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First of all, I am not a doctor, but I will play one in /.

Caffeine is not addictive.

I will repeat it, in case you are not paying attention, caffeine is not addictive.

Now, of course your body may have imbalances when you have abused too much in one way or another, or a certain substance may have certain efects in your body, but that does not make it addictive.

Addiciont implies many things: the response of very specific parts of the brain, the absolute dependency from the substance (think hunger in a starvation situation). Caffeine, not even in the worst cases, provokes the same responses and dependency.

Do you want to stop abusing a substance? Good for you, abuse of anything is worth stoping, but don;t assume you are in the same league as a nicotine or crack addict.

"No better"? As someone living in Germany (and married to a German), I can hardly tell you how wrong you are. Where to begin?

America and Britain did not seek to exterminate an entire people (and nearly succeed) as the Nazis did, or summarily rape and pillage and entire city, as the Japanese did,

America and Britain did not do human wave attacks, unlike the Soviets.

America and Britain did not, as a matter of policy, summarily execute prisoners of war, as did the Soviets, Japan and the Nazis.

America and Britain did not impose dictatorships wholesale on the countries they occupied, unlike the Soviets, Nazis and Japan. Indeed, most countries the US and UK occupied got liberal democracies and independence.

Indeed, America even rebuilt its defeated enemies, gave them liberal democracies, gave them huge amounts of money and aid, defended them from the Soviets through the Cold War...need I go on?

To make the statement that America was "no better" than the Nazis, Imperial Japan or Stalinist Russia is just completely out of touch with basic facts. Yes, America and Britain did commit many crimes, like the internment of Japanese-Americans and dropping the atom bomb on civilians and firebombing German cities and so on. But on balance I'd still much rather have a world where America and the UK won, as opposed to one where the Soviets or (shudder) Nazis won, thankyouverymuch.

And given that I live in a city which was flattened by Bomber Harris, and which has Hiroshima as a partner city, I can tell you that the "defeated" Germans were in the end just as much 'winners' in the end as us Americans -- and they know it, and won't forget it easily. That's why Germany still commemorates the Berlin Airlift, Kennedy's "Berliner" speech (no, he did not say he was a jelly donut), the Marshall Plan and so on.

America little better than the Nazis? Today's Germans -- at least all the Germans I know -- would say America's a hell of a lot better.

Cheers,

Ethelred

The USPS receives approximately 96 Billion dollars annually from Congress via the "Postal Service Fund."

From Title 39, Part III, Chapter 20, Sec 2003 of the US Code, The Fund shall be available for the payment of all expenses incurred by the Postal Service in carrying out its functions as provided by law and, subject to the provisions of section 3604 of this title, all of the expenses of the Postal Rate Commission.

>> And don't forget Tom Green.

We are trying to forget him. Please don't remind us.

>> Next time, maybe you can include Neil Young
>> and and Joni Mitchel if you want to show off
>> Canadian talent.

Hey, if you like Neil Young, please take him.

>>-Basketball (yes, we did invent basketball)
>>Was Springfield, Massachusetts, the birthplace
>>of basketball, once part of Canada?

James Naismith was the Canadian physical education instructor who invented basketball in 1891. James Naismith was born in Almonte, Ontario and educated at McGill University and Presbyterian Cllege in Montreal. He was a Canadian, regardless of where he invented it. If he invented it on the moon, it would have still been invented by a Canadian.

>> Was Boston, the place where the telephone was
>> invented, once part of Canada?

Alexander Graham Bell is most well known for
inventing the telephone. He came to the U.S as
a teacher of the deaf, and conceived the idea
of "electronic speech" while visiting his
hearing-impaired mother in Canada.

The idea was born in Canada, and he himself is not an American, he is from Scotland.

since they have 40 to 60 billion dollars in their kitty, how long will they take to burn through all of their cash reserves, even if they never sold another product ever again say, from Jan 2004?

This page using data from 2001 shows total (yearly?) liabilites to be in the range of 3 to 4 billion dollars.

So it may take a while for MS to burn through all of its cash, unless it gets hit by a massive government fine, an act of god, or something equally unlikely,

Please insert all your jokes under this thread....

the environmental impact will be dramatically reduced when using TheWheel(TM)

Sounds like someone stole an advertising campaign from 55 hundred years ago
I especially love this page with the heading "The Wheel - What It Is, and What It Does"

-----

I've actually read the article.
IANAE (I am not an engineer) but it sounds to me like they're re-inventing the wheel.

-----

In Communist Russia, The Wheel turns The Engine.

-----

1. Re-Invent Wheel
2. ???
3. Profit

-----

Damn STUPID Patent Office has DONE IT AGAIN.
(TheWheel(TM) has been patented internationally - Patent Nr. WO 01/54939)

-----

Have I forgotten anything, folks?

Definition: A protein particle that is capable of causing an infection or disease. Like viruses, prions are not capable of reproduction by themselves. Unlike viruses, prions do not contain genetic material (DNA or RNA).

Try a Rakgear deluxe backpack.

I bought mine 6 months ago and it changed my life (actually, my back life). The backpack is well padded and very comfortable. It include a removeable plastic rack so you can put many books and keep them organized.

You'll have no trouble running with it and it's very robust.

I bough it at Radio-Shack fo less than $50 CAN.

You can't go wrong with it.

Perhaps it works like this: antibubbles float downward, when they burst their membranes decompose to air "droplets" and "fall" upwards.... thus employing the opposite vertical motion that a normal bubble would.

(a pocket of air within liquid is not a "true" bubble...)

I really have no clue how to reply directly to the original article. Thus, I'm piggybacking :)

My SO is in the midst of creating a toy. Not the same route as games, but similar

Do not let yourself get conned into one of those invention promotion (for ex. Invent tech) companies. They are a waste of money and some of them are frauds. Check out a few websites that will give you some basics of how to get going in this business

Inventor's Headquarters is a good place to start to explain the various processes involved in invention and common pitfalls.
Randy, the website owner, also has a link to Mattel's toy scout and a few reputable agencies on his Toy Page

There are some aspects of game and toy inventing that are unique to that field. There is even a Toy Industry Association!
I found an introductory article by William Maclean, a board game inventor to be quite good advice!
About dot com has a game inventors area. She has an area specific to Board Games. Lots of luck to ya! :)

I really have no clue how to reply directly to the original article. Thus, I'm piggybacking :)

My SO is in the midst of creating a toy. Not the same route as games, but similar

Do not let yourself get conned into one of those invention promotion (for ex. Invent tech) companies. They are a waste of money and some of them are frauds. Check out a few websites that will give you some basics of how to get going in this business

Inventor's Headquarters is a good place to start to explain the various processes involved in invention and common pitfalls.
Randy, the website owner, also has a link to Mattel's toy scout and a few reputable agencies on his Toy Page

There are some aspects of game and toy inventing that are unique to that field. There is even a Toy Industry Association!
I found an introductory article by William Maclean, a board game inventor to be quite good advice!
About dot com has a game inventors area. She has an area specific to Board Games. Lots of luck to ya! :)

The actual perpetrator of this crime is a shady figure from the hills of Columbia and can be seen HERE

Check out http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa121997 .htm. It discusses the interesting history of the game Monopoly. Yes, Monopoly's success made it's "inventor" Charles Darrow a millionaire, but a quite similar game, titled Landlord, was invented nearly 20 years prior.

Maybe you saw it here? Or maybe here?

To be fair, though, this satire was picked up by many newspapers, including the Guardian, which to their credit published a retraction.

IQ results for Bush are not available, but his SAT score was 1206 or mid 80-percentile compared to current SAT test-takers. The SAT is not an IQ test, but it has a positive correlation with IQ tests of about 0.7 to 0.8. Also, note that the percentile refers to test-takers, not the general public, and test-takers are going to on average have higher IQs than non-test-takers.

That makes it very unlikely he has below-average intelligence. You might want to examine your news sources a little more carefully.

Maybe you saw it here? Or maybe here?

To be fair, though, this satire was picked up by many newspapers, including the Guardian, which to their credit published a retraction.

IQ results for Bush are not available, but his SAT score was 1206 or mid 80-percentile compared to current SAT test-takers. The SAT is not an IQ test, but it has a positive correlation with IQ tests of about 0.7 to 0.8. Also, note that the percentile refers to test-takers, not the general public, and test-takers are going to on average have higher IQs than non-test-takers.

That makes it very unlikely he has below-average intelligence. You might want to examine your news sources a little more carefully.

There are plenty of alternatives to Oracle as both a DB and an ERP. As a matter of fact, on the DB side, many customers realize this as Oracle's marketshare is still dropping, which you can find here and here.

SAP is still crowned victorious in the ERP solutions market. And quite frankly, DB2 and SQL Server are much easier to admin than Oracle, both with an extremely rich set of features, with SQL Server beating Oracle in benckmarks for some time now (until the recent release of 10g where Oracle beats SQL Server in the cluster market) seen here. Unfortunately for IBM, DB2 doesn't rank very well in either clustered or non-clustered.

Then there's the issue of licensing....

I'm a big Pixar/Toy Story fan, and I really liked Nemo too. But I happened to rent both DVDs a week apart and think that Ice Age (2002)really won out. It's made by Fox Home Entertainment, and not Pixar, but they really nailed it on the animation, the sweet story, the subtle adult humor, etc. It has more of a Monsters flair, which was also great. The second DVD, for those into animation, includes multimode cuts of the movie - showing how the animation is framed in before the finished product. I was really impressed and don't think the movie got a fair shake competing with Pixar.

1. Partridge in a pear tree = The One true God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ
2. Turtle Doves = The Old and New Testaments
3. French Hens = Faith, Hope and Charity
4. Calling Birds = the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists
5. Golden Rings = The first Five Books of the Old Testament, the "Pentateuch" which contain the law condemning us of our sins.
6. Geese A-laying = the six days of Creation
7. Swans A-swimming = the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments of the Catholic faith
8. Maids A-milking = the eight Beatitudes
9. Ladies Dancing = the nine Fruits of the Spirit
10. Lords A-leaping = the Ten Commandments
11. Pipers Piping = the eleven faithful apostles
12. Drummers Drumming = the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle's Creed

Efforts have been made to bridge the symbols to the doctrines they supposedly represent. Calling Birds = the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists. You can easily deduce the explanation for this one. The calling birds are spreading the Gospel; they are telling the Good News to others. The problem is that in the original song, there were no calling birds. The song began as a French song. The fourth day was about 'houiller birds. Houiller, pronounced sort of like "colly," (I think the first consonant is a gutteral sound) is the word for coal used as an adjective. In this context, it means "black as coal." They were black birds, not calling birds.

Now, how do you explain the connection? And when in history were French Catholics being repressed by the Anglican Church so that they would have made this song?

There are many sites like this one that debunk this urban legend. See Snopes also.

When we Christians hold on to legends like this, it only serves to discredit everything else we claim to be true, including the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Catholics, please stop spreading rumors! Where is your source? You have none. It is true that Christians used to celebrate Christmas for the twelve days from Advent to Epiphany, but there is no evidence of religious doctrine being embedded in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" or of a connection to Protestant banning of Catholicism.

Preemptive strike on trolls: Yes, I know that Jesus wasn't born on Dec. 25, pagan influences, yadda yadda, etc, but tradition and doctrine are not the same thing. The bottom line is that we don't (shouldn't) claim something to be true that isn't, and we disavow the evil sources that have affected our traditions.

1. The Softwood lumber dispute (I found a link to an american organization but one that is against the tarrifs because is raises lumber prices), which is doing severe damage to our lumber industry.

2. Kyoto I just threw out as something that came to mind, not all Canadian provinces like it either and a lit of US states have actually implemented their own rules that are even more stringent but it was an another international agreement that the US backed out of.

3. The landmine treaty pretty much everyone but the US signed, a notable exception, I remember hearing some speculation about them going to use some in Afghanistan but couldn't find anything in a quick google. Still it's important to note that this was in Clintons era so isn't exactly Bush's fault.

4. Here's a though piece on US violations with regards to treatment of war prisoners in Afghanistan.

5. Hostility doesn't always have to be military, the US has arguably been very hostile to the entire international community with the huge distain it showed for the UN and any country that opposed it's plans to go into Iraq or even countries that didn't offer military support (with us or against us anyone?). Yes there has been some hostility shown to the US but that's inevitable with a superpower and a crutial difference is that when the US is hostile towards another nation is any capacity it causes economic hardship and can be a threat to the nations very existance(what if GW decides to go to Iran or North Korea). As to the moron comment that was just an overheard remark (an accurate one I might add;), the bastard comment likewise was just a mistake from frustration, frankly I couldn't believe the amount of fuss that was made in the US over either comment. For example look back to the campaign when Bush didn't even appear to know who our PM's name was!! The only real reaction here was some jokes.

6. As to divisions bringing them into the open can the way the US does is more akin to aggrivating them. I'm too lazy at this point to google for info on what was going on between the Korea's at the time but I recall hearing on the media several months before about how the countries were starting to get closer together then Bush decided to through North Korea in on the axis of evil and all that went to waste.

Why pay when you can do it for free?

The tectonic plate does indeed pass right through the gibraltar but...

http://geology.about.com/library/bl/maps/bltectivi ty-eurafrica.htm shows that there is no recorded activity for the past million years. A reason to worry? Perhaps... But I would be more worried more about war there rather than tectonic plates moving.

Whereas in the United States consumer spending exceeds savings by leaps and bounds, Japanese citizens are highly conservative in their expenditures and their investments. The normal Japanese citizens' savings far exceeds their annual income, practically an unheard of practice in the U.S.

This is like ranking projects based on largest number of lines of code.

Hooray, thought no-one would say it !

It's like measuring commerce sites by value - I designed and built a system that could probably claim to be the world's largest online marketplace (executed more $ value of trades in it's first 2 weeks than ebay have done in 5 years, and has now executed more $3 trillion in less than a year) - but I'm guessing the software, hardware, complexity and management is a fair bit smaller than the equivalent ebay systems.

I thought this was news for nerds, not Top Trumps

--
T

And if they made the drinking age 75 it would drop even more. What makes 21 such a better choice? Many studies reference 25 as a cutoff. You can not seperate out the death rate statistics of raising the drinking age because at the same time cars have got safer, roads have extra safety features, seat belt use is way up, and in many places the speed limits have been lowered all in the same 20 year period. Thankfully through an effort on many sides, the death rate among many groups is going down but how can any one group take the credit for the total %. How can you break the numbers down?

Here are some interesting statistics to chew on.

Here says:
Juveniles arrested for DUI were disproportionately male (84 percent) and white (91 percent).

Damn, maybe the law should allow non white males under 18 to drink.

Here says:
Declines in DUI arrest rates have occurred for every age group. Of particular note is the decrease in DUI arrest rates for those under the age of 21 compared to their rates of DUI arrest in the early 1980's when States had not adopted a uniform drinking age. In 1980 persons between 16 and 20 years old accounted for 10 percent of licensed drivers but 15 percent of DUI arrestees. In 1996, this age group accounted for 7 percent of drivers and 8 percent of DUI arrestees.

Considering the drinking age in 1980 and 1996 was also 2l in all but a few areas but yet the % goes way down. Law may have been a factor but what about the other groups decline? What ever caused those declines probably was a factor in the underage group too.

I am not claiming the law has no effect but anyone or any organization for or against some idea can interpet statistics and just about "prove" anything. Researches have determined that 78% of all statistics were made up, shortly after that another firm came up with 79%.

Off topic, admittedly, but I just googled 'tequila sunrise recipe' and here are the first three actual recipes returned:
First
Second
third

They use regular email for the system. And no need for "intelligent files" - just plain text or html will do.

Well, if the chrome page existed before May 20, 1998 then it can be introduced as prior art (as long as that covers the actual claims in the patent). Patents in the US are granted from the date of filing, and it is assumed that the invention was invented up to a year prior to that. (This assumption comes from the fact that you cannot patent something that has been in use for more than a year.)

The US uses a first-to-file method for solving disputes, not first-to-invent. This is how Elisha Gray lost the title of inventor of the telephone by a matter of hours.

Why not find a local photographic club---even before you have a camera, and ask their advice? Have a long talk with people at the club, not about the hardware they use, but about photography itself. Find out what interests you, what directions you find attractive, and then take some more advice on how to achieve those ends.

Dropping a hydrogen bomb on Boca Raton, FL. would cut my inbox by half.

I'm sure its a very nice place - warm, sunny and everything Britain isn't in early December, but first of all it gave us the IBM PC and now spam.

You don't think Buffy put the Hellmouth on the wrong coast do you?

Best wishes,
Mike.

this articles a good read so take the time to go through it as it summarises innovation from the early internet years to date.

innovation. The trick is finding that one crazy idea. The problem with crazy ideas, though, is that for every one good crazy idea, there's a thousand bad crazy ideas

the eternal quest for an idea. you better start with a good idea. if you don't, no matter how hard you try it wont pan out.

the Internet community back then, the key technical people, didn't want the Internet to become easy to use or graphical, ... Only smart people could use the Internet ...so we needed to keep it hard to use

what other examples can you think of right now?... only smart people can use [insert you own example]

Mosaic started with 12 users in February 1993. It had 1,000 users within three or four weeks. About 10,000 users by spring. It was up to 1 million by early 1994

Posters who question why Andreessen has such prominence should reflect on this. No Mosaic (mozilla), no Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE Based on NCSA Mosaic code base licensed from Spyglass), no World Wide Web in the early to mid 90's. No doubt someone else may have invented the browser but how much longer would it have taken?

At first that makes you like a little bunny rabbit ... Everybody wants to play with you ....within a year ... fearsome competitors shooting at your head with high-powered ammunition

Larry, Sergi do you feel the hot breath of the MS juggernaut as you approach your IPO. Will google will be a repeat of Netscape/MS tussle?

Oracle database was a huge success ... Larry's spent the last 25 years trying to come up with the next product

it sure helps when the government (CIA) is your preferred backer. Why does oracle feel the need to keep trying to re-innovate or create the next best idea?

innovation comes from companies that are 2 years old, populated by 19-year-olds ... preposterous that Marc should think that innovation is .. the province of little entrepreneurial companies.

In fact it's both. The technical revolution was spurred on the back of the transistor. This was the combined effort of Bardeen, Brattain and shockley at Bell Labs - no small comany there ... but look at Intel, though a big company now, it was started with the (not so young) Noyce, Moore and Grove. What about the Linux kernel, third person shooters and that other search engine, Yahoo?

I've heard of that scam being called "The Lebonese Loop". Our local newspapers warned against it six months ago, but it's been around for years.

I love how GameSpy continually puts out these best gaming etcetera opinion pieces to simply spark the fanboy debates. The last page even has some useful essential links (scroll to the bottom) that must not be missed. :)

I am not immune, however. So...

Nintendo rules the artificial demand department with the "chip shortage" of 1988 which affected Zelda II more than any other title. Hmmm.... They also seemed to have a low supply of N64 consoles in 1996. One of my fondest Christmas-ish moments was walking into a toy store on Black Friday and asking if they had any N64s. The clerk told me that he had just got off the phone with someone who had to cancel their layaway and asked if I wanted it. I simply said "no thanks."

Sony had the hype/demand machine chugging in 2000 when they launched the PS2 at more than twice the price of the Dreamcast that had a bigger library of quality games. Those lucky enough to get a PS2 that year were treated with marginal titles, a way to play their PS1 games and DVDs and not much else. Majora's Mask came out in 2000. This is one of the most misunderstood games of all time. Most players hated it due to it's manipulation of time, but it is a very fine game.

My personal favorite holiday gaming season would have to be 2002. Some of the finest games of all time came out during this season. GTA: Vice City and Metroid Prime are must have games for any (mature) gamer. Platform lovers who usually stuck with Nintendo systems would be shocked as Super Mario Sunshine proved to be a slightly above average game. The PS2 meanwhile had the incredibly superb Ratchet and Clank. Even the Xbox had a slight edge as Jet Set Radio Future was being shipped with the system, unfortunately, the only other platform game for the Xbox was the terrible Blinx so it didn't have that big of an edge. :)

"Call Mr. Plow, that's my name! That name again is Mr. Plow."(wav)

Amazingly, that appears to be the only copy on the WWW. I'm surprised it doesn't show up in Google Groups.

-- Bill

Amazingly, that appears to be the only copy on the WWW. I'm surprised it doesn't show up in Google Groups.

-- Bill

• "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM (1943)
• "But what ... is it good for?" - Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, commenting on the microchip (1968)
• "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, president, chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (1977)
  http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/burrows/quotes.html

• Since its shipment in May of 1990, Windows version 3.0 has proven to be a remarkably stable product. In fact, Microsoft has only implemented a single update release (version 3.0a) to accommodate minor bug fixes. -- Microsoft press release for Windows 3.1
  

Okay... everyone who thinks like you should go forth and check out This site which is a verbose listing of Canadian musical artists.

I'm damn tired of people thinking Canadian music is all Celine Dione and Stompin' Tom Conners. In reality we run the gamut from east coast folk music (Great Big Sea), through soft rock (Barenaked Ladies), harder rock (Nickelback), to this new breed of country music (Shania Twain).

We have a hell of a lot of diverse talent up here... oh, and nowhere in that list are there any "Manufactured Bands" like the Back-Door Boys or N-Stink. The closest we ever had was The Moffats, who broke up because one of the brothers came out of the closet (let the gay boy band references fly). The very nature of our culture up here promotes diversity, not the cookie cutter melting pot of our neighbours to the south.

I know it's foolish to blow my perfect karma on an offtopic flamebait troll post, in response to a post that only has a score of 1, but godsdammit, I'm sick and tired of being America's whipping boy. We are our own nation! We have been for over a decade now. It's time to stop defining what we are by constantly stating how we differ from the boorish, uncultured loudmouths we share a border with.

Now, as a Canadian, I must apologize for this post and for any offence I may have given anyone. I just needed to get that off my chest. Thank you for your time.

Just think about this for a second: Alan Turing created his famous test in... what? The 1930s? The 1950s? How many computers have you seen that could pass the test? Simple answer: none.

How many computers have you seen that actually could perform what HAL performed in "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Simple answer: none.

Scientists have been talking about NanoTech for what? Twenty+ years? Have you already seen an application of NanoTech in real life? Where are the real-life NanoTech billionaires? Where is the Bill Gates of nanotech?

I believe that nanotech, just like AI and superconductivity, is a pipe dream. This is simply because solving the technical/scientific problems are simply too large for our current technology.

Don't misunderstand me: nanotech can be useful. Dumb computers are useful right now. Things like micro-mechanical machines may be useful. Limited, one-task-only, expert system can be useful. But real intelligence? Real nanotech? I don't think so.

I love it.

I've pointed out before that Windows is way more widespread than Linux, and so is more attacked and vulnerable, but then zealots come on and say Apache is the most-used on the net and yet not the most breached. But to this, it's already the most-breached operating system.

Hoot and holler about the reasons all you want, but them's the facts.

We REALLY, REALLY need to stop with the "Linux is invincible, Windows sucks" attitude. It's flat-out not true, and it's severely holding the community image back in the minds of the rest of the rational computing world who just uses what they use to get the job done and don't treat operating systems like religious belief systems.

It sucks, because it makes fanatical zealots look like flaming hypocrites.

The rest of us rational folks knew all along Linux wasn't perfect, but heaven forbid we mention it to the Mandrake and Gentoo kiddies on Slashdot. I've been modded down just for having this sig, which is ridiculous.

Seeing Gentoo itself be attacked with a remote exploit--especially in light of the fact that Linux is the most breached as it is--is just not surprising to me at all. The reason is because no system is perfect, especially not OSS. And we've been reading about a lot of high-profile break-ins lately, which is just funny.

Yes, it makes a lot of people look stupid when this stuff happens, and I do enjoy it, because I'm always branded as a Microsoft shill just for pointing out obvious truths. And then the news speaks for itself.

GNU
GNOME
Gentoo

The list goes on. According to this, Linux is the one breached more often.

Get your facts right:
"Linux is successfully compromised more than any other operating system". Mostly due to people setting it up straight out of the red box without adequately Reading The Fine Manual.

Infrequency?

Get your facts right:
"Linux is successfully compromised more than any other operating system". Mostly due to people setting it up straight out of the red box without adequately Reading The Fine Manual.

The situation we're in now (USA/UK/*) isn't too different from the textile industry during the start of the Industrial Revolution. Back then, it took two or more weavers to operate a single loom. British companies were soon being undercut by Indian weavers. However, the English companies managed to remain competitive by improving productivity through automation. The use of power looms (via the steam engine) and the Jacquard looms allowed factory owners to have one weaver operate two looms instead of having three or more weavers in constant attendance. Today, only one technician is required to supervise 20 Jacquard looms.

Going back to the computer industry, and the only way we (as programmers/engineers) can compete is by moving up a level and trying to automate as much of the design process as possible, using techniques such as expert systems, code generators, intelligent compilers etc...

Spanish Facts and Stats
i was just doing a remark about the fact that A LOT of people speak spanish and therefore shoudn't be such a surprise the site have news on spanish too.

Not if it was up to ashcroft

The first digital cameras for the consumer-level market that worked with a home computer via a serial cable were the Apple QuickTake 100 camera (February 17 , 1994), the Kodak DC40 camera (March 28, 1995), the Casio QV-11 (with LCD monitor, late 1995), and Sony's Cyber-Shot Digital Still Camera (1996).

I'll bite.

All Alabama has is boiled peanuts, pickup trucks, and charming Southern white trash.

Yes, and in addition they have all these.

Write to SOCAN and tell them (nicely) what you think about this.

Then write to the Supreme Court and do the same.

Remember, these have to be sent through the post - they think that each snail mail letter represents ten people!

Finally, here's a good guide on how to write a professional-looking letter.

Even if SOCAN just got 20 negative letters, they'd flip out!

Almost EVERYONE can relate to these movies because you can envision yourself as hobbits/wizards/kings against the Dark Lord (USA/terrorists/muslims/Bush).

Personally, it's me vs Sauron!