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Comment Re:I know a few people that drive Carrera GTs (Score 1) 961

You clearly don't know what you are talking about even in the slightest. A Carrera is a trim level of the 911 and is a completely different car than the Carrera GT that this article is about. The Carrera GT is a 600,000 USD V10 super car that was only sold/built by Porsche from 2005-2008; there were only ever about 1300 produced.

Comment Re:Insurance (Score 4, Informative) 666

Typically you get something called a "declared value policy". Wherein you basically document what modifications/parts are on the car and how much the value is as a result. You often times are expected to keep a folder of "comparables" that help validate the market value of the vehicle and then the policy works basically the same as any other policy. They are super common for things like show cars or antiques.

Comment Real fountain pens, not today's gaudy inkbombs (Score 1) 712

A few others have mentioned fountain pens, but all new ones. Older pens, in good condition with decent quality to begin with, will blow away new ones for writing quality. I'm currently making notes (for my latest internet startup) with a red ripple hard rubber waterman 52, ~1924 but pretty much never used until I got my paws on it. It's a heavily flex nib which means I can write with it almost as a needlepoint for fine notes, but can still get bold broad strokes at any time I want for effect and flourish, and for signing funding documents. It's unlike any pen most people under the age of 50 or 60 have seen, and no one tries to borrow it. I can change the ink color any time I want.

Slightly more modern, parker 51s from the silver age of penmaking are widely available, reliable as all get out, and can be had in XF nibs. They're not flexy, though, but once given a good cleaning and possible replacement of rubber parts, will last another 60 years.

Comment Re:Picard Facepalm (Score 1) 298

I simply don't buy your argument. If using facebook only serves to "steal" time that consumers would otherwise spend shopping then how do you explain that the average American spends some 20+ hours a week watching television and still manages to spend enough money at retail to make television advertising a worthwhile venture? You can't have it both ways... even the most rabid facebook addicts aren't jacked into their monitor 24 hours a day; they leave the house, they buy things, and when they do they might just have a preference for the items which they've seen advertised. The same behavior is true for all the advertising support media you've listed.

Comment Re:2nd Amendment (Score 1) 463

9 times out of 10 when the public uses the word "theory" they really mean "hypothesis". Should that stop scientists from using the word "theory" correctly? Should that stop us from educating people about the real definition of the word "theory"? Should scientists have to change their language every time the public warps it beyond recognition?

"Correct" is a matter of context. I shouldn't expect that teenagers writing sms messages are going to eschew expediency for accuracy and as such excessive use of acronyms and false contractions can be considered "correct" in the context of an SMS. However that same message when included in a homework assignment can clearly be considered incorrect given the more formal context. Understanding and adjusting your language to suit the context and intended audience is something that is taught in the first week of nearly every first semester speech, writing and critical thinking course. To disregard these principal in favor of picking arguments based on some false premise is pedantic at best...

And before you jump in with some retort please consider for a moment the formal acceptance of the ideas I've expressed. In an America criminal court an expert recognized by the court is expected to use language that is specific to their expertise in a manner that is both consistent and correct within their claimed/recognized expertise. The same level of expectation is not levied upon an layperson when they are presented as a witness. Such that a layperson could and should be expected to say "theory" when they might actually mean "hypothesis" yet a scientist would be expected to both understand the difference and use the term which is correct within the domain of their meaning.

Comment Re:rsnapshot is what you're looking for (Score 2, Informative) 300

i wasn't trying to guess at what he needed, but his question was about snap shotting. One of (if not THE) key feature of a snapshot is that it is atomic. Anything that rolls through a changing filesystem one file at a time is not going to fit that bill. Also you run the risk of making "backups" that could break things that presume state consistency. If you capture the log of a daemon before the product output then your backup could have no record of the event which created the output for example.

These types of concerns are of increasing importance to professional system administrators in a time where there (to me at least) seems to be an increasing focus on meeting legally mandated audit and retention requirements.

Government

Bill To Ban All Salt In Restaurant Cooking 794

lord_rotorooter writes "Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced a bill that would ruin restaurant food and baked goods as we know them. The measure (if passed) would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of food for all restaurants or bakeries. While the use of too much salt can contribute to health problems, the complete banning of salt would have negative impacts on food chemistry. Not only does salt enhance flavor, it controls bacteria, slows yeast activity and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. Salt also inhibits the growth of microbes that spoil cheese."
Image

US Grants Home Schooling German Family Political Asylum 1324

A US judge has granted political asylum to a family who said they fled Germany to avoid persecution for home schooling their children. Uwe Romeike and his wife, Hannelore, moved to Tennessee after German authorities fined them for keeping their children out of school and sent police to escort them to classes. Mike Connelly, attorney for the Home School Legal Defence Association, argued the case. He says, "Home schoolers in Germany are a particular social group, which is one of the protected grounds under the asylum law. This judge looked at the evidence, he heard their testimony, and he felt that the way Germany is treating home schoolers is wrong. The rights being violated here are basic human rights."
Cellphones

Nokia Leaks Phone With Full GNU/Linux Distribution 621

An anonymous reader writes "It is now clear why Nokia has been so slow with S60 updates: the upcoming N900 just left everything else in the dust. Unlike Google's Linux platform, Nokia is not intentionally breaking compatibility with real distros, choosing instead to bring you the unmatchable power of GNU/Linux on your phone. This is the most awesome device I have ever seen: MAP3 CPU/GPU, 3,5" 800x480 touchscreen, keyboard, Wi-Fi, HSPA, GPS; 5-MP camera, CZ lens, 32 GB storage, SD slot; X11, VT100 terminal emulator, APT package manager. Estimated price without credit: $780 (N.5800: $390, iPhone 3GS: $750). Developers should note that even though the current desktop is still GTK+, Qt will be standard across all Nokia platforms in the near future (less powerful phones will use Qt on the Symbian kernel). Users can download flashing software from Nokia, and patches can be submitted at the Maemo site."

Comment Re:Seems like a push from Apple (Score 1) 63

While I basically agree with the premise of what you are saying, doesn't the SLI bus provide for having a shared memory segment between all the cards? I'm not 100% sure that is a feature of that specific interconnect; but I've always assumed it was. The difference being that if n cards with x memory would have a single (n*x) memory pool local to the processors plus the overhead of whatever locking semantics that would require. v.s. having n spearate x sized pools plus whatever work predivision overhead and/or synchronization overhead and/or lock semantic overhead.

I could be, and likely am, wrong; please correct me me if I am. I don't see any clear indication in the SLI wikipedia article and I'm not motivated enough to dig much deeper than that.

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interlard - vt., to intersperse; diversify -- Webster's New World Dictionary Of The American Language

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