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I thought Pat nailed it quite nicely.

Nvidia makes SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) multicore processors while Intel, AMD and the other players make MIMD (multiple instructions, multiple data) multicore processors. These two architectures are incompatible, requiring different programming models. The former uses a fine grain approach to parallelism while the latter is coarse-grained. This makes for an extremely complex programming environment, something that is sure to negatively affect productivity. The idea that the industry must somehow resign itself to an uneasy marriage between the two approaches is nonsense. Logic dictates that universality should be the main goal of multicore research. The market is crying for a super fast, fine-grain and easy to program, MIMD multicore architecture that can handle any kind of parallel computing task. Neither Nvidia, Intel, AMD or the others even come close to delivering what the market wants. And as we all know, what the market wants, the market will get. So my point is that Nvidia should not rest on its laurels because their technology is bound to become obsolete as soon as someone figures out how to make the right multicore processor and kicks everybody's ass in the process. Read Nightmare on Core Street for a good analysis of where the changing multicore landscape is going. In the meantime, I advise everybody in the multicore business to thread carefully. Big money is in the balance. And I mean, BIG MONEY.

They weren't asked whether the copies were "unauthorized", they were asked whether the copies were "unlawful", a question to which they gave a nonresponsive answer.

There's a .pdf linked to here which apparently supports the parent's statement.

You're half right.

Microsoft do indeed spend millions on usability testing. Can't fault them there. But myself and other usability professions often wonder why they bother, because it doesn't get a look-in. Here's a famous story about how one tiny part of Vista came to be how it is. Not much room for input from usability testing there...

Related to this, here is a nice overview of the current state of various Ruby implementations (including a brief discussion of the javascript one) by Charles Nutter one of the lead developers of JRuby: http://headius.blogspot.com/2008/04/promise-and-peril-for-alternative-ruby.html

The neutrons that drive the reaction have to generated through spallation, so turning them off turns them off, period, since the fuel cycle is different.

http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2006/07/wash-1097-appendix-reactor-physics.html

I went into SL with the philosophy that I'd respond "sure" to any offer to see something or go someplace or try something and have enjoyed each and every one.

I was surprised by how many Caucasian blonde avatars with perfect bodies there were who slowly walk places.

Thankfully, in the past year that's changed a bit but young pretty AVs are still predominant, especially for the average 40ish user age range...

does anyone else try to use their alter-ego as a role model?

Offtopic but somewhat related: Cheeseburger Brown (author of Simon of Space and The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster) is writing a story right now titled The Secret Mathematic. It's about the discovery of a new kind of math that can be used to effect (no, it's not a typo) the universe. It's up to chapter 20 so far. http://cheeseburgerbrown.blogspot.com/

Here's a tip for narrow band users or any users who just want the content without all the eye candy. Seek out the mobile pages for a web site. Internet enabled cell phones and PDAs are growing in popularity and web sites are developing mobile pages for those users. A well designed page for mobile devices shouldn't use javascript or any plugins and will go light on the graphics which is just what you are looking for.

These mobile friendly pages are sometimes hard to find because the content providers want the full featured desktop users to use the full featured web pages. Why? Because most web trend analytics tracking technologies depend on javascript which isn't available for mobile devices. Also, they have to cut out most of the advertising which also doesn't fit the ad revenue business model too well.

That is why it isn't easy to find links to the mobile edition. One way to find the mobile page for a web site is to load the main page using a mobile device. Most of the time, you will get a client side redirect to the mobile page. Then email that page's URL to yourself and use that URL from your desktop. For example, /.'s mobile page is http://slashdot.org/palm/ and Yahoo's mobile page is http://us.m.yahoo.com/

Not only is the gain in mobile device popularity driving content providers to add support for mobile devices, it is also compelling CMS vendors to add mobile device support for their products too. I have recently added a mobile page to my open source news portal application.

/CF

The motion software is also a good choice for recording a network camera. There's a review of a cheap camera at benstechcents blog and it has some good tips for cheap cameras. Good camera placement is far more important that high res video, and more cameras can increase the chance of catching the identifying moments that you want later.

Well, I have been blogging on Blogger since late last year (see my sig, or http://mayaposch.blogspot.com/ for those with sigs turned off) and for my purposes it's more than sufficient. I write the blog posts locally in an editor, then copy-paste them to the WYSIWYG editor of Blogger, of which I only use the spell-check function, which is okay, add some tags and publish the thing.

With such a kind of interaction it's hard to find many faults with Blogger's setup :) Regardless, I'll soon, within a month, be moving the blog to my local domain (mayaposch.com, should be active in a few days). In addition to a custom OS I'll be using custom blog software. Best thing about a custom blog is the integration with your site and adding the features only _you_ need :P

Try Inform 7. Just to show you how literate programming can be, check out these poems that are compilable Inform 7 games.

One way of making progress is to start up a blog thread announcing this (potential) project and asking who's interested -- Recording Industry vs. People is would be a great spot for it. Circulating this through the blogosphere would gauge interest, and get various perspectives on the right technology base (a wiki, a CMS, etc.). Hey, maybe you could even get it on Slashdot :-)

By the way, for people interested in campaigns like this, there's an all-day workshop on education and activism on social networks on May 22 as part of this year's Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference.

Maps was in house:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/02/mapping-your-way.html

Or at least, it was acquired before it was launched.

Via:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Development_history

But they did a pretty cool unplugged album... Oh wait, that's a bootleg. Then indeed, they didn't (oficially) release anything decent after the black album.

*FURIOUS* Firstly, don't buy into the hype about GC ... managing memory isn't rocket science if you know what you are doing, which I am sure most of the haters don't know / care about - all they can do is throw in snippets of crap from time to time and not actually DO anything about it (i.e. pick up a book and RTFM) - when is the last time they have used smart pointers? ... (ask them what a pointer is - they will just say I DON'T NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT) ... no you don't need to know about economics of software/hardware either With the release of C++0x there is more standardization of stuff (like threading) that is already available (look @ boost.org) ... most people who bitch about C/C++ never could finish their 101 programming assignments. meh! more on pointers: http://chemivar.blogspot.com/2007/12/do-not-fear-for-smart-pointers-are-here.html also that list is rather bs, it doesn't factor in the importance of the projects, take a look around - everything runs on C/C++ developed code.

You can't depend on developers any more, they are just doing the shit the easy way, no code checking, no code assessment, the business needs are more important than spending hours and hours trying to figure out where are the bugs!??? 80% of web developers are just careless. My advise is keep your windows servers up-to-date. And deploy a web app firewall from vendors like F5 or Citrix. Blocking these kinds of attacks at the gateway is faster and will cover all of the vulnerable applications. check out my blog here: http://extremesecurity.blogspot.com/2008/04/un-site-took-injection.html

for spanish-speaking users who want instructions for upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04, leaving a link here http://fabianperez.blogspot.com/2008/04/actualizar-ubuntu-804-lts-hardy-heron.html

The top 1% pay most of the taxes.

Umm, they pay about one third of the taxes, which makes sense in a flat tax kind of way because the top 1% own one third of the assets in the US. Now while that seems fair enough, until you look at the distribution of investment assets (that is assets that are actually earning money and are not necessary for the owner's day to day life) now the richest 1% hold 40% of the investment assets.

Robert Reich has some words on this as well.

AND, it's relatively "old news", as this man reported on it far earlier:

http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/

A "Stroop test"? C'mon, you made that up. Next you'll be telling us that David Duchovny named his kid "Kyd".

Double fuel mileage and you only need 14350 square miles. Get commuters on more public transit: 12000 square miles. Get 25% of the cars on the road to go electric, 9000 square miles.

That might be harder than you think. We're already making cars that go 30mpg. Maximum theoretical milage is around 120mpg. Doubling milage would put us at 50% of the theoretical maximum, which would be a very impressive technical feat. Getting more cars off the road would help, but switching to electric just means you're getting your power somewhere else.

Security depends both on the voting / counting process and on the technology (this is true for paper ballots as well). The problem is when the technology can easily be changed in a hidden way that is unverifiable by elections officials.

A simple machine, that has been tested and verify can be sealed with stickers with signatures of election officials.

A machine (think diabold) with all kinds of inputs (think keyboard plugs) and complexity (think OS, DB etc...) cannot be easily sealed and verified by election officials.

I found two interesting articles about India's EVM

The two things I found interesting:
1) EVM cost = $230 (hard to tamper with, and relies on election officials to keep secure)

2) Diebold cost = $3300 (easier to tamper with, and relies on election officials to keep secure)

This points out two things: voting systems don't have to be complicated or expensive to work well, and that security depends both on the machine and the voting process.

Just like with paper ballots the election officials need to ensure security of the voting and counting process.

In Canada we have some electronic voting at the municipal level in some cities (mostly optical scan machines).

A comparison of EVM and Diebold
http://techaos.blogspot.com/2004/05/indian-evm-compared-with-diebold.html

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Voting_Machines

The issue is not about cost. The issue is crappy design, and politics in the selection of voting machine vendors.

It don't matter most of europe will be going in about 6 more years. See giant asteroid is going to hit us. http://kh-mmk.blogspot.com/2008/02/london-england-reuters-giant-asteroid.html. I'm buying a bomb shelter and generator right now.

The Ipod blew up during the star phase of the product cycle. Now it is in the cash cow phase, as it is a considerable profitable enterprise and thus a myriad of firms have capitalized on making similar products. Ipod's will continue to sell to yuppies who enjoy paying for an overpriced mp3 player with a network of music that lacks diversity to foreign markets. As a US consume I can enjoy not having access to England, Hollands and Germany's fine selections of electronica, which Itunes America lacks almost entirely. Mac sales have gone up, most likely to the yuppies who cannot sync the Itunes software to a Windows box and decide to buy the Mac due to the customer support representative with Mac stating, "it works better with a Mac," or the idiots logical thought process that decides a Mac is a cost effective option (cough, cough). Buying a Mac is for the glorified rich who eat too many donuts and watch too much TV. If you enjoy my lovely view of the world, read my blog. http://pupples.blogspot.com/

MojoPac is a clever piece of software which will bypass any software keyloggers on a windows system and give you your own (Windows) environment with all your files and programs. It also presents only a black screen to the system (not to you) so any screenshots taken by keyloggers see only black. I have the results of a bunch of testing I've done with mojopack and keyloggers on my blog: http://ryrw.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-travel-invisibly.html

You picked up a lot of former AOL people and you wonder why your company sucks. AOL sucks. AOL has always sucked. It sucked when it was pretty much the only ISP a lot of people could get. It sucked when you tried to cancel and ended up cancelling your credit card instead because no matter what you did they wouldn't stop billing you. It sucked when you tried to make them refund you for the months where you should have been cancelled but they just kept on billing. It sucked when you finally gave up and disputed the charge with your credit card company.

that explains a lot there actually. I did some work for AOL MANY years ago before they switched from Quantum Link to AOL. They pulled a few fast ones and I left. I figured they weren't worth my time. Now I see the connection and WHY they acted so weird when they terminated the family's internet. It's the same mentality and work ethic.

In our case the company terminated our account because we used it too much. Seems they didn't like us pulling content from their competition instead of purchasing content from them. A conflict of interest I'd say.

Now that the year termination is over we're starting to receive flyers to resubscribe to them.

think we did?

Our Answer here :D

My kids had fun doing this. I helped put it together but it's from their minds. I guess Concast doesn't worry about pissing off the next generation of consumer. That's ok.

Keep up the good work Concast. ;-)

"I could argue that the mass-published bible, in its various forms of incompletion, editing, omissions and linguistic adjustments, has done more to hurt the purity of the Judeo-Christian faith than to help it. "

You'd love Islam then. Their purists say there should not be translations and it all has to stay in Arabic. So teachers are mandatory to interpret stuff and tell followers what to do, rather than followers being able to just read stuff "without the spiritual guidance of a proper teacher".

On a related note, Yusman Roy (a muslim preacher in Indonesia) got jailed after "praying" (worshipping) in Indonesian. Yusman Roy thought it was only right that people should understand what he was saying.

http://indonesianow.blogspot.com/2006/11/yusman-roy.html

$0.0002 is 1/50th of a cent, not 1/5000th

There are plenty of places on the web for anyone that wants to be better informed about what is happening in Iraq. Just for starters...

Multi-National Force - Iraq website.
          Today's top stories:
          Iraqis Displaced from Homes Now Returning in Droves
          Soccer Stadium Opens with Tourney
          Mahmudiyah Hatchery Receives First Egg Shipment
          Soldiers Distribute Fertilizer to Farmers

The Long War Journal
Michael Totten's web site
Michael Yon's web site (He has just published a new book: Moment of Truth in Iraq )

Some Iraqi bloggers:
Iraq Pundit
Iraq the Model

Some useful news of the war does slip through:
Al Qaeda chief slams Muslims for lack of support
Iraq: After the bombs, the tomatoes
Violence Leaves Young Iraqis Doubting Clerics

There are plenty of places on the web for anyone that wants to be better informed about what is happening in Iraq. Just for starters...

Multi-National Force - Iraq website.
          Today's top stories:
          Iraqis Displaced from Homes Now Returning in Droves
          Soccer Stadium Opens with Tourney
          Mahmudiyah Hatchery Receives First Egg Shipment
          Soldiers Distribute Fertilizer to Farmers

The Long War Journal
Michael Totten's web site
Michael Yon's web site (He has just published a new book: Moment of Truth in Iraq )

Some Iraqi bloggers:
Iraq Pundit
Iraq the Model

Some useful news of the war does slip through:
Al Qaeda chief slams Muslims for lack of support
Iraq: After the bombs, the tomatoes
Violence Leaves Young Iraqis Doubting Clerics

Essentially, it only works on fats and oils, not carbohydrates or cellulose, and the yields are considerably lower than they claimed.