Heh... that's almost exactly what *I* said :P

He has changed, not killed the space program. Bang for your buck is in space astronomy and unmanned stuff anyways, and its not like we can afford everything we want these days. But hey, Obama bashing is in style these days, especially on Slashdot.

Its interesting that we have arguably one of the top 5 presidents every (certainly in the top 10) and yet if things keep going this way, we're going to get 1 term out of him followed by 8 years of Palin.

"All this puts Wikipedia in the confusing position of not allowing a page for an undefined word whose meaning is defined via the Wikipedia page for that word — and now I have to lie down for a moment."

The meaning was not defined by Wikipedia. It was defined (or, more accurately, coined) by xkcd by way of a mockup of a nonexistent Wikipedia page that was then later created. Only those going out of their way to try and create a situation where Wikipedia is contradicting itself see it that way. Which is not to say that Wikipedia doesn't constantly contradict itself; merely having a page that cites a frame of xkcd citing a fictional Wikipedia page (that is then later created) does not constitute a self-contradiction.

My point was none of any of those problems relate to Microsoft. If you want to use old equipment and old software, more power to you. Believe me I understand the reasons why someone would want to do so. But don't complain that your out of support software isn't being supported anymore. You are doing so at your own risk and own support. In the specific example the software did run on XP SP2, so I don't think it would be a huge stretch to assume it wouldn't take an enormous amount of work to get it running on the same OS with some patches. Oh and if you are running old unsupported OS on machines for whatever reasons, for Christ sake DON'T hook them up to the internet. As long as they are only attached to whatever equipment they need to be attached to, you are probably ok.

When one considers that we don't have any better trend data (the actual data we have only goes back about 50-60 years of proper measuring

So the thermometer was invented in 1950 in your alternate reality then?

The problem I have with the new law is that we've basically put racial profiling on the books. We're actually saying that if somebody looks illegal, you can stop them and ask to see their papers.

But what does a legal American citizen look like? We aren't all white. And not every illegal is going to be brown.

What it comes down to isn't whether you look illegal, because that doesn't actually have a look. It comes down to whether your skin is the right color.

Of course, beyond my ideological disagreements with the law, I have a hard time seeing any sane police officer actually using it.

Sure, if someone is already in custody for some reason it might be an additional charge to throw at them... But actually stopping someone on the street to demand proof of citizenship? That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

How many of us actually carry proof of citizenship around? How many can produce it on short notice? Honestly, I'm not sure I even know what would constitute proof of citizenship.

So a police officer stops someone... Asks to see their papers... But they don't have papers because they're a legal citizen. Officer doesn't believe them, because they've got an accent or their skin is too dark. So they're taken into custody until they can come up with papers. Maybe it takes a day or two. Eventually they produce the papers, but they've been held in custody for a couple days simply because their skin was too dark or their accent was too thick. You just know it is going to happen eventually... And somebody is going to get sued.

As for actually stopping the illegal immigration and protecting our borders and whatnot... We need to treat the disease and not the symptoms. You can keep giving the patient morphine for the pain, but they'll still die if you don't treat the cancer.

There's a reason folks are sneaking across the border to work here in the US - it's profitable. Take away the profit and they won't have a reason to come here. Or, at least, they'll have one less reason.

We need to either decide that we're willing to pay higher prices to get stuff done without cheap illegal labor... Or we need to come up with a legal way to get that cheap labor.

I'm aware of dutch etymology. But I suggest you look on a standard Querty keyboard and examine the close proximity of groups of letters in the word ..also humour...

No, it goes both ways - the government is deep in the pockets of corporations like BP, enacting laws to their profit - and they squeeze out every last bit of profit on the back of the rest of society. Sorry if I have been unclear. I definitely agree with you that the government enables the "evilness" (I actually don't like to talk in this kind of moral categories here, BP is simply acting rational under the current boundary conditions). My criticism was intended to be aimed at the whole political structure that makes this kind of stuff possible, and, of course, at the people who still believe holding up the status quo is in their best interest as members of the diminishing middle class. I would not agree that diminishing the role of the government would help, though. My point is that the we, the citizens, have to make a clear point as to for whose benefit the government does exist. And that's not the top 1% of the food chain.

Atomism is a greek concept, not Roman, also, it was not a commonly accepted theory, far less so than say elements/humours.

You can easily over-interpret translations of older texts; that text by Varro could just as easily have been talking about dust mites rather than viruses/bacteria. I don't think it's fair to compare speculation in this case with the more thorough understanding we have of bacteria.
 

Probably not. It's the "Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission", not the EU.

That seems vaguely reasonable to me, based on my experience getting people to do things. Some of the best stuff I've gotten from other people has been stuff that I've gotten on a totally "I'll do it when I get to it" basis. You get a lot of un-accounted-for work in those cases, because people aren't "really" working for you, but are thinking about your problem in the shower, or procrastinating from their "real" work by reading Google Scholar entries related to your problem, etc. Eventually, you might get back something pretty good. (Not always, of course; so you could also say it has a higher variance.)

Yes. The most recent genre launch was probably Parappa the Rapper in the mid-1990s, which kicked off the music game genre. Everything else is derivative; for example, Katamari Damacy is a reinterpretation of the arcade game Bubbles (1982) as a 3D platformer.

No weight and no bulk? What is it made out of, magic?

Probably because the Apple stories always get a lot of comments.

Depending on where you work, it might be a good idea to lock down most of the computers. A hospital or doctor's patient information shouldn't be on machines with free-for-all internet access, as someone mentioned above. The problem here isn't "loss of data". It's "anyone who isn't authorized seeing nearly any portion of the data", which is a much harder thing to do when everyone has access to email, Google and every bit of snoopware that comes with that.