Still, if you can't even pass calculus then there's something wrong. And that's not even the problem- he's looking for help preparing for the placement test. If he's let his skills deteriorate so far that he forgets algebra, then he has no business getting a degree in anything.

You don't need this level of sophistication just to fold towels. The robot could just kind of flatten it out by tugging on different corners until it's flat, and then grabbing two corners and folding it over.

Even easier would be just a big machine that pulls in a bin of linens and separates them onto rollers, which deposit them in piles.

The new deduplication-based file system called SDFS (GPL v2) is scalable to eight petabytes of capacity with 256 storage engines, which can each store up to 32TB of deduplicated data. Each volume can be up to 8 exabytes

Can anyone offer wisdom on what the volume size is supposed to signify, being different from the maximum size that SDFS is scalable to?

Maybe it's not a question of whether the code is efficient. Maybe it's a question of how much you're asking the code to do. It's no surprise that hardware struggles to make gains against performance demands when software developers are adding on nonsense like compositing window managers and sidebar widgets. I'm enjoying Moore's law without any cancellation.. just run a sane environment. Qt or GTK, not both, if youre running an X desktop. Nothing other than IM in the system tray. No "upgrade fever" that makes people itch for Windows Media Player 14 when older versions work fine and mplayer and winamp work better.

Ants and termites build cities, and beavers build dams, and we don't seem to care.

should, of course, by resisted fiercely by both technological and political means

So paper-bound inefficiency and insecurity is a good thing?

"union leaders who complain that thousands of public sector workers would be made jobless" is absolutely absurd of course. If anything, cut those jobs and send the people their paycheck anyway with the money the government is saving, instead of having them do unnecessary work all day.

If by last attempt you mean almost every hour of every day for over two years...

No additional plugin, is it? Built right in? Direct access to low level 3D graphics hardware without finding drivers?

That'll do wonders for Chrome being the fastest browser. And double the download size.

And I wince every time I see a story seriously using the name "Christopher Poole."

Looks cleaner than some of the Perl I've seen :)

Maybe not in an information society, but it made a lot of sense during the industrial revolution when workers were being exploited by captialists..

Of course I prefer our system, but you have to admit that communism has been very prolific. It's not an awful idea; it works to some degree.

How long would a chinese soldier last if they refused to obey orders?

These are people we're talking about, not governments. You're only wishing harm on regular people.

Also, "There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere." --Isaac Asimov

Nothing you could do or say could convince me that is a good idea.

It's not as simple as that. The Cuban embargo has stifled Cuba's growth and left it so that people don't have cell phones or internet at all. Standing up for Cubans' rights and refusing to deal with their government ultimately badly hurt common citizens.

Providing search services to Chinese citizens and letting their government rewrite results as they see fit may be better than denying them search altogether. If Google pulls out, the Chinese will still have censored search results, but from an inferior search provider.

US undergrad, US graduate, world.