[Puts on fire resist gear]
vi. Because emacs is for the devil.

That's an apologist attitude: his conduct was why he got abuse, not his stand. Or is that not clear to you? It's the same reason people detest Rush Limbaugh because he's a bully. Again, the absolutely worst person you could have brought up was Jack Thompson when it comes to violence in video games.

Whatever. His conduct and his statements were not that of a reasonable person. It's one thing to argue against violence in video games but his tirades includes personal attacks on everyone. For example when Thompson reneged on a $10,000 donation to charity, Penny Arcade emailed him about it and called him out on his hypocrisy. So they donated the money themselves as Thompson said he wouldn't do it. Thompson then sent a complaint to the Seattle police to arrest the members for "extortion".

Actually, Jack Thompson is the worst person that the movement could use as a spokesperson.

That's some revisionist history there. Jack Thompson wasn't run out of town because he opposed violent games. He was run out of the legal profession because his conduct was unprofessional, uncivil, and harassing towards opposing counsel and judges. He made unsubstantiated claims against others, outright lies, and never responded to questions asked by courts.

For example, in Strickland v Sony, he was granted temporary permission to practice law (pro hac vice) in Alabama as his licensed state is Florida. Normally this is a procedural formality when a lawyer wants to take on a case in another state. Part of the pro hac vice application to the Alabama Bar specifically asks if the lawyer has had any disbarment proceedings (question 8) and any suspension proceedings (question 9) and to list them. Thompson responded "None, but please see the attached letter" to both. In the attached letter, Thompson described how he had been reprimanded 13 years earlier. Thompson however failed to mention that the case 13 years ago involved disbarment and suspension proceedings. Because of this and Thompson violated a gag order, Judge Moore revoked Thompson's pro hac vice status; he was no longer on the case. Despite being thrown off the case, Thompson continue to send emails and faxes to the court about the case for at least 2 years afterwards.

During that same case, Thompson harassed the lawyers of Blank Rome, the law firm representing Sony. Now it's one thing to oppose counsel in court but he attacked the lawyers including the gender of one of the attorneys. He also accused the law firm of participating in pornography and killing of police officers.

In an unrelated case, Thompson went after Al Cardenas, a partner in Tew Cardenas by accusing him of pornography, racketeering, and other criminal activity. What was the relationship between Cardenas and Thompson? As crazy as it sounds, almost none. Beasley Broadcasting Group owned a number of radio stations, and Thompson had issues with their programming. Normally their lawyer Norman Kent dealt with Thompson, and his dealings led to the point where Kent sued and won $50,000 from Thompson for defamation. Beasley also had Tew Cardenas on their retainer for other legal matters. Kent and Tew Cardenas had no relationship other than they represented the same company on different legal matters. Al Cardenas was a partner in Tew Cardenas but did not work the Beasley account. The attacks on Al Cardenas started one week when Norman Kent was out of town and did not respond to Thompson's letters and demands immediately.

These are the reason why Thompson was run out of the legal profession; not his stand, but his conduct.

That does not matter. Threatening someone because you find their points silly or a sham is never acceptable. You missed the point.

These days the instruction set matters less than the underlying chip architecture than customization. With this, ARM has an advantage in that their business model allows for higher degree of customization. While some companies can work with Intel or AMD on their designs, for the most part, ARM allows them to change the design as much as they need depending on the licensing.

We all know these rocks were created in a sound stage by Kubrick and Lee Harvey Oswald to further the agenda of the Kenyan-born communist Obama in the teaching children the "maths".

For me, I am hard to pressed to think of something that Ballmer actually brought that was new and not a hold over from Gates. Windows, Office, Windows Server, and SQL Server all existed before Ballmer took over. I think Xbox was also in the works too when Gates left. Sharepoint to me isn't exactly something to celebrate. Instead, I see Ballmer squander opportunities. Windows Mobile was the largest mobile platform at one point until iPhone and Android decimated it because it became stagnant. MS missed badly on the MP3 player and released one when the market was already shifting to smart phones. Windows Tablets existed long before the iPad but sold poorly. Vista was a poorly executed successor to Windows XP.

The original mission duration was 668 sols for Curiosity. It is on 723 sols or so.

Er what?
Spirit
Original Mission Parameters: 90 Mars days (sols)
Actual Mission Length: 2210 sols (lost contact)
I wouldn't say Spirit's mission ended early. It went 2100 sols past mission date. It didn't last as long as Opportunity though.

Do your surfaces go from -150C to 20C in a single day? I would bet that your tires would not last long under those conditions. Mars conditions are not Earth conditions.

Well mission parameters for the Mars wheel would have mostly likely been as light and thin and wide as possible. Light and thin so that it would fit the weight and space requirements. Wide so that it could traverse the sandy, dune like conditions.

I don't think the UV and radiation is as much a factor as the huge temperature swings. Every silicon rubber I've seen can't handle going from cold to hot to cold repeatedly without breaking down. It could be somewhere between -150C to 20C depending on the location.

I think one of the main issues with Vista was that it was allowed on hardware that couldn't run Aero because Intel had millions in chipsets that it would not have been able to sell. Two years after Vista most of that hardware had been sold and newer Intel chipsets could handle Aero at the basic level. This left a bad impression on top of all the bugs as it added to the notion Vista was not ready for release.

I used to joke in TBC that a true hunter has 30 buttons macroed, 29 of which were Feign Death.