George Foreman

My kingdom for an editor.

Most anything I write would be improved with a second pair of eyes (and an extra computer).

I can read source code. With a refresher, I can read machine code. Give me the kernel and I can plug and chug my way just as well as any digital computer, although a bit slower.

I'd like to split my vote between "Older than 15 years" and "Which component, you insensitive clod?".

I spend almost all my waking hours using a computer my parents gave me in 1972. As you might expect for the era, its floating point performance is poor and its communication rate barely keeps up with a 300 baud bulletin board. But it kicks shiny metallic ass at analog computations, pattern recognition, and language comprehension. It also self-modifies both its software and hardware to tune performance for any new problems I throw at it.

My oldest computer is my brain.

Agreed on the 3rd party email. I can't believe that people get themselves tied up with an ISP or, worse, their workplace for their personal email account. But I'd still be reluctant to establish myself with any commercial provider for my main email account. Google isn't evil today, but they might be in a few years.

I use my alma mater for my permanent address. They've been around for almost two centuries and their mission statement includes "communicating, preserving and applying knowledge" rather than "turn a profit by any means necessary", so I trust them to be around and act in my interest for the extent of my life. Right now I pay them $10 a month for my email and web space, but they'll forward emails for free if I ever want to go the cheap route.

The "damn computers too slow" comment tells me that he really means the problem can't be solved numerically. A simple computer program can certainly tell you what will happen if you perform a certain burn. But it can't tell you what burn will achieve a certain outcome with minimal fuel expenditure. It can try to grind through all the possible variations, but if the variations are too numerous and the computations are too strenuous then it's not practical. Hence, the damn computers are too slow.

We found a book which had been checked out of the Denver Public Library in 1929. It was really fun returning it. I asked how much the fine was. The person at the circulation desk called the head librarian, and had a good laugh, a ferocious laugh, a cackle almost. Then the head librarian peered at me over her thick-rimmed glasses and grinned menacingly. She said, sternly, "Come with me." Then she lead me through the stacks, down a short stairway, and toward a dark, heavy door.

To continue following the librarian, turn to page 56.

To apologize and walk away, turn to page 129.

I also remember some Congress person complaining about the government paying for volcano research. I think they were from Louisiana or Mississippi and they laughed at what a waste of money it is for their citizens to pay to study volcanoes. Don't we already know everything about them anyway?

Well, sir, this is why. If a volcano blows, it affects more than its immediate neighbors.

Does your hypothetical iPad have a web browser? Can it visit www.markfiore.com? Could he post an iPad-compatible version of his cartoons there? Then why do you need an app for that?

That's what really bugs me about all these smart phones and tablet computers advertising how many apps they have. We used to call most of those things "web pages". But now that they are "apps", we can't use them on our general purpose computers.

You can make it happen. Come up with a method to encode alt.binaries in 140-character chunks and the Library will archive them all for you.

Where do you get the idea that US car companies don't invest in long term research and development? I worked at Ford in the 1990's, developing advanced technologies for manufacturing. My projects included new ways to measure the quality and appearance of paint so we could ensure the cars we produced looked pretty in the showroom, stayed pretty on the road, and endured all sorts of hostile environments. That involved technologies like ultrasound, lasers, and robotics; things that weren't part of the cars themselves but were important for improving cars from the rust buckets of the 1970's to the durable bodies of today.

I was working in short term R&D with a focus on technologies that would take 2 to 5 years to implement. But we also had long term R&D, Ford's Scientific Research Laboratories. They developed things like better catalytic converters and hydrogen-fueled vehicles. And they supported lots of university research on technologies that could take decades to reach the road. So I'd be interested to see what evidence you have that the foreign companies did research and the domestic companies did not.

Ewe our knot ah loan. Eye prey four the patients two git threw uh nother day.

FTFY

P.S. Why could I not find an online homonym generator?

Speaking of cold, dead digestive tracts: A few years ago, I got terribly ill while on vacation. Loss of appetite, waves of tremendous abdominal cramps, and vomiting. My intestines had plugged up and it took some intervention to get them moving again.

I put some of the blame on a sushi lunch I ate that day. I'd eaten sushi often before, but this restaurant used a lot more seaweed in the dishes than I was accustomed to. Even as I was eating, I had second thoughts about whether what I was putting into my mouth was actually edible. But I figured it seemed strange to me only because that Japanese restaurant was more authentic than the Americanized sushi places where I usually dined.

Now I wonder whether that seaweed would be edible to Japanese guts, but truly was inedible to mine.

Scrabble is not a language game. It's not about being well-read and knowing the definition of many words. It's about memorizing a list of acceptable patterns and applying those patterns to score points while denying points to your opponent.

Allowing proper nouns actually makes the game harder since it produces a much longer list to memorize and much more difficulty in preventing your opponent from scoring. So this optional rules change pleases the newbies ("Wow, that's so much easier!") and challenges the non-snobby pros ("Crap, I've got 50,000 names to memorize and evaluate.")

Old people don't have enough experience with video games. Younger people encounter a stuck accelerator and shift into Pole Position mode, finding a safe way to slow the car or mashing buttons until something clicks. Old people switch into TV mode, watching the scenery whizz by as they wait for someone to rescue them.