You just mocked the essential point of this whole question. Drives if they fail (other than from abuse) will usually fail in the first few days of use. My question is why are you here mocking anything at all?

This used to be a place to learn interesting technology from interesting and smart people. You won't notice that none of them are still around and there aren't even any good stories on the front page anymore "because you just showed how stupid you are on the internet".

This would be fraudulent for the body that is supposedly responsible for the money. They would be tainting the US Dollar in a real way that wouldn't go unnoticed.

I agree except for anything to do with magic. Developers are just a special class of user, so I really think the attitude you describe is harmful. UI designers tend to look down on "developers" because they make shitty guis ITNSHO; but those shitty guis are just designed for Ultra class computer users. I just made that up and you GUI designers better respect that. Their is a big spectrum of user and its kind of a joke to expect people to program systems they can't even work on without psychological or carpal damage. Unity works good for my Mom, you just need to realize it isnt usable for a certain class of users.

Twitter is a fundamentally stupid idea. It is like trying to run all of the mailing lists in the world from one server (and by 'like' I mean exactly the same) The end result is half as useful and twice as shitty. Seriously, write a web2.0 listserv interface and you will amaze tweeters. You can tweet with email holy cow!

Yes, it's a mailing list, suprise!

The magical thinking around chi alchemy is the result of Western charlatans taking what was effectively an 100% practial art and science and turned marketed it into a magical pill that heals all ills by next Tuesday. Protip: That ain't the way it works.

To make it clear what acupuncture is: It was believed that directly massaging another person with your hands drains your energy over the long term, leading to a shorter life. The needles were introduced to eliminate the need for this contact. Also the acupuncture/qigong meridians along with the 5 phase theory are the practical result of several thousands of years of Chinese culture. P-R-A-C-T-I-C-A-L. Yes, you can call it psuedo science, but you would be ignoring the many many many instances of real people affected in real ways.

I compare acupuncture and qigong to time travel. Imagine if you were a time traveler and you wanted to convince someone who never *directly experienced* it that it was real. It isn't possible. The only way is to feel it yourself.

Acupuncture is based on lines of tendons and fascia "meridians" connecting between extremities and organs. Now "chi" at it's simplest level is nothing more than stimulating certain groups of nerves at will. And chigong is studying your internal alchemy to differentiate between the many different plexuses of nerves. For example I can concentrate on the arch of my foot up the inside of my thigh and stimulate my kidneys and adrenals. Tell me it's psuedoscience, so what? It's real to me. You just kind of have to shrug at skeptics, because they refuse to experience they can never be "convinced".

The book that really made it click for me was ironically a Qigong for Women book I think by Ferraro. But the teachers with the most complete work are Mantak Chia (internal) and Yang Jwing-Ming (external). Any book by either of those two will teach you the true science of chi, but you have to experience it for it to mean anything. All I'll say is they cure cancer with qigong, search for the studies its real; and if I got cancer I wouldn't be poisoning myself with radiation I'd be doing kungfu.

How is it an arbitrary view that UNIX is the one true way?

Even if everything else you say is technically true, wouldn't
this project benefit from using the lingua franca of computing?
Or is their a hidden benefit from once again poorly recreating UNIX?
Is their a reason I should learn a new interface every time I pick up
a new device? Strange = Another waste of my time.

I find it silly that you talk about engineering design decisions and then
put down UNIX, the computer system designed by and for software engineers. I say
get a grip.

There may be no such stings now, but what about when they sign this super secret copyright treaty?

That's a seriously useful tip. You just changed the way I work.

I recommend Qalculate for scientific calculations. It has a large number of units and constants and a list of functions that really is awesome. Also a C++ api.

Yes this is "the queer calculator", but I'm certain it won't affect you sexually in case that bothers you. That said, it may rock your world computationally. Raise the well manicured fist!

And IT is still the industry that refuses any form of unionization. Everybody is too smart and too privliged because of the technicality of what they do to see the benefits of working together to make things better for us.

And before you start flaming, think where you would be if you were actually on your own, if you had to code your own OS, compiler, library and every other piece of software you use in your job. Yeah, but you are a lone wolf. Keep it up IT

Yeah, or the Patriot act. Gotta love peoples' capacity to put their heads up their asses. All the simpletons who support Obama like he actually is good for the US make me cry.

Only one thing will fix our broken democracy at this point -- revolution.

Retarded and wrong. The only thing that can fix our country is education. For instance, a good start might be educating everyone about why democracy is evil, and not something that we want more of. I'll give you a hint why democracy sucks; people are stupid fucks, for instance crying for democracy which would be the rule of said dumbfucks.

Maybe I'm a semantics nazi, but there is no such thing as States' "rights". Being governments, States are granted powers, and rights are something that only individuals can possess. (not paying attention to stupid ideas such as women's rights, gay rights or anything else meant to separate people into groups.)

oo.org has everything on your list except I'm not sure about any VCS stuff.

Sure a lot of people here will try to scare you into selling your soul to Word, but it needn't be so. If a publisher can't deal with pdf at least... well you could try to self publish if you're not worried about up front money. Seems you'd get more of the profits too. lulu.com is one self publishing house that seems good.