For example, in MS, I could set it up so that when I typed "rrr " it would replace it with "REBECCA" centered on the page, followed by two newlines, then set the format for single-spaced Times New Roman with 1.5" margins left and right. It could keep that format until I started a paragraph with "st[tab]" at which point it would skip down another newline and give me italicized text with .5" margins for the next paragraph, then automatically switch back.

Oh, yeah, and if that previous paragraph when over a page break, it could automatically insert "REBECCA (cont)" centered at the top.

May sound trivial to an engineer who's just writing up some simple procedure document, but when I'm writing a play, with dozens of lines of dialog and stage directions on every page, being able to put things automatically into the right format as I go is invaluable.

And that's the thing, sure, most users won't use every bit of specialized formatting, macros, or functions on each app. But enough people do that for most companies it's worth getting MS Office rather than trying to evaluate the potential needs of each individual user.

The bacterium, maybe, but not your head. Bacterium have very, very little mass.

For instance, a single E. Coli bacterium has a mass of approximately 2.9 x 10^-13. If someone flung one at you at at .3c, it could have a total momentum of only about 2.9 x 10^-13 x 3 x 10^8 x .3 = .0000261 gm/s.

This is about the equivalent momentum of a baseball (142g) moving at .00000001838 m/s (or .018 mm/s). (This is about the velocity imparted to an average baseball by an average slashdotter. So, not very fast.)

For example, the FAA routinely tries to smuggle fake guns and bombs onto airplanes to see how many get through.

Last I heard, that number had not changed significantly since TSA was started.

One number that has gone up significantly since TSA took over is amount of theft from luggage and at baggage screening points. As I recall, laptop thefts went up over 1000% between 2000 - 2005.

But, major terrorist attacks - yeah, it's hard to measure changes in something that happens on the average once every twenty years.

Not at all. There are a great many things that exist. Very few people have heard of every single one of them.

I guarantee that somewhere there's a tool that could make your job a bit easier that you also have never heard of.

I was wiping hard drives for years for my non-profit org by booting to Linux and using dd in a loop before someone on Slashdot asked my how come I wasn't just using DBAN. I use it now, but like everyone, including you, there was a time when I had never heard of it.

As much as Thomas Jefferson made a big deal about it, it wasn't even an original notion with him. (Hint for the historically challenged: he was not a baby boomer)

It actually worked out pretty well. At the beginning of each 4-hour shift, you get a series of pull tags, put them in order by aisle and shelf, then just take a cart along and do a single circuit of the warehouse, pulling the parts in order of the tags.

I think they did make some attempt at keeping things in specific order, but since it changed so much it didn't really make any difference. As long as the computer knew where everything was, it worked.

No running back and forth or criss-crossing the warehouse needed. With a modern computer system, it could be even more efficient. The computer can give you the tags in order, and different people could take different parts of the warehouse to speed things up even more.

If there was a fine associated with a false DMCA takedown notice, and it was enforced most of the time, it would put an end to the automated spamming of them.

Naturally.

That's not the "logical conclusion". That's called "reductio ad absurdum".

Emigration or armed revolution, I suppose.

Fortunately, even with the last president, the country resisted turning into the full-fledged theocracy so many of his supporters wanted. Sure, he gave away a few tens of billions of dollars of our tax money to specific churches, which was bad and wrong, but not nearly as bad as forcing teenage rape victims to marry their rapists and stoning gays to death like these people promote in other more theocratic countries.

"care more about" != "know how to educate properly".