If private, then companies and related ones will probably still have the data in their backups. Even if deleted, they probably still have them somewhere. :(

The second worst thing about non-metric systems is that the measure for a pound, a gallon, a foot, etc is not actually standardized between countries. Calling the US measurements "english" is a bit wrong, as an imperial gallon and a US gallon are two different amounts.

The worst thing obviously being insane conversions between different units of distance, volume, weight, etc.

We count/do maths in base 10. We have 10 digits. Our measurement system should reflect that. The rest of the world, and the scientific community get it.

I am still waiting for fibers near my homes! Verizon FIOS doesn't want to bring them here. I still can't get DSL too! Argh! :(

Someone is always archiving data like archive.org. :P

I am clean with my computer data, but messy physically. ;)

From your description, "they" were an individual customer service representative. As soon as one starts giving you pushback, take the operator's advice: hang up and try your call again.

most of them would end their lives are food or slaves.

Heh.

Congratulations, you caught me on an obvious typo.

Initially curiosity. Over the past couple of years I have found the social interaction to be beneficial.Higher signal to noise ratio in the conversation department. I woldn't want to hand around with smart folk all the time, hence my travels to Slashdot :)

Source? This is the first I've heard of this, I haven't seen any articles on the subject, so this would be very enlightening. Generally Thinkpad quality is very high, even if their screen quality went to garbage starting around Thanksgiving 2012... It would be interesting to see more details on this, as I have been tracking the downward spiral of Thinkpad quality ever since the Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing announced that they were going to square off the Thinkpad vs Ideapad brands under lenovo at the cost of giving users worse quality products under both brands....

$ ping facebook.com
PING facebook.com (173.252.110.27): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 173.252.110.27: icmp_seq=0 ttl=87 time=59.217 ms
64 bytes from 173.252.110.27: icmp_seq=1 ttl=87 time=58.550 ms
64 bytes from 173.252.110.27: icmp_seq=2 ttl=87 time=58.887 ms
--- facebook.com ping statistics ---

Try harder.

That particular episode was written by Conan O'Brien. Phil, while brilliant in his own right, just read the line. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701189/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_wr#writers

I am a member of a high IQ "society" that discrimatinates against the lowest 99.9% of the general population. Yet, I would do very poorly on this test as my visual processing is poor. I excel in abstract reasoning but do poorly in other areas.

What is intelligence? What is IQ? What is it good for? All good questions.