Slashdot

You young whippersnappers! Back in my day, all we had to hate were the Ewoks! And we liked it that way!

Theoretically, Referees shouldn't have any influence. They do, because people aren't perfect.

But the difference between judges and referees is that judges determine things subjectively, referees objectively.

In a sport, you can say, "If I do X I will get Y number of points." In a judged competition, you can't do that.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with judged competitions, I'm just saying that they aren't sports.

Since a moderator decides on objective criteria, slashdot posting is therefore a sport.

I fully expect this post to be moderated objectively.

It's nice to see some innovation in software (or in this vaporware stage, at least). desktop software hasn't changed much in the last 10 years. I mean, OS X is a better looky feely version of Windows, and Vista is trying to be OS X. Firefox and Safari are trying to be a better IE. And web 2.0 apps and chat clients are basically better versions of Usenet and IRC.

But there hasn't been anything truly revolutionary in the world of desktop software in a long time.

NASA found water on Mars over three years ago.

Everyone! Over here quickly, and bring your camera! I found the one person who likes the Awesome bar!

How responsable would you be for the content stored on your Nano Data Center... I can see tons and tons of lawsuits.

Another thought, how much redundancy would be required to protect the data should Joe-Six-Pack accidently wipe his data. Or get his set top infected while surfing for porn.

This could be a good way to distribute malware, being that we'd (presumably) have access to someone else's data within our datacenter. What would stop me from replacing the content of the datacenter side of my box. Physical access is a bad idea.

There is also a privacy issue. If we know what is on our datacenter, we could track incoming requests and build a database of users/ips that like whatever content we are serving.

Develop an application that can inject whatever you want to share (porn, movies, music, pictures, computer software, stolen identity data, the list is endless) and you would have instant and free worldwide delivery. All you would have to do is insert the data at a public box (one not tied to your house or account) and there's no way to track it back to you.

Really? Trolls have a posting history as long as mine? I must be one dedicated troll.

Because I disagree with another poster and the groupthink.

You honestly expect me to believe that there isn't groupthink and bias here? It's almost gotten as bad as Digg and Reddit.

Maybe I'm not a troll? Maybe I'm someone that - gasp, horror - disagrees?

Uh, yes, I do.

Sorry there, buddy, but it wasn't a "fringe" view. Claiming it was, now, is pathetic CYAing because it didn't turn out that way.

And the science is perfect now, right? Those guys back then had it wrong, but you have it right now?

Dude. Seriously. Fuck off. Call me when your neighbor is eating you alive and the temp is 150F.

Damn hard to get funding when the world doesn't want to hear a dissenting view.

Funny, you could always write off the purchase work vehicles. The rule that changed was that instead of taking those write-offs over 5 years, you could do it in one.

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You do know what write-off means, right? It means you can claim the expense as a business expense, so you purchase it with pre-tax dollars. It's not like you get it free, or get a dollar for dollar tax credit; at best, you maybe save 35%, tops (if a corporation; if an LLC or sole-prop then you probably saved 15-20%).

And of course you could only write off what you actually SPENT in that year on the vehicle, meaning if you made payments for 5 years, you still had a 5 year payment plan. It was only if you bought it in one year could you deduct the expense in one lump sum.

Seems to me to be a much better way to do things - if a business pays $100,000 for business equipment, I'm all for them being able to claim the entire $100,000 amount as an expense in one year (decreasing their net income), rather than forcing them to spread the expense out over 5 or 7 tax years.

If that's forcing people to buy a Hummer, I'd like to meet those people. They still had to have the $100,000 up front to purchase it...

I think I will make the best of this, take my HUMMER out for a ride.

1976: National Geographic predicts global cooling.

Today: National Geographic predicts global warming.

that if you install a mirror plasmoid and say "goatse" three times, RMS will appear and strangle you with his beard.

http://xkcd.com/331/

I can tell from the text and seeing quite a few spams in my time.