Why We Vote
And really, you should try to offset him, even if he's the embodiment of an ancient urban legend (ancient in Internet terms, that is).
Vista Features That Didn't Make The Cut
To address both of these things, we added a button called "Safe Delete" to every explorer window. Clicking this button would instantly delete all of the files shown in the window permanently from the system, overriding every confirmation, bypassing the recycle bin, and also zeroing out the space on the disk that the files used to occupy (hence the "safe" name).
We wanted to button to be in a prominent place in the UI, since hiding it would defeat the purpose of a fast and easy delete mechanism. However, we also felt it was important to indicate to users that the button performed a destructive action and wanted to make sure they didn't hit it by accident. Therefore, we made it RED (the universal color for danger) and put a large X on it. Here is what the UI would have looked like:
(note that the close button was moved in and the icon changed to a neutral image with a less intense color, indicating that at least in Explorer, closing a window is a benign task with no possibility of data loss. Non-explorer windows would still use the standard buttons.)
Even more hilarious are the comments of punters who think the Safe Delete button was for real.
The Crux of The Matter
Read the original and you'll understand.Steve Jobs can make sharing earwax sound sexy. Ballmer can make a digital file transfer sound like something you’d need to clean up after.
Matthew Jones And Inflation
Born into slavery in 1845 in South Carolina, believed to have escaped, and joined the Union Army when they came to his home state.
There's this article about Mr. Jones over at myway.com. I don't want to talk about the meat of the story, but about one detail that struck me:
Who am I to argue that $225 is a pittance these days -- especially for 21 acres of land, let alone Hilton Head land. But was it really a fortune for a former slave in the 1880's? That rather depends. I've no idea about the financial circumstances of former slaves in the 1880's, but I do have the handy-dandy Inflation Calculator! That will let me determine what the current value is of $225 in 1880. Punch in the numbers, let the magic of the Internet do its... well, magic I guess, and the answer is... $4,455.35. I don't know about you, but to me that's still not a lot of money. It comes out to just a hair under $212.16 per acre (and 1 acre is about .405 hectare).Matthew Jones paid $225 for this parcel - a pittance now, but a fortune for a former slave in the 1880s.
So, good deal for Matthew Jones, or at least his 180-odd descendants, whose property is now worth $4.5 million, if they were to sell it outright. Which, if you read the story, they won't, because they're smarter than that -- they're developing it, and stand to reap even greater windfalls.
Sometimes You Think...
Football Canceled After Teen Taped To School Bus
A Montana high school has canceled the remainder of its football season, after a hazing incident -- in which a boy was taped to the ceiling of a school bus.The hazing reportedly happened during a football road trip, while school officials were present.
Let me repeat that:
while school officials were present
It's a bus. A kid is being taped to the ceiling. And these dolts don't notice anything wrong?