One phone for family, one phone for work, one phone for the girlfriend, one for the wife, one for the other girlfriend...

Like The Master, I want a laser screwdriver. Who'd have sonic?

If the problem were only China, maybe, but of course there are lots of even lower-regulation countries in the world.

A URL for a wall?

Aldus PageMaker 3 ran under Windows 2. It came with the run-time version of Windows (that could only be used with that one application), but ran properly under the full Windows 2. We used it for typesetting in college. At the time, PageMaker was the "it" program.

I think the original Balance of Power game ran under Windows 1 run-time.

The advantage of course is lack of ambiguity. Is this particular asterisk used to mark a comment, multiplication, repetition of strings, or exponentiation?
I tend to agree that too many symbols would be confusing, but if done judiciously, I think it makes a certain amount of sense. For example, I find irritating perl's use of the brace for three separate purposes ( hash keys, anonymous hash construction, and code blocks). Separate symbols would be nice.
Of course, you could do the same thing with multiple-character symbols (maybe [[ and ]] could delimit hash keys and anonymous hashes). Either way, it's two keystrokes.

The primary system is not particularly functional. It is extremely uncommon for an incumbent to face a credible challenger, much less be defeated in the primary. This lessens its utility, especially in the US House of Representatives with its gerrymandered district boundaries meaning few seats turn over.

Having said that, given the Canadian situation I can understand how you'd prefer our system. As someone who has studied Canadian politics, I admire greatly much of what has been done there since 1945, but I don't think much of the Westminster system as it has evolved in Canada or the UK.

Yes, as near as I can tell this article made up the bit about Launchpad only working with App Store apps out of whole cloth.

I don't blame people for being worried that Apple wants to turn Mac OS into a walled garden. We've seen it with iOS (and, for the record, I think it's unconscionable). But it does appear that, at least for now, that's not the case. I'm not very worried about it myself, because I think people use Macs very differently than they use iOS devices, and Apple knows that. But it's not unreasonable to have that fear. I think it's a mistake for Apple not to make it very clear, from the start, that an iOS-style lockdown for the Mac is not part of their plans, now or ever.

There are a couple of Canadian members of the steering committee. I wonder if they got pressure to make the census voluntary?

are <classified material excised>.

Cool. Sit at home, get the patent applications, post the patent to Slashdot, watch people do the "prior art" search for you for free, deny patent based on that prior art, collect a hefty salary.

Plus you get to say you do the same job as Einstein.

I was a college student from 1988 through 1992, mostly at UC Santa Cruz. I had my own phone line whenever I could, so I could talk to my family, whatever part time employer I had, etc. Over those four years I lived in eight dorm rooms and two apartments, not counting two summers living with my mom. Either we had land phones, which cost $35 every time I moved into a new place (in 1990 dollars), or -- during the year I lived in Vancouver, BC, where UBC didn't have phone jacks in the rooms -- amazingly high telephone credit card costs on my dad's phone bill.

Cell phones back then were big, bulky, and expensive; I don't think I ever seriously considered getting one (although at one point my dad got one for business). I only wish I could have had what today's students have access to.

I prefer the following:

UUCP: {world}!ucbvax!ucscc!ucscb!aaronrp

What a dream I had,
Pressed with salami,
Clothed in anchovies
Fished from salty seas.
Softer than nine-grain...

It seems likely Apple wouldn't intentionally break compatibility, even if at this point there's no Apple products using Atom. Wouldn't they want to keep their options open, just in case they decide they want to release an Atom machine sometime in the future? Maybe someday can figure out how to make a premium netbook that will make them enough money to be worthwhile.