I have a bottle of whiskey and I'm driving through the storm tomorrow morning. Yeeee-Haa!

I agree that the unbundled services are not worth the money, and I will vote with my wallet. Specifically, I'll be keeping the streaming service and save $2.00 per month. That's a couple of lattes made at home on my prosumer espresso machine. (I saved about $600.00/year when I started making them at home.)

Meanwhile, I'll be looking at their competitors to see what my options are. I'm not real comfortable with a service provider that takes such huge gambles with a service I'm using as my primary form of video entertainment.

Call me once it's possible to remotely zap Jehova's Witnesses and other annoyances.

I notice that when the Mormons see the square and compases on my ring, they wish me a good day and leave. Or perhaps it's simply my demenor when strangers atempt to tell my that my religious beliefs are wrong. I don't care for door spamming, which is what this is.

Regardless, that's why I've had a door phone attached to an asterisk box for some years now. And, yes, it can call my cell when I wish it to.

Nothing new here, but congrats to the kid on a nice hack.

Actually, in the context of the GP, that's correct.

The Christian Bible (bible is a generic term, we are referring to the specific Christian Bible) is the basis on which the Christian Church (The Church) is organized. The Church specifically does believe that The Bible is "the be all end all of what God wants." Failure to believe that makes one something other than Christian. This has nothing to do with acceptance, it is a specification of the definition of Christian.

Ironically, a large segment of modern Christians fit the same category.

You could claim that a Christian is anyone who believes that Jesus is divine. However, the Christian Church (all Catholic and protestant faiths) is the originator of the definition, and says otherwise. It's sort of like saying that an atheist is anyone who doesn't follow an organized religion.

That's very accepting?

You're no better. You confuse the fact that the GP is making a factual statement with the impression that it is being done in a disparaging way. Call the poster an ass hole if you think that to be the case, but he most specifically cannot be accepting or tolerant of this and many other beliefs among others of his faith. Otherwise, he would not be a Christian either.

Perhaps, as a Deist, I should start calling myself an atheist. That way I could go around telling other atheists that they are intolerant for not accepting atheists who believe in God.

I would have written:
You haven't fully experienced Top Gun unless you've watched it in the original Chinese.

With the above you allude to the original joke without hitting us over the head with it. Thus giving all of us who "get it" a chance to look down our collective noses at those of less depth in Sci-Fi pop culture.

this isn't lying. Where's the story

Are you astroturfing? Of course it's a lie.

In a strong tail-wind my car really can get 4-5 more MPG for an extended period of time. However, using that as a metric for a car's performance, while factually correct under certain conditions, denies the implication of routine repeatability, and makes the metric unreliable.

It may be technically true that I can get the maximum bandwidth at 02:00 for 2 hours, but that's of no use to me. So I toss out the idea of ever getting the theoretical maximum and instead use maximum bandwidth as a metric to set my general expectations, and to decide the relative value of the exchange (bandwidth for money.)

The ISP knows that maximum bandwidth is my metric, and attempts to deceive me by inflating that metric in an unreasonable and unexpected way. This is exactly the same as inflating MPG ratings on cars based on theoretical maximum conditions.

The lie is, knowing that routine repeatability does not exist for the numbers they quote, ISPs prominently advertise this useless metric in order to deceive the customer as to the true relative value of the product.

The news is that this report proves it.

Pluto may be a dwarf planet, but it has a LONG orbit.

You'll never convince hoplophobes with logic. Their opinions are an emotional reaction derived primarily from fear of themselves.

I used to suffer from a benign form of this condition when I was in college. I had never tried to control my temper and saw no reason to. I viewed firearms as extending the range and destructive force of my temper. I assumed that everyone else was like me. They are not.

Both conditions were cured for me when I inherited my father's police service pistol and after educating myself on its safe and effective use, began shooting it. That led me to the conclusion that I had a lot more to learn about myself and about other people.

Now I carry daily, and only worry about the damage of ignorant and fearful politicians. I also try to take as many people as I can shooting. After some instruction in safe handling and proper technique, and about $20 worth of ammo, something changes and they begin to reassess their views.

Most completely change their views. Some never come around completely but understand more than they did. For the rest there's organized political action.

I can not see why anyone would want one for themselves.

Worse, It's a .22. I presume .22LR and not some more capable .22 like 5.7x24. The article didn't say, but called it a plinker.

I can barely understand my wife wanting a .380 auto (Ruger LCP) instead of a 9mm. But at least she'll carry it, and it's better than pepper spray or harsh language.

This sounds like a novelty to me.

Wait, the battery is rechargeable? If this is an ADVERTISEMENT in a paper magazine, why would you want to recharge it beyond the novelty? What good is this...

Because if they didn't include a rechargeable battery then you would complain that "The damned thing doesn't even have a rechargeable battery! What good is this..."

...ballistically speaking. Depending on the angle, a shot taken might have traveled past the intended target and missed if it were for real.

Good point, but it would be fairly easy to account for this, as well as windage in software. The computer knows where the target is relative to you (give or take a bit) and can easily calculate where your bullet would have hit based on the load data.

That said, bullet drop isn't an issue until the zero point anyway.

You could also load rubber bullets and simulate any round that you wanted.

I added a tankless electric hot water heater a few years ago (I love it, and have saved $$$$)
However this required the addition of a 220V-125A feeder breaker to a sub-panel with four 220V-30A breakers. Each of these is feeding a 7KW heater element on the water heater.

The heater is microprocessor controlled so that it uses only as much current as it needs. This lets my 28KW water heater run the shower and dishwasher at the same time endlessly with no outward sign.

The sad thing is, I only have 50A running to my server racks.

I recently looked into a (cybersquatted) domain for a client. The squatter wanted $3000.00. We said, "Take a hike." Over the next few weeks I received unsolicited offers, each one for less money. Eventually the price went below 1K, then to make-an-offer.

I was determined that my client not give these scumbags any money, so I advised against making any offers, and finally told the scumbag, "No, seriously, take hike!"

My client went with an alternative that turned out to be a better choice because he was able to trademark it. The one he originally wanted was pretty generic and was already being used in commerce in several states by several companies.

The ability to trademark is one of the reasons that so many companies have begun using made-up words in their names. Doing so also takes cybersquatters out of the picture.

Fuck I lost my line of thought.

Screw it.

Here. Have another Oreo.

That /is/ evolution.

Not necessarily, and in this case, I think not at all. Sexual reproduction is one example of picking up new traits from other compatible organisms. The offspring have a partial copy of one parent's DNA. They acquire new traits from the other parent. This does not result in a new species, but rather unique individuals all of the same species. This is not automatically evolution because those traits being passed around are possessed by many other individuals of the species. They are not new, but they are not possessed by ALL members of the species.

With flu viruses, you have the case of an organism acquiring new traits through asexual reproduction. The resultant offspring are still flu viruses. The pool of possible traits that they can acquire is limited by the species that they inhabit.

Crossing the species barrier, say mammal to avian, might open up the possibility of evolution in the organism by making new genetic material available.

We know that new species arise since we have have observed evidence of this, but I suspect that whatever the process, it is not the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin. I suspect that it is a much faster and more discrete (in the denotative sense) process. It may also have an environmental component. e.g. it only happens when sufficient pressure is put on the population. This would have new species arising in a single or several generations rather than over millennia as proposed by Darwin.