Yeah, but the point is more that the Verizon brand is only 10 years old.

I knew Ed Begley Jr. had something to do with this.

Actually Darwin's evolution means that those best adapted to the environment survive, not necessarily the strongest.

I guess I don't understand the distinction. Both those concepts in this context sound the same to me.

Really? It's not hard to understand.

Say you drop some apes into a place where the only food source is growing in the bottoms of holes 3 feet deep. Some of the apes are really strong, but others have really long arms. The strong ones are going to have a rough time getting food, the long armed ones are better suited for this environment. The strong ones will survive for a while by stealing food from the long armed ones, but eventually they'll lose if conditions don't change.

In this context, the supposedly more fit would be buzzing at a different frequency. It's not at all obvious that those mosquitoes would also be stronger, or even more efficient at anything - there's almost certainly an evolutionary reason why most mosquitoes buzz at the frequencies they do. Ones that buzz at a different frequency could be far less efficient flyers, or they could be easier to swat, easier to hear and thus less stealthy, etc.

Be careful sizing a backup generator when a large part of its load will be switching supplies and UPSes. UPSes in particular have _very_ strange load waveforms due to the rectifiers that are used in the charging circuit. The harmonics passed back on the line can cause the generator to 'seek' trying to lock in to 50/60 Hz, which can cause significant damage.

A permanent magnet generator can help, but they're a little more expensive.

http://ecmweb.com/news/electric_ensuring_generator_ups/

http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-186969.html

I'm more than dubious... I think that there is so little value in what AI experts have predicted in the past that I didn't even bother to RTFA.

...that doing anything on a motherboard, setting jumpers or whatnot, I have to use the stevie wonder method, touch based only."Is that the right set of pins..let me check..bump..one..bump..two" etc. I really can't see the darn tiny stuff like I used to. Have to rely on memory and then muscle memory. If it is out of the case and I can throw a really bright light on it and then use a magnifier that isn't so bad, but inside the case..not so easy, need to be three handed and three eyed...

Now distance though, with my glasses, still seems OK enough. Astigmatism I have always had, but that more shows up at night than during the day. I still can see tiny movements in the woods pretty fairly. I'm red / green deficient, and I think that is my DNA compensation, to see odd shapes and very subtle movement. Some old hunter/gatherer thing, where the subtle movement good gene made you more a hunter than a gatherer. The gatherers with better color vision could spot the "food-good-eat" verus the "might be food-bad color-no good eat" deal. The hunters would go "see eye flicker-deer" whereas the not so great hunters see "many colorful leaves and flowers and branches" in the same exact spot. I try to train myself to do both, but have to more rely on plant shapes than colors for identification. Makes it a little harder.

What are you building?

You sir deserve every last one of 5 score points for this post. I would add, though, that capitalism could work much better with stringent ethical and moral requirements for top executives and politicians. These would rule out the corruption and over-valuation that destroys so many businesses and even entire industries. The hard thing to understand is that both thriving and failing companies are wealth opportunities for certain people. An executive I know once told me that heavy compensation during a time a failure may be nothing more than hush money to protect the board of directors. I don't know if that is true, but it makes sense. Why else would you fire someone then give them millions of dollars?

> a lot of people (ie older parents/grandparents)
> buy a Mac because it's "easier" and are more
> inclined to be on a 5-10 year cycle.

In the Windows world, a lot of people are on an 8-12 year upgrade cycle.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if more people are still using Windows 98 than the total number of Mac users, all versions combined (actual general-purpose computers, I mean, not handheld music players and such). Obviously there's no reliable way to get actual numbers for how many Windows 98 systems are still in use, but I bet it's a lot higher than most computer geeks realize. People's tendency to upgrade promptly increases (more or less) geometrically with their level of computer knowledge, and the people whom an IT professional knows personally tend to be significantly above average.

DNA microarrays (also know as DNA chips) can already identify every virus ever discovered, and it can even identify undiscovered viruses by recognizing genetic sequences that are highly conserved among viruses. This type of chip first proved its worth in 2003 when it was used to identify SARS. The New York Times interviewed the inventor Joseph DeRisi about it:

We had just finished building the full version of our ViroChip, when we read about SARS in the newspapers. We literarily begged the C.D.C. to send us samples of the virus. Once we had it, we immediately put it onto a chip. In less than 24 hours we confirmed that this was a novel coronavirus. We confirmed the ViroChip’s finding by subsequently sequencing this virus’s genome. This had never in history happened before.

It is not yet evident what, if any, advantage this other chip that hopes to identify viruses by their size will have.

For the same reason that you can't take a piston from one engine and put it into another as easily. (Pedants stand down, I'm sure there's many cases where you can do this.) Automakers will muck it up with all of their proprietary shit and make the whole thing into a huge clusterfuck.

A standardized charging port is probably more likely than a standardized battery.

Except from all the people who believe that it does...

What I'm saying is, automation and safeguards are nice, but they should always be bypassable just by responding "yes" to a warning prompt.

It's been tried, doesn't work well for a large amount of people. Ever seen how "normal people" use their computer? Warning pops up "Do you want to install the RootKit ActiveX from l33th4x0rs.com?". Typical user doesn't even read it, clicks OK, keeps on browsing as if nothing happened. If you ask them what they did and why they'll go "Huh?". Because that's what they normally do: when a dialog box pops up they click "Ok" regardless of what it says (without even reading in fact), then go back to what they were doing.

That's because lots of things ask trivial questions, or questions the users don't know how to answer, on a daily basis. So people get used to getting them out of the way as fast as possible.

Simon,

Actually, I watched that review a week ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. That guy echoes a lot of observations I had quietly held as my own, but also provides very tangible explanations of where George Lucas utterly failed to craft a proper story. It's so much more than a "What were you thinking, man! Jar-Jar?!?! You IDIOT!" rant. I think it's kind of funny that this commentary piece is nearly identical in size to the subject it's based on, and that's why I made the "concise" reference. But I agree it's fully worth watching for anyone who is interested in films as more than an excuse to eat popcorn in the dark. It's one reason I'm eager to see the People vs George Lucas.

Skatepark Builder

What difference does it make who answers this in what fashion? All parties have idiots, lemmings, hypocrites, asshats and liars. You'll never get the plain truth out of people and to think that the majority of any party's members are going to see that they're just a supporter of the other side of the same coin is unthinkable.

If the majority of people ever came to see the truth about their parties there would be a major political upheaval. And, from where I sit, it's never going to happen. For as many glimmers of hope we've had that the choke hold on Washington or even state government was going to be broken they've all been false hopes in the end.

But, please, if you're dissatisfied with the dim wittedness of our leadership please take the time to consider a third party alternative. If for no other reason than to show that those in command today deserve a vote of None Of The Above.

A senator with his seniority in Australia pretty much has his multi-million dollar pension secured if he's reached the top of the Victorian Senate ticket. The only way to take away his power is to get the opposition party in power. (who, last time they were in power, had protect-the-childrens-from-childporn on their minds, but at least did so by giving people software they could voluntarily use (but didn't seem to care about)