I think a better test is - say you're a skinny person who is 115 pounds, if you were carrying a 110 pounds (some other light person) could you do a small hop on one foot? Or you were a 170 pounder and carrying a 60 pound kid - can you do a small hop? If you can, then you can probably push the 225 pounds required. That's closer to the brake leg movement than a leg press lift.

The CHP officer should have been able to easily do 225 pounds with one foot.

IMO the problem is if you don't apply max force on the brakes (just step on them hard but not max) - then the brakes might start burning out first.

Never mind. Your turn will come someday.

I sense sarcasm, but I need to make this point.

This article is definitive proof of someone with no definitive proof using the faucets given to them as a journalist to demonize a class of people whom she has little ties with and knows absolutely nothing about. Maybe she forgives on Sundays, but every other day of the week, it appears she's throwing punches.

Considering such hear-say proof will mess with all equations. That is exactly what most of us do, because we do not know better, and how we end up hanging the innocent in the name of justice and faith. Years later we shudder at our own ignorance, and promise we'll do better. That pretty much sums up the history of civilization, and if you think that somehow ends with us, then you are part of the problem.

That is what this article is evidence of.

Even better, define new LaTeX commands for the stuff you write repeatedly. This way, I was able to write my calculus notes in plain LaTeX quite effectively. For example, here are a few I had:

\newcommand{\fint}{\int_a^b f(x) \,\mathrm{d} x}

\newcommand{\ixi}{\langle x_{i-1}, x_i \rangle}

\newcommand{\non}{_{n=0}^\infty}

\newcommand{\mr}{\sum\non a_nx^n}

A high proportion of clothing in developing countries is second hand clothing from the west. So it's likely that the guys got no idea what it is that he's wearing. Apparently the second hand clothing trade creates employment but does undermine local textile industies. People like the cloths because they are cheap and they appeal to some more than the traditional garb. Oxfam did a report (although it doesn't mention Liberia): http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/trade/downloads/research_shc.pdf

but e-mail is more like a post card, its wide open for all to see. Its just a plain text stream after all. One could argue an encrypted mail is more like a letter.

Sounds more like it absolutely needs a proper way of shipping software or kernel drivers... I don't see why this can't be solved within a distribution, though. However, the current policy seems to be "if you need that new WiFi driver then either hack it in yourself from a tarball or upgrade the whole system and run the risk of fixing a whole load of things which ain't broke".

Yet competing operating systems manage to let you upgrade drivers and individual software packages as and when they need in the years separating OS releases... Its not even as if its not possible on Linux - its the distro system that dictates the all-or-nothing upgrade approach. I suspect the problem is that the techie types who make the decisions don't think twice about stepping outside the distro and rolling a custom kernel or building a tarball, and fail to realize just how inaccessible that is to other types of user.

The evolution of the English language is a fascinating thing.

...and came to the conclusion that I was dealing with a couple of cranks in Mssrs. Manjoo and Dvorak (not that the latter comes as any surprise).

Manjoo's piece attempted to 'prove' that Windows 7 was a better operating system based on one feature (Taskbar/Aero Views vs. Exposé) and provided a rather subjective critiqué even for that. I'd have liked to have learned more from him about why Windows 7 supposedly beats out Snow Leopard. Nonetheless, his first paragraph (with regards to crapware and the like) tells me what I've always known about the Windows experience: The more things change, the more they unfortunately remain the same.

As for Dvorak's piece, "cheap Microsoft vodka" paints a funny picture, but droning on about how he never gets any more press kits from Microsoft (is it really any wonder, knowing Dvorak?) doesn't tell me anything about Windows 7.

...just wasn't profitable enough.

That's a shame, because my fiancée and I have really enjoyed Hulu, as it's allowed us to watch our favorite shows (those that Hulu carries, anyway) on our own schedules, and with short commercial breaks, and no banner ads across the lower quarter or third of the screen. It's proven to be kind of an ideal version of television. (We've never had on-demand or DVR, just expanded basic cable, so take that with as many grains of salt as you wish.)

Speaking for myself, the continual, intrusive advertising that plagues television today has done much to drive me away from it, but Hulu has succeeded in bringing me back. I really don't mind that much when the ads are at most a minute long (sometimes as short as 10-15 seconds), and only one at a time.

Meanwhile, we're taking a wait-and-see approach to what happens next. There's no telling what Hulu will charge, but if it's reasonable (define that how you will) and serves to, say, buy CBS's participation, it could still be a worthy thing.

I'll grant you they'll give you the report form paperwork. If they're actually there. I swear, where I lived after college, one of my roommates actually came home when a thief was in the house stealing the TV. He struggled with the guy, who got away, went down the street to the police station, and there was no one in the entry hall, no one answered the buzzer, no phone to call in, nothing.

He only found them when he went around the corner to the coffee shop to get his nerve back, around people. They took his report, but it was pretty embarassing all around.

I also think your dad was were lucky. I strongly suspect that a real thief will take the money _and_ the credit cards, and throw it in the trash. They've little to risk by doing so, and much to avoid by getting it out of circulation. It's the casual thief, the "Oooohhhh, look, a wallet! With cash!" person who'll leave it to be found. Credit cards are potentially as valuable as cash: professional or semi-professional thieves can do quite a lot of damage with them.

"GPS should never replace maps and mapreading skills"

Why not?

Because when 2012 comes, only those of us with map-reading skills will be able to find the good stuff. I'll be navigating my way to gun shops and twinkie factories, while you get lost in the lingerie department at Walmart.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but Mac OS X has an application called "Keychain Access." Keychains store private keys, certificates, and arbitrary notes securely. I use one to store my passwords to all my e-mail and web accounts. They're encrypted using Triple DES.

Not only that, but it can generate passwords for you. Tell it how many characters you want, and whether the password should be memorable (comprised of dictionary words and a short string of numbers), letters and numbers, numbers only, something called "FIPS-181 compliant," or random. You can choose from the ones it generates from a pop-up menu, and if you don't like any of them, it can generate some more. Whatever password you choose, there's a gauge that tells you how strong it is.

I have to use it occasionally to look up a password to an infrequently visited web page. Entering my user password (that is, the one for my account on my computer) will unlock any one that is stored on the keychain.

Is it easy to use? Kind of, sort of; it takes a few seconds and more than a few mouse clicks to retrieve a password. Safari (perhaps Firefox as well, but I don't know) can be configured to remember your login information for a given page, and though it stores this information in the login keychain, the problem with Safari's implementation is that it works for some pages and not others, and doesn't require you to provide your user password--not exactly the most secure arrangement.

No one's ever compromised this scheme, as far as I know. Yet. Meanwhile, it works pretty well for me.

I work at a company where every developer moved to Vista two years ago (to help ensure our product ran fine on it, for starters). I've never seen a crash or heard of a crash from anyone.

I think your friends are using really bad or buggy drivers, or have really marginal hardware. It's proably something other than Windows that is crashing, because Vista is rock-solid stable for all I can see, far more so than XP ever was. About the only thing that makes it crash are really buggy drivers, or really bad (failing) hardware.

I see and hear people blaming Vista a lot of things that have nothing to do with Vista... just recently I heard someone bitching that they hated Vista because they couldn't print. I took a look, and it turned out to be the printer driver, not Vista at all. After insalling the correct driver, everything worked fine.

I think Vista is getting a lot of completely undeserved crap.

There is no spoon.