true that.. but why are you looking down long channels exactly? Are you trying to reduce cost involved with an overhead rail system by just using a single rail along the rows?

thanks for taking the time to respond, btw :)

While I agree that sex isn't limited to intercourse, I disagree that anything 'sexual' is sex. One could argue that a character saying "you're looking GOOD in that dress" is a sexual come-on. But to then say there was sex in that show.. to me, that's absurd.

tinfoil hat on

Because stories like these make the general public feel a little less singled out... clearly if even the security bigwig herself is subject to the same rules, then at least they're being 'fair'. If she then throws a mini-fit about it, the general public will realize that she's aware of the annoyance and grievances and she isn't any more fond of them than they are. Then later a statement is released in which she acknowledges this more formally, while pointing out that she deeply believes that these measures are necessary to stop actual terrorist plots... and the general public may just feel a little bit more sympathetic to her given the aforementioned.

tinfoil hat off

Now, about those body scanners...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJGvsAgpfig (not a rick roll, have pinches of salt ready though).

what.. all of that is -sex- now?

I think that means I had sex at least a dozen times today. I've also been exposed to others' acts of sex at least 500 times.

I know SG-1 very well, and Atlantis somewhat, and although I find little flaw in the descriptions of the examples you propose.. they're just not examples of sex to me.

So a person is pregnant. Yes, that (usually, see: Vala) implies sex was had. But I don't remember any of the characters referencing this act.. nevermind -showing- it.. which is what sex would be to me.

Even in Firefly, Kaylee mentions not having had nothin' not run on batteries twixt her nethers. Is that a sexual comment? Sure. Is that -sex-? No, not unless there's an X-Rated version of the thing where they cut to a flashback showing that which she described.

As for there hardly being any sex in Dr. Who. Uhm.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/7679858/Sexed-up-Dr-Who-scenes-prompt-complaints-to-BBC.html
That certainly goes -well- beyond anything that has been in Stargate SG-1 (pilot excluded, see previous comment).

then the follow-up question is.. why do those need depth perception in the form of stereoscopic vision instead of e.g. ultrasonic or laser range finding?

are you suggesting you are a *cough* tomato plant *cough*?

There was sex in Stargate? Heck, even Vala's pregnancy was through some manner of immaculate conception (Adria's birth was probably not a virgin birth, though).

The closest thing would have been the original pilot (full frontal nudity), but the directors/producers never quite liked that scene and chopped it from the re-cut version.

Data and Tasha Yar getting it on was far more blatant as far as 'sex' goes.

Mod parent up... although most of the reports on this story are copy/paste, I couldn't find a single one that actually stated where the money went. I would think that if they donated it to charity, that would be something to note in such a story. (not excluding the possibility, but there's no evidence that this is what happened as far as I can see).

The recent arrest of a 23-year-old California man that has allegedly hacked e-mail accounts of more than 170 women and posted sexually explicit pictures found within them to the victims' Facebook accounts, has highlighted the need to limit the amount of personal information posted on various social networks.

- http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10096

Coulter has in the past used her freedom of speech to advocate charging anyone who speaks negatively of the war in Afganistan with 'providing aid and comfort to the enemy' and locking them in prison.

Freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of exercising that freedom. That was even literally noted as such in one rather big iteration of the concept (see wikipedia + references).
Example: Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines saying she's ashamed that then-President George W. Bush is from Texas (like herself), and the backlash against the group that followed.
Note also that although you may be imprisoned, you can still send letters with the exact same speech if you wish - though you may then be indicted for this act and your prison term extended.

Of course under current U.S. (I'm presuming to be the context) laws this wouldn't happen anyway and Coulter was just making some headline-able statements to further her shameless self-promotion, but consider you being in the military and privy to detailed active operation plans. Freedom of speech says you can tell the world if you want to. Laws against treason say you'll be screwed if you do. But those laws don't prevent you from telling the world.. it may be a deterrent, perhaps even a strong deterrent, but you can still exercise your freedom of speech.

Compare this to e.g. a dissident in one of those friendly 'great leader' type states where anybody they suspect might exercise their freedom of speech in a manner they disagree with, they'll just lock them up and allow no communication to the outside world, or indeed the aforementioned soldier on a battleground whose communication may well be monitored and redacted (censored) as appropriate (regardless of the relative ineffectiveness of such measures in this technological age).

What's more worrying than people making use of their freedom of speech (which is almost entirely non-worrying) is the collective power of those listening to said speech and often with it the general lack of responsibility on the part of those making said speech when they are aware of said collective power.
Same example: Though the world was generally not aware of Natalie Maines' statement and it netted but a small column in a UK newspaper, this was picked up by politically inclined groups who lobbied hard to have their songs pulled from 'conservative radio' where individual stations decided individually to stop playing their songs; after touting the overseeing company's line, inciting their listeners, and eventually leading to such silliness as burning of CDs and driving over them with a bulldozer and ultimately a change in the Dixie Chicks' music career (for better or for worse).

In fact, I highly recommend reading up on that particular line of events and maybe buy/rent/download the DVD documentary "Shut up and sing" that follows the group from well before the proverbial shit hit the fan to several years after, as it demonstrates the above points fairly well.. though many people take away many different things from seeing it.. from "there shouldn't have been any consequences" to "good! they should have stayed away from politics!"

because traffic won't have to be slowed/halted while this accident is investigated and the car towed?

the lamp post doesn't need repairing?
that tree won't need to be uprooted (depending on damage)?
traffic won't have to be slowed/halted while this occurs?
insurance companies won't be involved (regardless of whether or not they pay any damages)?

I understand what you tried to say, but even in the case of the drunk driver who didn't cause any problems at all at the end of their trip I'd have a problem with it as that's more luck than anything else. (where by 'drunk' I mean 'impaired', not 'blood alcohol level is above the legal limit')

it seems hard to condemn companies too harshly for using a marketing catch-phrase.

Hmm, no.. I'm not finding myself having any trouble doing this whatsoever.

Everybody knew there would be -a standard- referred to as 4G eventually... hijacking that for "marketing catch phrase" purposes gains them no sympathy other than from other marketeers.

Think of it this way.. if Microsoft were to start offering "IE9 with HTML 6 support" where "HTML 6" is not clearly defined, would you have any trouble whatsoever condemning them?

Isn't this what customers want, though? I'm rather serious about that.

Say a company has a website and on that website they obviously have a news area, a contact page (perhaps even a listed e-mail address.. rare as that may be) and because they're not totally stuck-up, they also run a forum.

What happens?
People don't read that website for news.. not even if it had an RSS feed. They expect to get those updates from a Twitter feed.
People don't post to those forums. Why would they? It's probably small and won't get very many eyeballs, even if it -is- the official forum and they can get in touch with the actual business people / engineers there. They expect to just go @SomeCompany on Twitter and get their responses there.
People don't use the e-mail forms... again.. @SomeCompany on Twitter.

Substitute Twitter with facebook / youtube / vimeo in some scenarios.

Note that people will do this even if the company does -not- in fact have an account at these social networking sites. Heck, if nothing else, people will just complain on those sites about the lack of the company being on that site.

So I reckon this is exactly what people want. Even if it's not what they want, they in part brought this unto themselves.

And yes.. I realize that part of the reason is because it is oh-so-public. Blaming Company X for a problem with Product Y on Twitter tends to get re-tweeted and picked up right-quick. Saying so on the company's own forum tends to lead to relatively bland responses. So companies, too, brought this requirement to be on social networking sites unto themselves.

But certainly neither party should complain about the development of these tools (and Cisco's is hardly the first).

The good name that's slowly but surely turning sour in favor of the 'LibreOffice' fork? (which I do hope they plan on changing real soon)

it -should- complain, yes.... but the reason why people are groaning at Microsoft on this issue is the same reason they're groaning about the UAC prompts. With UAC prompts, lazy people get trained to 'just click Yes', thus severely reducing the effectiveness of the prompt. That this happens in other operating systems, albeit usually on a CLI, is apparently not an issue.

With the mixed content warning, you get an even worse problem from lazy people. The end-user will just click 'yes' as otherwise some silly little game just won't work, while on the developer's side there's some guy in a boardroom going "we're getting complaints from users that the site uses mixed content when running third party content X. How can we fix that?" and a site developer going "well ideally all of the content should be https.. but as we're dealing with third party content we have no direct control over, we could drop everything back to http" and a decision-maker going "make it so."