obligatory: http://xkcd.com/1015/

Three words: Cut the Military.

Surely they are referring to the calibration of the touch surface relative to the display screen. I've seen this being done on video slot machines for example. When in calibration mode, the machine asks the tech to touch a few specific spots on the screen, notes where the tech appeared to actually touch at, and adjusts a few variables in the math it uses so that future users' inputs will register correctly. I've done the same myself on a touch pad for an old computer once or twice.

In other words, any surface that sends discrete position information to the computer has the potential to need such calibration.

All of that said, there's absolutely no excuse for allowing a machine to continue operating if it is registering votes other than those being requested (not that I mind a few extra votes for Obama over rMoney, but that's a different matter).

So what you're saying is, it never occurred to him to think of space as the thing that was moving?

Checkoff?? Surely you mean Chekov. You may turn in your geek card.

Incorrect.

(OH G*D someone on the Internet is wrong!)

In the movie, Thornton picks up his report calmly from Diane's desk, looks at it, and asks why she failed him. Her exact quote, in addition to comments about him failing her and being emotionally regressed is, "Tell you something else, whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut." Completely calmly, if obviously irritated.

(Followed by Thornton threatening Vonnegut by phone to cancel payment on the check he payed with)

Vonnegut's only appearance in the movie is as himself for a few seconds before the above, when he first shows up at the dorm at Thronton's request and identifies himself politely to Jason. He never flipped anyone off.

The irony of your statement is that, with the advent of this fictional replicator, the baker would already have his new business model laid out in front of him: Bake his bread like usual, "record" it into the replicator, then charge a small fee for customer access to the replicator, in addition to selling the actual bread for those who want that.

Assuming decent rates for the energy and feedstock for the replicator, that means a lower cost of doing business than selling only fresh-cooked bread, which means more money in the baker's pocket. Plus keeping the real bread around (in quantities appropriate to the reduced sales) means the bakery still smells as inviting as it ever did.

I'm not a coder for the game at all - I just wrote a few mods and did some textures as an add-on. So obviously, I rather like the game. Not to mention, the game is free, so there's no DRM to sue over, and the primary author doesn't live anywhere near the US, let alone Texas.

Oh, and I am not a resident of Texas either, nor do I sell anything there or I do any kind of business there, deliberately or not, under any label or name having anything whatsoever to do with any block-type sandbox game.

Good luck suing either of us.

As for why grudge Notch? Simple: I don't like Java (in fact I hate it), my choice of game is open source, and Notch made it plainly clear that he's no longer just "making a living". I don't need any more than that.

To clarify that, I am one of many third-party contributors to the community, not a core developer.

And this, folks is why I support open source solutions whenever possible, in this case, Minetest. It is similar to Minecraft (generally based on the same idea), but 100% open source. Coded by Perttu "celeron55" Ahola et.al. For more details, visit the main website: http://minetest.net/

(Disclaimer: I am a mod programmer and texture pack developer for the game)

...or it could be that everyone and their uncle is already using some kind of warp drive, and we're just not interesting enough to visit - or that no one's even thought to take a ride through this part of the galaxy to begin with.

Let's put it this way:

There are 300 billion stars in the Milky Way, but the universe is "only" ~13.4 billion years old, and so a hell of a lot of travel would have to be crammed into a relatively short time, so let's crunch some numbers:

* The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years in diameter and roughly 1000 light years thick on average. That gives a total volume of 7.9 trillion cubic light years, and we occupy about 1.
* Given the 300 billion stars that are in the galaxy, that yields an average spacing of 26 light years between stars.
* Let's assume that only 1% of those stars are actually worth visiting, and that Sol is in that set. That's 3 billion stars to check out.
* Let's assume that that entire set lies within the parts of the galaxy that are fairly dense, and so let's cut the distance between stars to, oh, 5 light years. That's 15 billion light years' worth of travel.
* Let's assume that our hypothetical ship can travel at an average of 1000c indefinitely.

That's 15 million years' worth of travel time, assuming the ship travels non-stop, via the shortest possible course between subsequent stars/clusters, only studies them while in transit, and thus maintains an average speed of 1000c.

Increase that time by perhaps 5% to allow for time to actually study each destination.

As Doug Adams so famounsly said (in paraphrase), space is big - mindbogglingly so.

There's a better way - toilet-train the furballs instead. I have two cats whom I, after much hair-pulling, successfully trained to use a regular toilet. It's also a lot cheaper and more sanitary, and stinks less too. One flush and their leavings are dealt with. No litter box to clean also means no more of a risk of diseases than one encounters from regularly cleaning a toilet used only by humans in the first place. Note that the smarter the cat and the more time and patience you can muster, the faster he or she will pick it up.

Look on Amazon for "The Toilet Trained Cat".

(I am not associated with Amazon or the book's author. Just seemed apropos.)