But I have fond memories of the exploit called Win Nuke to cause the BSOD. Back in the day, I was a freshman in college and a football player on our floor was continuously giving me a hard time. In those days, we telnetted into the DEC Alpha to check our email. Also, in those days our IPs were statically assigned and we had no firewall. Those were quite obviously better, more trusting days of the internet. Anyhow, one day I waited until I knew he was in his room and checking email from his computer. I used finger on UNIX to get his IP address. Then, nuke away! I could here him banging, cussing, and throwing his stuff around. So, whenever I needed a little fun, I simply delivered that little exploit. One day he came back from a drunken binge and went to check his email and I felt it was a perfect time to test his patience level. After carefully delivering the little packet, I heard a smashing sound. My guess is he decided to do a body slam, WWF style, on his PC. As I walked by I casually asked what happened as I saw the computer smashed to smithereens. He told me to, "Get outta here, shit nugget!" It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing. Moral: Leave the IT guy alone.

Sony would fight this in court as something that fell under a contract not as Copyright infringment. That is what I'm getting at. Which would then modify what the penalties would / could possibly be. If it's found to be a true Copyright infringement that is equivalent to that of an individual person pirating digital media, then the same laws should apply. I believe that Sony will use their full legal force to argue the case as a contractual issue not a copyright issue.

American exchanges use *11 as special codes.

• 411 is directory assistance
• 611 is for customer service
• 711 is the deaf-to-speech TDD service
• 911 is the emergency number

In many places another number (generally 311 or 711) is used as a non-emergency information service.

Given enough energy, you can go to alpha centauri and back in 4 seconds.

Except that the G-force of that sort of acceleration would turn your brain to soup, which makes the prospect somewhat less attractive.

An AI based on suitably robust tech might travel to Alpha Centauri at close to light speed though.

You mean the replublitard right is blowing things out of proportion and making a lot of noise over nothing because they're irrelevant little piss-ants trying to regain their political footing? Say it isn't so!

So only 136 people in the UK file share? Sounds like it's not a very big industry.

Amigas, Macs and STs predate the advent of cheap PC clones by a number of years. It wasn't until the end of the 80s that sub $1000 pc clones hit the market and dominated it.

Can I hire these guys to make me money? Seriously, I've never seen number fudging like this.

For some subjects, absolutely. I'm still wishing, however, that our local schools' science departments would emphasize the observation/experience connection to wonderment and hypotheses. Instead, we have a (very well ranked) system that focuses heavily on standardized tests (which is probably why they are ranked so high).

Indeed. Consider how fans of certain other OSs show off and brag about their computer platform all for free, anyway.

If Apple were doing this, there'd be nothing but praise.

The funny thing is...

Same here. Every few months I download a few of the latest free AVs and ASWs, run them and then wipe them. In over five years the only thing any of them has found is suspicious cookies.

You can *never* have enough intelligent people, or even "Einsteins". Until we're all chillin' on interstellar spacecraft with unlimited fuel and your only worry is what galaxy you're going to visit next, there are plenty of complex problems that need solving.

If you look at the history of scientific discovery, there are very (very!) few isolated incidents in which a single person makes a revolutionary discovery. The vast majority of the time discoveries are evolutionary, because our knowledge is so inter-dependent. Even Newton, arguably the most brilliant scientist of the last thousand years had Liebniz. Most discoveries are made possible due to incremental advances in other areas, and they therefore happen in clusters - suddenly all around the same time several people hit upon the same thing. The lone genius scientist is a myth.

The DualCore requirement from Microsoft online services is hilarious. Defeats many advantages of a thin client, that's for sure. We can pay to upgrade the servers and pay again to upgrade the client, hey that looks like a perfect plan in somebody's eyes.

Your statement, sir, is not insightful, it is the statement of someone who knows not of what they speak.

Actually, sir, my statement was not a statement, it was a question. Sir.

A dangerous thing to say, as that not every child will necessarily have the ability to learn the subject matter in a reasonable period of time no matter how you present it. You may not mean it in that way, but easy phrases like that are easy to take out of context or misinterpret.