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Given that the test included only two operating systems and the other one (MAC-OS) beat Vista this is hardly a result to be proud of. Its a bit like saying you compared a Tata Nano, a Volkwagen Golf and a load of other forms of transport for motorway cruising (push-bikes, wheelbarrows, etc) and the Tata Namo came in the top 3.

OpenDNS Basic is ranked at 22 of the 26 solutions that were tested, scoring below average on all four categories: Functionality, Effectiveness, Usability and Security. The list is available here.

Interestingly, Mac OS X ranked as the best solution, scoring better than all the tested purpose-built options.

Very interesting area. Before people start saying that parents need to take control themselves (instead of letting software do their job for them), I as a parent of a seven year old believe I should do both. Be around to help, as well as give my daughter freedom and independence. She's not daft, but there is always the chance (especially on flash-games type sites) for interesting popups to... diversify her web and life experience. I use k9 filtering to help avoid this sort of thing. Wow, this almost sounds like a customer testimonial, sorry....

Anway, the article sadly has a duff link in it. The report's *really* at:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sip/projects/filter_label/sip_bench2/index_en.htm

The full report PDF is:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sip/docs/sip_bench2_results/report_jan11.pdf

See also:
http://www.yprt.eu/sip/

Very interesting area. Before people start saying that parents need to take control themselves (instead of letting software do their job for them), I as a parent of a seven year old believe I should do both. Be around to help, as well as give my daughter freedom and independence. She's not daft, but there is always the chance (especially on flash-games type sites) for interesting popups to... diversify her web and life experience. I use k9 filtering to help avoid this sort of thing. Wow, this almost sounds like a customer testimonial, sorry....

Anway, the article sadly has a duff link in it. The report's *really* at:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sip/projects/filter_label/sip_bench2/index_en.htm

The full report PDF is:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sip/docs/sip_bench2_results/report_jan11.pdf

See also:
http://www.yprt.eu/sip/

Wouldn't it be ironic if Iron Neelie were to slam facebook for privacy abuses when she herself has a facebook page?

If she were to delete her profile in response to this it might be a good gesture. She has been pushing online privacy strongly, and facebook almost certainly doesn't comply to EU-US safe harbour privacy principles.

I know this agreement is voluntary and not monitored until after the fact but EU citizen have contrary to their US brethren far more privacy protection.

Would these third parties misuse the gained information on EU citizen this could bring them grief, the ex-competition officer has a few months ago taken on the responsibility of the digital agenda.

Shouldn't Apple be using micro-USB soon anyway? They "voluntarily" agreed along with other major manufacters [sic]

Yep, and an adapter is a valid method of providing the micro-USB interface.

From the first page, footnote 2 on the linked PDF:

In case a mobile phone does not have this connector integrated in the device, an Adaptor may be available to ensure compatibility. An "Adaptor" is defined as a device with a Micro-USB receptacle/plug connecting to a specific non Micro-USB connector. An Adaptor can also be a detachable cable.

This means that Apple can continue to use the Dock Connector and just provide a Dock Connector to micro-USB cable or adapter.

I know the European governments in question are in fact working hard to stop exactly the crimes you described. I don't know what "governments" you had in mind.

The European Union, EUROPOL and national police forces collaborate, and have shut down several such criminal networks each year. They have a permanent task force, CIRCAMP, dedicated to this.

In 2010 the European Union even updated and increased the powers of the police to respond to online grooming, the absence of positive identification of child victims, criminalizing offences committed abroad, protecting victims by giving them further legal protections and creating prevention programmes for past offenders.

I remember learning in school that the only effective way to stop the production and distribution [of drugs] was to target the market.

If you attack the producers, someone will replace them soon enough. However if you remove the market, reducing the demand, production and profits will naturally stop.

Of course that doesn't mean it won't still happen, but at least there won't be "inspiration" available.

The info FB has collected on EU citizens may be valuable to marketers, however they won't get their hands on it. Thus the value of it to FB's bottom line is very nearly zero.

Basically FB and similar huge online sites collecting personal info, like Amazon and eBay, would run afoul of EU's Data protection Directive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive if they start sharing their databases with third parties. FB has specifically been told by the EU that they, FB, will be blocked in most EU member states at the firewall level if they do this.

The background is that the data FB is likely to have, in many cases will include particularly sensitive information relating to gender, sexuality, political observation and more. This type of data are especially sensitive in the view of EU law and subject to extremely strict restrictions on how it can be used and shared. In particular some kind of click-through EULA absolutely isn't sufficient to consider the user to have given consent to sharing of data. Please see this page for more info: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/privacy/index_en.htm

Also check the last paragraph in the section marked 'Scope' if you wish to argue that FB isn't based in the EU. The short answer is that - as far as EU law is concerned - this doesn't matter. The service provider, FB in this case, will by definition need to use electronic equipment, IE. networking equipment, inside the EU to reach their users.

So now you know why the info collected by, say, eBay isn't already used for marketing purposes by third parties.

All this was made clear to FB in no uncertain terms not too long ago, and may be one reason why people try to cash in on FB. Once the market realizes the collected EU info is worthless, then things may change a bit on the valuation front...

It should be pretty obvious to anyone that you can't have a democracy when the media is controlled by the person in power. It's also quite well documented on how the media in the countries I've listed has been taken over by the government or their freedom otherwise suppressed.

This is from just a quick Google search. The concept of freedom of the press and democracy goes back to the founding of the United States where the press is often referred to as the 4th branch of government or the 4th pillar of democracy. One needs a free press in order to expose corruption and provide an informed electorate which is vital for a healthy democracy.

It's well known among journalists in Russia that reporting on certain things is a good way to end up dead. In Venezuela almost all (if not all by now) of the major TV stations have been taken over by the government and spew pro Chavez propaganda without providing an outlet for the opposition.

http://www.un.org/democracyfund/XNewsSGFreePress.htm
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/21452
http://www.america.gov/st/democracyhr-english/2008/June/20080630215145eaifas0.6333842.html
http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/news/press-freedom-pillar-democracy-mzilikazi-wa-afrika
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51587-2005Feb24.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7321168.stm
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100430/158814432.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,443543,00.html
http://www.advancingafreesociety.org/2010/12/14/russian-style/
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/fd/droi20071001_russia_004/droi20071001_russia_004en.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_Russia

ANd the link to to the MoU that was incorrect in my previous post.

Yes, it's computationally expensive, but if you have the hardware to throw at it - just do it.

Half of the point is that they don't have the hardware to throw at it.

The European Commission has a lot of funded research going on and the red line is pretty much "If you aim for the stars you may reach the sky" oslt.
All of those projects have a "visionary" goal that is very close to things you read in sience fiction and pretty much no-one involved beleives that you will reach that goal.
The idea is that when you reach for that vision you will create new technology and find new methods that will benefit humanity in other ways.
Take for example a look at CERN. While the LHC is created to look for the Higgs boson the building of it required a lot of research in data management and superconductors.

Even if they never get as far as getting the simulation running they will probably improve a lot on current models on the way.

The simulation is a European project, part of the FuturICT-programme, a part of the European Union research framework programme.

It intends to unify hundreds of the best scientists in Europe in a 10 year 1 billion EUR program to explore social life on earth and everything it relates to. The FuturICT flagship will produce historic breakthroughs and provide powerful new ways to manage challenges that make the modern world so difficult to predict, including the financial crisis.

The FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator is a previously unseen multidisciplinary international scientific endeavour with focus on techno-socio-economic-environmental systems. The three main achievements of the FuturICT flagship will be the establishment of
- a Living Earth Simulator (global-scale simulation of techno-socio-economic systems),
- Crisis Observatories (for financial instabilities, scarcity of resources, emerging risks and conflicts, epidemics, etc.), and
- an Innovation Accelerator (identifying innovations early on, evaluating them across disciplines and supporting co-creation projects between different scientific disciplines, business, and governance).

Paypal is basically discriminating against an entity/person based in European Union, based on political pressure in united states.

United states, is not in european union.

Petition european parliament at the below url via their online form, or, mail your petition to the address below and ask European Parliament look into the practices of Paypal in european union, and take action against their holdings in Eu, if they are found in violation. If they are to do business in European union, they have to abide by its rules and regulations.

https://www.secure.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/public/petition/secured/submit.do?language=EN

Committee on Petitions
The Secretariat
Rue Wiertz
B-1047 Brussels

Freedom of information, or unfair business practices, or anything. tell them, these are happening just because of political pressure in a country that this service is based in. this service is caving to that pressure, affecting the freedom of people that are living in eu.

if they want to do business in eu, they have to abide by eu regulations.

you can file your petition here :

https://www.secure.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/public/petition/secured/submit.do?language=EN

From the current evidence, it is believed that a moderate consumption of soy foods (eg 1-2 serves of soy foods/day) along with an overall healthy eating plan is unlikely to have adverse effects. This is consistent with Cancer Council's recommendations and dietary guidelines to eat a diet rich in plant foods.

From here.

Meanwhile.. cow milk and meat are both considered to be a major risk to hormone imbalance, especially in children. In fact, American beef is not allowed for import in the EU for precisely this reason.

The official EPO release: link

The EU Commission policy that started it all: link

What do you want to bet that serious and well-planned out crimes won't include:

Goldman Sachs UK (where to start)
Paypal UK (seizure of users' money without refund)
Microsoft UK (organized monopoly abuse)
Intel UK (organized monopoly abuse)
and anyone else who's a paymaster?

There are other organisations for that, such as the Competition Commission. Though organisations of that size are more likely to be referred to the EU Competition Commission, who have (very widely reported) successful antitrust cases against Microsoft and Intel in the last few years.

SOCA on the other hand is more like the US Drug Enforcement Agency, a largely intelligence-led agency dealing with mainly criminal gangs - particularily "class A drugs, people smuggling and human trafficking, major gun crime, fraud, computer crime and money laundering", usually teaming up with other specialised agencies. For example, if you make a formal report under the anti-money laundering regulations it goes to SOCA, who make initial investigations then often pass it on to a more specific agency. Since they deal with money laundering, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were round at Goldman Sachs and especially Paypal quite often, albeit investigating customers rather than the company.

Even 2-3 minutes sounds very long, at least in Finland according to this page: 112 in Finland.

If I am unable to tell the 112 operator where I am, will the emergency services be able to locate me? If so, how quickly?
  * Yes, immediately for mobile calls and from 2 to 10 seconds for fixed calls.

The EU government thinks otherwise
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/112/index_en.htm

The system known as ECHELON is an interception system which differs from other intelligence systems in that it possesses two features which make it quite unusual:

The first such feature attributed to it is the capacity to carry out quasi-total surveillance. Satellite receiver stations and spy satellites in particular are alleged to give it the ability to intercept any telephone, fax, Internet or e-mail message sent by any individual and thus to inspect its contents.

The second unusual feature of ECHELON is said to be that the system operates worldwide on the basis of cooperation proportionate to their capabilities among several states (the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), giving it an added value in comparison to national systems: the states participating in ECHELON (UKUSA states) can place their interception systems at each otherís disposal, share the cost and make joint use of the resulting information.

This quote is from this publicly available EU report from 2001. The document further explains how sigint has become easier since the internet age, since all information passes trough a small amount of central nodes. They also recommend encrypting all sensitive information (especially data that can be abused in industrial espionage, because apparently that has become the #1 use of the system since the cold war was over). Cited examples include the 6 billion deal with Saudi Arabia (that went to McDonnel-Douglas instead of Airbus after the NSA released intercepted communications indicating bribes) and the Wobben wind wheel design that the NSA stole and Enercon patented before the inventor could.

Echelon exists today, but it's role changed a lot since the cold war. It's good indicator of govenment priorities.

It's the safety aspect that will stop this ever being a problem, realistically.

You can't land an unsafe plane in Europe. They won't let you:

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/air-ban/list_en.htm

Don't be amazed when Boeing and Airbus lobby the shit out of the EU to declare all Chinese-made aircraft unsafe. Problem solved.

It's basic game theory. If you can make a profit out of something that will kill you, you might as well.

The game theory is indeed simple - it's better to have 20% of a billion person market than 0%. The commercial airplane industry is largely dominated by Boeing and Airbus - two Western companies that have both received substantial state support The market for jet engines is dominated by Rolls-Royce. Given how interested Western nations are in having their own commercial aircraft manufacturing capability, it is no surprise that China also wants one.

This will not kill Boeing or Airbus. Unlike cheap crap that people buy off ebay, the commercial airplane market in the West is quite image sensitive and financially and managerially cautious. They are not going to switch fleets to cheaper Chinese aircraft just to save a few dollars. Consider that Rolls-Royce jet engines are the standard in commercial aviation, and they certainly aren't the cheapest, but everyone still pays up - because any airline that switched in order to save a few dollars would be crucified if the new aircraft crashed.

Find it here.

I like it (much more than the other one) for its bleakness and because it leaves the details up to your imagination. I think the protagonist is experiencing humanity having destroyed itself, but he might of course be mistaken. I always thought of a parallel to the first nuclear explosion lighting the atmosphere on fire, or to the case if we had used bromoflourocarbons in stead of chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) (by the time we would have noticed something being wrong, we would have released enough to eat away the entire ozone layer, the only thing that saved us was the price of bromine compared to chlorine). We have done incredibly stupid things where we should have known better (see Late lessons from early warnings: the precautionary principle 1896-2000)

2. No data revealing the content of the communication may be retained pursuant to this Directive.

To be fair, it is not like the US government is not also involved in corporate espionage:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do;jsessionid=392426F8AEF3E495934CBA3FB0007F30.node1?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+NOT+XML+V0//EN&language=EN

Just looked up the EU rules for distance selling.

Below a certain threshold you charge the VAT rate of your home country. If you are selling above that threshol, which varies from country to country, ( http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/resources/documents/taxation/vat/traders/vat_community/vat_in_ec_annexi.pdf - again its typically of the order of $100k) then you need to register in the destination country.

Seems like something similar would work well in the US, smaller business just pay tax to their home state, Big ones get the paperwork.

Member States shall adopt measures to ensure that the data specified in Article 5 of this Directive are retained in accordance with the provisions thereof, to the extent that those data are generated or processed by providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of a public communications network within their jurisdiction in the process of supplying the communications services concerned.

Article 5
Categories of data to be retained
(2) concerning Internet access, Internet e-mail and Internet telephony

Further, the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 in the UK facilitated the state's power to do just that.

So I'm just wondering what the difference being proposed is? If the proposal headling is sensational then surely the responce to it is to given the existance of legislation already? Is it the real-time tracking thats at issue? The Telegraph article only included

We will introduce a programme to preserve the ability of the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to obtain communication data and to intercept communications within the appropriate legal framework.

Screw this voluntary self-regulation slap-on-the-wrist-at-worst bullshit.

What we really need is legal backing for the right of self-determination over personal data.

EU has been impressing me lately.

Two things to correct you on that. This isn't the EU; this is the European Parliament - the only democratically-elected part of the EU bureaucracy. The declaration is actually complaining about the work the EU's own negotiators (from the "appointed by ministers of the member states" European Commission) are doing on ACTA.

Secondly, sometimes the EP gets things right, sometimes it gets them very wrong. If you look at the list of adopted written declarations you will see that the most recent one they have is about adopting an early warning system for paedophiles and sex offenders that consists of extending the data retention directive to search engines; meaning that everything entered in any search engine in the EU would be logged and potentially handed straight over to police etc. so they can see if you searched for anything that *might* indicate you were a paedophile or sex offender.

Sure, this is a victory against ACTA but it doesn't mean that the EU is perfect. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

EU has been impressing me lately.

Two things to correct you on that. This isn't the EU; this is the European Parliament - the only democratically-elected part of the EU bureaucracy. The declaration is actually complaining about the work the EU's own negotiators (from the "appointed by ministers of the member states" European Commission) are doing on ACTA.

Secondly, sometimes the EP gets things right, sometimes it gets them very wrong. If you look at the list of adopted written declarations you will see that the most recent one they have is about adopting an early warning system for paedophiles and sex offenders that consists of extending the data retention directive to search engines; meaning that everything entered in any search engine in the EU would be logged and potentially handed straight over to police etc. so they can see if you searched for anything that *might* indicate you were a paedophile or sex offender.

Sure, this is a victory against ACTA but it doesn't mean that the EU is perfect. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

laquadrature is not the EU Parliament. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/focus_page/008-80686-195-07-29-901-20100714FCS78876-14-07-2010-2010/default_p001c001_en.htm mentions there will be talk on Wednesday but nothing more.

Try this and search for ACTA in the title. The document in question is here (pdf). Note that the status is ONGOING but that tomorow is the lapse date.

Try this and search for ACTA in the title. The document in question is here (pdf). Note that the status is ONGOING but that tomorow is the lapse date.

This is just the implementation of Directive 95/46/EC. Over here in Portugal we have that kind of protection the constitution itself.

But that estimate should be the lowest typical, or even the average under typical conditions.[...] When I buy a pack of tomatoes advertised as 600g, I should expect to receive at least 600g of tomato.

In the EU, your worst case is 585g of tomatoes, but more statistics than I'm familiar with means you'll probably get 600g.

(See the formulae in the relevant law -- last two pages.)

"As regards the criterion for the mean calculated by the standard deviation method, a sampling plan used by a Member State shall be regarded as comparable with that recommended in Annex II if, taking into account the operating characteristic curves of the two plans having as the abscissa axis (Qn - m)/s the abscissa of the 0.10 ordinate point of the curve of the first plan (acceptance probability of the batch = 0.10) deviates by less than 0.05 from the abscissa of the corresponding point of the curve of the sampling plan recommended in Annex II.". Um... what?

Sorry, I was wrong about members of the Pirate Party being in Swedish parliament (yet). They might be after the coming elections though.

The fact that you have never heard of Parliamentary immunity doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Page 18: https://ecprd.secure.europarl.europa.eu/ecprd/getfile.do;jsessionid=B15228329B1345DA4640405400F8E548?id=5062

And here is the reason why I mentioned this scenario: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/pirate-bay-soon-to-be-hosted-within-swedish-parliament.ars

Even after 15 years, illegally tying MSIE to Windows is still happening. This anti-competitive activity has hurt standards, hurt competition, hurt the economy and held back the net.

There is even a form to report ongoing anti-trust violations, there are so many.

If M$ executives and employees would have ditched MSIE if security or performance were an issue. Opera and even Safari are far and above superior, if closed source is an obligation. Keeping MSIE in place AND keeping pieces of it throughout the OS show that there is no intention of MSIE being there to benefit the end-user in anyway. If we add up the cost over 15 years of all the MSIE malware in one column we will have an astronomical sum. If we then total the combined costs of all Opera, Netscape, Cameleon, Safari, Firefox, Mozilla, and Konqueror malware in another column and subtract that total of non-MSIE costs from the MSIE costs, we will still have an astronomical sum. Based on quarterly malware damage, the sum is probably in the range of 100's to 10's of thousands of billions of dollars. The Apollo program to the moon itself only cost 25 billion and we got integrated circuits out of that. Even for the unrealistically low sum of 1 billion dollars, what kind of rocking Free Software distro, applications or infrastructure could have been created? Even building a full distro from scratch we could have a full kernel, drivers, utilities, desktop, services, and applications for less.

You can put a stop to this and advance technology, economy and security by not feeding the Windows monopoly any more market share. Tagging this one as "antitrust".

Even after 15 years, illegally tying MSIE to Windows is still happening. This anti-competitive activity has hurt standards, hurt competition, hurt the economy and held back the net.

There is even a form to report ongoing anti-trust violations, there are so many.

If M$ executives and employees would have ditched MSIE if security or performance were an issue. Opera and even Safari are far and above superior, if closed source is an obligation. Keeping MSIE in place AND keeping pieces of it throughout the OS show that there is no intention of MSIE being there to benefit the end-user in anyway. If we add up the cost over 15 years of all the MSIE malware in one column we will have an astronomical sum. If we then total the combined costs of all Opera, Netscape, Cameleon, Safari, Firefox, Mozilla, and Konqueror malware in another column and subtract that total of non-MSIE costs from the MSIE costs, we will still have an astronomical sum. Based on quarterly malware damage, the sum is probably in the range of 100's to 10's of thousands of billions of dollars. The Apollo program to the moon itself only cost 25 billion and we got integrated circuits out of that. Even for the unrealistically low sum of 1 billion dollars, what kind of rocking Free Software distro, applications or infrastructure could have been created? Even building a full distro from scratch we could have a full kernel, drivers, utilities, desktop, services, and applications for less.

You can put a stop to this and advance technology, economy and security by not feeding the Windows monopoly any more market share. Tagging this one as "antitrust".

Why would they leave themselves out of such game? (warning: pdf)

Probably Eurostat. I haven't checked.

Just so you know, first link, widely discredited. Bad methodology, cherrypicked data, and never once mentioned a scientific reason as to why GMOs would be dangerous (they never do). Second, I've heard of those, but never one endorsed by the scientific community, nor one that could point to a reasonable cause for the animals' behaviors. It would be a real surprise if animals could detect subtle genetic changes but would still eat everything else. Third, can't find the link right now, but I read that it is somewhere in the range of 1 out of 50,000 monarchs that would be affected by that pollen (given the range and spread and that sort of thing) even if we accept that report, which, again, I haven't heard overwhelming confirmation of, and keep in mind, even if we accept that, it is generally believed that Bt crops tend to increase nontarget insect biodiversity and reduce pesticide applications, so even if we accept the thing about the monarchs, it is a trade off situation, not a loss with no gain.

Genetic engineering is a very controversial area, don't be surprised if you read a lot bad science about it. I mean, there are dozens of studies 'proving' that homeopathy works, that doesn't mean it does. The general scientific consensus among biologists, botanists, horticulturists, zoologists, microbiologists, biochemists, geneticists, ect., is that they're safe and effective. Sure, there might be patent stuff to work out, but that doesn't effect the crops themselves, and there might even be environmental side effects (although, not using them could be worse), but it is generally beneficial.

Your last paragraph is way off though. Just because there is a dispute (largely between scientists and laymen, what should that tell you?) does not mean we should forgo them. There is an equally valid dispute over the safety and effectiveness of vaccination, and whether or not they cause autism, and pharma patents on them, and every now and again a bad batch makes minor headlines (or is used sensationally by bad or biased journalism); should we stop vaccinating too? Just because a small vocal group of scientifically illiterate cranks muddy the waters for people who don't closely follow the subject? There is a dispute, yes, but it is, by and large, a manufactured controversy, an ultimately popular debate but not a scientific one.

Anything We Do To Fix It, Must Not Cause Harm IF We Are In Error.

Good idea. Let's take this as a starting point then.
European Energy policy has this so-called "20-20-20" concept for starters, to be achieved by 2020:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/climat/climate_action.htm

• A reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions of at least 20% below 1990 levels
• 20% of EU energy consumption to come from renewable resources
• A 20% reduction in primary energy use compared with projected levels, to be achieved by improving energy efficiency.

Now here comes my "radical lefty euro-communist hippy" claim ;-) :

Implementing this "20-20-20" policy will not lead to any harm to our EU economies. It may be insufficient to mitigate global warming though. But it will allow more time for EU societies and industries to adjust to a post-peak-cheap-oil era.

Comments?

Primarily because of scale. It would be more honest to compare, say, people going to California and Texas vs. people going to France or Germany. Start talking about U.S. vs. Europe as a whole and the numbers aren't so striking anymore.

For your edification:

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Tertiary_education_statistics ..and further:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index ...wherein incidentally, the United States ranks on a par with Lithuania, just above Kazakhstan, and just below Slovenia.

The implication that the EU is spending billions of euros on a program to study 3-legged dogs is completely misleading. The fund in question appears to be FP7 (Wikipedia article), which funds a huge variety of researchers on many differnet topics.

If you look at what I think is the relevant EU site, the project received EUR 2.7 million from the 'Embodied intelligence' Initiative within the 'Information and communication technologies' (ICT) Thematic area of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

Which wouldn't make much of a story I guess - "multi-billion" sounds waaay more impressive.

-Chris

Hi, The Locomorph Group ( http://locomorph.eu/ ) is made up of science and engineering partners. The science partners (University of Antwerp and the University of Jena, where the dogs are being researched) are guiding the robotics research on shape-changing robots at Ryerson University (the only non-EU partner, located in Canada), the University of Zurich, the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne and the University of Southern Denmark. More stories on the project can be found here: http://idw-online.de/de/news379765 (in German) http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS_FP7&ACTION=D&DOC=2&CAT=NEWS&QUERY=0129d6293767:57a8:2486afcf&RCN=32339 (in English), http://www.lemondeinformatique.fr/actualites/lire-l-ue-octroie-1-2-milliard-d-euros-a-la-recherche-en-robotique-et-dans-les-reseaux-31224.html (in French), http://www.jenapolis.de/69486/nicht-nur-spielzeug-wissenschaftler-demonstrieren-laufroboter/ (in German) There are also some informal photos from our meeting last week: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~jasmith/locomorph/photos/jena_2010/ Other photos can be found here: http://idw-online.de/de/image120758 http://www.jenapolis.de/69486/nicht-nur-spielzeug-wissenschaftler-demonstrieren-laufroboter/

"CIA ... trying to figure out what other countries are stealing from our corporations or what we can steal from somebody else's"? That's quite a lot of assumptions about the process already... (and actually it seems like it was, also & in singular case, sort of the other way around)

Anyway, why it would be such a big practical problem? Think insider trading type of stuff; and leverage in international treaties.

We do, but keep in mind that an ICE is only about 18%to 19% efficient (the engine itself is about 20% http://courses.washington.edu/me341/oct22v2.htm, but not all of that gets to the pavement - 80%+ of the energy from burning gasoline ends up as heat or sound. Electric cars on the other hand are much more efficient - about 70% of what ends up in the battery goes to turning the wheels. http://ec.europa.eu/transport/urban/vehicles/road/electric_en.htm .

Then you have delivery and fuel management. With gasoline, you used a lot of energy in the refining process, and then you have to put it in trucks and deliver it. Of course, transmitting electricity has it's problems as well - the average line loss is somewhere around 6.5%, and the uranium for nuclear plants, and the coal, natural gas and fuel oil needs to be obtained and refined, so I would call this one a wash, with perhaps an edge to electric since sending electricity down the wire is more efficient than delivering the fuel by truck

On average electricity generating stations (hydro excepted) are about 35% to 40% efficient. of that about 93.5% gets to your outlet. Of that 99.8% gets to the battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_polymer_battery from the charger, and 99.8% gets from the battery to the motor (there are some minimal losses in the battery cables)

Bottom line is that (not counting transmission and production expenditures) assuming a quantity of energy: Joules x .998 x .998 x .70 = .697Joules for electric car, and .20 Joules for an ICE. An electric car is more than 3 times as efficient as an ICE powered car.

Apparently they're not happy enough with what they know about you, they won't stop until your Facebook/Buzz/Yahoo/whatever profile is a 1:1 mapping of you. It all sucks badly when you think of how, a few years ago, having such a profile was kind of embarassing in the context of, say, a job interview, while now it's almost mandatory - "What, you're not on Facebook? How do you LIVE?" I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I always laugh at tinfoil hats, but all this looks like soon we won't be able to do anything without registering to a data mining website first. The other day I was reading an article which led me to the European Commission's website, only to find that part of the information that was supposed to be there was actually on Facebook: http://europa.eu/epso/apply/today/tra_en.htm Yeah, I know, it's just a link, but I think it's really lame that the Comission provides more information about an open position on some employee's Facebook page instead of its own. Hell, let's stop funding their infrastructure, they might as well move everything on Facebook. Or Second Life! Bleh.