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I'd never buy a wooden computer.

I'd never even accept one if it was given to me.

Reminds me too much of Greeks Bearing Gifts.

(clue for the philestines: I think we have enough trouble with TROJANS already)

Here's a short list: For lying and stealing DOS For stealing code from Stac Electronics For stealing the NT kernel destroying Netscape via monopoly tactics even if AOL caved in. For pulling the same crap with Real Networks For ripping off customers and makeing "90%+ margins" on what is Insecure by Design. Seriously. I know we live in an Enron world and any given company is about as honest as the politicians they buy off, but just look at the track record. These guys are serious slimeballs. Period. And the list above doesn't even cover how they screwed over Apple, used university resources in the early days to pursue a commercial venture.

There has not been ONE single Linux virus that has propagted in the wild: given the huge nubmer of viruses out there I would have thought someone* would have written and released one for Linux just to show it can be done.

Absolute, positive rubbish.

Firstly, whole countries have been blanketed with radio distributed telephony for decades -- indeed the data packet telephony network was the foundation of how the internet spread out to the public, and it's where a large percentage of internet traffic right now runs -- this is a very well proven technology. Disregarding that, the data packet network used to send the document (whether it's over POP3/TCP/IP or V42bis over a POTS) is absolutely irrelevant: That's a nuance of implementation that only myopic geeks get caught up in. The device images a document, and on the other end a facsimile comes out -- whether the packets are sent by smoke signals or DS3 grade lines is nuances.

Of course this is all a red herring argument anyways, as the article said absolutely nothing about satellite internet access. The highest probability is that they're getting internet access via the telephony network. The only difference is that a truck doesn't have to drive a load of letters up to some mountain town. This amazing technological advance has existing in fax form: A device technically invented in 1843.

This is such a non-story that could have been filled by a report objectively analyzing Darl McBride's bowel movements.

I've been here a year, and other than the hookers outside my apartment and the roaches inside, I don't ahve much to complain about.

Sorry, not funny. In fact, your town seems to have many of the same urban issues that motivated this discussion in the first place.

About those roaches. A little boric acid can work wonders. I'll resist the temptation to offer suggestions on your other problem!

b Here's another one: IBM. Big Blue has been behind so much of the scientific grunt work, a great deal of which has consisted of conceiving of and building experimental scientific equipment [about.com].

qf

Yeah, there was a film by that name, I'm pretty sure. It was a Paul Veerhoven tribute to the work of Leni Reifenstahl.

This will be a pretty big hit with todays audience. It's just too bad (or maybe a good thing) that it wont have the same effect as it did when it was originally aired over the radio.

The link to the Bush/Blair Endless Love parody in that article is hilarious! See, sometimes it's good to actually read the article.

This is completely offtopic, but ever since I learned how to use bring and take properly back in highschool (1988) its really annoying to see people use it inproperly.

• Grace Hopper : Girl Genius of Vassar
• Lt. Hopper of the U.S. Navy
• Grace Hopper and the Mystery of the Hollerith Code
• Grace Hopper Tames the MARK I
• Grace Hopper Defeats the NAZIs
• Grace Hopper vs the Pernicious Moth
• Grace Hopper Unravells Sputnik
• Grace Hopper vs the Commie Russians
• Grace Hopper Unleashes the Scourage of COBOL
• Grace Hopper Arm-Wrestles Hyman Rickover
• Cmdr. Grace Hopper : Recalled to Duty (special double issue)
• Cmdr. Grace Hopper Defeats the Commie Russians
• Grace Hopper CyberGrrrrrl

• And remember, (+1, Funnay) does nothing for karma!

mmmmmm.... interplanetary pancakes!!!! drooooool / homer

This should be close enough.
Hope it helps.

Yep, it looks like the article makes no sense at all.

Dr. Rhee, who made that comparison, also made another factual error: "TCP was originally designed in the 1980s when Internet speeds were much slower and bandwidths much smaller" -- Tcp was actually invented in 1974. Not that major, but you wouldn't expect a guy who "has been researching network congestion solutions for at least a decade" to miss the mark by so much.

Hopefully the reporter was confused, but since it was a press release, you'd think that it would have had time to go through some review.

Here's another one: IBM. Big Blue has been behind so much of the scientific grunt work, a great deal of which has consisted of conceiving of and building experimental scientific equipment.

... might I suggest you start smoking cool, refreshing marijuana? "It gets you high and a 'bye' from the draft!"

Nice try, but it probably won't work. A current example of why it won't is that the Iowa National Guard elected to deploy troops that had tested positive for drugs, including methamphetamines. Their commanding officers concluded that they had only used drugs to avoid deployment to Iraq, and their avoidance of service would punish those in their unit that stayed clean. Furthermore, these offenders will face a worst-of-both-worlds scenario, where they will deploy for combat service AND they will be punished once they get home. Whether their discharges will be adminstrative, or as a result of a conviction from court martial, that will be a heck of a thing to explain to a future employer.

If the U.S. is in such need of warm bodies for a future national emergency, they would very likely overlook current drug use, unless there was evidence of habitual use, such as a record of convictions or serious medical problems. Such a draftee would be given the same offer given to smokers. You will go cold turkey for Uncle Sam! In the case of drugs, if you use them again while on active duty, you will face prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). If convicted, you will have a serious criminal record that will follow you into civilian life. If the Iowa Guard example above is any indication, you will be given an opportunity to avoid prosecution by dying for your country first.

3) GUI with the Lisa,

Xerox PARC did the R&D for modern GUIs. The Lisa was Apple's first attempt to copy the Xerox PARC GUI work, and it failed. Then, Apple tried again with Macintosh, and by cutting a lot of corners made the system cheap enough to make it a success.

7) First to develop the laser printer and postscript printing with the Laserwriter,

The laser printer was developed at Xerox PARC. Postscript was developed at Adobe, based on a more complicated PDL developed at Xerox PARC. Apple just happened to create a successful product based on those technologies.

8) First to develop the PDA with the Newton,

The Psion predates the Apple Newton by nearly a decade, and I think it wasn't the first PDA either.

9) First to develop the laptop form factor as we know it with the Powerbook,

Not even close; you can find the history of the laptop here. In fact, the idea goes back to Alan Kay's work on Dynapad--late 1960's or early 1970's.

11) First speech technology with the Apple ][,

The Apple II was irrelevant to speech recognition research and development.

14) First company to ship a consumer digital camera with the Quicktake,

Not even close.

Would that mean that the mod would include an aim bot that forces everybody to miss?

Yo-Joe! Co-bra!

"OMG! You killed duke! YOU bastard!"

This reminds me of Ulexite ("TV Rock"). It's a mineral made of fibrous crystals that work similar to fibre optics. In this case, the guy made a rock full fibre optics.

George Eastman used the patent system from day one (1888) to acquire market dominance. This is no "new" source of revenue. Kodak's IP/patent dept. is huge.
However, this shows that the patent system doesn't guarantee shit for you in the long run unless you keep innovating.

1. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for the law.
2. 4/16/63

Brought to you by DAMM (Mothers Against Dyslexia)

"As long as the paid placements are delineated as such (e.g. Google's paid listings) they may not be such a bad thing."

Ever seen about.com?

so many "clearly-delineated" sections you can hardly find anything. It's 4 sections of which 2 are sponsored links, one is a search of their website, and one is a web-search.

Of course, the banner adverts on the top and bottom of the page are also clearly-delineated, just in case you wanted some colour to brighten up the day. What's the word for someone with a love of horizontal lines?

I'd like to see you tell a woman that you're going to take pictures of her, show these pictures to millions of people, and not allow her to take up at least one tube of lipstick and one of mascara.

I don't know, take a look at this, and this.

I'd like to see you tell a woman that you're going to take pictures of her, show these pictures to millions of people, and not allow her to take up at least one tube of lipstick and one of mascara.

I don't know, take a look at this, and this.

I'm sure it will support the Xshok controller. That should liven up your game.

If they decide to vibrate off the hook they'll be opening themselves up to HAVS lawsuits. Alternatively, they could also just strobe the screen and cause epileptic fits.

I'm starting to think that they should just package drugs with the game.
---
I had mod points but I sold them on eBay.

What is the fate of a few third-world countries compared to the convenience of a heated driveway.

Throw that snow shovel away!

Read the truth here.

Let me re-word that...At least it doesn't need this to run.

Heh...really...At least it didn't this to run.

Viagra isn't exactly the best example, as the drug was originally researched as a heart medicine (link).

From the article:

It poured out more energy in three hours than the sun does in 100 years

Given that the sun produces about 3.8e+26 Watt, and that a year contains about 3.15e+7 seconds, the explosion comes down to a total energy release of about 1.1e+36 Joules.

Still, this is puny compared with a gamma-ray burst: in 60 seconds, that yields about 10e+45 Joules.

where they mercilessly decimated him in South Carolina with accusations he had a black baby, etc.

Oh, now, that wasn't a lie, that was just a mix-up! They were thinking of Strom Thurmond.

That raises interesting questions. I believe the bulk of the killing and concentration took place between 1865 and 1880. That was the period during which Sherman waged his genocidal campaign. It was also during this period that the homestead act unleashed millions of colonists into the Indian territories. Like the Nazis, they superseded a deportation policy (The Indian Removal Act and the indian territory treaties) with one of extermination and concentration camps for the purpose of creating lebensraum. This was also the period of railroad expansion and the extermination of the buffalo, with the accompanying effect on hunter gatherer economies. But I don't have historical data on the extent of killings by time period. They didn't keep as detailed records as the Germans.

BTW, the German genocide didn't really extend to Croats. Germany created the modern nation state of Croatia (previously part of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, a.k.a Yugoslavia) and installed a puppet regime. They were, allies. Croats manned the concentration camps filled with Yugoslavian Jews, Bosnians and Serbs. There was Croat resistance of course. Tito, the most important Communist partisan leader, was a Croat. However, far more Croats fought on the Axis side, both in the regular military and the paramilitary Ustase. Or were you talking about the Serbian invasion of Croatia after the (perfectly constitutional) Croatian secession? Interestingly, I believe the current Croatia adopted the flag and currency of the Nazi sponsored Independent State of Croatia.

What do you think these guys use color screens on PDAs for?

Show me another marked that sized in the handheld space.

Yes, this is kinda how miserable failure points to where it does. A bit on the technique behind this here.

So, irrespective of the technical competence, or otherwise of Google, it is going to be around and the leader

This isn't necessarily true, as Yahoo! had a great-working engine and very good brand recognition. Although the syllables in "yahoo" do not lend themselves very well to verb usage or even expletives, the name is very much still alive. There are reasons why a brand gets to the top position in the first place, but there needs to be lots more reasons why someone sticks with that brand.

I hope Google stays fresh and at the top of the game, because it seems like the competition doesn't really care about the users at all. We can all agree that MS doesn't deserve a top spot for anything else. I don't think Yahoo! is in a position to take anything as far as search goes, but it might just be in my head. If Google needs to step their game up, certainly Yahoo! is long overdue. Their site seems to me woefully busy and somehow retains the look that nobody has messed with the design since 1998.

All the other search engines either advertise too much to be useful (see: Ask Jeeves) or seem to withhold relevant information (see: About.com).

(ooh er, perhaps there aren't any in the US since there's precious little public transport).

Jackass, we have tons of those things around for other things besides public transportation, of which he have a considerable share. Most people here have their own cars.

Touchscreens are used for numerous things. Recently, I was at a restaurant where even the waitresses had a touch-screen at their station. Many restaurants have them. General merchants like Wal-Mart and Target use them at every check-out counter for credit and debit card users. Most larger banks use them in their ATMs. They're everywhere.

So quit your antagonistic and mindless drivel and don't forget who invented touchscreens - and where.

Just make sure you don't tell him about the abundance of pretzels there.

Microwaving chocolate is a fun way to both measure the speed of light and get some edible artifacts of the patterns of the electromagnetic fields inside a microwave oven.

If I sell you a newspaper with a plagiarized article . . . no one can legally approach you for more license money later, since you never committed a crime

Imagine, for example, buying a car and finding out a couple of years later that the inventor of the windshield wiper was suing you for the misappropriation of the patent. Wouldn't you want the company that sold you the car to accept responsibility for the claims?

#include <ianal.h> //But I read a lot of Groklaw

There's lots of ways to compare conflicts -- obviously there's no objective way to compare the last 60 years to some other point in history. But it doesn't require a stretch of the imagination to appreciate the importance of the wars we have seen since WWII. Lessee... this page says around 8 million died in WWI. Vietnam had around 1 million deaths. That's only an order of magnitude for a huge international war, compared to a more modern single-nation war (that was only diplomatically a police action).

I found this page which gives a lot more statistics for deaths in modern wars and conflicts. The statistics are kind of scattered, but I think that's because the sources are themselves so scattered. Anyway, it offers something more concrete to think about.

there's no evidence that in the 42 months between May 1971 and the time he officially discharged on Nov. 21, 1974, Bush ever took an Air Force physical. His failure to take the physical in 1972, and his subsequent loss of his flying status, should have triggered a disciplinary review, copies of which would be contained in Bush's military file. But none exists. Where are they?

And why, after the government spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach him how to fly, did he apply to be transferred to an Alabama postal unit?

What's that sound? That's the sound of AWOL.

Or for those who enjoy conspiracies, maybe the CP finally did succeed in running a mole to the very top cloaked as a conservative to collapse the country, like they'd been planning in the late 50's early 60's.

there's no evidence that in the 42 months between May 1971 and the time he officially discharged on Nov. 21, 1974, Bush ever took an Air Force physical. His failure to take the physical in 1972, and his subsequent loss of his flying status, should have triggered a disciplinary review, copies of which would be contained in Bush's military file. But none exists. Where are they?

And why, after the government spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach him how to fly, did he apply to be transferred to an Alabama postal unit?

What's that sound? That's the sound of AWOL.

Or for those who enjoy conspiracies, maybe the CP finally did succeed in running a mole to the very top cloaked as a conservative to collapse the country, like they'd been planning in the late 50's early 60's.

The paper bank note is 200 year old technology so why don't I hear ANYTHING about a replacement for the banknote? And while I think that the US has done some interesting things with anti-counterfeiting measures, strong arming corporations like Adobe et al into causing their products not to work as intended is not a real solution, does not directly address the problem and in the end only goes to make for more problems for people like you and me.

This mentality of "kick the people" has gone on for way to long. Are we not capable of outdoing Benjimam Franklin? He is the one who invented paper currency to begin with.
Funny that all he did was put to use the printing press, an invention which has been around since 1440 to make these bank notes with. Sort of ironic that he made the money hmself with a press he owned... whooda thunk that people could counterfeit money with printing presses and printers?!?!? So now that printing capabilities a mere 200 years later are more advanced, do you think it's time we look for new ways to produce paper currency? Or should we just start walking backwards down the path of personal empowerment because the tech has gotten too powerful?

The paper bank note is 200 year old technology so why don't I hear ANYTHING about a replacement for the banknote? And while I think that the US has done some interesting things with anti-counterfeiting measures, strong arming corporations like Adobe et al into causing their products not to work as intended is not a real solution, does not directly address the problem and in the end only goes to make for more problems for people like you and me.

This mentality of "kick the people" has gone on for way to long. Are we not capable of outdoing Benjimam Franklin? He is the one who invented paper currency to begin with.
Funny that all he did was put to use the printing press, an invention which has been around since 1440 to make these bank notes with. Sort of ironic that he made the money hmself with a press he owned... whooda thunk that people could counterfeit money with printing presses and printers?!?!? So now that printing capabilities a mere 200 years later are more advanced, do you think it's time we look for new ways to produce paper currency? Or should we just start walking backwards down the path of personal empowerment because the tech has gotten too powerful?

Wouldn't a good solution to be what Mozilla did to ensure GPL compatibility? Cross-license XF86 under its own liberal license, the GPL, and the LGPL. This way, companies like mandrake could easily use it under an "approved" license, hassle free. -- What to keep away from dogs

I was agreeing with the first post. There are plans for tons of senarios.

If you were referring to my oil comment two things:
1) What does global warming have to do with oil?

2) CNN is a bunch of sensationally shit. They can report whatever they want either way. It all comes down to who they interview and when and blah blah blah. They could make a cat getting stuck in a tree look all political if they wanted. Wake up and see journalism for what it is, and read through the bullshit when you can. Reading / Hearing about despair, panic and worry sells, so of course they will always play that angle.

If you want to argue, do reseach. In otherwords don't look at CNN articles, but look at actual research papers.

Anyway here you go:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2004/ 01/23/2003092364
-- A nice story about how there has been an 'oil crisis' for the past 40 years, yet we still seem to have at least 80 years of oil in reserve yet. But don't forget about all that untapped oil in Alaska...

http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/run _out_of_oil.htm
-- Very similar information.

Oh yea...You don't know what you are talking about

To that extent, I will agree with you, because we do use an industrial-ag model of crop production. We don't need to, though.

Unfortunately, the standard method of ethanol production from growing and processing your own corn is illegal in the US: the end product is usually known as Moonshine.

Here are a few references on the subject.

Interestingly, moonshine enjoys a quasi-legal status in New Zealand. Looks like the Kiwis are going to be ahead of us USers again.

Well speaking as a Canadian, You can lick my balls, proverbially of course... I must apologize for that remark, since of course it is the Canadian way. ;)

And FYI some of the best things to come out of Canada, in no particular order are:
-Mike Meyers
-Jim Carrey
-Basketball (Basketball History)
-Hockey (Hockey History)
-Dr. Frederick Banting (discoverer of insulin)
-The CanadaArm (which you guys have used in your shuttles for ages now)
-Margaret Atwood
-The Light Bulb
-The Telephone, By Mr. Bell
-TV
-The safest Nuclear Reactor out there, the CANDU

Hell, I'll just stop now and you can look at this list: Some Canadian inventions or this Famous Canadians