Can't see any other way, copyrights are copyrights. And I don't think the GPL has ever implied that it can cover the APIs.

Or she could simply be one of the hordes who work for government contractors who support the NSA and similar agencies. The standards are, unfortunately, not so high. Problem is one needs to work in some very specific locations, and an existing security clearance is often a prerequisite.

....until the next time we really, really need you to bail us out of a jam.

Hey, the US has tried to play isolationist a few times, it seems to be Europe that keeps begging us back out of retirement. Just sayin'.

As an example, I'm assuming that Europe absolutely will not be seeking any sort of economic assistance from the US as part of the sovereign debt problems that seem to be facing 2/3 of that continent. And I'm also certain that Japan, SK, and Taiwan would be A-OK with us removing any and all support that has helped stabilize that region. Admittedly we've fucked up the whole middle east thing, but it was sort of our turn since everybody else has over the last couple thousand years.

As an American, we're used to the "Go away until we need your resources to solve our problems, at which we will act like ungrateful bastards about it" thing. Keep it up.

There conceivably could be an infinite number of "parellel" universes, but there's a real philosophical problem with that. So long as we use the real physicists definitions and not something out of Stargate SG1, those parallels will always remain undetectable. SF writers tell stories about interacting with other universes - physicists define them in ways that show they can't be interacted with to be verified. An untestable idea isn't part of science.

Quite true. And while there is a component of such research that will appeal to the sci-fi or metaphysical crowds, it is still worth considering what such systems would imply. Question: what defines a parallel universe? To me, it is as simple as an ensemble of particles that does not interact with our universe via any of the 4 standard forces with which we are familiar. Once we start there, it can become scientific (ie, testable) again if we ask another simple question: could groups of particles that do not interact at standard temperatures begin interacting at extremely high energies? If the physics were to suggest such a thing, it could be made testable.

There is some precent for such notions - in general, at higher energies, things become more symmetric. A singularity is fully symmetric, and the big bang process resulted in our universe losing its symmetry as it cooled. The 4 major forces (or at least the 3 non-gravity) converge at high energies. It's not inconceivable that other types of symmetry were broken as the universe cooled - whether that symmetry breaking resulted in a preference for matter, or whether it resulted in multiple ensembles of matter that do not interact (ie, universes), remains to be seen.

But like everything else in fundamental physics, creating higher energies should be part of the experiment. And, as you say, it has to be scientific.

Which exposes how little these tards understand about science, because nanotech is not a specific branch of science, but an amalgamation of many branches of science lumped together by those who don't understand any of them.

Thanks for the summary, it was staggeringly accurate to what I spent the last 6 months doing - namely, getting a high-end machine to use as a centralized computational workstation for my small research group. First I had to fight the external vendor to just get a quote. Then, a guy in IT cancelled my order because the company "doesn't support" that type of machine - which is, again, simply a beefed-up version of a machine they *do* support. Of course, they don't tell me it was cancelled, it was just sort of a silent failure. After a while, I inquire as to status, discover it was cancelled, find the guy who cancelled it, argue with him on the phone, eventually win him over.

Then, it takes forever for a "custom" machine to get delivered. When it does get delivered, it goes to the on-site vendor support team, who basically just put it in a corner and refuse to touch it, simply because it's not one of the very few machines approved for our large company. I discover this after a month. Then, I spend a month arguing with various representatives of the vendor, and finally I go back to one of the IT guys actually employed by the company who is actually willing to put an image on the machine. Finally, the OS and network access gets installed in a day (probably less), which is all I wanted in the first place.

I'd hate to imagine the amount of labor I spent getting this machine, but I'd say it exceeded the price of the machine.

They're getting paid. Facebook replaces messaging because people are using it through their smart phone. So they're paying for data plans.

No way it offsets. Even if you got ass-pounded with some $0.25/MB data charge, that SMS message is less than a kB. We're talking a tenth of a cent of data per SMS at worst, maybe less, for the worst data plan imaginable.

On the other hand, the carriers typically upcharge $10-20 for text plans, or $0.05-0.10 per SMS. SMS plans were definitely their cash cow, and the data used will absolutely not outweigh.

The only way it would make them more money is if people who *wouldn't otherwise have paid for data* did so as an upgrade to text, but I'm thinking the numbers there don't justify the low-cost, high-revenue stream they're losing. I think what happens is that people who want data for a variety of reasons drop text because they realize they don't need it. And I don't think the carriers will like that much.

They definitely want to still have the phone + text + data plans being sold, because it seems like you're getting 3 things instead of 2, so when you get that three-figure cell bill, it might remind consumers just a bit less of sodomy.

Of course, back then, you worked till the day you died, since there was no Social Security

Of course, since Social Security isn't supposed to be a fucking retirement plan, that's a non-sequitur.

Thankfully, the first amendment doesn't work that way, or we would have no free speech to speak of.

//REMEMBER TO COMMENT THIS SHIT OUT SO I DONT GET FIRED

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING....