The Celsius scale isn't that arbitrary. The freezing and boiling points of water are well covered. As well, 1 calorie is the amount of energy it takes to heat 1ml (1 cubic centimetre) of water 1 degree Celsius.

Ultimately, everything is arbitrary, sure, but that's a poor argument to put forthâ"some systems are more consistent than others. Use the system with the greatest internal consistency.

This didn't happen.
Macbooks are RoHS and use silver solder. The softest silver solder flows at a minimum of 681 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yeah, but this system is taking that sales part away. Books take time to read, and the alotment of funds comes out of a small fixed pool. Where once an author would be able to hustle and just make sure they were good and that people knew about their new work, this pool makes sure that they take less away. Exposure means a lot less with a system like this. The great writers draw people in, and the crap writers get an equal cut of the pie.

And then these authors WILL get new jobsâ"as you suggestâ"and we won't have quality books to read any more. This move is ridiculous and short-sighted. There should be caps, or ways for the user to distribute funds, at least. If I get 3 books through this system one month, and one is great, one is okay and one is terrible, I should be able to split the money to reward the great writer and leave the others with less. Quality would be favoured again, hacks would be driven out, and we'd actually be able to encourage better writing than the current system allows forâ"how many times have you bought a book on a whim and then discovered that it was actually terrible and you'd been suckered. With a post-reading money distribution scheme, I'd be able to punish bad writers with slick advertising campaigns for eating my time.

Libraries have scarcity built in. In the case of physical copies, this is obvious. If they want more of a popular book, they have to buy more copies. I've definitely gotten sick of waiting in the past and just bought the book I was waiting for.

Even the digital library systems have artificial scarcity and time limits built in. At least the ones I've encountered. But as the library is effectively the customer of books, they've always had to pay for them. The writer and publisher always got their cut.

Amazon is the publisher and seller in this case, and their mandate is to make money, not spread reading around. That $10/month has to cover their costs (or at least defray them enough so that they're not even MORE unprofitable) AND pay the authors, and they're not being funded by the government. Sounds pretty tight, to me.

The problem is that Amazon is a monopsony, not a monopoly. That is, they're the only BUYER that's important in the market. If you're not on Amazon, your potential for success is seriously limited. As a result, publishers and authors cede concessions that were previously off the table, harming their long-term prospects. That also ends up giving Amazon a competitive advantage.

But monopsonies aren't regulated, as far as I know. As long as Amazon doesn't do anything damaging monopolistic with their power, they can screw up the landscape as much as they like. Like Walmart.

Wow. People use Jabber? Yes, people use Jabber.

This is not news, not now, not ever. Jabber and XMPP is a real thing, much more real than IRC. Please move along and report something worthwhile, folks.

Who told you that? The Nook Simple Touch has a two-point capacitive multitouch display. I've got one right here.

Sorry, you're not correct. See the other poster's response.

Sadly you have no idea what a public school is actually currently responsible for doing. Next time your out, stop by your local court clerk and look into the legislation on what the schools are now responsible for doing.

Don't worry about it. This user trolls my posts regularly.

The original Amazon Kindle Touch and the Nook Simple Touch have used this technology for years. It's a very, very old technology. There's nothing really special about this except that it's being applied to automobiles.

Library Science was and is a true profession with a true college degree.

So is Hotel Management, now sometimes known as Hospitality and Hotel Management.

I haven't found this to be true. I've tried swiftkey and swype for weeks at a time, and I've found that they're generally slower than me tapping words out. The problem is that the worst case--that the system gets the word wrong and you need to replace the whole thing because none of the suggestions are correct--comes up surprisingly often for me. I also find the flow of tapping to be a lot more comfortable. I never stop tapping until I'm finished, while with the swiping methods, I have to pause in between words before I start swiping again.

Mileage varies, but I'm considerably faster with the built-in Apple keyboard unless I'm walking and typing with one hand. In that case, the swiping method has an obvious payoff because I can be less accurate with my movements.

Check that, the late 1990s was 85% C++ articles.
The 2000s moved to 85% Microsoft .NET articles.

I'm getting old.

I let my subscription lapse in the late 1990s after three straight years of 85% Microsoft .NET and C++ articles. The world had moved on. Dr. Dobbs' Journal did not.

In case nobody else got the joke, it was "jumping through hoops and pulling teeth" or, alternately, "twisting arms and pulling teeth."

And it had nothing to do with the Church of the SubGenius.

I believe they could have stayed on indefinitely if not for the silly name. We all know why it has that name, but I would never have discovered this magazine unless an adjunct professor in college pointed it out to us in 1990.