Soarer's. Blue Cube. Tipro. Cherry G86 (and even some G80 and G81). Xkeys. All hardware-programmable (and that's just off the top of my head). Even if you can detect the use of "illegal macro software", what about the hardware options?

Which makes me ask, what the hell is an "illegal macro" anyhow? If something is so predictable that it can be scripted and bound to a single key, then it shouldn't really take multiple presses of a key to do it in the first place. This is not just limited to games, it extends to all software where I want to do a single, moderately tortuous task efficiently and often.

I would agree that particular scenario is unlikely. I was just making the point that there may be a conflict between what is best on a local scale and what is best on a global scale, and there may even be severally equally flawed proposals which apportion the damage differently. The ones taking the brunt of the pain aren't going to be overly sympathetic, even if it needs doing.

The two of you hopefully agree that your interests are aligned, however.

What happens if the Russian plan for reducing temperature means a return of Dust Bowl conditions in the Great Plains of North America, and they start doing it unilaterally? You don't see how that could lead to a rapid escalation with Mr. "I'll nuke before I give Crimea back" Putin?

Is it really so smart to rely on Skype, a Microsoft holding, for internal operations? I would assume they have the capability to listen in to whatever they like, and would certainly not want to use Skype to transact business that is in direct competition to another one of their divisions. This is above and beyond the fact that the Feds will be able to listen in, since there is only so much they can do to avoid that anyhow.

Version numbers are arbitrary, I never said they weren't. Yes, the decimal is a divider and not a mathematical decimal, so 5.10 comes after 5.9 where it can't in the hardness scale. I never said anything about "half the new features". In fact I'd a expect large gap between the last 5.x and 6.0 and not assume the version numbers meant anything in regards to the actual quantity of features, only about their timing. That is, if a feature is introduced in 5.2, it's probably still going to be there in 5.5 (unless it was fundamentally broken and had to be yanked).

The decimals on the Mohs scale seem arbitrary as well, but that does not make them meaningless. If you have just one substance between 7 and 8, you could justifiably call it 7.5, but what do you do if it turns out that everything else between 7 and 8 scratches it? You downgrade it to 7.1, that's what. These are like old BASIC line numbers where you assign them in the hopes that you don't have to change any later because of things you plug in, but sometimes you're wrong.

It is also comparing things to OTHER things that fall between the two points. Something is not just "between 7 and 8", it is also harder than some other materials "between 7 and 8" and softer than others. The number after the decimal allows for them to be rankedrelative to one another. What you're saying is that just because the code base of Software 5.0 and 5.1 are largely the same there is no way to distinguish between them, and that everything in the 5.x line except 5.0 itself is merely "between 5 and 6".

I hope they can have two of these ready when Roseanne Barr does lose all of her central vision. There's just no justice in the world if she's the only one on the planet who doesn't have to look at her face.

One potential problem I see (it happens already) is people being ticketed for driving solo, when in fact they have a baby in the car with them. You might not feel they should be in the HOV lane because that baby would never be out driving by itself, therefore they aren't saving any congestion, but it does meet the letter of the law. It also isn't going to be easily picked up on a camera. These people already get pulled over (and released) by cops who can't see the passenger in back. What is going to happen when an automated ticket shows up in the mail? You don't think the system is going to give them the benefit of the doubt, do you? If you do, please pass me some of what you're smoking, Pollyanna.

That's how it often is around here, although they did have to shift (and in some cases narrow) the other lanes a bit to make what used to be the shoulder wide enough for a lane. Part of the result is that you end up with two wheels constantly floating across the seams in the construction that were designed to be hidden between lanes rather than within them. They should have shifted things over a full half-lane so at least we'd be completely straddling the breaks.

Ask someone with phenylketonuria. I once went to a restaurant with a group, one of whom has this disorder. When he ordered a drink, he specifically said "NOT diet, I can't have phenylalanine". They brought him Diet Coke. He drank enough that some time (maybe twenty minutes) later, he had a freak-out and would have gotten all of us tossed out if he hadn't had enough sense to explain to us what he thought was about to happen. The restaurant quickly reversed tack to make sure they weren't going to get sued, while one of the people in the group had to drive him to a hospital to make sure he'd be OK.

Again, misleading does not necessarily mean they knew it to be untrue. They could have bought into the propaganda themselves.

Agent Smith sets up misleading guidelines setting a particularly low bar for matches on fingerprints, knowing what he's doing could net the wrong people. Agent Jones follows those guidelines and testifies on the assumption that they are sound. Both the court and Agent Jones have been misled, and Jones is not guilty of perjury. Smith did not testify, thus is not guilty of perjury either. A crime has probably been committed, it's just not perjury.

It's not perjury if you really believe it to be true. Merely being wrong is not enough. Being shown to be wrong may discredit a witness, but it does not in and of itself demonstrate perjury. Perjury requires intent.

If you were told that a match to a certain level of confidence is sufficient to make a case, and you testify that your samples matched to that level (because it turns out that's a very low bar), how is that perjury? Even if your initial assumption is wrong, you are reporting what you believe to be true.

There's nothing fundamentally different about the 88-108 MHz band compared to the 2 meter band (144-148) except that it has four times the bandwidth. Any transmission mode that works well at 2 meters will also work well in the FM band, as the propagation characteristics are substantially the same.

It could also be related to the ranking of minor league affiliates to Major League Baseball teams. A teams are typically rookies, or veterans well past their prime who are looking for a way to move into coaching or some non-playing role (but they're still good enough to show off some skills). AA teams are sort of Purgatory. If a prospect doesn't move through this level relatively quickly, statistics say he probably never will. AAA teams are where the replacement-level Major League talent is being held in reserve, or fine-tuned, or where injured players go to sharpen up after time off, etc.

What would be interesting in this grading system is that AAA is not the top, as the entire system is a feeder for The Show. What would the equivalent be in game studios? I have no idea.

You'll never be the Purple Squirrel,
You'll never even see on.
'Cause I can tell you anyhow,
They'd rather H1B one.