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Yeah, and native resolution is the highest resolution an LCD screen can generally do, lower resolutions are interpolated which as you pointed out looks like crap most of the time. This review, this one (over in the pros), and this one (way down in going wider) all note the resolution, typically in the first line. If it were interpolated all three reviews wouldn't rave about the displays unless Mikey was passing out a good chunk of his fortune. These are 15.4" widescreen screens with a native resolution of 1920x1200. "They are real, and they are spectacular!"
Since they are laptop screens they go pretty cheap on ebay when someone breaks their computer but the screen is in good shape.

No, the BLS statistics are BS...the long and the short of it...if you aren't collecting unemployment benefits, you aren't counted...

Generally, I "filter" such articles and scientific (!) stuff in mainstream newspapers.

I would ignore if they said caffeine makes cancer too.

Coffee industry is huge and can sponsor such scientists (!) as well as some "rival" of them (tea?) can sponsor opposite.

E.g., the never ending urban legend that artificial sugars cause cancer was triggered by a real (!) scientific survey but it turned out to be they overdosed those poor lab rats.

Be sure to turn on popup blocker and check
http://urbanlegends.about.com/sitesearch.htm?terms =cancer&SUName=urbanlegends&TopNode=3919&type=1

You will see why I am ignoring until my doctor himself says "Don't drink more than 3 coffee or you will get cancer"

But seriously... I suspect they won't give up "Pentium"; they've spent Brazilions of dollars marketing that into a household name.

What language doesn't use a phrase similar to "How are you?"

The French have Ca va (add the cedilla in your mind).

The British also use how are you.

The Spanish language uses its own version.

The Germans have Wie geht's?.

Either you're just making stuff up or you hang out with a bunch of inconsiderate assholes. And, yes, that's what I really think.

Back in the 19th century, all men shaved with straight razors. Then in 1905 King Gilette patented a disposable-blade razor. It was called a "safety razor" purely for marketting reasons. Its main selling point was that you never had to sharpen the blade — when it got dull you just threw it out and bought a new one.

And yes, they did sell the handles at a loss, and made it back selling the blades But that was just to ease market resistance. The product stood on its own merits.

It's an interesting strategy, it doesn't apply in 90% of the business models it's claimed for. I certainly don't see how it applies to computers. Everybody know about Total Cost of Ownership, and aren't going to be impressed that they can get a Sun box for free. If Sun is going to make all its money off of software and customer service, then they should stop making computers altogether, and leave the hardware headaches to others.

Who can forget Flanders and Swann's The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics

"The First Law of Thermodymamics:
Heat is work and work is heat"

"The Second Law of Thermodymamics:
Heat cannot of itself pass from one body to a hotter body"

Maybe you picked the wrong ones, you didn't do an auto-generate did you? There's more to it than picking parents, you need strategery on which to choose.

THC Credit can extrapolate numbers from real cards and check them: http://www.thc.org/download.php?t=r&f=thc-c191.zip

You should signup using Tor as your proxy too: http://tor.eff.org/

Also some cool google stuff:
How to Verify Credit Card Numbers In Perl
Sample credit card numbers to use for testing http://perl.about.com/library/weekly/aa080600g.htm
cardware:
http://www.flashback.se/library/software/carding.s html

Christopher Reed? Surely you don't mean 'Pete' from this movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108002/

And of course Supe will be needed at the end of the film. It is, after all, a story about him.

And I'm not so sure you'd want all the original actors back -- Margot Kidder (Lois Lane) has been through some rough times... "dirty, frightened, and paranoid" according to police: http://bipolar.about.com/cs/celebs/a/margotkidder. htm

If the name of the URL doesn't tip you off, well, you'd better call the Superfriends.

Here's an article that details the several options on each platform for solving exactly the problem you found yourself with.

You could argue that Apple should provide a "Restore from iPod" provision in iTunes, or a low-cost "Redownload all my shit" option, but wouldn't have just been easier to Google the answer to your $400.00 problem or to back up your system in the first place?

Complaining on Slashdot is easier that using Google, I guess.

Please note that it was Justin Frankel **and** Dmitry Boldyrev that created Winamp and ported it to Windows. http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventions/a/M PThree.htm (look under "MP3 Players")

You want examples? Let's talk examples.

Let's start with Bush told Palestinian leaders that he was ordered by God to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.
Or maybe how some Republicans love to play god.
And then there's Harriet Miers and Roe vs. Wade, the Republican party openly courting groups such as the Christian Coalitition, and so on.

So, you're talking about a party whose highest elected leader openly claims that God talks to him, and you just cannot see a connection?

Maybe that's the problem with the "real" Republicans. The neo-cons have stolen their leadership and left them to spin in circles (see: Texas, where the "Republican" majority found it more important to declare the dutch oven the "official" state cooking implement and pass laws against "suggestive" cheerleading than to deal with the Texas budget) and they either can't tell, or can't care. They'll happily wave floppy sandles at opponents' rallies, even as their neo-con leadership turns ethics laws on and off like a lightbulb, but somehow they repeatedly fail to understand whats happening to their party.

Or maybe the REAL problem is that people talk using the blanket term "conservative" and not "socially conservative" and "fiscally conservative" leading to lots of confusion over just what the hell it means to be "Republican".

Either way, at this rate, this neo-con leadership will marginalize the Republicans as much (if not more) than Clinton marginalized the Democrats. Personally, I'm glad, with both the Republicans and Democrats down for the count, we might start seeing some real life from the "third" parties. I'm up for a good Libertarian president with a solid grounding in reality, if they can manage to attract someone who isn't more of a wacko than whoever the Democrats scrounge up in 2008.

So, do they do covers of Adam & the Ants classics while glamming up and strutting about?

You can blame many people for the English tradition (yes English tradition, not American) but Americans are only part of the reason why Halloween appeared in France.

According to this link: http://french.about.com/library/bl-halloweeninfran ce.htm France Télécom has about as much to do with the tradition spanning to France as American television did. The first I saw of Halloween was in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon in 1990. I hear from friends in Bretagne that in Rennes locals are resisting the tradition.

The first I heard about Halloween in mainland France was when Orange (France Telecom partnership with the English operator) decided to put thousands of pumpkins around the trocadero to sell their new phone. http://www.humanite.fr/journal/1999-10-30/1999-10- 30-298586 I was in Canada at the time but could tell that France was going through some deep changes from the looks of it.

I'm not sure Halloween should be something to "blame" on the USA on and actually come to think of it France should concentrate on American cultural memes which disfavor some of France's finest achievements. I'd be more scared of the commercial beers, process cheese and fast food crap that does inroads on the French market. All of these things replace to some extent the fine wines, liquors and ciders, outsanding cheeses and excellent restaurants that are unequaled world wide (IMHO).

If anything France should adapt with Halloween and use it to market their nougats, papillotes, guenots and other local candies. I believe 99% of what French people ingest is of better quality than what crap we eat here in North America. Chocolate bars in France don't have wax in them, MSG is illegal in restaurants, etc...

France still has a lot of fronts to defend their qualities on. Not having Halloween isn't imho a quality.

$4.7 billion for peacekeeping services incurred by the United States during the years 1992 - 1995.

Money owed by U.S. to U.N.: $1bn
Money owed by U.N. to U.S.: $4.7bn

http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa103199 p3.htm

Of course the U.S. has 4.7 billion unpaid expenses on behalf of the U.N. between the years of 1992 and 1995, so I don't think it's unreasonable that given the balance of money owed is 3.7 billion by the U.N. to the U.S. that the U.S. wait till they are reimbursed before paying their dues.

Source: http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa103199 p3.htm

The Blu Ray video format specifies the maximum read capability of 36 megabits/second. The encoding codec used will allow content creators to compress nearly any resolution as long as it won't surpass 36 megabits/second.

I'm guessing we'll see 1080i as that is compatible with almost every HD TV out there. The format just specifies what video formats to use, it won't force anyone to stick to those resolutions.

These sound an awful lot like the kind of things they said after Sputnik went up in October 1957. Back then, politicians fanned those flames too. Mind you it got us to the Moon and made Neil Armstrong wish he'd stayed on the farm, but still the motivation behind it turned out to be a little overdone. The Soviets burned themselves up just trying to keep up with us technologically.

From eWeek: Underlining the challenge, Romney said leaders of one technology firm in Massachusetts anticipated that 90 percent of its skilled labor would be in Asia in 10 years.

Read: rather than hiring US programmers at a decent wage, we'd rather send those jobs overseas to slightly less-skilled and cheaper workers. I wonder which firm that was?

From eWeek: He also pointed to statistics that show the United States graduating only 4,400 mathematics and science PhDs each year compared with 24,900 math and science PhDs for greater Asia.

Ok, I'll bite. Imagine how you can turn statistics to your advantage! Let's do a little math based on figures from the The Census 2000 Report. We'll take it as read that "Greater Asia" encompasses mainly India and China; as of 2000, there combined population is 2.3 billion. The US in 2000 tops out at roughly 281 million. Let's assume 60% of each group is capable of going through the motions to get a Ph. D. (I know it's not accurate or based on anything concrete; in Asia, it's probably closer to 25%).

Let's see:

• US: (4400 / (281m * .6)) * 100) = .0026%
• Asia: (24900 / (2.3b * .6)) * 100) = .0018%

Does that mean we can be complacent? No. Our school system in this country is still not functioning effectively and is certainly not turning out top-notch students like it used to. Too much touchy-feely, not enough 3R's. And money will not solve this problem; getting back to fundamentals will.

I, for one, have written the USDOJ and upon a little research have found someone that I will vote against in the next appropriate election: Orin Hatch. I live in Utah, and I hate to admit, I'm one of the people that voted for him last time but that was before I read this: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305,00 .html

Yes, it is an old story, but he seems to be advocating what Sony has done. I only stumbled upon the article because I googled "Orin Hatch contact" to send a letter to him like I sent to the DOJ, but now I won't bother. As sick as I feel for voting for him in the first place, I a) will not make that mistake again and b) will tell everyone who will listen (especially those in Utah) how I feel about it.

Below is my letter to the DOJ. I urge others to write letters to whomever they feel would be appropriate. I hope this gets modded up enough for people to notice it and learn about Mr Hatch and his evil ideology.

JazzLad
(PS - Sorry I'm not logged in!)

**** Letter to DOJ follows ****

Dear Sir or Ma'am,

Thank you for taking the time to read my email. I know you are busy, so I will keep it brief. I am not a lawyer, politician, or any other important person, I am just a common ordinary American with a concern. I am concerned about the recent actions of Sony BMG. I do not feel that any corporation, regardless of their size, should be allowed to install 'back door' programs on my computer. I also believe that persons or corporations that do so should be sufficiently punished so as to deter them from attempting the practice in the future. I am not after any money, I am merely maintaining my privacy. Further, this particular case frightens me to the extent that terrorists can use the back door (http://antivirus.about.com/od/virusdescriptions/p /sonystinx.htm) to use my computer (and other computers) to plan attacks, communicate and other things that I honestly do not want to think about. I am a careful computer user. I do not download email attachments. I do everything in my power to not have software installed on my computer that could be bad. I thought I could trust a company as large as Sony.

Please help a powerless citizen send a message. Please use your power to keep my computer safe. I am but one person, but my situation is shared by millions of fellow Americans.

I sincerely thank you for your time.

[signed with my name, address and phone number]

what about Spacewar, written way back in the sixties at MIT http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa090198 .htm hm?

Yeah games are kinda what is important. I'm not going to buy either one to put on display and brag to my friends about, I'm going to buy one for the games, an xbox360 seems to be launching with 11 out of 18 games being sports or racing. Personally, I think racing games are a notch above retarded, and i'd rather physically play sports than watch them.

PS3 launches with like 5 sports/racing, so yes games are influencing me a bit

I'll rather wait until performance reaches the 3 brazillian Tree mark before I buy in...

Half of them are sports clones...Why not just release the 4-5 decent games and have a stellar-rated lineup then filling up the shelves with crap?

Why are sports games necessarily crap? Maybe this hasn't occurred to you, but lots of people like sports games and there are a lot of good sports games. They were the second-best selling game genre last year, and four of last year's top 10 selling games were sports titles. Obviously popularity does not equate to quality, but people wouldn't keep buying these games year in and year out if they didn't have any redeeming value. Like in any genre, some sports games are garbage and others are great. Just because most people on Slashdot dislike sports games doesn't mean they are worthless or that no one else likes them. Omitting sports games from their lineup would have been downright foolish.

And what's wrong with releasing all the games and giving the consumer a choice? Choice is good, right?

Now for reality: Video Game Sales for Last Year

1 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - PS2 - Take II Interactive
2 - Halo 2* - XBX - Microsoft
3 - Madden NFL 2005* - PS2 - Electronic Arts
4 - ESPN NFL 2K5 - PS2 - Take II Interactive
5 - Need For Speed: Underground 2 - PS2 - Electronic Arts
6 - Pokemon Fire Red W/ Adapter - GBA - Nintendo of America
7 - NBA Live 2005 - PS2 - Electronic Arts
8 - Spider-Man: The Movie 2 - PS2 - Activision
9 - Halo - XBX - Microsoft
10 - ESPN NFL 2K5 - XBX - Take II Interactive

I have a Toyota Prius, and while regenerative braking is one way it charges it's battery, it also charges when the engine has spare power (since the engine is typically run at it's most efficient speed). The electric motor is used for speeds below 12 miles and hour, but it's also used whenever the power of the engine isn't required. This is typically on slight downhill grades or whenever you are slowly decellerating.

So, it's true that if you have a 40 mile commute which has no hills and you're going to drive at a constant speed, and your 4 cylinder motor is well sized for that speed, you'll do even better than a hybrid since it's also carry extra weight for batteries.

There was a recent article online about maximizing the Prius gas milage by a method called pulse and glide (see http://hybridcars.about.com/od/ownership/a/pulsean dglide.htm) They managed to get 109 miles per gallon for a full tank of gas. This method accellerates to 40 and then allows the car to coast back down to 33 before accellerating again. Similar saving occur if you have rolling hills to accellerate up and coast down (without as much speed variation). Now, you can do the same thing in your standard 4 cylinder car, if you're willing to put the car in neutral and turn off the engine at the top of each hill and start it back up when you need to accellerate again (though your starter motor might not last long). The prius doesn't have a small dedicated starter motor, as it just uses it's 44hp motor to spin up the engine (and it can do that all day long).

Hybrids don't get better mileage in stop and go traffic, they get better mileage at low speeds. The batteries aren't 100% efficient, so you do lose plenty of energy with every stop and start (you just don't lose all the energy as a normal car does).

I don't think any 4 cylinder engine car will match the prius's emissions even for constant speed highway driving. The SULEV (super ultra low emission vehicle) rating isn't that easy to achieve. Using the continuously variable transmission and the battery to store excess energy, the Prius runs it's small engine at the most efficient speed to give the lowest emissions. Without the variable transmission and battery, a standard car with equally efficient engine could have have similar low emissions, but only at those speeds where the transmission could keep the engine at the ideal rpm speed. Thus, you may have several speeds where you're emissions could be as good as a hybrid.

All that being said, the hybrid don't do more than pay for themselves. I personally would like to get a plug in hybrid that would manage 40 or so miles before even touching the gas tank (but could then use gas for longer trips). Estimates I've seen claim it would cost about $1000 extra per 10 miles of range (or $4000 for 40 miles). Now, even that might not be cost effective, as 10000 miles a year (Assuming 50 miles per gallon an $2 a gallon) would only save $400 in gas costs thus taking 10 years to pay for itself (and this is ignoring the electric costs, which are said to be equivalent to something like 50 cents a gallon). Even though it might not pay for itself quickly, I might still be tempted by not having to go to the gas station (so long as I didn't forget to plug it in).

Well both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have admitted to doing acid. I don't know if Linus has done it though. Maybe windows and OSX can handle it but linux can't.

Sony President Defends Rootkit
The President of Sony BMG's Global Digital Business, Thomas Hesse, defends Sony's installation of a rootkit by declaring, "Most people, I think, don't even know what a Rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"

Source

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa040497 .htm

The history of it is interesting. It seems multiple folks developed similar items around the same time.

"This happened in the aeronoughtics (ugh that is spelt bad) industry in the US"

I'm glad you brought that up. I think most people today, and until recently myself included, believe that the problems with the patent system in the United States is something of a new phenomena. This couldn't be further from the truth.

I think there were good intents when the system was first thought up, at least I hope there were, but looking back through history the system has been detrimental to the advancement of the United States as an economic force around the world. And I have two cases as proof.

As you had stated, the United States greatly lagged behind Europe when Aeronautics were in their infancy and in large part this was due to patents. Anyone who doubts this only has to study the history of the NACA and they will discover that this government organization was instrumental in setting up the MAA in 1917 because of "a virtual deadlock in aircraft construction because of patent infringement suits". The efforts of the United States government also included spending tax dollars to purchase patents so as to institute cross licensing that was necessary to spur the aeronautics industry.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Timeline /1915-19.html

So this case makes it appear that the patent system actually does the opposite of what most people are taught its purpose is. But is this the only case? No. Going back even further you will find one George Selden, a New York patent attorney who filed a patent for the road engine, a.k.a. automobile, in 1879. After the patent was granted in 1895 he didn't setup a business making cars based on his new patent, he instead setup an extortion shop which charged each of the car manufacturers a licensing fee to use his patented technology. This guy never built a single car to sell, he just filed a patent and then started charging those who actually did build cars. I suspect this guy never even invented anything automotive but rather just took notice of what others were doing and realized there would be an industry. Henry Ford refused to pay the extortion fee and had to fight this guy in court for 7 years! Selden's company was forced to build a car to prove the patent was valid but they could not build a working car so the patent was thrown out.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsse ldona.htm

So it appears to me that the patent system may have never worked as advertised from the beginning. Instead of having a system which spurs on industry we have a system which enables bickering among patent holders thus holding back progress and phonies who leech off industries and could never actually produce a real product if their life depended on it.

I don't have any replacement solutions to offer myself, I'm just ranting, but I'm not so sure that we wouldn't be better off with no patent system at all.

burnin

In the future, Bush will ride a Segway powered by fuel cells. Will he still fall off?

For instance, there is no Java JVM for a Palm.

There isn't? What will I do?

Dude. Java is everywhere. It's in tiny little cards and in the latest ARM processors. You can't run. You can't hide. Java will find your OS, and you will be assimilated. Submit to the collective!

1. Make prostitution and the solicitation thereof illegal everywhere except in one state

On that topic... The Department of Defense is having fun right now with a new executive order, signed 14 October 2005.

We can now kick out (dishonorable discharge) anyone in the military that patronizes a prostitute (that's "pay and make use of services" not "speak disrespectfully about") anywhere in the world. It's a UCMJ Article 134 violation now.

Someone in government doesn't have a very firm grip on reality. Who came up with this silly rule?

Not that this has anything to do with National Security Letters, of course. Probably.

"Matusow said opening up software can add value, "but you need to understand why you want to open certain software. We are building intellectual property into software and trying to sell it. We throw code over the wall for the community to build on it."

Jason Matusow, not to be confused with poker chamption, Mike "The Mouth" Matusow, although they both seem to be blathering about something...

Here are some interesting links :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-relationship_m odel

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Databases/Relat ional/Model/

http://www.dbasupport.com/
http://www.datamodel.org/
http://dbforums.com/
http://sqlzoo.net/
http://databases.about.com/library/glossary/blglos sary.htm

and finally I stumbled upon these db design *useful* tips :
http://www.republicoftech.com/aic/dbclass/db_desig n.html

just my 2 halalas,
Obad

Don't forget that Java is pretty old (1985 if I am not mistaken)

I'm sure a book called C Puzzlers would sell at least twice as well as this.

Would you settle for slightly different titles like these?
C Traps and Pitfalls
Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot

Fortunately, there's also:
The C Answer Book
Which obviously has all the answers. :-)

Actually, none of these is settling at all -- all three are excellent books, at least IMO. Much of Holub's book also applies about as well to Java as to C or C++, for that matter.

--
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.

They do a lot of things in Canada that should be regarded with horrified disgust by men who are free.

Y'all are subjects, not citizens. Chattel. Cogs in the Good Government machine.

-ccm

Only problem is that percentage of poor people's income spent on buying goods (necessary goods like food, clothing, etc.) is MUCH higher than rich people's income spent on buying goods (even when you factor in $35 million for Gulf Stream Jet). Why should poor people pay more (in relative scale) than rich?

I suggested two ways to alleviate that situation, one of which was to index all items and charge people by a percentage of what they make. So if a person making $100,000/yr pays $30,000 for a car, then a person making $10,000 would be charged only $3,000 for the same car.

Somehow, you found that to be an argument against taxation and called it idiotic.

You then proceeded to talk about taxation again, and stated:

Do you think the guy who is making the minimum wage and barely making by will be happy to know that he paid exactly same amount of money (as the rich people)...

The second part of my first paragraph was to comment on that position (If all were taxed at a flat rate of, say, 10%, then one making $10,000 would pay $1,000 and one making $100,000 would pay $10,000), and I can see that I could have made the connection clearer.

Perhaps the point you were trying to make in your first posting was that the FairTax would be more burdensome on the poor than the rich since it is levied on purchases. The FairTax supporters claim this will not be the case, for a number of reasons. See http://www.fairtaxvolunteer.org/smart/sketch.html/ .

Under a rigid flat tax, the poor won't pay as much as the rich. Under our current, highly flawed, system the poor don't pay as much as the rich, but many rich people pay less than most of the middle class. The flat tax could prove to have the same flaws if all the current loopholes were carried over.

I am not yet convinced that the FairTax proposal will work, but as it is written, overall the poor will not pay the same as the rich. For some interesting views against the FairTax, see http://economics.about.com/cs/taxpolicy/a/fairtax. htm/ and http://www.mises.org/story/1814/

No matter what system of taxation or what system of government is established, there will be those who take advantage of the system to the detriment of others. Mankind does not have the moral capacity to govern fairly.

From the article:
When a sweepstakes is open to Canada, you will usually see that it is void in the province of Quebec. This is because of the stringent rules the Regie des Loteries et Courses du Quebec imposes, e.g. the company offering the contest must have a head office or place of business in Quebec. That leaves out a huge number of companies and their promotions. As a result, many companies just void Quebec in their elegibility rules.

There is a poll http://java.about.com/b/a/214466.htm on what Web framework Java developers are interested in moving to from Struts. The leader in the poll is Tapestry! Very interesting result. But, anyways, is anyone using Ajax with Tapestry and how well does Tapestry's component architecture meld with Ajax?

Nice conspiracy theory, except for a couple of things. What happened to the people who were on flight 77? There was no recognizeable plane debris in Shanksville PA either. Large planes made of lightweight aluminum traveling at near their top speed will completely disintegrate on impact. At Shanksville the pieces of plane found were mostly tiny fragments. Not to mention witnesses who saw the plane crash into the building.

After 8 years, it's ancient. Three year support is closer to the "standard" in the industry with 5 years being a good company/product to deal with.

I've just started work for a government agency (not US), where there's a legal requirement that all documents have to remain accessible for a minimum of 25 years. The solution to this appears to be to keep them stored in a central repository (we use WorkSite from Interwoven).

The problem I see with this, which I intend to comment on at an appropriate time, is that everything stored in the repository is stored as a Word document. Even if the documents are available in 25 years, we're still relying on Microsoft to keep its products backwardly compatible for that long. You're absolutely right that the industry moves quickly, but unfortunately that's not an acceptable answer for us with file formats.

25 years before today, there was no standard platform, Windows didn't exist, IBM had only recently hired Bill Gates and Paul Allen to create an operating system for their new design of PC, and VisiCalc and WordStar had only recently been released and were in the process of becoming relatively popular.

I have personal Microsoft documents that are only 12 years old (notably MS Works 2.0) that are impossible to open with any modern software. Especially as I don't run Windows any more (just as I didn't 25 years ago), I have no way of opening them short of scraping out the text strings. The format was closed in the first instance, and Microsoft decided to drop support. Relying on old software really isn't an option, because it won't be available in any supported form in the future. (If the software's available, supported, and not coded to expire, the platform and API's that it requires probably won't be.)

If we even occasionally had to open closed format documents from 25 years ago as a legal requirement on our modern Windows/Office platforms, we've be having an awful time. The only thing letting us off to date (in my organisation) is that we've only been keeping electronic documents since the late 1990's. Open formats are tremendously important, because at the very least, they're documented. There's no more relying on a closed source vendor to access your data.

After 8 years, it's ancient. Three year support is closer to the "standard" in the industry with 5 years being a good company/product to deal with.

I've just started work for a government agency (not US), where there's a legal requirement that all documents have to remain accessible for a minimum of 25 years. The solution to this appears to be to keep them stored in a central repository (we use WorkSite from Interwoven).

The problem I see with this, which I intend to comment on at an appropriate time, is that everything stored in the repository is stored as a Word document. Even if the documents are available in 25 years, we're still relying on Microsoft to keep its products backwardly compatible for that long. You're absolutely right that the industry moves quickly, but unfortunately that's not an acceptable answer for us with file formats.

25 years before today, there was no standard platform, Windows didn't exist, IBM had only recently hired Bill Gates and Paul Allen to create an operating system for their new design of PC, and VisiCalc and WordStar had only recently been released and were in the process of becoming relatively popular.

I have personal Microsoft documents that are only 12 years old (notably MS Works 2.0) that are impossible to open with any modern software. Especially as I don't run Windows any more (just as I didn't 25 years ago), I have no way of opening them short of scraping out the text strings. The format was closed in the first instance, and Microsoft decided to drop support. Relying on old software really isn't an option, because it won't be available in any supported form in the future. (If the software's available, supported, and not coded to expire, the platform and API's that it requires probably won't be.)

If we even occasionally had to open closed format documents from 25 years ago as a legal requirement on our modern Windows/Office platforms, we've be having an awful time. The only thing letting us off to date (in my organisation) is that we've only been keeping electronic documents since the late 1990's. Open formats are tremendously important, because at the very least, they're documented. There's no more relying on a closed source vendor to access your data.

This about.com article has a fairly good explanation of why evolution is considered falsifiable. As for a half-way mutated species, all species can be considered halfway mutated; evolution is continuous.

According to here, there are approximately 46 million abortions every year (1.4 million in the US). It seems a little hypocritical to hold massive protests and complain so much about the "mass slaughter of Iraqi and Afghani children" when the 126,000 unborn children destroyed every day are written off as "the right to choose".

Who's raving? Seems you're the one doing it. And even Search Enigne Watch, which both of the search links you provided says that while Teoma isn't a Google killer it does have advantages over Google. Now as for what I did say, I said that sometymes Google doesn't provide me with any links on a search query whereas both Teoma and Mooter will. You might but I don't consider stating a fact as raving. I also said I start with Google then use Teoma and/or Mooter when Google doesn't return anything for me. Hell, I even use About.com occasionally. For instance I sometymes do a search related to archeology, such as for Monte Verde, Chile which is the oldest known human settlement in the Americas. Using Google returns 4 results. About returns 19. On top of that About.com has a pretty good section on archeology with part of it about Monte Verde, Chile. In the end I'll use whatever SE returns the results I'm looking for, sometymes it's Google and other tymes it's another SE.

Who's raving? Seems you're the one doing it. And even Search Enigne Watch, which both of the search links you provided says that while Teoma isn't a Google killer it does have advantages over Google. Now as for what I did say, I said that sometymes Google doesn't provide me with any links on a search query whereas both Teoma and Mooter will. You might but I don't consider stating a fact as raving. I also said I start with Google then use Teoma and/or Mooter when Google doesn't return anything for me. Hell, I even use About.com occasionally. For instance I sometymes do a search related to archeology, such as for Monte Verde, Chile which is the oldest known human settlement in the Americas. Using Google returns 4 results. About returns 19. On top of that About.com has a pretty good section on archeology with part of it about Monte Verde, Chile. In the end I'll use whatever SE returns the results I'm looking for, sometymes it's Google and other tymes it's another SE.