This was a rational piece without too many sensationalist remarks! How do we show them we appreciate decent scientific writing as opposed to the crap we normally get?

Why is the being policed? Google doesn't have any requirement to be fair, do they? Who ever said the search results were unbiased? This just boggles my mind as to why this is even an issue - they are a private company. I think they should prioritize their links, it's in their best interest. I don't necessarily agree, but if you don't like it use a different search engine. No one's forcing you to use Google.

0) Gnome-Do in Docky mode 1) Gnome-Do is a incredibly flexible launcher, allowing you to start any program with the keyboard only. Most docks that I know of have zero keyboard integration. Having this makes it much more useable. 2) Gnome-Do with Docky is missing some things (pinning and unpinning of icons, drag and drop ordering) that I enjoy in Windows 7. I just read what came after your questions and feel like I've added nothing.

Because religious groups propagate ideas that are known to be false. You can without a doubt easily prove that the world is older than 4,000 years, yet there are many Christians that will tell you otherwise.

Example: I try to convince you that I had a flying cow in my backyard. I sincerely believed it try to teach your children that cows can fly if you sacrifice food an money to them. Is it alright for me to go around saying this, taking money and food from the innocent and weak? No, this is immoral whether I believe it is true or not.

I agree that the world is not perfect, and scarier everyday. But I feel like it's a heck of a lot better than the time when the church ran everything - we now refer to that as the Dark Ages.

I would like to see how it would play out (legally) if a BitTorrent site started hosting some (or any) sort of local news.

I've searched like you. For a long time I used GB-PVR, and while it's great, it isn't as pretty and flashy. Very functional with the right plugins, and if you like tinkering, it's awesome. I recently moved to Windows 7 Media Center. I am a sorta open source kind of guy, but wow. I am totally blown away by 7 Media Center. I've been setting up boxes for everyone I know and they are loving them. Give it a try, I bet you'll be surprised, especially as a DVR. It just rocks. And when (if) CableCards get popular, you will be able to use it.

At least in that case they would be giving something that people wanted. I bet there is a much greater demand for massages than there are for even-buggier-than-normal builds of IE.

Not necessarily. I don't think your analogy to Linux works quite the same. It would be more like someone walking up and finding 50 different versions of Ubuntu (for example). They all can run the same code, same programs. They might have buttons placed in a different place, different colors or wallpaper, maybe even a slightly different desktop experience (different/more widgets) but they are all running the same basic codebase. From what we've seen with HTC's Sense and Motorola's MOTOBLUR, there will be differentiation, but all apps will still run the same. Especially at the moment since they all have the same processor. HTC has their own on-screen keyboard, for example, but there are no compatibility problems (yet) with Android across multiple phones. Realistically, the changes between the phones are relatively small (qwerty vs t9 vs no keyboard, capacitive vs resistive touchscreen, camera autofocus and megapixels, etc). These changes don't really affect how the platform runs, just specific aspects of it. The goal of Android was to create a strong, common base where many apps can run, and I think they have done that so far. When phones start differentiating on CPU and RAM, we may see some apps which don't perform similarly across all Android phones, but Apple is already having to deal with something similar between it's own versions of iPhone models, so it basically is not inevitable. Phones will get faster and have more RAM as time goes on. I think Android really is going in the right direction, and the more models that are available, the better. A 'universal' app store under Android in my mind is much better than an app store for every phone.

If you run linux, you could probably set it up as a pulseaudio sink. That way, you could stream music to speakers other than the ones at your desk. I always wanted to do that, sorta like what apple does on it's airport, but cheaper and linux based.

woot. This is crazy. I didn't think anyone important went to Hope. I am currently a student (class of '09) and its awesome to hear that someone from Hope made it big (at least in my eyes). I read pretty much every story that passes through /., and i've been doing it for a year or two. Crazy to think it was at one time hosted on smaug (probably). now im curious. You know all about my world, VanZoren and Voorhees and the Kletz and all that goodness.