Was away on a job for Christmas one year and some of the people wanted to decorate the work space for the holiday. We had a xmas tree but no lights and no way to get any (the company said they couldn't justify a chopper run for xmas lights). I took two wires and soldered them to pins 2 and 5 on a DB-9 connector, then ran the wires parallel to each other about a centimeter apart. Tore apart an old device to get a bunch of different colored LEDs out and then soldered them between the wires every 2-3", reversing the polarity of every other LED (used hot glue to make sure they wouldn't short out). Then I wrote a quick little program to open a serial port and turn the break state on and off at intervals of ~700ms. A serial port's idle state is -5V and its break state is +5V. So when I plugged the connector in, half the LEDs would light on the idle state, and the other half would light on the break state. I would consider that unusual.

How can you build good applications without knowledge of math, theories, and algorithms; and what use are such things if you're not going to apply them?

So, this is the oil companies' way of ensuring future income? Perhaps they will use this to argue that oil is, in fact, a renewable resource.

You may laugh now, but what will you do when riots break out in 2012? Hollywood is a bunch of Nazis (figuratively speaking). They see fear, and they see profit. They're just cashing in on the game the History Channel has been playing for years. If saying every prophet in the history of the world predicted destruction on 2012 gets you more money, then why not do it, right? Unfortunately, it seems this has gone much farther than the 2000 scare. With so many people freaked out about this whole thing, I think there is real potential for a minor cataclysm in 2012, caused by Hollywood and the television networks themselves. Not the end of the world, but possibly a major blow to civilization.

And I know it seems ridiculous, but you have to remember: Humans are emotional creatures. Poke their feelings and all logic goes out the window.

Religions didn't start off as a scam. But form any institution, and people will rise to power within that institution to take advantage of its constituents. It happens everywhere, from Catholicism to the government to the Red Cross. While the uppers of many religious institutions may have been taking advantage of the lowers for years, the central belief that holds them together has remained the same for centuries... this applies to all religious institutions that I've seen, except for Scientology: which is clearly, without question, a scam. I honestly can't figure out how Scientology still exists. The fact that people are willing to believe in such a thing as Scientology makes me question my faith as a Christian. And that makes me a sad panda.

I can't think of any reason at all why they shouldn't have named it Colbert. They asked what people wanted the name to be, the people said Colbert, and then NASA turned around and said, "oh, we meant what BESIDES Colbert should we call it?"
And for what reason? Is there something inherently offensive about the name Colbert?

What's happened in the past doesn't apply here. All throughout human history, musicians and actors, okay well entertainers in general, have been confined to the lowest levels of society along with prostitutes and peasants. Hell, even the king's jester would regularly get killed for his royalty's amusement. While playwrites and composers may have earned some respect in the past, the actors and musicians never did.

Then came things like radio and the record. These inventions turned musicians into celebrities while making them rich at the same time (which are two mutually reinforcing conditions). And we all know that for every person who has a lot of money, there are 100 people ready to exploit them.

Is the ability to bypass payment for music not a return to the natural state of things? After all, while musicians may be making less money, they are probably enjoying greater popularity. And when in the past HASN'T popularity led to riches?

Besides, aren't we just praising and giving money to these people for possessing talent and beauty that is really not nearly as uncommon as they would have us imagine? There are thousands of girls who look like Christina Aguilera, can sing as well as her, and aren't dirty whores either. Why should Christina Aguilera have any more fame or money than the other women who possess the same talents and physical attractiveness? Do artists, actors, and the **AA really deserve all that money? Even if they never sold a single CD, they'd STILL be richer than 99% of the population.