I still support 7-bit ASCII, you insensitive clod!

It's just Microsoft that want to control the web in place of Adobe. Nothing will be gained for the user with this. That codec is managed by a patent pool.

SP3 is supposed to upgrade to 7 or 8 (though I think if you're already at 7 it leaves it alone).
SP3 DOES NOT upgrade IE.

Are you from the future? I'm a GIMP myself, but come on...

I am not an astronomer but there also seems to be a lot of improbable things in this story. Obviously it's odd to find ice and organics on an asteroid but not impossible. But it's the first asteroid (24 Themis) these two teams have independently looked at. It's evenly distributed on the surface as well which is also odd. And it has to be replenished from within -- which I think challenges a lot of assumptions about asteroids -- otherwise this water would have baked away a long time ago. These last two might be related in that the asteroid has a water table with seepage from the inside out that -- due to a lack of strong gravity or possibly the Yarkovsky effect -- is distributed fairly evenly.

I'm glad that two teams independently verified it but I'm a little concerned that there may be a flaw in the methodology of the reflection of the light. I'm sure they've accounted for everything but I'm just concerned because the only logical explanation is either our fundamental understandings of asteroids is largely incomplete (the first one they picked was laden with organic molecules where normally there are but a few traces) or the methodology of determining their composition falls prey to some unforeseen phenomenon/distortion in this case.

I'm sure I'm not the only one excited to see what the Japanese bring back from the Itokawa Asteroid.

Yes exactly. A two legged robots are useless if they don't have the extra appendages to help them maintain balance or regain their bipedalness after losing their balance.

Do you know if that actually is something that monks still do?

I would assume that the process of manually copying manuscripts started to taper off when the printing press went into operation, let alone now with digital copying processes.

As a side note, a friend of mine has a sub-11 second Mustang drag car. It, like most other dragsters, has an automatic transmission that you shift manually. That's not really a contradiction; imagine starting from a stop light with your transmission in "1", bumping up to "2" when your engine is almost at redline, then again to "D" when appropriate. Anyway, the advantage is that the automatic shifts much faster on average than a human can. A trained professional's fastest time might be shorter than an automatic transmission's fastest time, but the odds of even that professional being able to shift perfectly 3 or 4 times in a row are pretty slim.

So to extend your analogy, average drivers like automatics, enthusiasts like manuals, and many true motorheads like automatics. Well, average users like simple computers, enthusiasts like complicated, configurable interfaces, and many true geeks like simple computers. Don't believe me? Go into any highly technical conference and see how many Macbooks and iPhones you see. Those people didn't pick the simplified interfaces over the other options because they can't manage anything harder, but because they want to spend their efforts elsewhere.

Me? I guess I'm either a wannabe or an outlier because I'm typing this on Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Still, a lot of my equally technical friends love those "walled garden" systems.

I sort of agree with you, but I think you're confounding two issues.
One is the tendency for anti-social behaviour to emerge when there are large groups of people and no one feels personal responsibility towards any one else. This is what I think you are referring to.
I'm thinking of something else, which is the tendency of people to tell themselves that they're good and in-the-right. I think this tendency is exacerbated by religion, because people think they're on God's side, etc. I think this can lead to people behaving in more selfish and anti-social ways. In the example of the mega-church you used, they might tell themselves that stiffing the little contractor out of payment for a job is ok, because they're doing God's work.

If metadata is such a concern, one simple command with ExifTool http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/ can recursively delete all exif info in your whole image collection. And no, I will not post it can be just as destructive as rm -rf /

Don't put lies in peoples heads. Everyone knows gravity is "created" by the FSM holding us down with his noodley appendages. Thanks FSM!

I agree. Don't leave it out. Just discuss it in the same neutral, contextual manner as you would the Roman or Mayan polytheism, the Ottoman's practice of Islam, the shamanism of indigenous Brazilian tribes, King Ashoka's Buddhism and the multiple conflicting religions of the Punjab region of India.

It's the promotion of one religion over another in a taxpayer supported forum that's the problem, not information itself.

To be fair, it sounds like he talked his (Well Underage?) niece into being an honest person. Frankly with all the illegal downloading that kids do these days I think this is actually quite an accomplishment in itself. Maybe he is around his brother/sisters house several times a week. Doubtful. In this case, he would have had to teach his niece about backups, the importance of backups, and hoped she would go through the hassle anytime she spent some money on music. She is already (in her mind) being inconvienced by paying for music that her friends get for free. Pushing her to go through extra hoops isn't going to encourage her any more.

After all, Limewire will allow you to "recover" your songs if something goes wrong. Why pay money if you get LESS service than stealing the music? Besides, isn't "Cloud" computing the new fad? Your data, backed up and safe on a huge corporation's servers instead of your crappy home computer? The music store has the bytes. She paid for the bytes. It costs them nearly nothing to replace the bytes. What is the problem? Seriously? If I were in headkase's shoes I'd tell my niece "Well, you just learned how the world really works. It sucks. Everyone will fuck you as often and as hard as possible. Sorry you have to become jaded at this age, but you might as well steal as honesty isn't rewarded.

They gave them fair warning. If they don't defend the GPL it loses it's strength.
If you are unable to follow the licence, you shouldn't be using the code, simple as that...

At the end of the day, Steam is the same thing as the Xbox 360 or PS3, from a business perspective at least.

Consoles are sold at a loss with the belief that game royalties, DLC, subscriptions, etc. will make up for hardware costs and then some. The hardware is just a gateway for a locked-down platform where the proprietor gets a cut of every transaction made over the platform.

Valve completely sidestepped the hardware and retail floorspace aspect of the traditional console sales model and delivered a platform straight to users' computers. Like Microsoft and Sony, Valve makes money from every game and DLC pack sold over their service, only Valve didn't have to sink billion of dollars into manufacturing and marketing an entire console to do it. Valve boiled away all of the extraneous stuff and focused on where the money's actually made.

Microsoft and Sony undoubtedly bring in more revenue from their respective videogame divisions, but Steam must have a staggering return-on-investment given that it cost virtually nothing to create.

"Hardcore" videogame consoles only exist because there are a few megacorps out there with enough capital to sink into making them. Given the enormous costs of creating the PS3 and Xbox, it strikes me as a horribly inefficient way of making money. Does anyone know if the PS3 and Xbox divisions are net winners for their respective companies yet?