Sure, run-of-the-mill people with no special awareness in the public mind who show up multiple times in national and world news. Just like the Kardashians, Martha Stewart and Tom Brokaw. Gotcha.

No, but I find atheism is no guarantor of benevolent behaviour, either.

Yes, but they tend to use other languages than Latin.

I was merely pointing out the actions of a rather notable atheist, much like you were pointing out the antics of some rather notorious religious figures. It seems that neither Stalin nor his subjects were particularly happy with the choice. And I'd rather have a chapter of Westboro Baptist Church in my town than one such as he. To be clear, not because he was an atheist so much as he felt an overburdening desire to enforce his beliefs on others.

Fortunately, atheism is a viable alternative. In fact, let's make it a national requirement.

Chanting a long etcetera. Sounds more like Catholicism than Buddhism...

See, there's the problem, right there. You could meet every point of that patent on a touchscreen phone using an image of a latch with "Slide to Unlock" written below it. But some legal pedant would still say the idea behind this, when combined with the concept of touch-style drag and drop, which I personally used in 1996 and is a simple extrapolation of the mouse interface which was designed before I was alive, is a new and novel concept. Hence, millions of patents that basically read "[Something people have been doing for some period of time between a generation and the beginning of recorded history] on a computer/the internet/a tablet/a touchscreen.

Um, yes they are. Physics instructs my physical latch that it has been touched, and physics causes the image I receive of it to move while I continue to maintain contact with it and move my hand. Physics may also cause it to move back to its original position if I remove my hand, depending on the design of the physical latch.

If your 'simulation' is throwing so much computing power at it that you can use actual physics to design the fire, smoke, and atmosphere, and just let them interact with believable results, I don't think it deserves a patent. Your processor might, if it isn't merely a progression of currently-patented ideas. However, if your simulation is a bunch of special algorithms that effectively reproduce the effect of real life without having to calculate what all the pieces are doing, that's may be worthy of a patent, and will doubtless require something more than and 80-year-old physics reference.

The fact that computing power has improved to the point that we can track physical contact and move high-res images with a responsiveness that is indistinguishable from reality by the human mind doesn't make using physical analogs in that environment innovative - that just makes sense. If they want to patent the painful, almost-intuitive design of the quicktime interface, circa v5, feel free. There's nothing obvious there, from the setting panel that can't be used on a low-res screen on up.

Thanks for the clarification. For all the faults of the society I live in, we can at least still state our opinions and not usually have to worry about jail or death. That said, there are things I won't say or put in writing because they can and have landed others in jail where I live (but not a third world jail). That's my solution to sensitive information, which, unfortunately, isn't going to do much to change the world for the better.

The complete implied sentence is, "Sometimes, it's easier just to not think if you're pretty than it is if you're not pretty." It doesn't mean you can't be ugly and not think, just that there will be more difficulties than if you're pretty and don't think.

I can compact dishes such that they only fill the bottom third of the dishwasher. The only drawback is ever using them again - the uncompacting routine is hugely intensive! I call this my VERY Lossy Dish Stacking Routine (I learned it at a Greek wedding). Note that it isn't very effective with metal kitchenware, and my cutlery packing algorithm doesn't allow for enough water to get between the cutlery and actually clean them.

Alternatively, they could test for both separately, because I think there is still value for being able to do math quickly even if it isn't normally as important as accuracy. There are ways to do math very quickly, and ways to do it right, but very slowly. If you only have the second technique you will still be correct, but not fast. It might be worth looking at techniques to improve your math speed.

It's certainly possible that you are using the more robust techniques and still find it slow going. Then repetition may be your only option to improve. It's been determined that the brain gets more efficient at things it does over and over again, so some improvement will be seen, although how much is difficult to say.

Take a look at your keyboard, and count all the keys that produce a character of some sort. Now multiply by 2 (for using the shift key). And that is your approximate number of readily-available characters for a password. Mine has 94 (47 character keys), but I'm sure there are some that are just a bad idea.

I personally just assume that Bengie is a greybeard and is used to the old keyboards, or that he is big into security and that is the exact number of characters allowed by most security tools.

There's a bit of a difference between sensitive information and valuable information. Just about anyone who can afford a smartphone (in a first-world country) has sensitive information. That information probably isn't very valuable (less than $100) and so isn't going to be targeted with any serious effort to acquire - the phone is worth more. But, while that information isn't very valuable on the open market, dealing with the hassles of identity theft or similar makes it rather sensitive.

This guy doesn't seem to get the nuanced difference between wearing a skirt to walk down the street or sit in a restaurant as opposed to wearing one while, say, doing gymnastics. The difference in how much it conceals is drastically different. Likewise, I'd venture to guess that most women probably wouldn't walk on a glass walkway with others walking beneath it while wearing a skirt/dress.

That sounds like an interesting script, and I'd love to get my hands on a working one that provides that functionality. Be a sport and whip that up for me, okay? You can just post a link to the file in my reply. Since it's so simple, and making it requires virtually no effort (certainly not enough effort to require monetary compensation), you can just make it available to the general population as soon as possible. I'm sure you have a coffee break coming up with nothing better to do.

Oh, you like to get paid for the work you do? So does that guy who wrote that script. Also, some people don't want to bother cutting their lawn and will pay a small amount to neighbourhood kids to do it for them. This doesn't make the kids thieves and scam artists - it makes them people providing a service that their customers couldn't bother doing themselves. Something tells me that you won't get a bill for the installation from Dell if you don't select the option and install it manually after you get the computer.