should it not be 'alleged rapist'? there has been no trial nor conviction. i mean really! if you want to fnord subconciously smear fnord the fellow there are less clumsy fnord ways to do it.

peoples like you are why science is so sucky. where did you start and how did you end up so close minded?

? we is the universal theory of everything ? *puts down cookie* !time for bed!

I see more and more that the commercial side wants to tighten the grip, and intentionally hobble software for all but the highest bidders.

Meanwhile my software budget decreases out of continued disappointment and frustration.

The US can't do that in the US either. Just an FYI.

" Frankly, EU and European countries take privacy a lot more seriously,"
Care to back that up? I mean when you can take time away from being on public video, told what you can and can not say, carrying papers,

IT would be more correct to say it treats privacy different;which makes sense because what it considered ''privacy' is different. For example, what you do in public can be considered 'private' in some countries.

Of course it's such a patch work in the EU, it's almost nonsense to say to use the EU as a generally statement concerning privacy.

I'm not so sure, do facebook, farmville, youtube, hulu, and flash games work? if so thats about enough for a "couch tablet" getting the price down around 200-300 may be the problem though, considering you can buy whole computers for that price, but they sit on a desk, and don't have batteries.

there is no war on drugs

there is a "war on alcohol" (pointless) or a "war on lsd" (pointless) or a "war on meth" (NOT pointless)

you need to evaluate each drug individually, because for some drugs, that are highly addictive and inebriating, pushing back against the availability of the drug has a real effect in terms of saving lots of lives

there are two classes of drug users, for any drug: the committed idiot, and the casual idiot

the committed idiot, just as you say, represents a permanent underclass of drug addled zombie. no law will stop their self-destruction. whether every drug is completely free, or completely draconianly locked down, they will still destory their lives, no matter what you do. that's just their psychological fate. and so they don't matter in the policy analysis

but the CASUAl idiot, the average teenager who thinks they are immune and immortal, that there are no limitations on their will power: in a free and unfettered environment, these are lives you are burdening with decades of quality of life destroying, freedom destroying addiction (when it comes to only the worst drugs: cocaine, heroine, meth). but given enough time, and difficulty in accessing the worst substances, the casual teenage idiot will mature and realize on their own the threat coke/ meth/ heroin has on their quality of life and freedom

that is what the war on drugs is for. not the permanent unalterable underclass of drug zombies, but the much larger user base of casual idiots who, with CERTAIN substances (meth/ heorin/ coke) will be turned into drug zombies

you have to evaluate the substances individually. alcohol, marijuana: the war on drugs is stupid

heroin, coke: the war on drugs makes a genuine net positive. yes, the war on drugs has plenty of negative effects. for alcohol/ marijuana, those negative effects argue for legalization. but for some substances, life destruction is so viral through easy addiction, that the war, even with all the negativ effects considered, still has a net positive effect

I'm trying to figure out which part of this story is the scariest.

... that someone has suggested setting off an underground nuke to close an oil well?

... finding out that the Soviets did this all the time?

... finding out that the USSR was so careless they had six "petrocalamities" worth trying this trick on?

... finding out that there's an actual word for an oil accident of this size?

that if you legalized everything, every single problem you just cited above would be worse?

the best you can do is push back against the growth of the drug addled zombie underclass, and push back against the growth of the mafia, forever. NOT pushing back against these things simply means they grow and proliferate even more, to the destruction of far more rights and freedoms and destroyed lives than the war on drugs itself. you can't ever completely destroy the drug use, but that never was the point: the point is to simply minimize their stink

why can't you see that? why can't you appreciate the damage done by a large underclass of drug zombies and a fattened mafia from their existence? why doesn't your mind perceive of and understand the threat to individual freedom from those things?

here, learn your history:

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/CHING/OPIUM.HTM

here's the problem: teenagers are idiots. they think of themselves as immortal and immune, they don't perceive of the limitations of their willpower when faced, for example, with crippling addiction to something like coke/ heroin/ meth. and so, in an environment of easy access, a heck of a lot of them will try these things, and wind up with a life long crippling addiction

prevent them from accessing to these drugs though, and they mature to the point where they perceive on their own these substances have towards their quality of life and their freedom. of course you won't save everyone, some committed idiots are just hellbent on personal destruction. but a much larger class of casual idiots needs to be given the chance to escape the hell of addiction

i really wish you could understand and appreciate exactly what heroin, coke, and meth do to someone's lives and their minds and their freedom. of course the war on drugs has negative effects. i recognize and acknowledge every single negative you cite. now i wish you would acknowledge what free and unfettered access to heroin/ coke/ meth will cost in wasted lives, and see that it is far worse than the war on drugs

it's not an obsession. it may seem counterintuitive, but it's been shown that very small lags do, in fact, affect user experience, even if the user himself doesn't realize it. i don't know if 0.1 seconds would make a difference, but i'm fairly certain a number in the 0.5 range does. (can't find relevant citation at the moment)

I understand your point, but the middle-mouse-click does exactly that - open in background tab.

Well, when I get mine, I'm going to get a powered wall mount in my kitchen. I'll use it as an all-in-one e-calendar, music player, photo display, tube map, ordinary map, etc etc. I'd like to have that handy. It would be really nice if I could also get all my applicances' manuals on there as well, so that when the boiler or washing machine plays up, I don't have to hunt around for it. Of course, being detachable, it'll be great to read Alice in Wonderland and similar stories with my 1-year old daughter and enjoy this amazing new combination of words, graphics and interactivity that she can enjoy in a way that's completely inconceivable with a mouse or trackpad-driven device. Oh, and it'll be nice to have a recipe book that plays videos / shows multiple angles to show me the really tricky bits, compiles instant shopping lists and allows one-click purchasing from Waitrose, etc etc.

When it was going through inflation, it hadn't collapsed into the set of physics why now have.

IN fact, it may have gone through sever types before collapsing into what we know observe.

". And Scientists are like most people, they don't like big changes."
That is completely false. They LOVE big changes. Nobel prizes, cash grants, a chair, books are easier to achieve by discovering big changes.
Big changes make your career, especially if it changes away from something the data had previously pointed from.

however you need to be able to show substantial evidence you can just toss out a different idea. You need to back it with data that others can confirm.

The newest DS, the XL has a standard SD card slot, for playing music from. Why you would want to do that I am not sure, as there are cheaper and superior players around but it can be done.

This Jerkface Playhouse guy is just windows noob upset that the world he knows a tiny bit of is collapsing around him. People like that react with fear and hostility to anything new.

I have no idea if ChromeOS will be anything more then a thought experiment, but stranger things have happened. Right now Android is outselling the iPhone. Who would have thought eh? granted there are more android phones and they are cheaper but still. And who would have thought that with all this MS is behind EVERYONE on mobile phones. So much for 3rd time is the charm with a MS product. What release is Windows Mobile 7 by now (and no, it ain't 7)

I think Google is just seeing what sticks. It wants to break open the entire IT market and it is succeeding so far. MS ain't its enemy, MS lock-in is its enemy. Same as telecom lock-in and email provider lock-in. MS is breaking this up. more and more small companies and bigger ones use gmail. Gmail. Not exchange. BANG. Gone MS lock-in. For that matter lock-in with anyone. Granted now you got a bit of gmail lock-in although since there is far less tie in going on, you can far more easily migrate away from gmail then exchange.

If the internet becomes open then Google can sells its services to anyone. The more cheap devices are out there connecting, the more people will want to use online services (I barely ever write documents, and then often on different machines, I don't need office. I don't want office. I do use google docs. Anywhere, anytime.) and google makes money from that.

ChromeOS is just another attempt to break the lock-in. Maybe someone will make a cheap netbook with it purely for web access in the house. A cheap iPad for in the kitchen. Or maybe it will be in eternal beta. But Google is constantly trying and a lot of its succeeding.

When news broke about Android outselling the iPhone, where were all the doubters? To busy eating crow to admit they were wrong?

I am personally very intrested to see where Google is going. They are one of the freshest daring companies out there.

A software patent covers an allegedly novel method of information processing; how is such a method not a "new and useful process"?

In Gottschalk v. Benson, SCOTUS ruled that a "process" does not include mathematical algorithms. Methods of information processing are mathematical algorithms.