It's very hard. They took away my green card when I became a US citizen.

Web 2.0 is a crock. You know the ".0" version is always bug ridden. Just patch it and release 2.1 already.

Now if we could only ban "v6".

You have misunderstood. It's not the Microsoft window update doing its job as it is keeping ALL your software up to date. Windows update does not update all those other piece of software you have, e,g., java, flash, firefox, adobe pdf reader, virus scanner &c. Instead, each piece of software some unique mechanism (or none at all) to keep itself updated.

There is no common infrastructure to do this automatically. I don't expect MS to update my flashplayer, but I would enjoy some kind of help like a master list of update-sites and repositories to check the software against. Unfortunately, it would open up some kind of security can of worms too. But then again, vulnerable software is also a security can of worms.

I particularly loathe those crapplets which load up automatically and exist only to look for updates. They don't just check and go away, no they stay loaded all the time. Can't they make some sort of cron task?

If I had mod points, I'd mod you as a troll.

I am a systems engineer (no, not a computer tech, the other kind) and I am sick and tired of all the belly aching from software when you ask for even the simplest linear algebra. If I want to say, multiply a matrix times a vector, they want me to spell it all out for them. Asking for solving a linear set of equations using Guassian elimination or Cholesky &c and it is suddenly a major million dollar undertaking. God help you if you want something advanced like singular value decomposition.

No matter that libraries like LAPACK for this have existed for over 30 years. Open up Golub and VanLoan. Why should I need to re-explain this stuff?

The problem, as I see it, is that there is insufficient overlap between domains. The systems people could do with learning a bit more about software and the software people need to understand the domain. Software is not just software. You should see the crackpot monstrosities that are written from insufficient understanding of the higher level structure. I'd rather have the engineers write the numerical/math code and leave the user interface to the pure software guys.

No doubt, BLAS and LAPACK are kind of awkward when used from C or C++.

An engaging professor is worth a lot. A good professor can make a dull subject come alive. A boring one can do the opposite.

Also, there are many flavors of math so you might want to sample to see what suits you. I would suggest a course in "linear algebra". Linear algebra has very low prerequisites - basically arithmetic - there are no "limits" to be taken. It is very useful for almost everything technical and it offers exposure to theorem and proofs. Plus you can use Octave (or Matlab) to try out programming with vectors and matrices and get some hands-on experience with the concepts.

For the sake of argument, I will suppose that your ISP gives you IPv6. What makes you think they'll give you more than one working address? Verizon and Comcast are known for their greed an ineptitude. For competition you need at least 3 viable choices.

You could just retcon the BC dates. Set 0 AD = 1 BC, and -N AD = 1-N BC for N > 0. That way you can start from 0 AD and leave today's date the same.

Vodka? No wonder windows 7 sucks. You make a martini with gin.

>> this means no readdressing problems when you suddenly decide 2 completely independent networks need to talk to each other.

What if one of those independent networks is running IPv4? Fail.

And that is why IPv6 continues to lose.

Sales tax sucks because it slows down the velocity of money. You pay sales tax whenever the dollar circulates which could be many times in a year.

The income tax (while it has the really annoying forms and loss of privacy problems) is assessed on your net profit and once per year. Sales tax is on total sales revenue.

You could do a value added tax (VAT) which is not as bad as straight sales, but it still clobbers commerce and especially high volume business.

As far as fairness goes, the higher the income, the lower the percentage people pay in sales taxes. It's just empirically the way it works out (although there are solid reasons for it).

I hate the sales tax. It's my least favorite kind.

Hiking that Appalachian trail can be tricky. I hear it goes all the way to Argentina.

Let's do the math. From that fount of knowledge that is wikipedia, the US grid is about 4 thousand terawatts. That's 4*10^15 W.

So say we want over 4 times that, like 20*10^15 W to give 4 times the power of the US grid.

Power is energy divided by time. 1 femtosecond is 10^(-15) sec.
Let energy in joules be E, power in watts be P and time in seconds be T, then
      E = P*T
So the energy of power 20*10^15 W times times time 10^(-15) is just 20 Joules.

Say it takes 1 sec to pump the laser, that's an average power of 20W. Of course the laser pumping
isn't 100% efficient, and 1 sec might not be the exact right time, it's still feasible. It's only the equivalent
energy of having the light bulb lit for a few seconds.

As if network television even has news.

And there are plenty of news sources that are not the interweb:
- your friends and cow-orkers
- radio
- newspaper

If they haven't gotten the news about the digital TV transition, how important can the news possibly be to these people? Turning off the signal is the only way to get them to notice. And if they still don't notice after that, why would they care? It's not like they are trying to watch TV.