I moved to my own cobbled together Compiz standalone shortly after Gentoo devs forced the issue with KDE4 (the second or third time). I was really ticked at the KDE devs -- and separately, the Gentoo devs -- at that point. Basically, I was used to the way I had things set up and I didn't want anyone compelling me to make changes I didn't want to make for reasons that ultimately had nothing to do with me. I didn't care what these people's vision of the future was, and didn't understand why they were "screw"ing the users who had supported KDE for so long.

I knew if I switched to Gnome, the same thing was going to happen, and soon. Of course, now the compiz packages I use are getting removed from portage, so I made them local packages. When the deps change again and break compatibility, I can look forward to a new round of hell. But either way, it's my responsibility--I can complain to myself about all the bugs that I've failed to address. Puts things in perspective. I understood, but didn't fully appreciate just how complicated this crap is, but now I just couldn't imagine any screwing involved. Screwing implies some satisfaction on at least one end!

Why have it go with the furniture when it can be the furniture?

Regular (and NPH) insulins have the advantage of being out of patent for over 10 years and not requiring prescription in most (all?) states. That's not the case with analogs, although I believe the patent on Humalog runs out next year.

And actually, yeast is used in the production of insulin, Novo Nordisk's Novolin insulin, for instance. Extraction is easier, but production is lower. However, research published in 2010 (open access) describes techniques for significantly boosting the production using a modified yeast Pichia pastoris.

This is great news. The cost-reduction ship has sailed, perhaps, at least in the US, but I still look forward to having more choices available.

IKEA is more comparable to desklets or plasmoids (or whatever the KDE applets are called these days), though. The basics are done already, so its appeal is accessibility and ease. The real DIY "open source" furniture is more like this stuff. Anyone can do it with simple tools and the right materials, but it still takes some effort. When it's easier to start a project, a steady increase in required effort builds a reluctance to let the initial investment go to waste. The trouble is biting off more than one can chew from the start. I think that is often the case with FOSS.

I kept a common starling many years ago that had an impressive vocabulary. If only he'd known he was supposed to have a "'bad recording' style", perhaps his cursing wouldn't have been so distinct. He even had a drawl: "Woll shee-ut!"

You claimed that most people can't be trusted, their judgment sucks, they suck. Fine. Any given "Nanny State" is composed of people--what sets them apart from the mass of suck that is the rest of us?

If people could be trusted to take recreational drugs responsibly (infrequent low doses, over 18 etc) then it'd be fine - problem is, most people suck at judging these things (hell, most people shouldn't be trusted with a cheque book or credit card) so the Nanny State has to make a blanket ruling to compensate for the suckage of the General Populace.

You seem to have a problem trusting people to make good decisions for themselves, but no problem trusting them to make decisions for others. This seems ... odd.

Last I knew, the FCC was pretty clear that they were the only ones that had the power to regulate RF emissions. I wonder how easy it would be to get the FCC to tell the plaintiff to retract his case or face FCC fines.

I mean, hey, my neighbor was just fined tens of thousands of dollars by the FAA for launching a homemade balloon. They're serving jail time now. I don't want to mess with organizations matching the F[A-Z]{2} regex. :-)

Sean

I do wonder, did previous generations struggle with the same feelings and opinions of the next?

From Rousseau's Origin of Inequality :

Discontented with your present state, for reasons which threaten your unfortunate descendants with still greater discontent, you will perhaps wish it were in your power to go back; and this feeling should be a panegyric on your first ancestors, a criticism of your contemporaries, and a terror to the unfortunates who will come after you.

Don't ask any permission. Just do it and have a good lawyer ready.

Good lawyers cost money.

The best lawyers will tell you to drop this idea before it costs you even more money - and time.

I had linked it above:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1506636&cid=30737894

Here it is again:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011537

It appears there are different methodologies involved. And it would be fair to mention that the over 40% thing happened for the first time in 2007.

"Looks like", dude... looks like.

Ah yes, the sand "man"...how could I have forgotten?

Seriously GP, Spider Man 3 was just a big pile of crap. Considering how decent Spider Man 1 and 2 were, this was a bit suprising. They should have cut out all the crying bullshit, given Venom more screentime, gotten rid of sandman-man, and included Carnage.

Now THAT could have been crazy.

I've actually found a mantra which is quite useful for this exact purpose. Whenever I'm talking/thinking and I'm about to say/think "I'm right", I automatically replace it with the more elaborate construction "I dare hope that I'm right" and then mentally append a list of reasons why I think that's the case (to be revised according to further information).
Helps me remain critical yet non-judgmental. YMMV, but I dare hope it works :)

I saw one of the stocks I owned go up when Company A released a press release that Company A signed a deal with company B.

The stock of Company A spiked again 3 days later when Company B released a press release that it had just signed a deal with Company A.

If there are quant systems out there listing to the wire and trading on info like this, the system will surely be gamed. What is worse is that if a human were watching the blips come over the wire would he necessarily catch the problem?

They've been doing crap like this in their accounting for years, Enron charges X to company Y, and Y charges X back to Enron, both of them had 2X extra sales in the quarter, but no money or goods actually change hands, now it extends to journalism.