even one part per trillion is too much, and the spill at the storage tank was probably just meant to cover up the deliberate poisoning of the water supply in three counties in rural PA....

If you're kid is not learning because they're on Facebook (or Xbox, or the iPad, or whatever) all the time, you've FAILED as a parent. For some reason, that's accepted nowadays.

I work in schools.
I work in "elementary" schools (we don't call them that, but similar age range).
I work in private "elementary" schools.

I find it vaguely ironic that someone who can't spell "your" (or someone who can't choose the proper form from among "your" and "you're", if you prefer), and who works in various schools, thinks he can pinpoint the failure point in education...

Just curious, did YOUR parents fail you in education?

The lack of scientists at this hearing would be of interest if the last time the House had a meeting about drug laws they had invited drug dealers. Or drug users.

Note, by the by, that the real reason no scientists were invited is that scientists don't contribute meaningful amounts to reelection campaigns....

Who's the eldest being in Middle Earth, Tom Bombadil or Treebeard?

Bombadil was "eldest and fatherless".

Treebeard was merely the eldest Ent. Note that the Ents were awakened to sentience by the Elves, so Galadriel (who was among the Firstborn of the Elves) was older than Treebeard as well.

Note that the age of any particular Elf is problematic in general - very few of the Firstborn were mentioned by name, which is not the same as "only a few of the Firstborn were still alive in Middle Earth (much less in Valinor)".

Is "Sauron" (lit. "abominable") a name that he despises and does not permit his underlings to speak, and if so, why does he have his messenger refer to him as "Lord Sauron the Great" and a servant refer to himself as "the mouth of Sauron"?

Because they weren't speaking English, and it's annoying to have names for characters vary within a literary work? Or possibly because the comment about "he permits his name to be neither spelt nor spoken" was an exaggeration by Gandalf (the wisest of the Maiar) when speaking of Sauron (the most powerful of the Maiar)?

Why does Gandalf warn people against using devices "of an art deeper than we possess ourselves" when talking about the palantir and yet have no problem with with the fellowship using all sorts of magical items of arts deeper than they possess (glowing elvish swords, daggers from the barrow, the Phial of Galadriel, Galadriel's box of earth, etc)?

Because he meant "an art deeper than *I* possess" when he said that (he was using the Royal "we"...). The work of Feanor was beyond even the Maiar, unlike sharp pointy things made by Elves and handed out by same to diverse characters....

So Galadriel knows Sauron's thoughts that concern the elves, but didn't know of Saruman's betrayal, or never saw relevant to mention it to Gandalf?

Saruman was NOT an elf (it's not clear what he was - perhaps a Maiar like Gandalf). So "thoughts that concern the elves" didn't apply. Note that the thoughts in question weren't "thoughts of interest to elves", but "thought about the elves".

Oh, and the mithril shirt pretty much had to be hard enough to stop a blade, or there was no point to it. Most likely the "supple as linen" was marketing-speak for "amazingly light and flexible by the standards of a mailshirt". What, you didn't think they had marketing in Middle Earth? Marketing was one of those evils even older than Sauron that was mentioned in passing....

From memory.

Of course, my mnemonic for D-Day is "Twas the Dark of the Moon on the sixth of June in a Kenworth hauling logs..."

As to Midway, once upon a time, I read the History of the US Navy in WW2 (all fourteen volumes). One of the things mentioned there is that Yamamoto predicted that Japan would run amok in the Pacific for six months after Pearl Harbor...which was almost exactly the length of time from Pearl Harbor to Midway (off by only three days).

Remember 7/11 buddy. 7/11. ... I think today is 2 for 1 Slurpee day.