Cowboy Robot is yet another example of someone trying to use "facts" to create alarm, raise money, and achieve world government. If there were really a time problem in UNIX, and I don't believe it for a moment, it's not necessarily caused by human activity. I prefer sunspots. Yeah. Sunspots.

Dell's R&D must be working overtime to come up with a clever new idea like that.

Here's another "someday" idea they can pursue: put a 5" crt, two floppy drives, and a Z80 in a suitcase. Call it a "portable" computer!!

First the United Nations, then Darwinism, then Galileo. If they force us to use litres, we'll all be living in the USSR before the decade ends.

"what really concerns me is the ability to find another job in the field without 95% of companies discarding me for lack of formal education"

You are 26 and working for a company with 50K employees, some of whom are both in high positions and enlightened enough to have recognized your intelligence without needing to see a "credential." Any company like that ought to have many subdivisions to choose from, so you have your own little constellation of possible new employers, all within this company.

And, should you really decide you want to look elsewhere, you have a zero-effort technique to screen out the 19 out of 20 companies that you say are not as enlightened as the one you already work for. Big win, because wouldn't you be miserable moving to one of the 19 out of 20 stupid ones?

Attention Slashdot,

On behalf of the DoJ (*) and the FBI (**), I must inform you that your link to instructions on changing an XML file are in violation of any number of laws, judicial opinions, and fantasies of various American politicians. Cease! Desist! Guantanamo remains open.

(*) Dumb oily jerks
(**) Folks bu****it inspired (***)
(***) Yeah, you can do better.

So how is that not voting working out for you? Are you getting better winners?

New Jersey's email voters can be confident of as secret a vote as voters already get in Colorado, because only election officials will know who they are. (Look it up, folks, and cry: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/22/1419211/federal-judge-says-no-right-to-secret-ballot-oks-barcoded-ballots)

And, of course, they'll have as much reason to be confident their votes were counted as residents of any state that uses slot machine (er, electronic) voting.

It doesn't really matter, anyway. When you want to buy an election, the Supreme Court has provided the way.

Absolutely. I think your language is perfect, because simple and straightforward.

You should be aware that many people who claim to be election integrity advocates actually oppose allowing citizens to inspect ballots or images of ballots (on the grounds that special squiggling could be used to sell votes). They also actually oppose allowing citizens to inspect "cast vote records" of the ballots (on the grounds that a voter could encode their identity by the pattern of filling out unimportant races, to show how they voted for an important race.) This is all despite the fact that the increasing use of vote-by-mail allows anyone to sell their ballot to anyone else anyway.

The efforts of these so-called election integrity advocates slow the truly important work of ensuring that people can see for themselves the ballots that supposedly show who won the election. It's a national disgrace, on the same level of significance as the disgrace of allowing paperless voting at all.

Brilliant. I'd make a teensy change. Replace the spinning magnet outside the car with a cable, and replace the spinning magnet and generator in the car's underbody with a plug. Run power through the cable to the plug, but only after there's been a handshake between the cable and the plug. Use the equipment that would spin the magnets to establish a physical connection between the cable and the plug.

I think the efficiency of this, compared to old techniques, will be closer to 100% of existing efficiency than to 90%.

"does such outspokenness on non-technical matters reflect poorly on the Linux community that Torvalds leads?"

Every member of the Linux community checks to see what Linus is wearing before getting dressed in the morning, right? No? Then why are you asking such an apparently stupid question?

Please help us understand how people are using Facebook:

Is this your friend's real name?

Do you really like this friend?

Has this friend ever sent you any revealing pictures?

How much do you think this friend spends on entertainment? clothes? shoes? online services?

Please estimate the odds that this so-called friend might be a terrorist?

If you had to describe this friend to Facebook and the DHS, which of the following descriptions would you use: creative? avant-garde? obedient? disruptive?

Facebook appreciates your answers and respects your privacy. Thank you.

So, basically, world history might have taken a different turn if Al Gore's campaign had used Baskerville. And wouldn't Comic Sans have been the perfect match for 43? Ah, democracy, lead us onwards.

Take that, Google.

(or, in reality, an alternative three words beginning with the letter f.)