If you go to the list at https://gacweb.icann.org/display/gacweb/GAC+Early+Warnings , you'll see a jumbled hodgepodge of requested TLDs, impossible to find anything (except exact matches with Find-within-page). I immediately wished that the list were sortable.

Turns out, it is. The column headers are hotlinks that trigger sorts on the associated column. It's just not at all obvious that that's the case, because they've suppressed almost all standard hotlink cues. The hotlinks are bold, black and centered, standard highlighting for the TH tags that they also are. Nothing but the index finger pointer indicates that the headers are hot. They also didn't provide any commentary that it was sortable, either in title tooltips or in introductory verbiage. Very cool and minimalist, but not in a good way.

In other words, the table sort feature is inaccessible, even to sighted readers, because it denies the reader the information that it's sortable. It might as well not be sortable at all if you don't let the user know.

Anyway, if you want to get a clearer view of the competition for TLDs, you might want to sort by Application (the TLD itself), Applicant or Filing GAC Member. YW.

That's hot. (tm)

Actually, the problem is software that's not built for concurrency on multiple cores/cpus: Amdahl's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law

Once upon a time, in college, I forgot I had an evening computer sciences test. I forgot because it was unusual, not because I had been smoking. So thinking my night was free, I got majorly stoned on weed (the end of my work day, so to speak). Then all of a sudden, at the last minute, I remembered I had the test. Living just off campus, I walked to the test site, which was in an auditorium. I arrived about 5 - 10 minutes late. There were about 100 other students there who had already begun the test. I got my copy of the questions, sat down and began.

Then a very strange thing happened.

As I read the questions, before reaching end-of-sentence, the answers formed in my mind and presented themselves to me VISUALLY as colorful 3-dimensional block letters that hovered over the test page. They kind-of bounced and danced and floated. Very amusing. The answers couldn't have come to me any way other than from my own memory and problem-solving skills, so it wasn't cheating or anything. It was just an amazingly awesome way to remember and code.

I THOROUGHLY enjoyed taking that test. I zipped through it with ease, answering every question even faster than I could read it. Despite having arrived so late, when I went up to turn in my answers, I was only the second person in the auditorium to have finished.

I missed only 2 questions, and they were highly debatable. The way the questions were worded, someone who actually understood the material would answer a different way from the officially-correct answer. But as a mathematics and computer-sciences major, I was used to that sort of thing. Didn't bother me much. I got the highest score of anyone taking the test, and an A.

When I first told a stoner friend of that experience, he said "Gee, I wonder what the guy who finished before you was on."

I was VERY surprised to see this topic on Slashdot. I had no idea that others had noticed that marijuana could so positively enhance puzzle-solving. (Let's be honest, that's what math and computer programming are all about.) I just thought I had an idiosyncratic response.

Oh well, here's hoping there's more research, and that weed isn't reclassified as a performance-enhancing drug. I'd hate to have to hand back all my tour-de-force wins. :-)

Are you're quoting the Mentat Piter De Vries or my e-mail signature? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMBb_tPPA8E

Programmer, n., device for turning caffeine into code.

Univac's 1100 series also had a 6-bit opcode, fixed instruction length and tons of registers back in the 1960s, around the same time as the CDC 6600.

At less than half of those prices (real hearing aid prices quoted above), you could get a top of the line mobile device, then search the associated app store for "hearing aid". There are already plenty of apps for free, $0.99, $1.99, etc, that take input from the built-in microphone and pump it through to the ear buds.

Not the best quality, but it would also function as a music player, video player, e-mail client, Twitter client, web browser, handheld gaming device, video chat device, voice memo recorder, GPS/map, electronic book reader, telephone (if that's the kind of device you chose), scheduler, TiVo remote, sketch pad, musical instrument, Victoria's Secret catalog, virtual pet simulator, news aggregator/reader, alarm clock, phone book, calculator, units conversion tool, dictation device, data organizer, note pad and outlet for paid entertainment content.

Except that apps sell for so damn little these days... It would be hard to get rich, even with a kickstart. It would probably be better to sell an add-on external microphone / app combo to turn it into a decent hearing aid. Early turn-by-turn navigation systems were external hardware / app combos too.

It's not just a behavior, but also a pattern of acceleration and deceleration (known as an "easing function") that reminds the viewer of a rubber band. Easing functions are pathetically easy to do, so there are a ton of them. Bouncing ball effects, wiggles, hop up in the air and bounce, you name it.

The purpose of patents was to encourage inventors to undertake a LOT of work by allowing them to profit from it with exclusivity. Otherwise, who would test thousands of light bulb filaments and bulb contents (vacuums, inert gasses) until finally determining the best one, right? When inventors strive to patent something that's dead easy, it's an affront to the goals of the patent system.

Maybe there was SOMETHING that was hard about rubber banding, but I don't see what it could be.

Perhaps you're thinking of the iPad too much like a laptop and not enough as a new way of interacting with a machine.

I've been using the dictation button on the new iPad and it works great. Much better than typing for bulk data input. Then when done, I go back and edit what it couldn't handle (usually not much). Admittedly not a good solution in a noisy classroom or teacher's lounge (background din of people talking), but otherwise, it's good.

Dictation tips: Say "comma", "period", "left paren", "right paren", "quote", "unquote" and "new paragraph" aloud, and it'll do it.

I wonder how much support Khan Academy will have for iPads (teachers monitoring kids running through lessons, like on 60 Minutes). That could be a pretty great use of a tablet. (Carry it with you as you walk from student to student to help them out.)

Top politician in his country, loves to brave the cold, does judo, loves nature, ..., OMG, he's Teddy Roosevelt!

"They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage."

Norton prefers to say that they were colonically extracted.

Clearly they came from Indoeuropea.

The money he'd be paying to lawyers would buy a rather extensive new iTunes library.