Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in that order

If a ramp is needed for construction purposes only, then make an earth ramp (with wood skids etc) and remove it once it's no longer needed. See the excellent 1930 book Ancient Egyptian Construction and Architecture by Somers Clarke and R. Engelbach (Dover Books has a reprint). I've read it twice and would give it 10 out of 10.

I used to bring my failed baking experiments (tomato-bread etc) to work. If you cut it into pieces, and everyone tries a piece, then it will disappear, which is better than throwing it out. Noone was pleased, but noone was harmed.

What's missing is a reliable/trusthworthy/unobtrusive/easy micropayment system.

I'm not going to subscribe to any of the thousands of news sites that very occasionally have a single article I want to read-- but I would be willing to make a one-off payment of 1 cent, or 1/10 of a cent or whatever, to view their one article that I'm interested in. If browsing the news ad-free cost me $0.20 a day (distributed over various sites) I'd do it. But I have zero tolerance for ads.

The turning point for me came when I was watching a footrace on TV (years ago, I don't watch TV anymore)-- it was the end of the race, and the runners were approaching the finishing line, and there was a white tape stretched across the track........ but it wasn't a plain white tape anymore, oh no: it had printing on it that said ADVIL ADVIL ADVIL ADVIL ADVIL ADVIL ADVIL etc.

Advertisers are scum.

There once was a Finn who loved his wife so much.............. that he almost told her.

> If i can buy a part directly from the manufacturer in China for $3.99, I'm not going to pay $11.99 for Amazon to deliver it to me or even $5.99 for an Ebay reseller.

Alibaba is mainly about wholesale/volume. There are minimum quantities, usually far greater than 1. If you need *one* you go to eBay/Amazon/whatever, but if you are a manufacturer and need 10,000 of some widget, you can buy straight from the manufacturer via Alababa.

For example, I randomly chose violet laser pointer as a product, and on Alibaba there are many sellers. Minimum purchase quantities for those sellers: 5, 500, 10, 100, 100, 1, 500, 50, 10, 100, 100, 1, 1, 50, 1, 50, 1, 100, 10, 10, 10, 100000, 100, 100, 100...

Doing plumbing? Here's are minimum quantities from different suppliers for copper street elbows: 10 tons, 1000 pieces, 1 ton, 1000 pieces, 1000 pieces, 1000 pieces, 3000 pieces, 100 pieces, 50 pieces, 10000 pieces, 1 piece (!), 2000 pieces, 1000 pieces, 1000 pieces...

We'll stop using feet as soon as the Brits stop using stones.

Two words: chord keyboard.

I used one in '87 or '88 at SRI. It was old then, part of Engelbart's mouse/keyset interface. He first demo'd it in '68.

Nope; you didn't read the code: "As used in this section, a motor vehicle speed contest includes a motor vehicle race against another vehicle, a clock, or other timing device."

> ...even though there IS no crime for "accelerating too fast".

There are such laws, usually prohibiting "exhibition of speed", "speed contests", and similar acts. In California, it is VEHICLE CODE 23109:

Speed Contests

23109. (a) A person shall not engage in a motor vehicle speed contest on a highway. As used in this section, a motor vehicle speed contest includes a motor vehicle race against another vehicle, a clock, or other timing device. For purposes of this section, an event in which the time to cover a prescribed route of more than 20 miles is measured, but where the vehicle does not exceed the speed limits, is not a speed contest.

(b) A person shall not aid or abet in any motor vehicle speed contest on any highway.

(c) A person shall not engage in a motor vehicle exhibition of speed on a highway, and a person shall not aid or abet in a motor vehicle exhibition of speed on any highway. ...etc...

Two words: Delphi Pool. This is an idea from 1975's The Shockwave Rider.

I'm a Ram Das man: BE HERE NOW

Cell phones are the exact opposite of that. I will never own one.

ASCII will be with us forever, because it's enshrined in the bottom 7 bits of Unicode! U+0000 through U+007F are ASCII . The most common/useful encoding of Unicode is UTF8, which is backwards compatible with ASCII. Your ASCII data is Unicode, in UTF8 guise.

> Rat Poison.

If you needs must poison rodents, use Bromethalin . It is a fairly rodent-specific neurotoxin with low secondary toxicity, so anything that eats the poisoned corpse will likely not be harmed. We use it in the sticks to control wood rats, and it works like a charm. I did eventually switch to barn cats as the only stuff available is a synthetic version by Bell Labs which is very expensive (trade name Fastrac). The cats are cheaper and have bonus amusing antics, although they do leave heads and gall bladders everywhere.