On Slashdot they got 80% accuracy just by identifying all users as trolls.

We're trying to modernize acre-feet to Manhattan-fathoms, but the traditionalists won't have anything to do with it.

I thought Copenhagen Suborbitals was a brand of pot.

Oh, look -- another post full of the economic-policy voodoo "logic" that suggests we can prosper better as a nation by isolating ourselves from trade, contrary not only to theory but to every single example in recorded history. You'd think that this would be frowned upon as much as climate-change denial these days, but apparently not.

As long as we have millions more people in the US who consume computer-powered services than earn their living producing them, the population as a whole will prosper better by having those services done at a lower cost. The same goes for importing manufactured goods at reduced prices. Sure, owners of the corporation (including many rich assholes, not just individuals or retirement funds) will earn more money for themselves, but it's a fraction of the total economic benefit, most of which goes straight back into consumers' pockets in anything resembling a competitive marketplace.

But since the benefits of are spread among millions and the costs are concentrated, it's a textbook case where it's profitable to go rent-seeking and mandate that people are forced to consume American programmers' programming, or American laborers' manufacturing. This is an insidious form of wealth transfer that is very regressive in nature (it hits the poor a lot harder than it hits the CEOs).

Finally: of all people, computer programmers in this country are hardly the tragically underpaid class which can't AFFORD to buy toys.

= "none"

The whole thing has been turned into a gigantic cream-skimming operation.

I had a 486DX2 for a while. The 486 ran at 33Mhz and came in SX and DX versions (the DX's had floating-point coprocessors). The DX2 ran at double the speed (66Mhz) and so did a mean job of running Fractint. You could expect to see them running something like MS-DOS 5 or 6, and maybe Windows 3.1.

I think they were about a generation after the Turbo Button fad (the ones I saw usually toggled 8/33Mhz or so).

Actually, in the past 10 years America's oil production has ramped up substantially. If it came down to it we could be self-sufficient pretty quickly. The main barriers to that right now are regulatory (our current administration being of the opinion that fossil fuels are bad for the Earth). But the oil's there, we can drill it if we feel like it, but stored oil capacity is at an all time high... the biggest short-term question would be refinery capacity, whether it's prepared to deal with shale oil instead of imports. Oh, and also available: Canadian tar sands.

All the recent geopolitical analysis I've seen has suggested that the United States doesn't care about oil over there and is quite willing to let the Middle East go to pot: ISIS and Iranian nukes and what-have-you.

The only thing more annoying than a computer is a computer that tries to be helpful.

One word.
Amway

I'm glad to hear that someone is trying to out-stupid *my* country.

wherein we find out that Monsanto has known it all along.

Probably they were hoping no one would find out until they' ready to market GMO humans that are resistant to it.

I guess everyone's getting bored with the war on drugs, so now they're looking for a new menace to protect us from.

He's considering changing his name to N. S. Sherlock.

Crime doesn't pay for everybody.

Makes me wish I be a Chinee pirate. Besept I don't need Wind O'Tain, and I don't know how to say 'Arrrr' in Chinees. And I hear tell their ships are all junks.