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Well yes I do know about the "rich Jewish archaeological history of Jewish civilization" do you? have you read Ilan Pappe?

http://www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/mqumsiyeh2.htm

And read this:

http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/node/1494

It is almost certain that many of the Palestinians are descendants of the (Jewish) occupants of
Palestine in the 1st century of the modern era who converted to Islam.
Do you know about Palestinian culture or do you believe that Palestine was a "land without people for a people without land"?

The Jews are not a race - they are a religious group.
There is a human race - I believe that there is no reasonable definition of "race" that accords the term to Jews - or to Arabs for that matter.

Am I the only one who thinks she was, you know, kinda hot? Pre-Chino, I mean.

Am I the only one who thinks she was, you know, kinda hot? Pre-Chino, I mean.

Don't you think that the U.S. should protect the only multiethnic, multifaith, and fully participatory democracy in the region ...

Gibson's Disneyland with the Death Penalty was about Singapore, not Indonesia.

Indonesia has the death penalty, but it is much larger than Disneyland and not at all as clean.

Disclaimer: this post is seriously off-topic, but at least it aims to be informative. :)

I wrote it a long time ago and haven't looked at it since but have a look at

http://www.locofungus.btinternet.co.uk/calc/

Javascript based calculator that will convert from ATM bandwidth to Application bandwidth for a PPPoATM connection.

Has the constants predefined.

Allows you to decrease the MTU and see the benefit

Tim.

Actually there were plenty of 'all time' boneheaded ideas, not just those *obsoleted* by modern technology. Another one, of the zillions, I remember was a car with headlights that move when you turn the steering wheel.

Although pioneered by Citroen in the late 1960s with the DS, it is making a comeback. A quick google brought up a Lexus that has them, while I think even Ford (at least in Europe) is toying with the idea.


Bubble memory

Not exactly. The APTIS ticket issuing system (featuring 1Mb bubble memory), introduced 1982, is still in use today in many UK stations. So not exactly "obsoleted" technology. Just Old. Very Old.

This doesn't even make sense. "Brother" as used in that paragraph is clearly used as an indefinite noun meaning "others." Remember, what you are reading is a translation. Arabic has male and female genders in the language, unlike, for the most part, English so no Arab would call a female Muslim his "brother."

http://www.macroknow.com/books/philosophy/religion .htm This table is good as well. Compare the religions and see how much Islam sticks out. Bias perhaps, but anyone is welcome to give me better quotes.

I'm not even sure what this table is supposed to be comparing. Between Judaism and Islam it appears to be comparing a translation of the opening versus of the Bible and the Qur'an. Especially with no context given, that's kind of a mindless exercise. It's like comparing the opening paragraphs of Moby Dick and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Agreed. Look at, for example:

http://www.john.lerwill.btinternet.co.uk/spirit/al laresame.htm

And see if you can spot the odd one out. A quick hint - "brother" is defined as a male (or female) _muslim_. I have asked many Muslims to double check this as best I can.

http://www.macroknow.com/books/philosophy/religion .htm
This table is good as well. Compare the religions and see how much Islam sticks out. Bias perhaps, but anyone is welcome to give me better quotes.

When you put it that way, eugenics sounds just peachy. I suppose all these people bred "crap" genes into humankind?

Bullshit. There is no such thing as "legitimate spam". Now maybe it's the same as junk mail, but sure as hell not as normal advertising.

Normal advertising works in that it pays for some service provided to me.....

Which normal advertising? Does the kiNe tick pay for peoples footwear, help keep people working in third world countries in well payed jubs with good working conditions or does it go into the pockets of the kiNe coporation?

What about product placement in films, do all those shots of krapples pay for the file? my every so comfey seat, less DRM on films or joe blogs £50 Million pay packet for playing the lead role?

And most billboards I've seen have nothing to do with helping out the community and everything to do with putting money into the pocket of one person/company.

etc.....
You've completely narrowed down your perspective on advertising to the point where you cannot see that other forms of advertising are often just as intrusive, offensive etc... as spamm, so why only target spam and not all forms of unsolicited advertising?

Unfortunately, advances in tiny lens quality will be undone by advances in CCD chip size (which is to say, shrinking). A lot of digital cameras are already deficient because of the tiny size of the sensor.

Further reading:
http://www.photo.net/equipment/digital/sensorsize/
http://www.digicaminfo.btinternet.co.uk/sensors1.h tm

Bigger is better when it comes to CCDs.

And that's to say nothing of the limitations imposed by a small aperture.

It's not an obvious technique, and it's almost certainly unique and novel.

It's very obvious.

You want to abstract/summarise a non-computer information source automatically using a computer - an obvious task for automation. You've got sound and you've got video. With the current state of the art the computer is not intelligent enough to interpret this information source directly.

What else is the computer going to do except look for loud noises and possibly contrasting lights? Sure, you could come up with Heath Robinson nonsense variations but loud noises are by far the most obvious approach.

With the stroke of a pen the USPTO has now blocked any realistic competition in yet another area for decades to come, retarding the state of the art.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

Damn. I knew the twelve signs of the end of the world were missing something.

Ebay is your friend.

Also consider going with PICs, Basic Stamp, SitePlayer (a webserver on a chip), the BugBook books and hardware, 8085-based systems, or some other simplistic frameworks.

A year or so ago, I was lamenting how complicated (and unapproachable) systems had gotten, and a friend proved me wrong when he pointed toward some similar set of suggestions. There are a zillion interesting ways to learn practical/basic digital electronics now, rather than fewer. And the results can be delightfully cheap: simple atmel pic's sell for a buck or 2, can be programmed by some funny homebrew parallel/serial port interfaces that are equally cheap, etc.

And then there's USB, digital A/V, etc.

Depending on what aspect of pc design (memory, buffering, hardware I/O, signals/timing, computation, real-time circuits, homebrew SCADA, animatronic/smart toys, robotics, or whatever), you can either go retro using modern equivalents to old hardware or do enough to learn concepts and then fast-forward to the newer tools.

Timeline of capital punishment in the UK. Includes cattle stealing and arson. Britain had public hangings until 1868. Coining wasn't classified a non-capital crime until the 1830s.

Possible, but just as likely homage to that British fellow William Heath Robinson who did the same sort of cartoons as well as many other types including fantasy art etc. Examples of his mad machines used to be found here but most of the images had to be taken down because of a breach of current copyright. A rather odd idea considering that these mostly date back to the 1910's-1930's.

There are still a few perhaps more recent examples viewable via the wayback machine eg. here and here and here.

Sorry, charlie. A benevolent God wouldn't have let 150,000 people die in a tsunami. "understanding god's plan" or not, no greater good can come out of that evil. Or was he just punishing the wicked? You know, the thousands and thousands of poor people? Yeah, real merciful. Have fun not being part of the 144k that get brought up to heaven. I mean, you're probably a great christian, but really, are you in the top 144k? You _do_ have to compete with Mother Theresa (who, in all seriousness, did remarkable things in God's name). What? 144k is just a number mistranslated? Then what else might be mistranslated? THE WHOLE BOOK?!

I think its sad you are spending all your pre-worm food time believing something is waiting for you after you close your eyes that final time. Cheerio!

The man killer.

We can always use them for cat skeet shooting.

It's tough to get a feel for what Unity was all about, but as they say, a screenshot is worth a thousand words (scroll down). There's also a bit on VLM3, which they say predated the Unity project.

I still remember reading about (I believe it was) Attack of the Mutant Camels in Antic/Angalog magazine during the early '80s. Unity's cancellation may be disappointing, but the fact that Jeff Minter is still involved in the industry after 20 years is, IMO, nothing put a positive.
___________________________________
Inago Rage - Create and Fight

In Durlston Country Park, Dorset, England there is a big stone globe. Sadly, I don't remember it being oriented in the way you are describing, but if someone was to make a similar sculpture oriented in the right direction it would probably last quite a while.

1. Acquire Citroen DS. Cheap!
   
2. Shoehorn in extra wheels and electric motor.
   
3. ???
   
4. Profit!
   

There's only one thing that dog should be able to do, and as far as I can tell, that's been covered already.

That's right, Rolfie. Come to papa with his brandy.

The Christians have done nothing wrong in this country, especially nothing illegal, therefore there is no reason to be put in jail.

Yeah I geuss state sanctioned murder is not illegal... But then again, those nutty christians are mostly harmless.

Remember, fanaticism in any sense means the trampling of anothers rights

Maybe he was too busy working on Land of the Lost? :^) (That show had quite an array of writers but ad-hoc changes were common.)

Hmmm, if suing is educational, then hanging, drawing and quartering would be the equivalent of a college degree.

For symbolism, the cutting of the "privy parts" should be done with the sharpened edge of a CD.

P.

Again there have been attempts to prove the existance of these particles, mainly involving mine shafts and a lot of water, and again there have been no conclusive results.

This sounded too interesting to not look up:
Mine Shafts and a lot of water
Organization running experiment

If you're interested in such statistics, you might be interested in the Broad Universe statistics page.

Regarding a couple of the women whose names you didn't recognize:

Nancy Kress is probably the best-known woman on the Locus SF novels list; she came to prominence with the Hugo-winning and Nebula-winning novella (later turned into a novel) "Beggars in Spain" in 1991, and has continued to write good stories and novels (and to win awards) ever since. She's more recently best-known for the Probability Moon, Probability Sun, Probability Space trilogy.

Liz Williams is a novelist becoming well-known in the UK but not so well-known in the US. For a sample of her work, you could read her short story "Century to Starboard," which we just published at Strange Horizons (if I may be forgiven a small plug).

FYI, that picture is a computer rendering of Mars, "created using Bryce and MOLA topographic data from NASA" (info here). Which is not to take anything away from it, because it's a stunning image, but let's not try to pass it off as a real photographic image.

--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

A high-res color picture can be found here

Um. Not an expert in this stuff but awhile back I read an interesting book on the history of dark age England and they mentioned that the Venerable Bede (8th century) and the earlier Gildas (6th century) who lived shortly after the events described how Vortigern allowed the Germanic Englisci into Britain as mercenaries and how a war then ensued between them and the Britons. The writers state that the Britons (really the Romanised inhabitants left high and dry after Rome fell) were pushed back but that a leader arose called Arturus who fought successfully but was finally defeated by internal intrigue. Bede went on and on about how the plotters screwed Britain. Sounds like a model for Camelot. I don't know how accurate this all was, the book was pretty scholarly describing in detail the spread of things like buckle designs of Germanic origin at the time etc. Pretty interesting though showing a very different view of the "Dark Ages".

Google around for vortigern bede gildas arthur and you'll see plenty of stuff. For example.

One little quote on that page (which is later but Bede mentions Arthur too):

"The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and the Britons were the victors."

The Question: Can those managers be charged with manslaughter now?

Says Bladernr:

"Probably not. If you could prove their behavoir was malicious, instead of merely stupid or calous, then maybe. People performing in their legal line of work are generally protected"

I'm not to sure about that. I know it doesn't apply, but the law in Oregon is:

163.145 Criminally negligent homicide. (1) A person commits the crime of criminally negligent homicide when, with criminal negligence, the person causes the death of another person. (2) Criminally negligent homicide is a Class C felony. [1971 c.743 91]

To me, if it is as simple as the managers telling the engineers who should know to go away, then it is criminal negligence. The guy I called at the county law library said that, in court, "criminal negligence" doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as it does on the street.

Futher, (10) "Criminal negligence" or "criminally negligent," when used with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense, means that a person fails to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur or that the circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that the failure to be aware of it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the situation. [1971 c.743 7; 1973 c.139 .] This foaming mass comes from Chapter 161 of the ORS, so I don't know if it applies to the laws in Chapter 163, the chapter that defines criminally negligent homicide.

According to Lawinfo, "Negligence is always assessed having regards to the circumstances and to the standard of care which would reasonably be expected of a person in similar circumstances. " Futher from Lawinfo, "Gross negligence is 'Any action or an omission in reckless disregard of the consequences to the safety or property of another.

In view of this, I'd say that being a calous moron could get you in trouble.

Making something perfectly safe or as safe as it can be made is not always sensible. People take unnecessary risks all the time for money and thrills, including astronauts. Insisting on perfect safety would be insanely expensive and boring.

But, speaking personally, If someone didn't do something that they could have, just to save a tiny fraction of the total project cost or to save face, I would want heads to roll. I mean that literally.

Whatever else happens, we must be careful not to make managing inherantly risky endeavors like space travel so risky that good people will back off. I really don't know where that line should be drawn.

I'm guessing that these turkeys won't be charged with anything. Even if they do get fired they will probably be able to get another management job.

I do know one thing for sure. If I don't get on with my day I will miss the laundry-mat and then I'll be charged with criminally negligent stinkiness for sure. Besides, all this law stuff making my head hurt.

But the most anoying is probably the Darth Vader helmet. How is it possible to live with such a helmet? How does he breath? And there is now data about how they in the future have soved the problem with steam from the mouth.

Z-Code, along with TADS and a couple other formats, is still used by enthusiasts today via the Inform compiler.

Check out some of the five-star games at Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive if you're curious! A few of these are at least as good as Infocom's best efforts.

Palm VNC client and TopGun SSH are a bit of a strain on the phone's CPU, but still usable -- even over a dialup connection. It comes in handy if I need to access my servers when I'm away from my desk.

In the UK the machines must pay out a certain amount (78% IIRC) but this can be averaged over a period of time. "Streaks" can be programmed in which the machine will pay out a lot of money in a short period. There is a lot of information at this site.

Gareth

Check out Embedded Linux/Microcontoller project I've never tried it personally, but looks promissing. Don't know about support for the older platforms you're talking about though. Gives you somewhere to start though.

Some very usefull tools that I've used on newer Palm devices with net connectivity:
Top Gun SSH - Works pretty good for remote shell access.
PalmVNC - Decent VNC implementation for the Palm.

Not *nix on the Palm, but gives you good access to remote systems.

READ THIS COMIC NOW!!!
Comic.gif

What frequency range?

The price is something like $20, including transformer, PIC16F628 Microcontroller, FTDI serial to USB chip, etc. The problem is the clock chip. Places like radio shack etc aren't likely to have them.

The hardest part is learning PIC assembly. PIC's are weird devices, having an accumalator style, havard archecture. Take a look here for a good tutorial on PICs.

The Handspring Treo has software for IM'ing. VeriChat works on AOL, ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger.

Not only that, but I can use it away from my home. I recently went to the beach and had a great internet connection for chatting with friends & co-workers. You can find info about VeriChat on InfoSync or at VeriChat's web page. It is a solution that is much better than a dedicated device and offers much more, such as web surfing and email as well as any other Palm OS application you may need (such as VNC!)

see here before modding as Troll.

Damned lameness filter always ruinging a good joke.

I sure could.

However, I'm not sure about other people. Looks like you need a good-quality (Tosh/Plextor/Pioneer) type CD drive to work around this BS copy protection. Fantastic.

AFAIK, EMI UK aren't using the Cactus "protection" yet (the official UK 100th Window wasn't), so there is still some hope. I am therefore no longer buying CDs from copy-protected labels using online importers; it's causing me an extra expense, but for less hassle in the end. Of course, my rip was entirely for "fair use" reasons (playing the CD on my computer), and we don't have a DMCA in Britain (yet), so there is still hope.

In answer to the people who suggest (electro)magnets, a design to do just this was published long ago, before the 1993 archive start, in dead tree Scientific American. Assuming the pendulum weight is cast iron, it is perfectly practical to use a magnet. As I remember it, the magnet goes on the dead center line below the pendulum bob. Depending on where in the cycle it is turned on briefly, it will accelerate or decelerate the pendulum very slightly. I guess with some clocks if you made the magnet big enough, it could be used to decelerate the pendulum very slowly to a complete stop allowing the Daylight Saving adjustment, and the use of a second magnet to one side could then enable a restart. Potentially less invasive than an arm that prods the pendulum, which seems extremely Heath Robinson or Wallace and Gromit to me.

But when it comes to making an Operating System or even choosing one for their schools, they simply turn to America and say, "Give us Microsoft". Amazing.

It was not always the way. After all, business computing began here with the Lyons Electronic Office, and in the 80's schools used the BBC Micro, developed by Acorn in Cambridge.

The rot didn't set in until the 90s, and a once thriving British computer industry went down the pan. For shame.

I blame the government. It doesn't help when we have a PM keen to lick arse, whether that arse be Bill Gates' or Dubya Bush's.

curvy sorry for the guest

curvy (arguably)

curvy

NOT curvy (IMO, yours may vary - more power if they do).

Will you ignore the fact that radiometric dating frequently produces different answers for one set of samples, and that the "correct" date is then selected?

Experimental error happens. Indeed, creationists go to great lengths to find examples of such:

The data is taken from a creationist publication that mined the literature for examples of bad dates - yet they STILL average out to being correct!

Will you ignore the fact that the most widely accepted model of continental drift now in favor is one put forward by a creationist, as his computer model explains things that nothing else does?

What, this one?

You do realise that this model implies that the entire ocean floor was created in a year? Given that the oceanic crust is 6km thick and covers 53% of the planet, this implies that the entire ocean was boiled off. This model is not 'widely accepted', it is wrong.

You have, of course, still failed to answer with regard to the thermal gradients and cooling in the oceans, why all the different radiometric techniques give the same age, and why the ages agree with those given by continental drift extrapolation. Hell, I even have to post your arguments or you!

The question is not my open-mindedness - I'm fully prepared to take creationist arguments on their merits. You are the one dismissing science without even learning about it first. THAT is closed mindedness and you know it.

You'll have to excuse me, I was shooting from the hip and didn't realize that I had made a mistake in my original discussion.

I originally said, "When you bend metal you tend to form more grains in it, due to the movement breaking up existing grains and splitting them into smaller pieces. The increase in grains causes the metal to weaken, even if it is a small amount every time."

This is not exactly true, it had been a while since I studied metallurgy and I didn't have any reference texts to consult. To clarify, the reason the metal weakens is not that the number of grains is increasing and making the material more ductile (easily bendable), but that the dislocations (areas of stress in the metal matrix) and impurities are getting moved to the edge of the grains and are collecting together. This means that less of the metal has flaws distorting its structure and is therefore harder. Since it is harder it is now less flexible and more brittle. This causes micro cracks to form during the bending. Eventually these cracks lengthen and the metal fails.

Work hardening occurs when the metal is plasticly deformed. These deformations cause impurities and other strains to gather together and less distort the structure of the metal. Since more of the metal is ordered, it is harder than it was originally.

One thing you should know is that metallurgy is very complex. There are many factors which enter into the equation, such as grain size, alloys, impurities, many different phases (crystal structures) of the metal, etc. Often simply how the metal is composed, heated, cooled, worked can vastly change its properties.

Here are some sites to study more about metallurgy:

PLANT MATERIAL PROBLEMS - a site on metal failure

Metallurgical Terms Made Simple - a site on the basics of steel metallurgy

The Metallurgy Of Carbon Steel - a more in-depth analysis of steel metallurgy

You all forgot apples newest-soon-to-be-released product: The iToiletI already pre-ordered mine, along w/some fiber. This thing looks so swweeeeeeeeeeeet!

You all forgot apples newest-soon-to-be-released product: The iToilet I already pre-ordered mine, along w/some fiber, and a copy of war and peace!