Oh, well if Hammurabi did it, it must be OK.

One only need to look at the City of Boston to see the full force of the Militarized Police State. One man, wounded and half dead, and the whole town goes Apeshit poo flinging crazy. Martial Law.

Indeed. And compare the situation in West, Texas the very same week, where corporate greed lead directly to the deaths of 15 people and no one responsible has been arrested. That's how you can tell that the law has nothing to do with keeping people safe, and everything to do with keeping the rich rich.

I do not live in fear of going to jail for off hand criticisms of our elected leaders

That's because authority in the US is so powerfully entrenched that no amount of satire can hope to damage it. If someone makes fun of the party in power, what are people going to do? Vote for the other party?

I do not fear that those currently in power will not leave office peacefully if they lose elections.

Those truly in power in the US are not elected. Whether a Democrat or a Republican is in office, the true power is held by the ultra rich. No party that threatens the rich can ever attain power in the US.

I do not fear for a military coup.

Of course not. Why would the military overthrow a government that is completely controlled by the military industrial complex?

I do not think our courts as an institution are toothless or corrupt

Then why does every amendment except the third have exemptions you can drive a dump truck through? If you don't think courts as an institution are toothless or corrupt, you're simply not paying attention.

I do not live in fear of going to jail for off hand criticisms of our elected leaders

That's because authority in the US is so powerfully entrenched that no amount of satire can hope to damage it. If someone makes fun of the party in power, what are people going to do? Vote for the other party?

I do not fear that those currently in power will not leave office peacefully if they lose elections.

Those truly in power in the US are not elected. Whether a Democrat or a Republican is in office, the true power is held by the ultra rich. No party that threatens the rich can ever attain power in the US.

I do not fear for a military coup.

Of course not. Why would the military overthrow a government that is completely controlled by the military industrial complex?

I do not think our courts as an institution are toothless or corrupt

Then why does every amendment except the third have exemptions you can drive a dump truck through? If you don't think courts as an institution are toothless or corrupt, you're simply not paying attention.

Sequencing involves in vitro DNA synthesis. It sounds to me like they are doing nothing more than solution hybridization. e.g. denature your sample, apply it to membrane with a probe on it, and let the strands anneal to the probe. Then they get a fluorescent signal if the strands anneal properly.

My question is how they get the hybridization so specific that a single base pair difference will cause a measurable difference in hybridization. If it's as easy as they make it sound, they do this without highly controlled temperatures and buffers.

most American's are decent folk and indoctrinated to submit to authority

Did you mean to say "most Americans are not decent folk, and indoctrinated to submit to authority"? Decent folk pay attention and resist when authority is unjust. Unthinking submission to authority is not just indecent, it's the cause of every atrocity in history.

Depends on what you're doing. I do some bioinformatics with Bioconductor. Even on Debian Sid, the r-bioc- packages get out of date fast. If I install Bioconductor manually, all I have to do is update from within R. If I install Bioconductor with apt, I have to wait until someone else packages it. This very frequently makes the difference between getting the work done and not.

Who pissed in your cornflakes? The underlying reason it speeds up both games and rendering is identical, ie: swap space.

Yep, an SSD on my i5 makes WoT play at "highest detail" just as good as it does on my i7 using a conventional HDD, they both have the same video card and ram but without the SSD the i5 is practically unplayable (especially if you want all the eye-candy). It also loads the O/S and game faster than the i7. However durability is a bit of a concern, my first SSD shit itself without warning after 3 months, it was replaced under warranty and has been running for about a year now without problems. "Windoze" gets a lot of bad press but I have to say the is a remarkably simple and useful tool for determining the best way to spend your hardware upgrade money.

Quick, someone hand Tom a shotgun and a sturdy walking frame.

As users can do more for themselves and don't have to wait for IT, they do more, so more gets used. The real gain, then, might be that more gets accomplished as IT becomes less of a bottleneck.

As with your calorie example, you won't end up with more work being "accomplished".

You'll end up with more fat.

Look! I can record HD video and upload it to the data center and then embed it in my Power Point presentation and then email it to everyone as an attachment. With just a few clicks. Instantly.

Right now most of the people I deal with are more interested in the fonts on a document rather than the content of the document (which they will rarely read in the first place).

I was raided by the drug squad in 1980, they found nothing because I had nothing. They were surprisingly friendly and somewhat sheepish about searching after initially surrounding the house and jamming a jackboot in the doorway, maybe it was my calm (bewildered) demeanor or perhaps it was the wife and baby in the background that helped chill them out. Whatever it was they basically gave up after looking in a couple of cupboards and the greenhouse out back, when they left they said it was an "anonymous tip off" and hinted that the old woman next door didn't approve of young men with long hair.

I have no ill feeling toward the drug squad because of the raid, they behaved like people put into an awkward position by social circumstance, apologized profusely for the commando crap, and did not trash the place - but I know for a fact that it doesn't always turn out like that.

Edithvale, best beach in Melbourne. :)

....And in an emergency you can wipe your arse with a newspaper, if you try that with an iPad you should ensure you have a plumber and shower on standby.

Old fart here - I reserve a copy of the paper when I get breakfast at the cafe near work (twice a week), I come back and read it during lunch then leave it on the free magazine rack for others. If I don't reserve a copy then they are usually sold out by lunchtime. Of course the web is a much deeper and broader source of news than a city newspaper, but the morning paper and a frothy coffee is still a better way to relax.