Um, where did you get that? The act is still in place - states don't have to recognize same-sex marriages. The only Supreme Court ruling that I know of (quick Google search seems to confirm, but I may not have used the right search terms) had to do with California's Prop 8, and the ruling said that you cannot take rights away from a group once they had already been granted. If the Supreme Court had struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, then Utah wouldn't have been able to appeal.

They also stated that one state does not have to recognize what happens in another state, but the federal government does - ie if you are married in California, Texas doesn't have to recognize the marriage as legal, but the IRS does when you list your spouse on your tax forms.

Eh, that is a bit of a stretch. In a nutshell, they said that race could not be the only determining factor, gave a list of guidelines, and sent it back to the lower courts.

Yes, but this still has me wondering. Meat spoils pretty fast if it is not refrigerated. Maybe they had ice ships or something and only transported in the winter, or maybe they had farms where they raised exotic animals for food supplies. Even if these animals were in Northern Africa, it would take a few days to cross the Mediterranian with wind / oars, and then it would have to have been transported over land or the Nile through Africa to the port in Africa, so it would be spoiled by the time they reached Pompeii

Unless the ancient Italians knew about drying meats. Giraffe jearkey anyone?

Actually, I wonder if maybe they trapped the animals, shipped them, and then slaughtered them at their destination. This would keep you from having spoilage.

Actually, this is the same news, although I do like Daniel's blog.

FTA:

Very interesting read. I do have a question though - it seems that a good portion of your argument stems from intellegent people who are believers because they have been indoctorinated from a young age. So, how would you explain an intelligent person in a Christian society who imbraces, say, Islam or Buddhism as and adult, or say a person in a strict Islamic-law nation who decides as an adult to embrace Christianity knowing the oppression they will face?

Not saying your argument is right or wrong - it is very well written and insightful, I just feel that it is a bit incomplete.

Totally agree. Most of the under-20ish people I know use Facebook primaraly for games. The 20-40ish crowd may have accounts, but find themselves too busy nowadays to really use it.

I find that the thing that really seems to have killed Facebook is the "share" feature - especially on photos and videos. Now all Facebook is is people sharing comics, 6-month-old newsstories, virus hoaxes, etc. I wish there was a way to block all "shared" content - but more than that, I wish Facebook would just remove the feature. At least, if a person wants to share a website, they need to copy and paste the URL - do away with the ability to share someone else's posts and pictures.

Maybe then, Facebook may actually get back to being useful.

I have actually been thinking of jumping the Facebook ship myself, mainly because of everything I have mentioned. The only reason I haven't yet is because there really is no good alternative. At least, not in the English-speaking world. I just want to know what my friends are up to, if they are in a relationship, and see pictures and videos of their kids (and maybe vacation photos). I don't care if you joined a new team in such-and-such game, I don't need 20 of my friends to share Uncle George's picture of the day, and I don't want to see inspirational posts unless I am on an imspirational page.

Truthfully, I find Instagram to be much closer to what I am looking for in a social-networking site.

Facebook is turning off older users, and younger users don't have a need for it, and everyone in between just doesn't have time to sort through all the crap that is on Facebook now. As soon as a viable alternative comes up, people will jump ship. It happened to MySpace, which was thought to be unsinkable. It will happen to Facebook.

SocialFixer puts your posts back into Chronological order

I'm not familar with that game, but I block game requests on Facebook.

A tablet is capable of rendering a desktop version of a page reasnoably. As for a phone, not many people are going to be surfing the web on a phone. Those that are are usually looking to do one or two things (ie a google search, buy movie tickets, pay a bill, get directions, etc). Most sites where users want to do a specific feature on a phone already have mobile version or a phone app available.

Most people are not going to be reading a church website, a city or state website, trying to run Galaxy Zoo, or likewise on their cell phones, so why go through all the trouble to rewrite a site?

Now, there are a handful of people I know whom a cell phone is their only data-connection at home. Many of those will either go to a friend's house, library or work or the couple of times that they need a desktop for something (such as filling for unemployment or job searching or doing their taxes). It could be argued that maybe the unemployment office and welfare pages might benefit from mobile versions of their sites, but as those are government agencies, I don't expect to see that any time soon.

Truthfully, the reason that most places don't have a mobile site is that they don't need it. It is as simple as that.

So, you either have an economist who was working in an IT position, which may explain why the website is having such problems, or you have an IT guy who is going to step into an economist position, which means that the economy is going to tank. Or you have a manager who doesn't understand either but acts like they do. Who thought this was a good idea?

Would be nice if someone created a website where people could submit newsstories and they get reviewed by multiple people before going live to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening.

Oh wait, that's slashdot circa 1999.

We are seeing more and more of these bogus newsstories on slashdot. I think Slashdot needs to fire a few editors and do away with the Firehose.

I thought Harvard students were smarter than that.

Oh, whaaa! You may not be able to stream 1080p SuperHD from Netflix or HDX from Vudu, but this is fine for just about everyone. Most of my friends who are on DSL are on 768k, and I got a few friends on cable and UVerse at 1meg and 1.5 meg. They watch YouTube and Netflix, they download torrents, they play games.

Truthfully, if you are still close enough to an exchange to get DSL, you are probably in an area where you can get wireless internet (microwave). I have friends who live way out on ranches and stuff who have microwave internet and 40Mbps speeds with unlimited transfers. And if you are really out there, there is always HughesNet and CenturyLink.

Yeah, I may have 20meg at home, but I don't think I would be complaining about having to deal with "slow" 1.5, as you have options pretty much anywhere in North America to get faster via satelite, and I could make allowances (such as downloading versus streaming) to compensate if I want to do HD. I had 1.5Mbps for years up until about 7 or 8 years ago, and it was fine.

80ms ping rate isn't bad either. It's not great, but up until about 3-4 years ago, that is what I was getting on most things. So it takes a few extra seconds for facebook to load up. Whaa!

Worse, the article is really poorly written. It sounds mostly like a rant from someone who thinks he is entitled to fiber or something.

Longer than that - I was dealing with this issue 8 years ago working desktop support (I'm in networking now). While I never put together svchost was related to Windows Update, I was always having svchost kill my XP machines, and I knew the more updates that were installed, the longer it took to run Windows Update.

Doesn't really matter now, though. XP is EOL in a few months. If you still want to run XP, just turn Windows Updates off - its not like you will miss anything.

I am sure this is a typo, but I thought it funny. According to dictionary.com, if the word Alpine has a capitol A, it means either 1)of, pertaining to, on, or part of the Alps or 2) of or pertaining to downhill skiing or a competitive downhill skiing event.

Down further in the page:
1. of or relating to the Alps or their inhabitants
2. geology
          a. of or relating to an episode of mountain building in the Tertiary period during which the Alps were formed

As the article is not referring to The Alps, but rather to the Krasnaya Polyana Mountains, they should be using the word "alpine" with a lowercase A.

Yes, I am being a grammar Nazi, but found it funny.

You got that from the article? The article is written by ComputerWorld, suggests that only a couple of people get it, and litterally says the rest of the entertainment industry doesn't.

And quite frankly, I am not sure why ComputerWorld even bothered to write an article about this - pretty much anyone who reads a computing magazine will already know that DRM is bad, and doesn't even speak to their target readers - software pirates (as opposed to movie or music pirates). Shoot, I cannot tell you how many times I have purchased a game, and ended up having to go download a crack because I had issues getting the game to work. The No-CD cracks are really nice - so I don't have to go digging out my discs to play a game I have installed.

In short, the article told us nothing we didn't already know, offered no insight at all, didn't even really speak to its target audience, and is really not news-worthy. But the story-publishing guidelines on Slashdot seems to have really gone downhill lately.