"
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill
" - Rush, Freewill

How is this any different from physical currency?

They keep changing the money to make it 'harder' to counterfeit, but I don't think they're succeeding...

Hacking bank accounts or investment portfolios and adding ten zeroes to the balance would have the same effect, no?

Only in America could 75% of people agree on something, yet there is absolutely no chance of it getting changed.

Request for Next slashdot poll: 'Should the US switch to the metric system?'

My job is dull, and it makes me weird. I feel as though having even the most basic understanding of logic seems to make me completely alienated from the 90% of the world who consists of idiots who write worthless turds of "journalism", or other non-producing careers. Enjoy your meaningless, pathetic, existence, you piece of useless crap journalists. I hope some slashdotter automates your job, tomorrow.

OK. Fine, your snarky remark doesn't seem to release any hatred for completely ignoring weight on something so important. They aren't even considering a linear approximation, and they can't comprehend a fifth order equation. They are very clearly asking for drivers of regular vehicles to subisidize the damage caused by the large vehicles. So take your details and send them to your government (aka shove them up your ass)

Taxing by Miles Driven is absolute nonsense when discussing 'road wear'. The wear on the road rises exponentially as the weight of the vehicle increases. This must be included or all the light cars are subsidizing the wear caused by the heavy ones. So accounting for the weight of the vehicle, we need to come up with units of (weight * distance) For Example, A Harley that drives a thousand miles would get something like ( 1000 lbs * 1000 miles ) = 1,000,000 lb*miles And, a Semi Truck that drives a thousand miles would get something like ( 50,000 lbs * 1000 miles ) = 50,000,000 lb*miles The tax rate would increase with the weight of the vehicle, accounting for the fact that the wear is exponentially growing with weight... Then you take your 'lb*miles' value and multiply by the tax rate. This is at least not completely moronic... but probably still doesn't reflect the true reality of the situation.

Certain materials might just get zapped a bit. Seems like this could be kind of like putting Grandpa in the microwave on low...

Its because management shoved a shitty product out the door without letting the engineers finish their job.

Thats no planet, thats a battle station!

Just install XP on it!

I don't want windows 8 ( don't want my laptop working like a tablet ), and I don't want a touch screen. I'm good with the keyboard and mouse, thank you. I don't desire any improvement in control over my computer at this point. I especially don't want a dumbed down interface that reduces access to my applications. I dock my laptop between two big ass monitors, How come this isn't more common? Mulitple monitors makes me much more productive. I combine this with Dexpot to give myself 4 desktops with three monitors so I can keep my applications open all the time. 3 monitors x 4 desktops = 12 applications open, no window switching. I need more power. My next computer will be sitting at something like i7 - 16GB RAM - SSD - Radeon7950. I would hope that internet speeds would double or triple, though there doesn't appear to be any improvements in this field. Don't they know that starcraft 2 expansion just released? I'm not buying a new laptop and suffering the terrible lag of a 4x4 game all over again.

Best Buy has laptops for about 250, which are good enough for web work. Just make the backup CDs and refresh it when they fuck it up. Or use Norton Ghost to image it

Initially, it seems like you couldn't get a wind-powered vehicle to go faster than the wind. For example, let us imagine a wind going 20mph North. If our vehicle is going to travel North with the wind at its back, the max speed would be 20 mph because any greater speed would result in an opposing force. However, if your vehicle is traveling West, and your sail is near perpedicular to the North-going wind, the translational velocity of the vehicle has no effect on the sail and the vehicles top speed would be set by the force applied to the sail and vehicle friction & weight, and if you got a good run at it, I don't see any reason you couldn't break wind speed that way.

I'm a bigger guy, broad shouldered, 5'9" 225 lbs. Yes, I'm a bit over fighting weight but I'd hardly consider my weight out of control. I barely fit into a southwest seat. It is miserable, I spend the whole thing with my shoulders shrugged, trying not to steal the armrest from my neighbor. Yes, they have the cheapest fare but its the most uncomfortable trip you'll ever take. My wife, a 5'7 120 lb'er says the same thing- she complains we're slapped in there like sardines. Perhaps they just got cheap and crammed an extra seat into each row, completely sacrificing comfort for all aboard. Would anybody really bitch if they just had bigger seats? This is a design problem that the airline figures they can shed the blame onto heavy people. This is probably the fault of some penny pinching executive, but you all want to blame the hamburgers.