By being closer to the average height of traffic, you're not just making yourself safer. You're also making everyone around you safer because you can react more quickly to problems up ahead. In larger vehicles, you are also more easily seen by other vehicles because of your larger overall footprint, which, again, makes everyone safer.

That would be true if the drivers of pickups were taking advantage of their improved visibility and paying attention but many drivers in pickups seem to be in their own little world with the radio on, and coffee in hand. They feel safe, and in fact they are safe, but they make everybody else less safe by their inattention.

I ride a motorcycle during the summer. . . . Drivers who pay attention make other drivers safer.

Exactly. Maybe they are building planned obsolescence into their products. Soon people will need to turn in replace their old routers and replace them with new IPv6 routers but the strategy could backfire since D-Link and others already support IPv6 on their inexpensive wireless N home routers

Or my favourite...UI's designed by graphic designers. I used to work with a fantastic designer. He had a real talent for creating visually appealing designs for our web apps that were simple and could be elegantly built with CSS but he insisted on putting menus and buttons in non-standard locations. The result was users had to relearn every interface and hunt for buttons. If we simply had OK, and Close buttons at the bottom right of dialogs, and the menus near the top right our programs would have been easier for new users.

I have no problem with copyright holders seeking damages for infringing. The problem occurs when RIAA and others seek damages far in excess of what is reasonable. In this case they are asking $150,000 per download. These groups have unlimited legal funding that almost guarantee the downloader will go bankrupt simply by being accused. Even if they are innocent the legal fees to defend yourself could send a person into bankruptcy. This seems way out of proportion of the crime. A person who went to Best Buy and stole 50 blue ray disks might get a week of community service but get caught downloading 50 movies and you could owe $7.5 million dollars. The laws are broken.

Not everybody who uses DeCSS is a pirate....some of us just want to watch our legally obtained DVD's from our linux laptops. As a side note does one need DeCSS to read a VOB file then convert to AVI (I've never tried). Or can it be done on a windows computer using a legally obtained DVD codec?

What makes you think that flight 447 fell apart in the sky? Reports I read suggest that the crash investigators believe the plane was in tact and flying in a normal attitude when it hit the water: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1282367/Air-France-crash-The-truth-disaster-killed-228-people.html

Even the wiki article suggests the reason for the crash is still unknown but the following facts are known:

On 2 July 2009, the BEA released an intermediate report, which described all known facts, and a summary of the visual examination of the rudder and the other parts of the aircraft that had been recovered at that time.[7] According to the BEA, this examination showed that:

• the aircraft was likely to have struck the surface of the sea in a normal flight attitude, with a high rate of descent;[Note 3][7][106]
• there were no signs of fire or explosion;
• the aircraft did not break up in flight. The report also stresses that the BEA had not had access to the post-mortem reports at the time of its production, some of which suggest differently.[7][107]

The current working theory is that a thunderstorm in the area reached as high as 50,000 feet and could have disrupted the plane. Normally a pilot would fly around such a system but a smaller storm in front might have obscured the thunder storm from the flight's radar system and the crew didn't see it.

I don't know how it is in the states but here in Canada setting up a corporation can help you regulate the timing of your income but not avoid paying taxes on it altogether. If you set up a not-really-a-company limited company, and it makes a profit you will still want to transfer those profits into your personal account at some point...and when that happens the individual will be taxed on the income. (I'm not an accountant, but do have a limited company)

It probably depends on the audience. I appreciate good grammar when I hear or read it, and expect it from journalists and formal writers. There are definitely people who will judge you as an uneducated hick for using too much slang but sometimes in casual conversation using proper grammar just makes a person sound like a pompous ass.

That's a pretty good analogy. Mountain bike tires are optimized for traction. Take a look at the bikes used for tour de france which are optimized for speed and reduced rolling resistance.

I wonder if the increased fuel efficiency is simply the result of creating a smaller contact patch for the tires and reducing the rolling resistance. Maybe the same result could be acheived by using skinnier tires...but they wouldn't look as cool.

In java/C/php not equal is expressed as !=
In Visual basic you might say "not equal to"
In SQL you would use <>
  =/= seems to be popular these days. Programming hasn't been a major function of my career for about 5 years so I am a little out of the loop. What language uses =/= to mean not equal?

In an age where many suppliers use web applications that our employees need to place orders, research part specifications and more blocking the web isn't very feasible, and white lists are way too much work compared to occasionally re-imaging a drive. However ever since we put in IPCop to track web usage the number of viruses and other malware decreased significantly. But it could be just a coincidence.