I would guess the plate read "SN DREK", since the Yiddish for "eat" is "essen".

apropos: http://xkcd.com/1105/

What is this thing you call an "ad"? Is it contagious?

Pirating IS a form of protest if you declare it as such, not that it necessarily does any good.

As for your car analogy, yours is flawed. To use your example, the more correct way to put it would be where you buy a car with OnStar, where OnStar is a feature you happen to like, but you don't like their theoretical ability to track you. So, you decide to hack[*] the car's systems to selectively disable anything that could be used to track you without compromising your ability to actually USE the rest of the service. But to do so would require changes that would put you in violation of the car's warranty, or OnStar's service agreement or acceptable usage policy (I'm sure they have one), or some obscure law.

It becomes a question of which is more ethically right: protecting your rights by any reasonable means, or only being able to use the goods you purchased according to some ridiculous, perhaps unconscionable set of rules?

[*] and I mean that in the proper sense of the word.

I had the same surgery (Roux-en-Y) about 8 months ago and I can vouch for how difficult a path it can be.

That said, I have dropped around 100 pounds so far since then, and it just keeps falling off as long as I don't get stupid. I don't react nearly as severely as she does to the wrong foods ("dumping syndrome"), but I still react, so I also had to learn what not to eat, where my limits are, etc.

On the one hand, it's not super hard to eat too much, but I feel like crap if I do. On the other hand, it's fairly easy to get the protein I need, provided I have enough of the appropriate foods on hand in the first place (eating right is comparatively expensive).

As for "nasty" protein shakes, she just needs to switch to a better brand. I use one I got at wally world called "Body Fortress" [*], peanut butter/chocolate flavor. Add two scoops of that to 6-8 ice cubes, a cup of milk, one or two spoonfuls of peanut butter, and blend until smooth. The result is quite enjoyable, takes forever to drink, it's thick, and keeps me sated for hours, sometimes all day. I'd prefer solid food of course, but when I have to resort to liquids, this is the best combination I've come up with.

It bothers me somewhat that I'm still able to eat more than I should, but it's far easier than it ever was to simply eat less, and what I do eat doesn't get nearly as much of a chance to absorb as it used to.

Plus, losing that much weight makes it possible for me to get up and around more - I've given up using my wheelchair around the house, for example.

THIS is why weight loss surgery works.

[*] I am not associated with this product. I just happen to buy it because it's the least expensive of the options available to me here, and it is palatable when mixed as above.

make that http://minetest.net.. stupid slashdot pointed the link wrong.

And if building, planning, etc. in a voxel sandbox game is the way to go, why not go with a free (as in beer and as in freedom) alternative like Minetest?

(and yes, I contribute to that project)

And yet, any good torrent tracker with a couple thousand active users can do the same thing - for free yet. So why can't a big corporation with thousands of times as many resources as those users do the same thing, especially if they expect you to pay for it? Simple answer: they're stupid.

(Disclaimer: I don't watch TV, nor do I pirate it. I buy the content I want on Blu-Ray or DVD)

The first 8-inch floppy disks held only 79.75 kB (read-only, in 1971). The first 5¼ inch floppies held 87.5kB (in 1976). Even the first 3½ disks only held 280 kB (in 1982). In each case, of course, capacity inflated rapidly over a few years' time, but if you subtract out filesystem metadata, which of course varies with the disk format, each one would easily drop by 5 or 10 percent, putting those first 8-inch disks in the just-over-70kB range.

"And what's with everyone calling processors 'cores' now?"

Simple - it's because "processor" still generally refers to the chip and its packaging as a single device.

Most processors have a number of structures and resources that are shared by some or all of their execution units (such as a processor-wide shared L3 cache versus a single core's dedicated L1 cache). Since an execution unit genrally can't be separated back out from the rest of the processor, but it still mostly functions as an independent unit, it doesn't make sense to call such a unit a "processor". Someone had to come up with a term that describes those execution units, and since they collectively make up the central operating core of the processor, "core" just makes sense. Who came up with that? No clue.

Heh, subject says it all.

Also, first post?

It's a robot. You know - like a super-advanced robot. It's probably Japanese. Yeah, it's definitely Japanese.

Strange, I always thought it went "Hey Bubba! Watch THIS!"

Shows how much I know :-)

Most of the space between us and this distant galaxy is empty. That which isn't, in this particular case, are contained in a few rather massive regions, enough so that the gravity generated therein acts like a few giant lenses, bending the light from the distant galaxy around it and focusing it in our direction.

Except, they won't. Companies don't give two shits about little details like full mailboxes because they won't see it as affecting their profit margins - they'll just continue to lay blame on whoever they can when a problem arises.

My utility bill has wording on the back to the effect of "Failure to receive your utility bill is your responsibility, not ours", and I can almost guarantee that they'll continue to stand behind those words 125% if something like once-a-week delivery were to be implemented. When your bill ends up in the circular file because your mailbox is full, they'll just ask "Well, why didn't you phone us or come by the office?"

And before it comes up again, forget the idea of going all-online for receiving/paying bills - the folks you owe, especially utilities, just loooooove to charge "convenience" fees (or use 3rd-party entities who do) for paying said bills online.

So no, we need daily delivery (minus Saturday perhaps). Everyone and their dog uses the postal system, so put it back under the government umbrella before it fails, fund them with tax dollars, and cut out the bullshit like the aforementioned 75-years-ahead pension.

This isn't some car company or bank that's teetering on the edge, this is the fucking UNITED STATES POST OFFICE. We kinda need them.

(that last comment isn't directed at anyone in particular)