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Hi, the precondition of solving the taiwan problem is "There is only a single China in the world", and both mainland and taiwan are parts of it.

Under this condition, we "trust" the people in Taiwan to decide what is right for themselves without bringing military threats into it.

Not a country in the world would allow its domain (is this word right? sorry for my english again, I looked up the dictionary and found this word to be the closest in meaning to what I wanted to express) to be parted from it.

About taiwan, I would like to say two things:

1. Why they "did a hell of lot better" than us?

   I would like to have you consider two things: (1) the population: mainland - 1,270 million; taiwan - 23 million, that's only 2% of mainland's population.(2) the historical problem, the year 1949 Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) lost the war and fell back on taiwan, do you know how much gold his government took away from exchequer (I don't know if this word is correct... correct me if I was wrong, thanks!)? That was 920 thousand Liang (1 Liang = 50 g). It's not so much today, but in the year 1949, that was large amount of money! Then, 820 thousand Liang of those gold was used to boost up taiwan's economy. That's what historian Li'Ao http://www.fact-index.com/l/li/li_ao.html pointed out. You can find out more about this history here (Chinese website) http://www.phoenixtv.com/home/zhuanti/fhxd/liaoyou huashuo/200403/26/229195.html

2. "They even have this miraculous thing called democracy with truly free, fair, and open elections"?

   I personally admit that, they have a larger "circle" to stand in than us in some certain cases. Well, have you ever read the books written by Li'Ao? He has disclosed many things behind the scene of taiwan's politics. Well, I have to say, taiwan has someone like Li'Ao, that's the evidence of taiwan has a "larger circle", I admitted that.

In the meantime, every mainland leader talks about "democracy in 50 years" meaning "democracy sometime after I am dead."

I live here in China, I can tell you that we are making good progress, do you trust me? :) My friend, due to a lot of problems, especially population problem IMHO, we do need more time than taiwan, then please, be patient. And, thank you for your concern about our democracy, too :)

IMO, as the economy develops, the democracy advances, too.

Instead, you follow the typical mainlander line of: "we should be husband and wife, so marry me or I'll kill you." No benefits for the Taiwanese mentioned at all. Who would want to take an offer like that?

We are brothers with taiwan, not husband and wife:) We mainland is offering an old brother's hug. We were born with nature blood relations, we are a whole family. If someone ever tries to parted our little brother - taiwan - away from this family, then they are going to pay for it. Yea, they can call it "threat". Then why don't you threat someone if he/she tries to take away your dear little brother?

Please come home, my little brother:)

It was just a simple question. Anyone out there understand why this is classed as a troll?

Sorry, I don't. Seems eccentric to me. Too bad there's no system for moderators to attach short explanations so we would know what they were thinking.

Then again, since labeling a post "troll" is an ad hominem, there might not be terribly interesting to the moderators' line of thought in this case. See Troll

hi, it's nice to know what other people in the world out there think about China :)

here is my opinion, still, I'll try my best to make myself clear, I hope someday I could speak English more fluent, so that I could help other people in the world know more about The People's Republic of China :)

that depends what you mean by "part of china". i have no problem with the concept that taiwan be considered part of a single country that includes the mainland. however, the mainland is currently under the control of a non-democratic, illegitimate government, and taiwan has a fledgling democratic government.

It's great to hear that you have no problem with the concept that taiwan and mainland are parts of a single country. That's the policy undergoing for such a long time: a single China and the mainland and taiwan explains "single China" to their needs. That's a gray zone that keeps us in peace for so long. There've been always some people try to "clear things out", including those who want to make taiwan an independent "country". Once that happens, we would get taiwan back with our forces - then, there would be clearly only one China - the PRC - we "clear things out", too.

I think it's a better but short term policy to keep things as they were. Then, with enough time and enough faith of both taiwan people and us mainland, we sure could get this problem solved peacefully.

And, as you've mentioned: non-democratic and illegitimate. Would you agree that sometimes these words are not so easy to be defined clearly? I have to admit that ONCE I've been disappointed about democracy status here in mainland. Yea, I've seen a lot of good things there in developed countries like America, I've read as much as I could during my college life to find out why the America is so powerful.

Then one day, I deeply realized that: China is my OWN country, it's better for me to DO SOMETHING rather than JUST CRITICIZING. I've written something here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=119275&cid=100 74920 about my viewpoints of democracy, I would like to share them with you:) And I can't say I know much about taiwan's government, though I've read a lot of book written by Li'Ao http://www.fact-index.com/l/li/li_ao.html who keeps disclosing what's behind the taiwan politics.

it seems CCP mind control is working perfectly. the CCP has indoctrinated you with nationalism, and now exploits it to cloud your judgement on the taiwan issue. tell me: why is it that taiwan, with a market economy and democratic government, is going the "WRONG" way, and PRC, under illegitimate control of CCP, is going the "right" way?

"mind control" is something really interesting to be discussed, how do we possibly know ourselves or other people are mind controlled? What I can say is, we DO make our judgement on things BASE UPON our education, life experience, informations we hold, etc. I can tell you that, I've been through a period of self-awakening (I don't know which word would be better), and my interest in philosophy helps me know much about myself :)
Sorry, my limited English ability prevents me from going deeply into some philosophy things, I can express myself better if I could communicate with you in Chinese.

Here is my answer to your question about "WRONG" or "right" way: despite the economy and democratic things, those people who've been trying to make taiwan to be an "independent country" ARE going the WRONG way. That's it. We, the mainland, has been ready to negotiate ANYTHING with taiwan government under the condition of they formally admit that there is "only a single China" (whatever they would like to explain that express). We even allow them to keep their army! Isn't that enough?! They just say: yea, we taiwan government admit that, there is only a sin

Duuude ! You need to hone your mindfucking skills.

Senator Foghorn Leghorn, that's a good one!

Don't forget NeXT? It might have worked with a "mature" internet ...

--
Try Nuggets, the new question answering search engine per SMS.

Someone had to ask: wonder if anyone's simulated the universe using MOND. How did the researchers account for all this dark matter that's supposed to be around? It's far more likely that we got the force law wrong. Do these dark matter guys still believe in Santa Claus? BTW has anyone successfully simulated a galaxy and produced results that correspond to observations? I think this problem is still open...

Be careful: NP \ P != NP-complete.

A problem is only NP-complete if it is both in NP and in NP-hard. Many problems exist which we know are not P, but have not been able to show to be NP-complete.

In fact, according to this article, although we know that integer factorization is in NP, "[i]t is suspected to be outside of all three of the complexity classes P, NP-Complete, and co-NP-Complete".

Another interesting problem (not necessarily related to prime factoring) is graph isomorphism, which "seems to fall in a crack between P and NP-complete".

I've been spending a lot of time lately with signal analysis - high speed sampling of analog signals [i.e. high bit-rate digitization of analog phenomena] and the subsequent software analysis of the digitized sequences - and it strikes me as a really, really difficult [maybe impossible?] problem trying to decide if a stream of 0's and 1's is just noise, or if it represents some phenomenon worth paying attention to.

Consider something as simple as "Hello World!"

In a word processor [or a web browser] that is capable of recognizing ASCII, it looks like

Hello World!

72 101 108 108 111 32 87 111 114 108 100 33

01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01010111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100 00100001

It's my understanding that, to this day [i.e. some fifty years later], the vast, overwhelming majority of Venona traffic still hasn't been decoded: Out of some hundreds of thousands of intercepted cyphertexts, it is claimed that under 3000 have been partially or wholly decrypted.

So my question: Are there any standard texts or treatises on the theory of how to distinguish interesting signals from large amplitude noise?

argh, this just aggravates me...you mixed up japan and china you douche, and real-life with anime at that!

http://www.fact-index.com/e/ev/evangelion_general_ characters.html

there you can read about Naoko Akagi

It did make $25,266,129 source, which is better than Gigli (US Gross, $6,087,542, Production Budget $54,000,000). Sure it's not a Kevin Smith movie, but it's got the same goofy actors. source

The historic problem with this approach is also accountability - ballot stuffing (i.e. putting lots of extra paper ballots in the box) has always been a problem with paper ballots. If there are a suspicious number of votes in the box, how do you tell who put the extras in, which candidate they were voting for, etc?

There is a bit of info on this page about the problem. The parties used to actually force people to vote on coloured paper depending on who they were supporting, and they made the ballot box transparent - so they could always tell who you were voting for! Of course, if all the officials at a particular voting station were corrupt, then practically anything could happen.

And, while I agree that without the correct technology paper voting as it is used in the UK and Australia is a much better plan, it's not as though the British system hasn't been the home of massive electoral fraud over the years. Blackadder probably sums it up pretty well:

Political Commentator: And now it's time, I think, for a result, and tension is running very high here. Mr. Blackadder assures me that this will be the first honest vote ever in a rotten borough. And I think we all hope for a result which reflects the real needs of the constituency. And behind me...yes, I can just see the Returning Officer moving to the front of the platform.

Blackadder: As the Acting Returning Officer of Dunny-on-the-World...

Commentator: The acting Returning Officer, Mr. E. Blackadder, of course. And we're all very grateful, indeed, that he stepped in at the last minute, when the previous Returning Officer accidently brutally stabbed himself in the stomach while shaving.

Blackadder: I now announce the number of votes cast as follows: Brigadier General Horace Bolsom...

Commentator: Cheap-Royalty-White-Rat-Catching-And-Safe-Sewage-R esidents Party...

Blackadder: No votes.

Blackadder: Ivor Jest-ye-not-madam Biggun...

Commentator: Standing-At-The-Back-Dressed-Stupidly-And-Looking- Stupid Party...

Blackadder: No votes.

Blackadder: Pitt, the Even Younger...

Commantator: Whig...

Blackadder: No votes.

Commentator: Oh, there's a shock.

(Pitt the Even Younger turns to his mum and cries)

Blackadder: Mr. S. Baldrick...

Commentator: Adder Party...

Blackadder: Sixteen thousand, four hundred, and seventy-two.

(Cheers are heard.)

...

Commentator: And now, finally, a word with the man who is at the center of this bi- election mystery: the voter himself. And his name is Mr. E. Bla-- Mr. Blackadder, *you* are the only voter in this rotten borough...?

Blackadder: Yes, that's right.

Commentator: How long have you lived in this constituency?

Blackadder: Since Wednesday morning. I took over the previous electorate when he, very sadly, accidently brutally cut his head off while combing his hair.

Commentator: One voter; 16,472 votes. A slight anomaly...?

Blackadder: Not really -- you see, Baldrick may look like a monkey who's been put in a suit and then strategically shaved, but he is a brilliant politician. The number of votes I cast is simply a reflection of how firmly I believe in his policies.

a capybara is not a rodent or even a mammal.
a capybara is a fish

Suchetha

Is it going to hurt Microsoft that they aren't releasing a real 64-bit operating system for another year and a half?

I tend to see the possibility that people who buy 64-bit computers will try to take advantage of their capabilities by choosing 64-bit capable operating systems to run on them. Even Itanium users would have little or no interest in running a beta version of Windows when they could have a real, tested, released operating system like Linux for cheaper. This may potentially even help Linux with hardware support, and encourage 64bit vendors to use more capable hardware.

On the other hand the 80386 processor (the first to have 32-bit capabilities) was released in 1985. It wasn't until 1992, 7 years later, that Microsoft came along with an OS (Windows NT) that took advantage of the 80386's 32-bit architecture. It was 3 more years after that before Windows 95 brought those features to the consumer market, which Microsoft promptly dominated.

Will Microsoft's delay in releasing a 64bit operating system hurt them? Will it make a difference?

Is it going to hurt Microsoft that they aren't releasing a real 64-bit operating system for another year and a half?

I tend to see the possibility that people who buy 64-bit computers will try to take advantage of their capabilities by choosing 64-bit capable operating systems to run on them. Even Itanium users would have little or no interest in running a beta version of Windows when they could have a real, tested, released operating system like Linux for cheaper. This may potentially even help Linux with hardware support, and encourage 64bit vendors to use more capable hardware.

On the other hand the 80386 processor (the first to have 32-bit capabilities) was released in 1985. It wasn't until 1992, 7 years later, that Microsoft came along with an OS (Windows NT) that took advantage of the 80386's 32-bit architecture. It was 3 more years after that before Windows 95 brought those features to the consumer market, which Microsoft promptly dominated.

Will Microsoft's delay in releasing a 64bit operating system hurt them? Will it make a difference?

NetBSD and X go together. If you are using *BSD AT ALL as a desktop operating system, you need to have brain surgery.

But I can tell you don't REALLY know what is going on... after all, "X-Windows" doesnt actually exist. What you are referring to is the "X Windowing System", or "X" for short (http://www.fact-index.com/x/x_/x_window_system.ht ml)

Aficionados commonly refer to the X Window System as "X11" or simply as "X", but frown on the widespread but incorrect label "X Windows", analogous to "Microsoft Windows". A T-shirt seen at an X11 conference bore the sentiment: "It's a windowing system named 'X', not a system named 'X Windows'".

I am tired of the Unix/Clone bandwagon. Quit using your hammer to stir your koolaid.

until the early 50's all films were made on Cellulose Nitrate . now cellulose nitrate (or some may recognise it as nitrocellulose ) has a tendency to spontaneously combust at high velocity. this tendency increases as the compound ages.

in short - the film can go boom

the studios are sitting on top of a time bomb, and its ticking

Suchetha

One way copyright goes into force is based on as soon as a work is first published publicly. The EFF found the first published date is 1945. That means in order for the copyright to be extended under the rules which were in effect during the time, Ludlow would have had to file an extension no later than 1973. Renewing in 1984 was 11 years too late, because the song would have automatically passed into the public domain in 1973 and once in the public domain, always in the public domain.

I never understood why this logic has not been applied (legally at least) to Happy Birthday which was music originally published in the 1890's (as "Good Morning to All/You"), had the alternative lyrics published or alluded to a number of times from 1909 onwards, but wasn't copyrighted until 1935 by one of the original authors (who didn't even write the changed lyrics!) and is still under copyright until something like 2030, allowing the current holders to sue the Girl Guides and force restaurants to come up with those silly hand clapping songs.

I think more appropriate would be SoSuMi, don't you? :)

What like you.

Read this then get back to me

Yes, some of them will be pretty much useless after all of the time, but others will be more unstable.

Something called "Composition A" is RDX mixed with melted wax. That stuff will keep for a LONG time, since no water is going to penetrate the wax.

RDX has been used as an explosive since the 1920s. It's some powerful stuff.

Remember Saving Private Ryan? Remember the "sticky bombs"? That was Composition A. You can blow the treads off of a tank with a sock full of the stuff. Imagine what a boatload of it will do.

We're not talking small quantities of these explosives either, we're talking about a military transport ship.

That could be dangerous, but nothing compared to the Lost Hydrogen Bomb that is sitting in the atlantic just off the coast of the US.

War is nasty business.

LK

Serious linguists find the question "are there more linguistic units that mean 'snow'" more useful and meaningful. However, this approach also has some difficulty because the boundary between things that are "snow" and thing that are not-"snow" is a somewhat soft one in language, e.g. is "sleet" a wet type of "snow" or not?

Despite these issues, people are still interested in "the answer" and experts commonly come up with counts of about 1 or 2 dozen, which is not particularly remarkable in comparison to english.Here's a brief article synopsizing all that a little more clearly.

Cause there was nothing socialist about the "National Socialists"

Actually, the Nazi party NSDAP did have a left/socialist wing, propaganda minister Goebbels being the most "prominent" representative of that faction (opposed to Hermann Göring's right wing and Hitler playing the divide and conquer game between them.) Read for example Hans Bernd Gisevius' book on Hitler.

http://www.fact-index.com/t/tr/trs_80_color_comput er.html

I think a lot of people have forgotten 1789. Doesn't "Department of Homeland Security" sound a lot like "Committee of Public Safety?"
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)

Well done Phil this is spot on.

Back in the 60's the American car industry peddled out a similiar line of "product before safety" . The book, Unsafe at any speed [Ralph Nader, 1965] ...

• ... broke the car industries ability to pass off inferior products unsafe for use by the general public. ...

In the case of the Chev Corvairs even when parked. (you can read such stories from the reader testimonials at amazon. Better still read the book at your local library). As a result of the book and the following movement, the mantra of "Engineering, Enforcement, Education". The legacy that is still applied to Engineering practice today.

It's a sad day for journalists (let alone Journo's from the Washington Post [think Woodward and Burnstein]) that fail to understand Naders legacy and see it's relevence to todays computer software industry.

The lefty ratbag John Pilger's creed should be repeated here to see where this journalist has failed the Posts readers ....

• ... it's not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas and myths that surround it. ... John Pilger.

Japan's entry into WWII was motivated in part by a desire for Manchurian oil.

A major theme of the Cold War was control over Mideast Oil.

The oil wars parent mentions are referenced here

That said, there is still a lot to be said in favor of oil, as you point out. I prefer to blame human nature rather than black gold.

The general technology is called "In-Band, On-Channel." The implementation in the US is different from the the one in the rest of the world. In the USA, DAB technology is controlled by a company called iBiquity. It's incompatible with the world standard. In the rest of the world, the standard is Eureka 417. I found this explanation helpful.

So you're saying it can't be done? Just like building an island for the Kansai International Airport couldn't be done? Just like removing what - 3 mountains for the Three Gorges Dam in China isn't being done as we speak? The scale is certainly a bit larger, but these projects were of unthinkable scale not to long ago as well.

I don't have a 128MB usb drive... But this is what I would try..

The .gz file seems to have an bootable filesystem image. Extract it using wizip, winrar or gzip/gunzip. Get the rawrite2 utility and use it to put it on the USB drive using the USB drives letter. Download the "Debian netinst CD image" (as stated on the page you linked to) and copy it to the now correctly formated USB drive........ Profit!?... :) ... Please post success/failiure reports.. :D

Disclaimer: these are just suggestions and I haven't tried it mywelf! If you damage your hardware.... then you must have done something pretty wild..

Cheers...

Today, the only the electronic music most of us hear is the repetitive, simplistic beat of dance or industrial music piped into clubs and dubbed over with offensive lyrics and banter.

I think someone needs to check out ishkur's guide to electronic music. There is a pretty wide variation between the intricate beats of Drum 'n Base and the repetitive, simplistic beat of House. Of course, if you want more experimental electronica, look for IDM, Aka intelligent (unintelligible) dance music. None of these would be possible without using computers carefully as instruments, and none of them fit into mainstream musical categorization.

I must also argue with the idea that game artists haven't evolved the craft. Most games now feature dynamically adjusting music based at bare minimum on character states. They adjust for boss encounters without interrupting musical lines, and can dynamically increase or decrease instrumentation based upon on-screen action. While most game audio creators do focus on sounding like traditional recordings, this is probably because most are traditional recording artists these days.

Some of the best game soundtracks are traditional recordings. Final Fantasy, Xenogears, and Wipeout all spring to mind as great soundtracks involving "dumped-in" music. Even Street Sk8er, with it's off-kilter collection of grungy tunes, was a great listen.

That's not to say that the article doesn't have it's points. But to say that videogame composers should be at the forefront of experimentation just because they used to need to be is erroneous. Of course, if everyone were as original and good as The Fat Man (no lie, he's one of the greats) game audio would be far better off. But that combination of original sound and skill is rare in any medium... and The Fat Man's genius is not so easily replicated.

Game audio should be convincing, engaging without being detracting, and should heighten enjoyment the first time heard without getting annoying the 10th. It should dynamically change based upon the character's situation, and should contain an original artistic spark. Game audio shouldn't be the tunes you hear in your car... Nor should they be the buzzes and blips of yesteryear. While certain composers pioneer original genres (Tommy Tallerico springs to mind), this shouldn't be the defining feature.

All artists should be creative, game or no.

Totalitarianism has a real habit of working against itself...

How does one account for the popularity and prominence of the Communists in Finland after World War?

Althought recently in decline, in the last parliamentary elections, the Left Alliance, the successor to the Communist Party, got close to 10% of the vote. It had three members of the cabinets of the recent governments of Paavo Lipponen (1995-2003).

There have been ample alternatives on the left to a party so closely associated with a foreign invader. I suppose it's possible to get 10% of the voters to support any marginal party but the fact the Communists got positions in the government seems truly strange.

It seems as likely as Quisling getting a cabinet position in Norway.

"Vector processors" do not accelerate the same kind of vectors that are involved in "vector graphics."

A vector processor works the kind of vector that is a data structure including many data elements. A scalar processor handles one piece of data at a time.

Vector processor

It's true that vector processing makes it faster to process vector graphics, but only because you can use it to process large lists of 3-D data very fast. Vectors (arrays) of vectors (quantities with both magnitude and direction).

The kind of "vector processing" you're thinking of is called a "transform and lighting engine." GPUs have that, the G5 does not per se.

Writing in Quartz 2D is yummy because Apple did the data type design pretty well, has some really useful calls, and you're surrounded by eyecandy.

Not mac os, not linux, not windows.
Apple bought the iPod's operating system from Pixo, a small company, that meanwhile has been acquired by Sun (try www.pixo.com).
It seems to be a proprietary OS.
Some information: http://www.fact-index.com/p/pi/pixo.html

I'm surprised they leave out the Bellamy Salute. Apparently, in its original form the pledge was recided with right arm extended; this was changed to right arm held over heart after the rise of National Socialism.

If I recall correctly, Herbie the love bug did express feelings and drived about by itself. And that was as early as 1968.

Please...if drug addicts can get blamed for the most crazed and violent among them, then I think christians should be blamed for the most crazed, vocal, and violent amongst them.

If you give your 20% or 20 bucks a week or whatever to some asshat who tries like hell to get me thrown in prison for a bag of coke, who tries to tell my sister, mother, girlfriend that she can't do whatever she wants with her own body ( I'm anti-feminist, but very much so for equal treatment - think about it ), and who encourages his brain-dead followers to walk around giving people like me ( shaved head, covered in tattoos, done time, hard worker, honest, intelligent, and more than willing to give anyone a fair chance ) a hard time, for living their own lives, on their own terms ( which means not hurting you ), then what do you expect?

Did you expect me not to get pissed off when you have lobby groups ( Christian Coalition, etc. ) who attempt to destroy our freedoms and lives?

Do you expect me to be happy when one of your pathetically eager little sheep gets enough balls to carry a pamphlet up to me in a grocery store, then threaten to call the police on me when I explain to them that I've told them five fucking times I'm not interested and they're about to get fucking hurt .

Do you expect me to ignore the fact that, as your preachers are so keen on touting, America is a > 75% christian nation? I don't care whether you're Protestant, Baptist ( well, actually, I really despise Baptists ), or Catholic - you represent the same religion. The fact that you're so schizophrenic in your beliefs that you can't agree upon one view of the same belief, while mind-boggling, does not concern me, nor does it the rest of the world, who are scared to hell of your little "crusades".

Bear in mind that I have friends who believe in all kinds of religions ( including christianity ), but all of them are open-minded and intelligent. What's interesting to note is that I don't have any American christian friends. One of my best friends, who is christian, is from Australia, and says that most Australians tend to view the kind of religion that Americans practice as being absolute fucking madness.

And, as far as this comment goes :
I can't speak for other religions, but Christianity is about making the RIGHT choices, not about eliminating the wrong ones for everyone else.
That's hilarious. Did you even read my initial post? I brought up the fact that one of the major principles of most religions is human choice. And I also brought up the fact that as it's practiced, christianity tends to disregard most of it's guiding principles. Not that I necessarily agree with most of those principles ( and the ones I do I admit are way too idealistic for the world we live in ), but who are you to tell me about your own beliefs when you don't even know the tenets of the faith you espouse? So, while you may grasp the fact that christianity has a good deal to do with choice in principle ( and I appreciate the fact that you do ), you seem to ignore the fact that very few of those who are more vocal and prominent about their beliefs seem to.

And, to address the last point, I'm probably more conservative than you could dream about being. But, when I sat down and looked at the parties, and what I've seen in my life, I see both parties eroding people's rights and imposing more state and federal regulations on their citizens, but the democrats appear to be doing less damage. Ultimately, as I explain it to people, would you rather give the federal money to some ignorant crack whore who would probably spit on me for being white if she could, or to some asshole like Ken Lay or Jerry Falwell? I'd rather do neither, but given the choice, I'd rather the crack whore. At least I don't have to be worried about being manipulated and controlled indirectly by her.

Allright, off the soap box, going to sleep. It's amazing how aggravated painting all day can make you.

Fact-Index entry.

Hey, that's interesting. Did you know your school was named after a rexx interpreter?

"The hamlet of Pile of Bones was renamed in 1882 to Regina (Latin for queen) by Princess Louise, the wife of Canada's Governor General, in honour of her mother Queen Victoria, the British monarch at the time. Reginans commonly refer to Regina as the "Queen City"." http://www.fact-index.com/r/re/regina__saskatchewa n.html

Of course FISHER is not the only chess genius having (had) a hard time, another US-example is Morphy.

Of course both are not alone ;)

After all, if one looks at this game (FISHER-BYRNE), one has to appreciate Fisher's chess playing capabilities.

CC.

This site has most of the relevant passages from the Bible. Keep in mind, dispensationalists spend every waking moment of the day looking for the end times. Most of your conservative Christian politicians in the U.S. are dispensationalists, hence their undying support for Israel (the end times won't come unless the Jewish people have full control of the lands around Jerusalem -- the Promised Land). I don't think the link about has anything specific about it, but credit cards have long been a source of distress for end times folks as well, as the same "mark of the beast" passage says you can't buy or sell without the mark.

God, I love watching you young kids.

You mean "MACSYMA, the ancestor of things like Maple and Mathematica".

Look at this or this, or this.

That last, "Maxima", is an open-source version. Not quite as slick as the commercial one, but not half bad.

Even though they are not very often seen in space, I always stay at one of Hilbert's Hotel.

> "Today Wikipedia reached the 300,000 article mark.

LOL! How much of that content was shoveled in from somewhere else?

> It has everything that a traditional encyclopedia would, but also many things that would never get written about

Like web vandalism, edit wars, and SEO attempts...

> For size comparisons, the English Wikipedia has 90.1 million words across 300,000 articles, compared to Britannica's 55 million words across 85,000 articles.

How much of Wikipedia's content is unclear, incomplete, contradictory, off-topic, duplicated, or just plain wrong?

> shortage of PHP/MySQL developers is probably the biggest long term problem facing the project.

The biggest long term problem facing the project is human nature. Let's leave it at that.

At 625 MB, you could fit the text of the current database on a CD. The images will jack it up another 3.6 GB. So you could reasonably fit the current revision on one DVD. If you also want the full record of changes and revisions, it's about 15 GB just for the text.

You can download this stuff easily, and it's obvious from recent Google searches that many people do.

This is gonna go over like a lead balloon.

Why not make it with as it has the best characteristics of concrete and ice, the materials would be readily abundant (sea water) and, in an arctic environment, would never melt. They could build new pykrete domes whenever they needed more space. They would just have to take wood pulp (sawdust) and sprayers and it can be formed/sprayed into final form.

More links:

Thanks! I found that NERVA is also an acronym for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application , as well as being a Roman Emperor.

Living in Japan, I guess I sometimes feel a little disempowered when it comes to looking things up for some reason. Must work on that... ;-)

Here's another good link about nuclear engines for space, by the way.

Thanks! I found that NERVA is also an acronym for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application , as well as being a Roman Emperor.

Living in Japan, I guess I sometimes feel a little disempowered when it comes to looking things up for some reason. Must work on that... ;-)

Here's another good link about nuclear engines for space, by the way.