I explained it to one friend thusly (she's a nerd, but not a computer nerd): "It would, for example, allow Nintendo to sue and possibly shut down Facebook over the photo you posted of your (DIY) Pikachu sweater."

If you think Marin voters go crazy when it comes to EMF radiation...

Python also has a built-in "unittest" module that might make it a lot easier to manage your various test cases. I'd say if you can't count all of your test cases on one hand, you should take a serious look at that module.

Is it just me, or does the mouse on page 4 bear a striking resemblance to Logitech's current line-up of ergonomic mice?

Historically, soy has been used as a flavoring agent (e.g. soy sauce, bean paste), not as a primary source of food (soymilk, tofurky, etc.). I'm no expert, but my guess would be that until the last few decades, nobody consumed soy in large enough quantities to experience any negative effects from those isoflavones.

That wasn't McDonald's fault. That's why the damages she received were significantly less than what she had sued them for.

I went to Santa Rosa Junior College. It's actually one of the best junior colleges in California, if not the entire U.S. And I'm sure that at most of the faculty there can recognize (or easily be made to understand) how stupid a move this is by the administration.

The real problem is that these sorts of technical decisions are being made by people with no understanding of the technology. And there are countless institutions besides SRJC that have that exact same problem.

I heard she was wearing sweatpants at the time, which absorbed significantly more liquid than a t-shirt would, and held it in-place against her body long enough to cause third-degree burns.

Think of it this way: if you pour boiling water on yourself, you'll get burns, but the water will mostly run off of your body before doing too much damage. If you soak a sponge in boiling water and hold it against your skin, that's going to transfer a lot more thermal energy (since it can remain in contact for much longer) and thus cause a more severe burn.

There's a huge difference between naturalism and naturism. Naturalism is the study of the natural world. I worked as a naturalist during college, at a nature preserve that was owned by my university and used for research and education (I led kids from local elementary schools on field trips).

Naturism, on the other hand, is a practice that is synonymous with nudism (there might be further meaning that I am unaware of).

Err...BART doesn't serve Silicon Valley. It's only available in San Francisco, the east bay, and parts of San Mateo county (just south of San Francisco).

There are plans in the works to extend BART into Silicon Valley, but they're unlikely to translate into actual service for years.

He didn't buy the laptop. His employer did. And he was already well aware of my opinion of Vista.

I've heard plenty of stories about his employer, and I'm sure they could never be convinced that an older version of Windows might be superior to the so-called "latest and greatest".

I've never yet had to use Vista myself, but in my limited experience helping friends who do use it, the "budget laptops" issue looks to be a serious one. A friend of mine was given a budget laptop for work, but he couldn't get wireless networking to work and asked me for help.

The first thing I noticed was that it took something ridiculous like 10 minutes to start up, and was incredibly slow even when no applications were running. So I went to the "System" control panel, and discovered the laptop had only 384MB of RAM.

So...it's a new laptop, that ships with Vista, and it falls short of Vista's minimum RAM requirements? I never did figure that one out.

I finally told him that the first thing he needed to do before I could help him was to get a laptop that met or exceeded Vista's minimum system requirements. I didn't hear anything about it after that.

They already have a computer that does the work of six congresspeople. Unfortunately, it takes twelve congresspeople to operate it.