Actually, I do fairly well watching episodes of TV shows that I've already watched into the ground (e.g., MASH). Because I know exactly what's going to happen, I can tune in and out at any time without missing anything. It's kind of meditative.

I also agree about the headphones. Perhaps these two are related.

The GPL only exists to ameliorate the ill effects of copyright. I think (and I believe he has said) that RMS would much prefer that copyright go away, at least with respect to software.

True enough, but that's like telling someone who's on fire that they need to decrease their temperature. True, but not very helpful practically, in the absence of a lot more help.

Perhaps, but a two-fold difference is not required to cause a problem. In fact, our energy balance mechanisms are spectacularly precise, and only a minor imbalance is required to cause problems. If you consume 1% more calories than you need each day for 20 years, you will be quite obese at the end of this period. There's not a person alive who can intentionally regulate their calrorie intake at this level of precision. We all rely on our unconscious mechanisms, over which we unfortunately have fairly limited control.

Yeah, I was joking--I know Google has better taste than to distribute something that won't work well in a straight Linux environment (unlike some other wannabe companies that shall remain nameless).

You say that as if it's a good thing. ;-)

I haven't done heavy Java development since before Ant had really caught on, but as far as I can tell, it was written to pave over Windows' entirely incompetent set of command-line tools. And maybe to catch the XML train, which probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but just makes Antfiles utterly unreadable to my eyes. (Even the tiny example on the Wikipedia page makes me want to hurl.)

So, doesn't work with vi or emacs, eh?

If it makes you feel any better, the job titles for "people who make computers do useful things" are virtually useless as well. Over my (long) career I've found that you usually can't tell what someone does (or is capable of) by looking at their job title even if you're familiar with the title structure of the company. For places you're not familiar with, it's totally hopeless.

As far as I can tell, job titles primarily exist to give HR the impression they understand what's going on. Beyond that, I mostly favor general titles ("Member of the Technical Staff") or whimsical ones ("Data Mortician"), and I think we should get to choose our own.

A scenario somewhat like this occurs in Crawford Killian's Empire of Time (which I enjoyed).

I would argue that Justice is always in society's best interest. Likewise, ending unfair treatment before the law is a benefit to society. Is there really any argument against this?

Good, I'm glad to hear it. If you think about it a while, you'll probably realize that some of the worst situations gays have to endure right now don't involve physical violence per se, but just something more like abominable stupidity and pettiness. Consider the 25-year couple, one dying of cancer, who cannot even assume that they'll be able to be in the same room when death comes. That's where we're at today in the US, and if we want things to improve, we need to make it clear that when religion and bigotry oppose basic human decency, the latter should win out.

but W is still a jackass...

Since no one is suggesting that we "promote" homosexual pairings, this question is entirely moot. (No, objecting to discrimination and violence against gays does not count as "promoting" homosexuality. Good grief.)

I have no idea why anyone thinks this matters. The reason that gays are A-OK with me is because they're not hurting anyone by their behavior and frankly, in my experience, even seem to be slightly nicer than the rest of us (on average).

Bzzt. Gays do not get preferential treatment or tax benefits for being gay, nor is anyone suggesting this ought to be done.

Now we've completely jumped the rails. Obesity has a significant inherited component. Go trawl NCBI.

Perhaps you're thinking of Jehovah's Witnesses? (Maybe they have a "gay" branch, I dunno.)

Shouldn't the question here be whether or not a set of behaviors is harmful to society, rather than what "the majority of society wants to see promoted"?

Well, (a) one can be gay and in the closet. Doesn't really matter whether or not being gay is genetic. Duh. As for (b), we saw a study just this month that found that homophobic males are most likely to be turned on by gay porn. So, maybe fear of just that really is a significant component here.

Anyway, please take a deep breath. Gay acceptance isn't going to mean the fall of the republic or endanger the safety of your children. For those we have Neocons and motor vehicles, respectively.

P.S. Yeah, I know you're trolling. It was good for me anyway. ;-)

This reminds me of a great April Fool's Day prank from the late 80s (IIRC--I cannot find a link). Someone posted a description of a wonderful new way to economize on backups, using UUCP. The idea was to create the backup and then uucp it back to oneself using a somewhat circuitous route, so that it would arrive back just when it might be needed (say, a fortnight hence). And thus no tape would be needed to hold the backup in the mean time.

(This was in fact an absurd suggestion, of course, since data transmission was very limited and expensive at the time, and the data would end up being temporarily stored anyway on the disks of one's neighbors.)

Believe it. And it's not just squeezing Linux out but eviscerating the web as we know it. Already I have to deal with web apps at work that are just a pile of obscured javascript (often plus activex). Something like this can't be programmed, it can't be interacted with, can't be reasoned with, and it will absolutely not stop until you have learned to be absolutely helpless at Microsoft's feet...

(hat tip to The Terminator :-)