is that Win8 is an utter pile of crap. Windows 8 Pro might possibly be less crappy, and is apparently the version all of the pre-release 'you can get used to this' reviews were based on. But from the pointless non-locking lock screen that you can't disable, to the tiles thing to its ridiculous insistence on making documents full screen on a widescreen laptop, regular Windows 8 does nothing but get in the way of user. And I will be darned before I pay Microsoft another penny to remove some of the suckage they went to extra effort to ram in there. And so, my shiny new core i3 laptop is less useful than my 10 year old pentium-m/WinXP system, at least until I get some flavor of linux installed.

And once that happens, Microsoft, know full well that I will not be going back.

With alcohol, they will indeed wait at your door for you to show some ID, and they have billed the shipper accordingly. UPS at least will make three attempts, waiting each time, and absolutely ignoring any notes saying 'please leave with my neighbor' because that is a know vector for kids trying to get some booze.

About the only thing that was controlled more strictly than wine were the thousands of envelopes known to contain tickets to a big college football bowl game.

Because if his website is anything like the public appearances of Romney himself, it changes content based on the state your IP address maps to.

The first debate was supposed to be about domestic concerns. The bacon shortage news originated in Europe, and this maple syrup caper is a product of Canada (also, by the by, a leading exporter of frozen waffles), so you will have to wait until the foreign policy debate to find out where the candidates sit on breakfast table issues.

At DFW the airport runways, taxiways, and parking aprons are also very nearly 100% concrete, not asphalt. Concrete is much more expensive, harder to repair, and the expansion joints can be rather murderous. Which is a point the summary left out: a good asphalt surface has fewer joints that can be split open by snow and ice.

North Korea got nuclear weapons technology from Pakistan, and possibly from China many years ago, not from India. Since India is not, unlike their neighbors to the north-west, bat-shit insane, they probably know that selling asymmetric weapons tech to countries that are bat-shit insane does not advance any of India's political or economic interests. As such they have probably already taken measures comparable to the US or France to secure their project rather than cold calling every drug exporting, famine inducing, hereditary dictatorship in their Rolodex.

And for similar reasons, nobody is any more worked up about this than if France tested a new missile, and maybe even a little less concerned than if the US developed a new ICBM.

Which means it becomes a case of one printed, signed and dated document and another printed, signed and dated document. It is just like having two differing files with the same checksum and same digital signature. But I bet buying an unprinter won't require as smart a crook as producing a good MD5 hash collision.

Unless there is a clear way to tell which has been unprinted and then reprinted it simply devolves into a case of who has more lawyers on speed dial.

And to build on another poster's reply to my first comment, with a little malice aforethought, the unscrupulous could print the originals on paper that has already been unprinted a few times as an 'eco-friendly' feature. If this tech really works as summarized then the only truly safe document is one that can't be unprinted cleanly.

Unless they also developed a way to make paper that can not be unprinted without damage, I imagine that unprinting a signed contract that is just a little too fair and replacing everything but the signature with something more to your liking will be far more efficient than regular forgery.

Actually, the key phrase in the ruling you quote, and in America libel law in general, is 'a private individual.' And as very noisy advocacy group, the Heartland Institute blew past 'private' years ago and is firmly in the realm of public figure. Which in turn means that an entirely different standard for constitutes libel applies, specifically the standard that allows the Enquirer and most political ads to exist. The Heartland Institute would probably have better luck making a copyright claim than a libel claim at this point.

As that very article points out, Motorola has declined various settlement offers from Apple for PAST infringement of Motorola's patents. Motorola has licensed these very patents to Apple on FRAND terms for use in newly developed products which is why the iPhone 4S was not affected by the sales injunction, only the older models.

Since Apple did not license the patent on FRAND terms before pushing out the older iPhones, Motorola does not have any obligation to be fair, reasonable or non-discriminatory in negotiating the deal for those products now.

Indeed, it would take an unbelievably long time to raise the temperature of the ENTIRE planet by one degree Celsius, but with two google searches and a couple of simple equations you can calculate the raising the temperature of the 5.97*10^24 kilogram ball of iron and nickel we call Earth by one degree Celsius would increase the Earth's mass by about 33 million tons, not a mere 160.

Even without reading the article, I think it is safe to say the 160 ton per year figure is derived from the heating of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, which are getting measurably warmer and will continue to do so no matter how loudly you shout 'la-la-la can't hear you' while sticking your fingers in your ears.

A partial solution that seems to be working here in Oregon: for all scrap sales over a certain (relatively low) amount, the scrap dealer has to mail you a check rather than paying cash on the spot. Having to provide a working mailing address deters thieves, and the time delay discourages the druggies.

Because we have already used up almost all of the other 20th century US presidents as ships' names already. The only other dead president without a ship is Nixon, Clinton is still kicking, and Bush the second might just have to wait until the USS George H W Bush is sent off to become razor blades. Obama is still in office and USS Enterprise is still in service.

So that leaves Ford unless we want to have a third carrier and a lead ship named for some corrupt senator.

Free trade agreements between governments have no legal bearing on what a private company chooses to charge for its products and what private individuals seem willing to pay. Rather the point is to prevent the governments in question from adding import duties all willy-nilly on top of the seller's price point.

Ergo, the presence of a free trade agreement means that an Aussie iPod only costs 50% more than an American one rather than 100% more, and that only Apple gets to laugh themselves all the way to bank instead both Apple and the revenue office.

A free trade agreement can also make it easier for individuals to buy stuff from overseas directly, substituting one middle-man like me for three or four others in the normal retail chain, but that might be pure self-interest talking.