I'm playing Master of Orion 2, Battle at Anteres, with Dosbox, right now. For some reason, the DOS version works much better under Dosbox than the Windows version does under WINE.

There's a slight sound stutter at times and a slight effects lag, but everything else is perfect. Still one of the best turn-based strategy games.

They recommend setting the maximum password age to 42 days too.

Anyone who has ever worked in IT, or has a bit of common sense, knows that the result of such a policy is that every employee has a post-it with their password on or near their monitor.

Frankly, the Danes and the Australians are doing the "liberal" thing in trying to block these sites.

This must be the American "liberalism is just another word for communism" version of the word "liberal".

any idea when Firefox will implement the multiple process stuff found in Chrome?

I'm probably in the minority, but I actually prefer MOST of my apps to be single-threaded (or at least sticking to one core). I can only imagine what it would feel like to have Firefox (Javascript or plugins, typically) completely max out ALL my cores the way they are one now.

Halogen light bulbs use tungsten filaments, JUST LIKE ORDINARY BULBS.

Two main differences:

- The filament is run at a much higher temperature, resulting in higher efficiency (around 20%).

- The gas inside the quartz "bulb" (the inner bulb, if you're buying a large bulb as a replacement) is a halogen gas (thus the name). These molecules combine with tungsten evaporated from the filament and effectively redeposits the tungsten on the filament. This results in longer lifetime.

End result: Longer lasting bulb, higher efficiency, roughly same environmental impact as normal bulb during production and disposal, still incandescent light (so no gaps in the output spectrum).

The one downside to halogen bulbs is that they get a lot hotter. Why? They have lower heat output, right? Yes, they do, but the AREA is a lot smaller due to the close proximity of the quartz. An outer bulb, such as typically present in a large-format "normal bulb replacement" (E26 base in the US), reduces this problem to about the same as for an ordinary bulb.

Double Jeopardy works differently in different countries. Originally part of "common law", double jeopardy laws vary throughout Europe, but generally look more like the Canadian version than the US version. In short: Appeals to a higher court are not considered a NEW trial, but rather a continuation of the old trial.

In Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights provides a measure of protection, specifically Protocol 7, article 4:

Article 4 - Right not to be tried or punished twice

      1. No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings under the jurisdiction of the same State for an offence for which he has already been finally acquitted or convicted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of that State.
      2. The provisions of the preceding paragraph shall not prevent the reopening of the case in accordance with the law and penal procedure of the State concerned, if there is evidence of new or newly discovered facts, or if there has been a fundamental defect in the previous proceedings, which could affect the outcome of the case.
      3. No derogation from this Article shall be made under Article 15 of the Convention.

As the article implicitly states, unless you have been FINALLY convicted, you can be tried again.

command mode (beep constantly?)
insert mode (not sure how you are breaking things here)

and

visual mode.

come on now, it's a great editor for deleting things from files!

Go to the character of interest, hit x. Go to the line of interest and hit dd.

Of course, if you want to do more than delete, you are better off with notepad.

I was very tempted to use my mod points to mod this TROLL, but I try staying far away from anything that even smells like "modding down stuff you disagree with", so I'll Feed the Troll, instead...

How do I search-replace SMARTLY (i.e. with regexp) in Notepad?

Does notepad support syntax highlighting?

Does notepad support "jumping" to the last position when reopening a file?

Does notepad support auto-indentation? Language-dependent auto-indentation?

Does notepad support multiple buffers? (cut-n-paste)

Does notepad support variable tabstops? Using spaces as tabs?

Does notepad support collapsing/folding sections into a single line?

These features are just a tiny fraction of what I use in VIM *every single day*. Notepad does none of these. I used to use emacs, because the insert, command and visual modes confused me. It really didn't take long to get used to, however, and I generally prefer VIM now (although I'm perfectly happy using emacs instead).

I feel I should now come up with a car analogy, comparing VIM and Notepad, but the only word that comes to mind is Yugo. And that would be Notepad, in case you were wondering.

That's impressive, sure, but doesn't give me a clue as to whether he's on track to a 10-year pay back.

Checking out his first article on the solar setup, he apparently spent $36K up front for the whole thing.

His pre-solar electricity bill was listed as $4400. His 6-month post-solar usage was $389. July - December should be a reasonable estimate of January - June power consumption, but let's just say $800 for the full year.

That's a savings of $3600 or pretty much exactly 10 years to pay the up-front costs back (ignoring all the other stuff: capital costs (interest), effect on home value, inflation, year-to-year fluctuations in price pr kWh and actual need etc).

So, depending on how it all adds up - and assuming maintenance costs are relatively low - he could end up in the green after maybe 8-12 years.

I've yet to see a browser pull off a decent smooth scrolling feature. I want to use it, but it just doesn't work very well... in that it just winds up making scrolling slower. But, I guess it's like all the kids that want fancy menu animations, whereas I just want the damn menu to open NOW. No, don't "slide" or "fade" open. Just OPEN. NOW!