Are there any valuable functions mapped to a middle button anyway, that make it so important?

Yes. For people who use real computers, middle button = "paste selected text".

Who puts three fingers on the surface of a mouse?

People who use real computers but have not yet found the one true pointing device, the 4-button Logitech Marble Mouse Trackball.

Just because one is a physical limitation and the other is a psychological one doesn't make them different

Yes, actually, it does. That the idea of so-called "mental illness" obscures this is one of the problems with mislabeling various problems of living as diseases.

I've heard claims that one in four women will be raped at some point in their lives, and have yet to hear any sort of data-based rebuttal.

Really? You heard such an extraordinary claim, but apparently made zero effort to look into its validity?

Here you go. And here. And here.

Essentially, that inflated number is based on questionable surveys which often fail to distinguish between a regrettable drunken hookup and rape, and is not just about rape but about behavior ranging from grabbing a woman's butt on up through attempted rape and actual rape. (Yes, grabbing someone's butt is bad. It's assault. It's unacceptable. It is not, however, rape.)

Is rape much more common than most people think? Yes. The data is murky but I would be surprised if the lifetime victimization rate for women was less than 5%, 1 in 20. Is it 25%, "eeny-meeny-miney-RAPE!" common? No.

And a teacher sending a student sexy messages over the internet is certainly a breach of professional conduct...but it's not rape.

Thanks, I just may. I wonder who the other person was?

B&N has one too, I may just go for both and look for more.

Amazon was an experiment. I read the library's copy of Andy Wier's The Martian, really liked it, and googled to see if he had any more titles. Wikipedia said that he couldn't get a publisher so he introduced it as an Amazon ebook, it went to their best seller list, and a publisher bought the hardcover rights for a six figure sum.

So I thought, what the hell, why not give it a try? I thought it might give me extra exposure, but I was wrong.

Star Trek now has freedom to have any future the writers can come up with

No, they're stuck with the universe Abrams left them. A universe which makes no sense, where starships are irrelevant because transporters can move people over interstellar distances (from Earth to the Klingon homeworld), and where a cure for death has been found in Khan's blood. Not to mention the absurd political situation, with a corrupt Starfleet operating accord to some bizarre system of personal prerogative of individual commanders rather than any rational chain of command.

I came here to moderate, but unfortunately slashdot's bug initiation team has made it so I either have to have teeny tiny print or a side scroll. Hey, slashdot, we aren't all using thirty inch monitors! Jesus, even the newspapers (most are the worst sites on the web) don't fuck up this bad.

Really, slashdot, is Dice trying to get rid of you? This is really lame. You really should hang your heads in shame.

See you at Soylent News.

Now, someone else with points please mod me offtopic. Thanks.

ASCII is fine if it's only going to be published at slashdot, but conversion is a pain in the ass I shouldn't put up with.

It seems that slashdot no longer fixes bugs, but are trying to introduce more. Today I have a choice between a tiny font and a side scroll. LAME!

I think the writing was on the wall over a year ago when they tried to shove Beta down our throats.

I miss Taco, the place worked when he was here.

In further news various governments have dropped all attempts at regulating the internet after the 15th successful kicker starter campaign has created yet another global network outside of their control....

No, but he DID speak. This theory is the dumbest theory I've seen coming from someone who should know better for years; it's already been disproven before the dumbass thought of it.

Other apes have language. Prairie dogs have language. Even dogs have language, even though the only three things they say are "I'm hurt", "I'm lonely" and "get off my property before I eat you!" Previous STUDIES have shown this.

Why do these educated morons think vocal cords evolved for in the first place??

Also, the summary is likewise retarded: "If there's one thing that distinguishes humans from other animals, it's our ability to use language."

We may use it better than other species, but this is unproven; whales and dolphins may have more sophisticated language than us, but we can't tell because we can't understand them. It may well be that we're the only species to have abstractions, but that's not proven, either.

Tools aren't even human-only; birds and other animals have been spotted using tools. So what makes us different?

Music, art, and humor. No other species laughs (Hyenas' "laughs" aren't from humor); no other species make art (the elephant doesn't count; do you really think he knows what's going on?), and no other species makes music -- and no, bird "song" isn't music, it's speech (that the idiots coming up with this absurd theory don't understand).

The bottom line is that the Bolt is a Chevy, and a Chevy is a GM, and GM is the auto production arm of the Federal Government that should have gone bankrupt and broken up a dozen times over in the past 50 years.

From which I will never buy a vehicle from. The End.