To keep up with captioning for a live show, a typist has to track the pace of the show over a substantial period of time. The typist who is putting down her own thoughts gets to work at her own pace.

Natural, casual speech is usually around 150 or 160 words per minute. At first glance, this looks well beyond the abilities of a well skilled typist. A _very skilled_ typist might be expected to type around 50 or 60 words per minute on a sustained basis. But, the thing is, for most applications, content creation is not a linear process. Even people who dictate their writing seldom just let go with 3000 or 10000 words flowing out of their mouth. They might say one sentence, then say, `no. that is not right. what I mean is ...' Or they might delete an entire paragraph. Or decide to move a paragraph around. Or just move a singe sentence.

So, in the end, it really depends on the situation. I would go so far to say that, for most people, typing is probably quicker on balance than dictation. But it really depends on a given person's typing skills, how well that person can order his thoughts, and a whole host of other factors. And there are certainly situations (e.g. transcribing a live television event) where typists are at a disadvantage.

Desk jobs make it harder to stay active but not impossible. There are the little things such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator and getting up to walk to a cow-orker instead of using IM or ringing her extension.

But when it comes down to it, we need to make time to stay active outside of work. Six days a week, I either run for 5+ miles or visit the gym to use the weight machines and go for a shorter run to cool off. It amazes me that a subculture that spends hours configuring, tweaking, and improving their technical kit largely doesn't take the same time to keep their bodies in shape.

The local county community college here charges $112 per credit hour for part students. Two classes per term and three terms per year put you at $2,016 per year which is right about where the benefit maxes out. Coursework at that rate is probably on track for a student to get an associate's degree in four years with not much out of pocket other than books, and miscellaneous fees.

I think that's a fairly good deal for what is effectively a non-skilled manual labor position with limited room for growth.

In 1994, I stopped using BBS systems with Internet gateways and switched to a dedicated ISP. The ISP I switched to had been offering service to homes and individuals for a few years by the time that I switched.

The September that Never Ended was in, what, 1993? That was when AOL put in an Internet gateway. But even as far back as then, you could find local ISPs offering dial-up Internet connections.

But, here's the thing, we're talking about when the Internet was ``commercialized'' rather than when it was offered as a commercial service. For that you want to look at things such as the invention of web based advertising, online ordering, the invention of USENET spam, and so on.

They won't be duped into buying a book, but they may be misled into thinking that the book originated from the Jack Daniels company.

As a parallel example, no one would would confuse a poster inviting people to "Enjoy Cocaine" for an ice cold bottle of Coke. Yet the "Enjoy Cocaine" poster was found by the courts to infringe upon Coca-Cola's trademark.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tmcases/coca.htm

It isn't obvious that this is a parody. It's a commercial enterprise targeted towards whiskey fans that adapts one of the most recognizable trademarks in the US whisky business. This is a bit different than a tee shirt manufacturer satirizing a Coca-cola trademark to promote an entirely different addictive substance.

But, really, the merits of the case are a secondary question. Many firms send out very nasty cease and desist letters making very strong claims even if they _know_ that they don't have a leg to stand on. This letter really stands out in that rather than taking an adversarial approach from the start, it seeks to cooperate in good faith from the outset. That is commendable.

The distinction between a truck and a light truck (at least with regards to federal regulations) has to do with payload capacity, curb weight, and the number of passengers that can be held. The type of axle is irrelevant.

SUVs existed well before the term was invented in the 80s. The Chevy Suburban is a great example. It was basically designed as a station wagon built on a commercial truck frame, precisely the attribute that you're saying it lacks.

8th generation Suburbans (offered from the early seventies through the eighties and into the nineties) came in half ton, three quarter ton, and one ton models depending on the type of truck chassis that they were built on. With a two ton curb weight and two axles, the half ton and three quarter ton models fit the federal definition of a light truck.

Jeep Wagons (and Wagoneers and Cherokees), the Suburban, Toyota's Land Cruiser, multiple Land Rover models, International Harvester's Scout, the Dodge Powerwagon, and others date back to before most folks on /. were born. Usually these vehicles were categorized by the label "4x4" or "Station Wagon" but they match pretty much every aspect of what people today in the US look for when they hear the term "SUV."

What was invented in the 80s was the term "Sport Utility Vehicle" and nothing more. It wasn't invented as a class of a new type of vehicle but a new label under which it was convenient to group existing vehicles.

From the iWork home page, ``iWork for Mac works with any Mac running OS X v10.6.6 or later.'' The most recent version of OS X is 10.8. On the one hand, this is more or less comparable to what Microsoft is doing which was your main point. On the other hand, it's certainly not the case that ``Apple's iWork already limits you to the latest OS.'' The most recent version of iWork runs on the latest release (Mountain Lion, 10.8) and the last two major releases (Lion and Snow Leopard which are 10.7 and 10.6 respectively).

Aside from try to protect their internal supply chain processes as trade secrets, there isn't much Walmart can do to counter this. I suppose that they could try contracts with suppliers to forbid them from doing business with Amazon. I imagine that would result in multiple lawsuits.

I think the added costs are mostly negligible, at least with regards to the marginal costs compared to marginal profits. Amazon (as well as Walmart) have been extremely innovative in supply chain and other logistics. Costs will increase, but largely in ways understood by Amazon. These increases will not be exceptional regards to the warehouse infrastructure that they already run.

The interesting thing about Amazon's model, though, is that they aren't interested in putting other online retailers out of business. Say you have a specialty shop such as a book store that specializes in rare volumes. Amazon is just fine collaborating with such a business by making them an associated and taking a cut of every sale. Amazon basically gets a niche warehouse for free. And the specialty shop now has a nationwide (or worldwide) market rather than being restricted to the local market.

Not to mention that it is doubtful that Amazon will be vacating existing markets. They are adding the same-day sales, not replacing their old model with a new model.

You can write object oriented code in assembler if you want.

It's easier to write object oriented code if the compiler supports syntactic sugar around the pillars of object oriented code (inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation, message passing, etc.) but such syntactic sugar is not strictly needed.

``If you find yourself disliking Thomas Jefferson you need to rethink your life.''

Really? He paid hack journalists to make up lies out of whole cloth about his political opponents. His behavior was so atrocious that he managed to make an enemy of Martha Washington. He was so bad at finance that when he died his estate was bankrupt. The more I read about him, the more I come to the conclusion that he was a really nasty human being.

That he was an asshat doesn't diminish whatever genius he may have held in the fields of political theory, architecture, and agriculture. But neither do his triumphs in other areas mean that everyone should like him and adulate him as a hero.

First, even if you don't consider the license fee a true tax, the BBC World Service is directly funded by the Foreign Office.

Second, the BBC Trust which governs the BBC is run by appointees of the crown and confirmed by British government. The trust has ultimate oversight and appoints the Director General of the corporation who acts as both editor-in-chief and chairman of the board of executives. I fail to see how this is somehow `independent' of the British government.

So it seems to me that calling the BBC independent in a way that al-Jazeera or RT is not independent is special pleading. Especially al-Jazeera which has a goal of eventually becoming self-funding through advertising and licensing deals. After initial funding, its only continued government subsidies have taken the form of loans.

That said, there are meaningful differences. RT is more tabloid. They cover many (if not most issues) in a sensational way, especially if doing so can poke "The West" in the eye. A fair argument can also be made that RT is more tightly controlled by the Kremlin. But that is more a function of the nature of the Russian regime compared to the British government than a difference in kind in how the organization relates to the government.