If they were beaufiful they wouldn't use mascara.

(please think about it for a few minutes before modding me down)

> I work as freelancer over the internet.

Sounds very nice, but how do you find and get those jobs? I've been freelancing a bit too, but I only get local gigs through people I already know.

Ten years? So.... you think the SSSR fell when Jeltsin stepped down?

It's not news, I remember my teacher telling us about this (how you recognize the shape of words, not letters) back in 1982. It has probably been known for much longer than that.

Oh well, this is Slashdot "news"...

(can I take that back? It IS old news, but OTOH it's a cool thing that kind of fits here)

Source?

Good if it's true, I recently abandoned Ubuntu and installed mint because of Unity. Nice, clean and works fine out of the box (or USB-stick). But I don't see how it could be more populair than Ubuntu (yet)?

> Programmers have lost the ability to optimize.

(which is very sad, I agree)

When I have children, they'll only have access to a C64 with a Retro Replay or possibly a Chameleon Cart. That way, they will learn how a computer actually works, unlike kids (those under the age of 30) today

> There are always going to be 'haves' and 'have nots' in this world...that's the way of nature.

I think you're confusing nature with modern society.

First impression? I want an OS that feels right out of the box. Not very rational, I know - but I'm probably not alone. And since Debian, Unity and Mint are more or less the same under the hood, the (default) GUI is important. Nevermind that I can change it, or that I do all my important work in the shell.

Not yet.

However, I hope buy a house outside the city some time next year, and when I have my own house I *will* build an underground bunker (my girlfriend thinks I'm joking) that can be used for - among other things - hiding from zombies. I just hope that the zombie apocalypse or World War 3 or the next (real) Black Death-grade pandemic doesn't start until I'm finished.

And if nothing happens, well, then I'll have a perfect data dungeon!

> Presumably, if you see a post saying something like
> "the Americans have the death penalty", you'll produce
> a similar response?

Yes? That would be just as silly, since the USA consists of several very diffent states. Some civilized, some controlled by the Taliban. Most people know this, those who don't should be mocked.

> Yes, the context of the OP was very clearly the
> Chinese government

No it wasn't. That's the point. But I know what you're saying, [perhaps] from your perspective perhaps the PRC is the Origin of All Evil, and then it would be natural to assume that the OP was talking about the PRC government, and not the Chinese. However, not everybody thinks that the PRC are responsible for everything that's bad in the world (just a significant percentage of it).

> the Iris[h] are drunk all the time

They are. I lived in Dublin for 3 very long years, I know.

I've heard that the Dutch wear clogs, the French eat snails, the Iris are drunk all the time, Swedish girls sleep with everyone, the Japanese likes schoolgirls and the Americans are very fat. Does anyone know anything about this?

(sorry, your question is kind of interesting, I just couldn't resist. "The Chinese" are not the same as some individuals or some organisation based in China who might or might not have done something at some point.)

> I am a gravitational theorist.

I don't even understand what that title means, but it sounds very cool.

Seconded. There was a time, perhaps around -94 or -95, when I would type in an url that described what I was looking for. Then webcrawler (the first decent searchengine) came along and made that whole "SLD having any relation to the content" thing useless.

If those games are oldschool, what do you call Delta, Who Dares Wins, Defender of the Crown, Armalyte, Monkey Island, Beach Head, IK+ etc?

Or are you writing from the distant future?

Haha, SAP.... :-/

(mod me +5 insightful, I used SAP for years and promise that I deserve it based on the short but very insightful comment/review above)