Woah. Who knew that Microsoft's competitive internal teams and closed-source development was counter-productive?

I wish I could upvote you.

Hydrogen peroxide powered rocket packs fly for around 30 seconds, because they have a specific impulse of around 125, meaning that one pound of propellant can make 125 pound-seconds of thrust, meaning that it takes about two pounds of propellant for every second you are in the air. Mass ratios are low for anything strapped to a human, so the exponential nature of the rocket equation can be safely ignored.

A pretty hot (both literally and figuratively) bipropellant rocket could manage about twice the specific impulse, and you could carry somewhat heavier tanks, but two minutes of flight on a rocket pack is probably about the upper limit with conventional propellants.

However, an actual jet pack that used atmospheric oxygen could have an Isp ten times higher, allowing theoretical flights of fifteen minutes or so. Here, it really is a matter of technical development, since jet engines have thrust to weight ratios too low to make it practical. There is movement on this technical front, but it will still take a while.

John Carmack

But these are system calls, and should not be part of the IIS application itself. Of course, Microsoft loooves to say everything is part of the OS, and we can't see the actual calls that are being made, but whatever is being called should be outside of IIS in order for the article to make sense.

--dv

Actually, a pair of jeans that writes Nietzsche would be a better analogy. Or if the sample I saw was any indication, a pair of jeans that writes Dan Brown perhaps.

I agree it's annoying, but you have to start from the facts of the situation. The laws are what they are. If you want a change in the laws, your options are limited. Given the premise that you aren't interested in working within the system to change them, then your alternatives come down to:

1. Hide from them. Either get rid of your land line (since cell phones are still excluded), or use caller ID or an answering machine to screen your calls. Or get somebody else to answer your phone.
2. Drive the industry out of business. There are thousands of call centers. There is not (and will probably never be) a do-not-call list for research. To make them stop calling, you would need to use guerrilla tactics to convince the industry that phone research is worthless. Start a visible grass-roots movement of people deliberately giving false results on polls. Take out newspaper ads. File frivolous lawsuits. Go on a hunger strike. I don't think any of these things would get results but knock yourself out.

Or just do what I do. Take the polls that sound like you might be able to influence policy in a way that you'd like. Tell the others 'no.' Don't waste your time saying "don't call me again" because there's no mechanism for the polling house to do anything with that request. In fact, a cornerstone of proper research is that each respondent must be kept anonymous. Ranting won't and can't get passed on to the Senator who commissioned the survey.

And no matter how mean and rude you are to the caller, remember this is just a low-paid wage slave earning money to buy peanut butter for the kids.