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Uh, don't you know Ali G is jewish? His real name is Sasha Baron Cohen. See here.

according to The Guardian is the 1986 Vauxhall Belmont.

I can see the owners of those lining up to get one of these remote controllers fitted (not).

Newer vehicles are much less frequently stolen, presumably because it's getting much harder, what with improved central locking, engine management systems that mean you can't hot-wire the thing, and other anti-theft features. A spokesperson in the linked Guardian article is quoted as saying "it is virtually impossible to steal a new car without access to the correct keys."

I don't buy the argument that this remote control idea has much if anything to do with wanting to make it easier for police to stop joyriders. It won't help for the reasons above - joyriders don't, or simply can't steal the kinds of cars that have this technology on board.

It sounds to me like just another attempt to turn us all into good docile law-abiding consumers.

Curveball

I cant remember where I first saw the stuff linked below, some of the ZX stuff wasnt quite closed source enough.
Prepare your soldering iron:)

How to build your own ZX80/ZX81
Another zx81 clone using an FPGA
Yet another ZX81

I was about to say "Shame no one's done it for a Spectrum", but a quick Google search reveals that someone has. I am not worthy.

Is this a worthy haggis?

You want sources for the draining of the southern Iraqi marshes? Googling on 'marsh', 'arab', 'drain and 'iraq' gets me 1130 hits. Number 1 is a Voice of America site and number 2 is an American University site, so I guess they fail your GWB/Rummy filter. Number 3 is an article by Robert Fisk however:

"The first time I saw the Marshes, just east of the Baghdad-Basra highway, the tourist guide was true to its words. For miles, thousands of reed huts stood on earth and papyrus islands, each inhabited by the descendants of the ancient Sumerians, a time warp of simplicity which, according to old Arabic scripts, may have begun with a devastating flood around AD620. The last time I went there, the women from one Marsh Arab village were prostituting themselves to lorry driversto make money for their impoverished families."

Its hosted on a website called Common Dreams which looks to be fairly left-leaning as far as I can see.

Link number 4 which is an article hosted on the South Wales Worker's Education Association website (not a notable hotbed of neo-con thinking) which cites UN studies and includes some comparitive Landsat images:

"This section marshals the latest evidence of a tragedy developing in Iraq since the 1970s. The drainage of the wetlands that have been home to the Ma'dan or Marsh Arabs for 5,000 years."

Link 5 is an article on the US Institute of Peace website, but this is a congressionally funded federal agency so probably fails your GWB filter.

Link 6 is a page on a personal webpage of some bloke called Mike. I don't think he's a sock-puppet for GWB, indeed looking at the site index he seems to be fairly right-on sort of chap (albeit with unfortunate goth-ey tendencies back in the 80s). Here's the first sentence:

"These satellite photos reveal exactly how Saddam Hussein is systematically draining the marshes of southern Iraq, transforming a unique eco-system into a man-made desert and destroying the ancient home of the Ma'dan or Marsh Arabs."

Link 7 is a BBC website for children. Here's the text:

"There are about 250,000 of this Shia Muslim group, also called Madan, living in Iraq. They originally lived in the marshes around the southern end of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

After the first Gulf War, they tried to overthrow Saddam. The Iraqi government stopped them.

Saddam's government decided to drain the marshes, which split up all the Madan. This removed their ability to threaten the old regime."

Link 8 is another personal webpage, this time for a Dutch doctoral student in mathematics. It has photos of a trip he took to Iraq as part of a delegation trying to overturn the sanctions that existed post-GW1, so I think its reasonable to conclude that he doesn't much care for GWB.

Link 9 is a State dept website, so probably fails your GWB-filter.

Link 10 is a Kuwaiti website, so they probably count as GWB's sock-puppets for you.

There you go. Five out of the 10 are probably tainted for you (although I note that only 1 is an overt propaganda site). If that ratio holds good for the rest of the links then you've got 560 more webpages you can read.

Regards Luke

PS Dunno why the l

Robots need legs for 1 reason, STAIRS. Wheels don't handle stairs too well, unless your a stunt driver in a action flick.

its clearly the best show. you have a time traveller who goes around solving other peoples problems and dependning on which one you watch he has a different personality. but always he is knowledgeable and intelligent moreso than everyone else. he also frequently changes nice looking english hoes. might i add, also from all time periods.

of course the 4th and 7th are most memerable to me. maybe the 2nd one was good too.

Marshal: 'How can we have peace until we have the ultimate deterrent that will ensure a lasting peace?'
Doctor: 'Tell me Marshal, if you had this ultimate deterrent, what would you do?'
Marshal: 'Use it of course, make sure it works.'
Doctor: 'Yes... You have a true military mind, Marshal.'
Marshal: 'Thank you.'
--
k9 rocks the casbah too:

Drax: 'Blimey, it's a dog! Who's a little tin dog, then?'
K9: 'Your silliness is noted.'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/episodeguide/a rmageddonfactor/quote.shtml

also i have tonnes of pirate dr who. if anyone has a nice ftp or collection of torrents i would be happy to trade. :)

The citizens of Iraq, Vietnam, Hiroshima and Nagasaki might disagree with you there.

"Practically nobody could have afforded a "personal" Lisp machine of yesteryear."

This is another popular Lisp Machine myth that I've recently found out is not true. The sole reason for the Lisp Machines' outrageous prices was Symbolics' monopoly. Worse than their high mark up on the hardware was their support costs - "Like everyone outside the US, I was grossly overcharged by Symbolics UK (some $40,000 per annum in maintenance charges alone)." (emphasis mine)

The original Lisp Machine as developed at MIT was primarily designed to beat out the minicomputers of the times in terms of cost - and this it did very well. Let me quote a few excerpts from Artificial Intelligence: An MIT perspective, vol. 2, 1979 by Winston and Brown, ed. (pp. 350-251):

"The memory is typically 64k [32-bit words - two megabytes!] ... 16 million word disk ... The access time of the core memory is about one microsecond, and of the disk, about 25 milliseconds ... The display is a raster scan TV driven by a 1/4 Mbit memory ... The shared resources are accessed through a 10 million bit/sec packet switching network ... The complete LISP Machine, including processor, memory, disk, terminal, and connection to the shared file system ... would be likely to cost about $80,000 if commercially produced today."

Recall the emphasis on the 1979 as the publication date! Not only did the Lisp Machine well outperform most minicomputers of the time, it was also considerably cheaper to manufacture and service due to it's simpler architecture (even the processor was microcoded RISC). The price is analogous to the comparatively underpowered PARC PCs of the time.

By the time the 80s rolled around, VLSI manufacturing dropped the costs of producing such computers by well over an order of magnitude (note that the original Lisp Machines had core memory). The $40k quoted by a ripped-off customer would have probably bought him a new Lisp Machine every year had it not been for the terrible mark-up introduced by a monopoly (LMI, inc. dropped out early in the game, and TI Explorers were priced closely to Symbolics machines).

http://www.heulwen.freeserve.co.uk/pstation.htm

Did anyone else think of one of these when reading "30m round"?

Also fluoride is definitely a poison and is classified as such unless its use is medicinal, its addition to common drinking water therefore violates the Human Rights of citizens of the EU.

It's also interesting to note that the water companies in the UK only want to add it providing the goverment indemnifies them against any lawsuits that might result if it ever does get proven to be bad for people!

So I really don't think that was such a good analogy to use in the original article.

• Visual Basic -- is a comment really necessary?
  
• Java -- does what it's supposed to do
  
• C# -- tries to be more advanced than Java, and is, but is rather similar in the end...
  
• C / C++ -- now we're getting somewhere... does the job efficiently, but be sure you can handle it
  
• Assembler -- it's cool, it's efficient, it's deadly if handled wrong

lol you would make a good lib democrat because you are too ugly to ever win a vote

Here's a better analogy:

You arrange with a realtor to purchase a home, and until you move in, their sign is still up with a big "SOLD" on it.

<horror>OH MY GOD!!! They're using your lawn to advertise their goods and services! Those evil perverts!</horror>

Your argument is bullshit. Once your website is up, it's up. If it's not up, it's not up and you shouldn't bitch about what might come up while it's not set up.

It looks even more unprofessional for someone to type in your URL and come up with something like
this or this. I'd say this is somewhat more reassuring, although the pop-up windows and ads are a pain in the ass. If I really wanted to give my customers more value, I'd set up a coming soon page that looked more like this.

I guess if the register.com people had thought things through, they might have figured that some people might be shocked/upset/surprised by a "Coming Soon" page loaded with ads and popups (yeah, they could have used a little more restraint in that area -- 4 popups? Come on!!). Something a little more reserved probably would not have drawn as much attention. On the other hand, domain registration is a fairly new arena, and it's harder to define terms like ownership, property, and rights. I don't think the swapping MP3s is a good analogy. Regardless of the technology, it's still plainly illegal. 50 Cent could care less if you correctly attribute the music you stole. On the other hand, what is domain ownership, and what does it entail? There aren't clear guidelines or rules in this area. I think certainly a Coming Soon page should be expected in these cases -- and it would certainly be appropriate in those cases for the registrar to identify itself, including promotional links back to its own website; the only bad thing I see about it was register.com's zeal in using it as an advertising space. They could have been a ton more subtle.

Excellent collection of info, btw.

Regarding newer laptops and CPU sockets:

I upgraded my Sony GRX570 (1.6Ghz) to a 2.0Ghz because it's a socketed P4-M platform.

Before CPU removal.

After CPU removal.

The entire post is at Vaio Village for those curious. (Yes, same username)

Excellent collection of info, btw.

Regarding newer laptops and CPU sockets:

I upgraded my Sony GRX570 (1.6Ghz) to a 2.0Ghz because it's a socketed P4-M platform.

Before CPU removal.

After CPU removal.

The entire post is at Vaio Village for those curious. (Yes, same username)

A broomstick or a boomstick? Ass. Nobody's going to care if you shout allah is great in the street. Especially if you're carrying a broomstick. Now if you're waving around a boomstick, then yeah... i can see a reason to get upset. I love the way the French can hold drug dealers without trial but when we Americans do the same... WE are a country without rights. You Europeans are so screwed up in the head it's sick. You push entire countries - for example, Ireland - into further economic chaos with your stupid "national" interest rate. Brussels has such an inferiority complex it's disgusting.

It's a good feeling to know that the fine proud and proper Brahmins in Delhi feel no sense of responsibility at all for the helping the hundreds of thousands of the poorest, most hopeless, most destitute people in the world begging on the streets of Calcutta.

Or where temples have monks feeding milk to swarms of rats in the middle of cities where people drop like flies from disease merrily carried by the same rats?

A country with it's head stuck so far into it's religious arse that whenever some people bust their arses differently to make an honest living, but they can't stand their indusriousness, they bully them into submissiveness in order to rape the product of their industry even better.

It's not for nothing that throughout Asia, indians are universally despised.

You really can't blame the Pakistani for not wanting to be associated with such people...

One thing I found interesting about the iBot: some users report that it actually feels more stable in two-wheel mode. And indeed, ordinary wheelchairs do tip over. Possibly having a device that's actively resisting falling over is a more reliable safeguard than simple physical "stability". Hey, it works for bipeds!

You think people who use powered wheelchairs are lazy? John Hockenberry had to spend nine months in rehab before he learned to get by without his legs. And I understand that's pretty typical. Anybody who can deal with shit like that, with or without electrical assistance, has my respect.

And stop and consider all the practical things the wheelchair-bound can't do without assistance. Not just the obvious stuff like climbing stairs. But basic stuff like washing your car, reaching the top shelf at the store, cooking at a normal-height kitchen counter ... And imagine what it's like not to be able to hold a casual conversation in the hallway without craning your neck.

And you think battery life is the biggest problem for the paraplegic? Gawd I love these Slashdot "experts".

Good page with specs

The second effect is the "grant effect." [...] n other words, if you are a climatologist and you don't predict warming, have fun getting funding.

You might also find difficulty finding funding to research cold fusion from your peers if you are a physicist. That does not mean that cold fusion is correct. Please argue on the basis of evidence, not on throwing unsubstantiated allegations of scientific corruption.

Especially when you consider that a single decent volcanic eruption releases more greenhouse gases than man does in a year

If you had indeed "studied this issue intensely", you would have discovered that this is a myth. CO2 released through human activity dwarfs that released through volcanoes (see here for example).

Please, in the future, don't talk bollocks, don't throw baseless accusations, research your claims, and don't claim to be an authority on something you clearly know little about.

There's a nice review by a fan in the UK here - he read about it and got a director of the company brought one to round for him to play with.

We can hope that the mass-production of Segway (it it ever happens!) will help reduce the production part of the price tag.

Gareth

• Movie 1 1.8MB
• Movie 2 1.8MB
• Movie 3 20 MB

If it isn't safe, it fails for practical use. The segway circumvents this as being reliable sturdy (heavy) US alteration it seems. Of course I'm merely a young chap[sic] residing in the US who has never heard of it before now.

Before I depart, I was wondering just how dangerous it was. Proceeding to google it, I found an interesting interview that appears to have taken place August 1986.

Of course relational interests are too much so I had to look into the Clive Computer. I came across some interesting information since my inception was the NES ;-]

Actually, back in April my wife and I chapperoned a trip to Paris and London. I remember seeing several interesting cars over there, and picked up a newspaper or two to read about them.

I was absolutely shocked at how poorly they did for fuel economy (and how expensive they were in general!). I read a review of the Vauxhall Zafira, I think it was. Thirteen thousand pounds for that little box! Yikes! The top-of-the-line GSi costs twenty thousand pounds and only gets 35 MPG on the highway? Their Astra model is just as expensive for the most part, but gets much better milage, not that Americans would buy a diesel-powered car that small for what amounts to $20K.

how about this cheaper alternative.

One thing to remember is that the models used for the current renders may not be what's released in the game. They may be using million polygon models, and cut it back to a "more reasonable" ten thousand for actual gameplay.

Looking at the concept art, a few ideas for Q4 can be found in the notes. Apparently humans are going to be used as power cells (one and two). Humans may be upgraded into Strogg troops, power cells, or other pieces of Strogg technology. Then again, things could very well change by the time the game is released.

I'm starting to wonder if Q4 is going to be a "retelling" of Q2, rather than a sequel.

One thing to remember is that the models used for the current renders may not be what's released in the game. They may be using million polygon models, and cut it back to a "more reasonable" ten thousand for actual gameplay.

Looking at the concept art, a few ideas for Q4 can be found in the notes. Apparently humans are going to be used as power cells (one and two). Humans may be upgraded into Strogg troops, power cells, or other pieces of Strogg technology. Then again, things could very well change by the time the game is released.

I'm starting to wonder if Q4 is going to be a "retelling" of Q2, rather than a sequel.

One thing to remember is that the models used for the current renders may not be what's released in the game. They may be using million polygon models, and cut it back to a "more reasonable" ten thousand for actual gameplay.

Looking at the concept art, a few ideas for Q4 can be found in the notes. Apparently humans are going to be used as power cells (one and two). Humans may be upgraded into Strogg troops, power cells, or other pieces of Strogg technology. Then again, things could very well change by the time the game is released.

I'm starting to wonder if Q4 is going to be a "retelling" of Q2, rather than a sequel.

One thing to remember is that the models used for the current renders may not be what's released in the game. They may be using million polygon models, and cut it back to a "more reasonable" ten thousand for actual gameplay.

Looking at the concept art, a few ideas for Q4 can be found in the notes. Apparently humans are going to be used as power cells (one and two). Humans may be upgraded into Strogg troops, power cells, or other pieces of Strogg technology. Then again, things could very well change by the time the game is released.

I'm starting to wonder if Q4 is going to be a "retelling" of Q2, rather than a sequel.

The results are, unsuprisingly, skewed. We discover fascinating facts such as: The average male thinks of having sex every 20 seconds.

Now, ordinarily this sort of skewed data might be a bad thing. But given the goal of guessing passwords chosen by computer programmers, it's pretty much the ideal target audience.

Geeks are even more predictable. For example, the average male freshman's is pretty much thinking "I hope the person giving the test is a cute chick" and 20 seconds later has blossomed into a full-fledged fantasy (If you've already supplied the details, you match the target demographics).

In contrast, your average geek is thinking "I am not a number... I'm a free man!" and determining the best way to skew the test results.

Well, that and fantasizing about sex. So I'd bet that inkblots are actually far less secure.

Then again, I choose my password based on what shows up on Sesame Street when I leave home in the morning. Today's password is brought to you by the letter Q and the number 3. So what do I know?

>When I was a kid, I always wondered why American programmes were so fuzzy

When you were a kid, unless you were living in France, programs were probably being broadcast at 405 PAL (well, actually far less considering how poor recording equipment of the era was), a far cry from the quality available from 525 NTSC lines, which, at the time, in black and white looked great (no colour shifts, obviously).

NTSC had the edge for many years before the UK woke up and improved their standard much later. And let's not forget that all your movies had (still have?) shorter run times due to the poor choice of PAL 25 fps, which doesn't divide well into 24 film fps, unlike 3/2 pulldown, which the NTSC system supports handily.

The only thing PAL really has over NTSC is better colour information (which hasn't mattered in decades). The fact is that NTSC transmits a better picture when one considers total data received by the set:

25 fps (PAL) @ 625 lines = 15,625 lines per second
29.97 fps (colour NTSC) @ 525 lines = 15,734.25 lines per second.
30 fps (B&W NTSC) @ 525 lines = 15,750 lines per second.

Any way you slice it, apart from the (long fixed) colour issue, NTSC beats PAL for everything, including total resolution.

http://www.shartwell.freeserve.co.uk/humor-site/fo od-myths.html

I've read about these in ESR's _The New Hacker's Dictionary_, and have been trying to find more information about them but to no avail. Has anybody ever seen or used one, or have pointers to information (ahem, more links to The Jargon File need not apply)? Pictures would be great. Thanks!

Last Minute Google Search!
Search for "LISP Machine" turns up a few pages, such as this one, with information on the Symbolics machine, and has a picture of the keyboard, complete with the all-important control/super/hyper/meta keys. Still interested in more info on the MIT LISP machine, though!

I've read about these in ESR's _The New Hacker's Dictionary_, and have been trying to find more information about them but to no avail. Has anybody ever seen or used one, or have pointers to information (ahem, more links to The Jargon File need not apply)? Pictures would be great. Thanks!

Last Minute Google Search!
Search for "LISP Machine" turns up a few pages, such as this one, with information on the Symbolics machine, and has a picture of the keyboard, complete with the all-important control/super/hyper/meta keys. Still interested in more info on the MIT LISP machine, though!

You might be thinking of Barcode Battler, which is not the same as the GBA e-Reader (which helps tie in with Nintendo's CCG market. ie. Pokemon).

(Also, how many other ways can game companies squeeze every last cent out of gamers? It's pretty amazing what they've come up with so far.)

I must have missed the part where Nintedo puts a gun to your face to force you to buy their games.

The participants in that secret meeting continue to rave about IT. "If enough people see the machine you wonâ(TM)t have to convince them to architect cities around it. Itâ(TM)ll just happen," said Jobs.

Source

It sounds like the guy was going to be accountable anyhow. 60 mph in a residential neighborhood is still extreme reckless driving.

Does anybody remember tools like STOS? STOS was a basic-language and dev environment for the Atari ST . You could put a game together in a few hours, including sprites, music. It was as simple as the basic-shells of the 8-bit days, simple enough for a 10 year old to build a game in a weekend.

I can still pull out my ST and whip a game together with that tool. The only thing that comes close today is Python + pygame (or perl + sdl) ... but they lack the integrated tools (sprite editor, score editor, map editor). A toolset on top of python + pygame would rock.

I highly recommend EnZip.

7-zip is nice too (really good compression), but the UI sucks. Out of all the free zip progs I've tried, EnZip's UI is perfect. (I haven't tried the JZip that another poster mentions tho.)

But even at the level you claim, it's better than GIF due to the high color depth support.

See this article for cross-browser PNG transparency. One of the techniques can be seen on this UK church site.

I think we need a space race for the first WARP engine!! Let's get China to start it off, then the U.S. could get off thier lazy ass and get those scientists back to work doing something productive like building a WARP engine. Then, humanity will finally start to explorer the final frontier.

...boss could use it to walk into your cubicle even when he's on a trip to Japan...

Alternative meaning - boss uses telepresence to make his trip to Japan. So there is no problem taking off the telepresence head set and having a walk round the office to see what the workers are up to, while he is "in Japan"

I posted a link earlier.

Telepresence is not teleconferencing. The telepresence camera is under the control of the near end, not the far end. It can roam and see things it is not meant to see. It is a tool for bosses not workers. The location is laid open to the inspection of the visiting dignitary, while the presence itself reveals nothing of the near end.

I WANT INFORMATION

I started learning how my car works because all that "moving stuff" is elegant and complex. It's the figuring out part that gives me satisfaction.

I will never do metalsmithing, but Maxwell's demon may be my next experiment. Too wierd to be missed!

I wouldn't have guessed that particular name would to be applied a region in the UK

www.washington-westsussex.freeserve.co.uk