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Apples and oranges certainly are comparable, within a particular context, just as Mono and Java can be compared within a particular context. For example, if I am seeking a way to prevent scurvy on long ocean voyages, I can compare apples and oranges and reach a clear conclusion about which is best.

Mono and Java are probably comparable in many contexts. I have no basis for declaring a winner since in the context where I use Java (mobile phones that come with J2ME), the two are not comparable.

Hence "canonical".

As in, "this is blindingly obvious, but the canonical example which everyone has already heard and understands (irrespective of the fact it's technically wrong) is this...".

And yes, ultimately everything is "comparable". Hell, I can compare oral sex to the colour aquamarine, in that they both cause sensory impressions in the form of qualia in my consciousness and I prefer the qualia associated with oral sex, but that doesn't tell you anything useful whatsoever.

One could argue that comparing Mono and .NET is like comparing an apple with another apple that's designed to be utterly indistinguishable from the first apple. Again, there's a comparison, but it's largely useless.

Java and .NET, however, allows for enough similarities to make an interesting comparison, without being attempts to produce exactly the same result. Apples and different-tasting apples, maybe.

And (for tradition's sake) your car analogy was flawed. ;-p

Netcraft.com rankings: http://toolbar.netcraft.com/stats/topsites?s=2629A F9E8226E9D5E21D0E6F8945#89"

1 http://www.google.com/ November 1998 Google Inc. Go US
2 http://www.yahoo.com/ August 1995 Inktomi Corporation Go US
3 http://www.google.de/ April 1999 Google Inc. Go US
4 https://www.google.com/ May 2002 Google Inc. Go US
5 http://www.google.co.uk/ April 1999 Google Inc. Go US
6 http://www.google.fr/ November 2001 Google Inc. Go US
7 http://www.microsoft.com/ August 1995 Microsoft Corp Go US
8 http://mail.google.com/ June 2004 Google Inc. Go US
9 http://news.bbc.co.uk/ December 1997 BBC News Online Go UK
10 http://www.bbc.co.uk/ August 1995 BBC Internet Services, Docklands. Go UK

Slashdot is some 89 today.
Looks like the rank depends on who does the counting.

Here in the UK, I was reading a Littlewoods mail order catalogue (just for christmas gift ideas) and came across a new toy for young girls.

It's a *POLE DANCING* kit !

What is wrong with this picture ? I mean, have the womens liberation movement ceased to exist ? I mentioned this to a friend of mine and he replied that he already knew about it, and that his daughter had been doing it as a course at school ! WTF.

I am all for liberisation etc, but surely this is a bit over the top. I mean, do they teach these children what the fucking pole represents ?

I tried to get to Littlewoods website to find a link, but the net is slow here right now, google has some good links to a story on it though, as it appears Tesco had a similar product. I remember a time when women got pissed off if you bought a young girl a pram and a doll, now apparently we can train them to be erotic dancers, at public expense ! Jesus H Christ, on a bike. What's next, My Little Pony Fuck 'n' Suck outfits, Crotchless panties (age 5 to 6), Leather gear for the discerning 8 year old ?

Amazon have the same product and it even includes toy dollars ! They also have a toy lapdancing kit, which seems to have the words "not a toy" hastily tacked onto the description.

If just one person is saved by making automobiles illegal, its worth it.

if just one person is saved by outlawing air travel, it's worth it.

if just one child's life is saved by replacing teachers with robots, it's worth it.

Those three examples all have immediate disadvantages on our ways of life (might have to think about the robots one for a bit though). The grandparent is right, the only disadvantages of this system is if legitimate sites are getting blocked, which only the conspiracy theorists claim anyway. I'm in Britain where my ISP use the Cleanfeed system. The only thing I've even noticed is when part of 4chan got blocked (the part where child pornography is supposedly occasionally posted, you surely can't blame them for that block). As of right now, even though it's still in the system, BT have unblocked it.

I agree with the nephew post saying we should be going after the distributors and producers, but this can be ineffective for sites outside of western countries.

Maybe search results depend on country? I live in Germany and use http://www.google.co.uk/.

Because you can hardly convince me that customSiliconeBracelets.com is at the top of the list if I checked it myself and found it on position #33.

Google. Not a toggle switch admittedly - but an advanced interface, and a simple one. The iPod is another example of a simple interface which has been enormously successful.

It's an awful idea ... [that] functionality ... should be locked away from all but the lords of technology, unavailable to the unwashed masses

That's not what the parent is saying. The parent says why can't interfaces be less cluttered. He is describing his own needs and, for example, his mother's, not claiming to be a "lord of technology". Just because designing a simple interface is hard to do doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted. It's enormously important, and it's made a lot of money for Apple and Google.

Aisha Mohammad

It is common knowledge that reading in a moving car increases the likelihood of motion sickness in many people. Motion sickness is basically caused by your mind getting conflicting information about movement. Reading probably acts to increase the difference between signals from sight and balance and therefore makes matters worse.

So rather than his kids having 'some weak composition' it is more likely that you and your siblings are actually the odd ones in this case.

This is an ill-thought-through measure designed only to court acceptance from the public. Now that it's no longer politically acceptable to go after witches, blacks, jews or gypsies, sexual offenders are the current untermenschen -- somebody to whom everybody else can feel superior; and against whom no measure is unjustifiable, irrespective of whether or not it would ever be workable in practice and/or the extent of collateral damage it would create.

Have you ever received junk mail addressed to a former occupant of your home?

Have you ever been refused credit because of a bad debt run up by a former occupant of your home?

I can answer yes to both questions. I've even received late-night faxes from abroad on my voice line, because my phone number used to be a fax number (the telco had run out of never-before-used numbers and so had to give me a recycled one; it had been out of service for over a year, but that didn't help against some overseas scumsucker with an out-of-date phone book).

Now think of the way that information tends to hang around on the internet: somebody sees an interesting story, makes a copy of it on their website, the original goes away but the copy persists. Also, "sexual offences" cover a broad gamut. Legally there is no distinction between someone who has non-penetrative sex with a 15 year, 364 day old girl who managed to get into an over-18s bar; and someone who participated in gang-rape of a pre-school child. Being caught taking a leak in the street (in times when councils are closing public toilets, and bars and restaurants are erecting bogus "toilets are for customers' use only" signs [they're bogus because entering the premises for the purpose of using the toilet makes you automatically a customer]) is also deemed a sexual offence.

Still think all this tracking of sexual offenders is a good idea? I know exactly why this man did what he did.

For the rupee-challenged, INR 140000 pa > SGD 3500 pm)

GNU/Solaris especially if, as rumored, Sun put Solaris under the GPL

Roll up Roll up come on you lovely people.

Buy your RFID Readers http://froogle.google.co.uk/froogle?q=RFID+reader& oe=UTF-8&scoring=pd&price1=&price2=225.00&lnk=prsu gg
Buy your RFID Tag/Chips http://www.gaotek.com/index.php?main_page=index&cP ath=63&gclid=CJ7p383q_YgCFSJ4MAodJDDrAg
Buy your blank credit sized cards http://www.smartcardsupply.com/Content/Cards/cards .htm

What was the question again "Would You Trust RFID Enabled ATM Cards" mmm let me ponder that, NOOOOO.

Personally i have little hope or no, for are open/free society, mainly after talking to friends, people on the train anyone who understands RFID, and most people that i have talked/chatted to really do believe that rfid is a good thing, when questioned about some basic fact they just do not get it but follow on blind F^^KING FAITH.

RFID good for packages and tracking your stuff you ordered, useful for the company and client.
RFID good for making people belive that if a dick fits up your arse then it is compatible and you should adopt, even if it is not comfortable or useful, no questions just sit on it and smile.

are you sure?

That's the advice from the TSA, just after they tell you that they'll break your bag open if they want to. They're kind of biased in what their advice is based on.

The advice not to put your home address comes from a lot of sources, such as Transport Canada at http://www.tc.gc.ca/aboutus/travel/Air/brochure.ht m which says "Label your luggage. Do not use your home address or business title. Luggage tags with flaps that hide your name and address are a smart idea. These steps will help protect your anonymity and thwart would-be thieves.", Transport Ireland at http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=27&url= http%3A%2F%2Fwww.transport.ie%2Fupload%2Fgeneral%2 F6535-0.pdf&ei=YQJvRf_WA47oQNy2_ZQG&usg=__Haa72yev dWerxzm-Gah18HxNr14=&sig2=P18NtWDbgiu4n6zi_3QSVA or from a wide range of house insurance companies.

From what reality do you hail? An inch is 25.4 mm long. http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=convert+1+i nch+to+mm
Sheesh - you come from Britland for heavens sake. We only officially ditched imperial for metric a scant 33 years ago. What are they teaching you young whippersnappers in school these days?

Oh, and would you mind getting off my lawn? Thanks awfully.

A lot of the reason for the online growth is that people tend to be an impatient lot and as just about everywhere is shut Christmas day and many also on the 26th, people can't wait for the stores to open, also add to the people who got their first computer as a gift (hopefully a mac unless they're comfortable with Linux) may be keen to make their first online purchase.

Love the fixed background on your site :-)

This means that in the UK you're unlikely to be in a place where the FM range is full. Even in London you can find a few gaps. Although I didn't know of any drive in cinemas in the UK. Because of the law mentioned in this article, gyms tended to not transmit on FM either, I've seen two solutions to the problem, some gyms have headphone sockets on the pieces of equipment and others have special receivers that transmit on a different band, they give you a receiver when you enter the gym so you don't need your own. This is why FM radio is not exactly a big selling feature on MP3 players over here (well it's not in the US either considering the popularity of the iPod, but in the UK if someone launches a device with built in FM the first response is 'what no DAB?')

It will be a while before FM disappears entirely, their first priority is getting analogue TV off the air. Why is it the government is forcing this? I don't know, it should be up to the market to decide.

This means that in the UK you're unlikely to be in a place where the FM range is full. Even in London you can find a few gaps. Although I didn't know of any drive in cinemas in the UK. Because of the law mentioned in this article, gyms tended to not transmit on FM either, I've seen two solutions to the problem, some gyms have headphone sockets on the pieces of equipment and others have special receivers that transmit on a different band, they give you a receiver when you enter the gym so you don't need your own. This is why FM radio is not exactly a big selling feature on MP3 players over here (well it's not in the US either considering the popularity of the iPod, but in the UK if someone launches a device with built in FM the first response is 'what no DAB?')

It will be a while before FM disappears entirely, their first priority is getting analogue TV off the air. Why is it the government is forcing this? I don't know, it should be up to the market to decide.

The real 800lb gorilla for methane is the Arctic. If the predictions are right then this is the calm before the storm. If the Arctic melts, which it is, it'll release vast amounts of methane.

Do you think that self-discipline is especially malleable? Are you familiar with the concept of hyperbolic discounting and intertemporal bargaining?

"(luckily they've stayed away from horoscopes for now)"

Actually, the Google UK default personalised home page (the link may end up taking you somewhere different if you're not in the UK, I'm not sure) features a horoscope from tarot.com.

I thought nintendo was supposed to be using the Gyration miniature gyroscopes.

Analog devices make MEMS gyroscopes too. Nintendo could have gone to any vendor, of course.

There's not as much market for gyroscopes as for accelerometers, hence they're more expensive. Sometimes they can be found in car satellite navigation systems as a way of increasing resolution above what GPS can offer - ever heard of a roundabout? They're useful there - and there are other applications as well. Games consoles, for instance!

If you read the article, it says:

Analog Devices Inc. of Norwood, Massachusetts makes a similar chip, which goes into the main Wii controller, the stick-like Wii Remote. According to Analog Devices, ST's chip is used in the auxiliary Freestyle controller (popularly known as the "Nunchuck") that connects to the larger controller for some games. ST said it was not allowed to say where exactly its chip is used.

Sony Corp.'s "Sixaxis" controller for the PS3 also has an accelerometer. The six axises the name refers to are the three dimensions of space, plus three axises of spin. The company hasn't revealed who makes the chip.

Have we learned nothing?

The article states that if you can see the human-readable part of the passport, or even just take a good guess at the details, you can extract the rest of the data from the RFID chip -- and clone it. Encryption is used to ensure that nobody can eavesdrop on a transaction once initiated, but that doesn't help the fact that every transaction is presumed legitimate -- and the very nature of RFID means that you aren't always able to know that a transaction is taking place. If there isn't a human being checking passports, just a machine -- and one day, that is exactly how it will be -- one of those cloned RFID chips will be enough to get you past it.

Attempting to automate people out of the loop is asking for trouble, because we can always know what tests a machine is performing and falsify the results. Criminals are not stupid -- and smart people can often be bought. If the anticipated returns are high enough, you can be sure that someone will put up the stake. Security through obscurity is worse than no security, because it leads people to believe that their details are safe when they are not.

By the way, if you want to see how easy it is to commit identity theft, start here.

Its not that hard to build a charcoal fired furnace that is more than capable of melting down a HDD

Write (or snag) some generic xsl and use wget and xsltproc. All my sites have used xltproc via cron to regenerate a html sitemap from the google sitemap xml since the sitemap thing was launched.

If you're using a text mode browser, this should be obvious...

True yes, but thats more than what I said and they Still have limits of 1GB/day.

Plus theres often a bit of talk about ntl being a bit evil...

Anyone know of any good UK Broadband Providers? Freedom2Support used to be good

Here is a well known company whose logo is also visible from space.

you can use OpenOffice and Firebird as an MSAccess replacement

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=openoffice+ firebird

Firebird also can replace mssql server, sql express , sql everywhere

good news it works on macos, linux, windows ,*bsd , solaris x86, cell cpu (recent linux powerpc port completed)

what we are missing is an vms port for openoffice ;)
any volunteers ?

http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=06/10/19/ 9519833

Broadcom users on Linux should really be using the bcm43xx kernel module by now.

I personally had the bcm43xx drivers cause system instability with two very different machines and different broadcom chipsets. Going back to ndis made things stable again.

But Kudos to the bcm43xx developers, I hope they get this cracked. although in the future, I'll make more of an effort to steer clear of Broadcom, both because of their lack of co-operation in supporting Linux AND this recent news.

Broadcom can join Canon on my shit list.

"You know, stupid fanboy comments like this are really annoying"

According to this all that's required in adding entries to /etc/hotplug/blacklist.

http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net/

2000 ((cubic meters) per day) = 117409.801 hogshead per fortnight

According to Google that is.

I do love Googles conversion function though. I didn't think it would work that one out OK but it did.

Well that is not all, not so long ago I was planning a trip to Birmingham and while looking for the bullring I was amazed to see that it had been destroyed..

Fortunately for me, it seems the pictures at google were wrong, as when I arrived I could get into the place withour problems.

This is stupid. Like Apple records persisting solely to sue Apple Computer. There's no overlap in business beyond the name - no-one looking for 70s beatles recordings on ebay is going to get confused and buy a powerbook instead.

Also, the utube site is not difficult to find as below. It *is* difficult accessing it, it's been slashdotted! But there's certainly no overlap in business.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=utube

The dearth of opportunity to get short films exhibited could explain why Cnet hasn't seen so many.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=short+film+festiv al&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB

The one I work seen plenty of attendance growth in the last few years.

YouTube et. al. are all well and good but there's something about a few beers in the bar with the filmmakers, crew and appreciative audience you just can't get with a download.

$200,000 per minute does price plenty of folk out of the market for TV advertising.

Another thing that's strictly forbidden in adwords (I actually read the TOS when I was signing up for it) is advertising any form of prostitution. However, people have got around it if you search for pay sex you get loads of ads, some fairly innocent like dating sites and others advertising escort services. You're also not meant to use trademarks but there's loads who use the Firefox name for ads. The reason so many do that is because with Google adsense you get $1 if an IE user downloads Firefox with the Google toolbar, it costs less than $1 for the keyword 'Firefox' and so they make a profit when people go to thier site and click the banner (but only if the person clicking it is an IE user, otherwise they get nothing).

Another thing that's strictly forbidden in adwords (I actually read the TOS when I was signing up for it) is advertising any form of prostitution. However, people have got around it if you search for pay sex you get loads of ads, some fairly innocent like dating sites and others advertising escort services. You're also not meant to use trademarks but there's loads who use the Firefox name for ads. The reason so many do that is because with Google adsense you get $1 if an IE user downloads Firefox with the Google toolbar, it costs less than $1 for the keyword 'Firefox' and so they make a profit when people go to thier site and click the banner (but only if the person clicking it is an IE user, otherwise they get nothing).

You are a true moron if you think a government which openly proclaims genocide should have anything nuclear.

You are the moron if you believe that. The only thing that springs to mind to make you believe that is the story about the Iranian leader wanting to wipe Israel off the map. Shame it was a deliberate mistranslation (more info)

Now, I'm sure there are extremists in Iran who say what you think represents the whole nation. These people are not in charge however. They are no different from Jerry Falwell, Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones. There are extremists on all sides and if you filter your view to only these you get a completely jaded picture. And that is what is being deliberately done by your government, in the exact same way that the Iraq propaganda was done. They want you to fear the Iranians in the same way that duck and cover made you fear the soviets. For some of us this repetition is getting a bit boring.

http://www.esthost.com/

based in ...USA !
yet nobody Police, FBI, SEC or even who they peer with will shut them down, money talks in USA i guess
land of the Outlaws

A few new weapons, a new map, a vehicle that was meant to be in the previous game, is it enough just to say HALO 3 and expect fans to go into a flurry of hype?

Where's the innovation?

If you look at the marathon jump between HL1 and HL2, what Bungie are doing is pathetically lazy. If time is constraining them from doing anything truly different from previous games (which is highly dubious) then leave it a little while before you release something with the $50 price tag.

"What if you could save your own movies from Halo 3's single- and multiplayer gameplay and then rewatch them? In Halo 3, you can."

Great, something thats already available and expected in many games. Come on this is meant to be the 'NEXT GENERATION' of gaming, this stuff shouldn't even be being mentioned in comparison with actual developments.

"Halo 3 will have three retail SKUs: standard, collector's edition, and Legendary. Guess which one comes with a helmet and four discs of content?"

How is having extra shit to sell to people meant to get people excited about the game?

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=63596151 23408599084&q

Is this all there is needed to cause a sycophantic hysteria months, maybe even a year before the game is released?

The Spore, Supreme Commander, Crysis, Portal all even the ill fated Stalker all showed tremendous promise during previews. Hell most games claim to be REVOLUTIONISING the genre, but Halo 3 doesnt even seem to be trying to fool anyone.

This trend of meager sequels is worrying, together with micro transactions for maps, exclusive content etc. I would not be surprised if Halo 3 were to charge for a 'updates' that were mandatory to play online. These "features" for Halo 3 would not be out of place among free updates for multiplayer games such as Red orchestra and other game developers with a strong dedication to the online community.

I appreciate this is an early preview, but why does this mean only mediocre improvements must be shown. This probably seems more inflamatory than is my intention, and I guess if this is what people want to pay for its good that Bungie are providing it.

getfirefox.co.uk is not an official page, only getfirefox.com is

The .co.uk site is just what some enterprising individual set up in order to make money off Google referral fees.

Google offers $1 per Firefox download for users signed up to adsense. Just Google for Firefox you'll see that all the sponsored links take you to pages with "Get Firefox with Google Toolbar" buttons on them.

Have you tried electroconvulsive therapy yet?

Lithium may also work, but from my experance they try to avoid giving you lithium so there's probably something bad about it that they don't put on the leaflet.

This answers all your questions:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/talk.politics.gun s/browse_thread/thread/a466622fd192c7b1/1f3ec1ae30 9f0690#1f3ec1ae309f0690

Try searching for paris -hilton...

Ta-Dah!

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=paris+-hilton&sta rt=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

"They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination" - U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff

"I don't think they can be considered a "derivative work" because really they add functionality to the kernel, not take functionality from it"

Adding functionality has nothing to do with copyright law. If you don't believe me, add some binary-only functionality to gcc or emacs and see how long it takes for Eben Moglen to get on your phone.

"besides there's too many other backdoor ways of getting round it"

Well you can shift your blob down into firmware or up into userspace. I think the kernel devs would be happier with that than with you tainting their kernel.

"So, rather than just making a sensible, stable, driver ABI we have something not stable which doesn't support binaries. It's just a PITA to have to recompile all the bloody VMWare drivers every time a slightly revised kernel comes out. This is the kind of thing that just hurts users without doing anything to the vendors which it is meant to spite."

If youre recompiling drivers, then you should be asking your vendors to put the drivers in the kernel, where all the maintenance and interface twiddling gets done by the kernel maintainers. It also means the kernel people can revise and twiddle the interface when they feel like it, instead of turning the kernel into a mush of backwards compatibility kluges like windows. The kernel writers have looked long and hard at what happens when you encourage binary only drivers, on the lkml, and they have their reasons for keeping it the way it is. Check it out here.

You guys like to think you're making pragmatic compromises; you're making foolish short-sighted mistakes. Look at THIS case, where a known bug has sat in a video driver for 2 whole years and counting...

I would die for a dual or quad Cell based system with a couple gigs of RAM running Linux for my desktop.

Although "we" never noticed it, the Reiser news has been around for much longer, check Google News sorted by date. I read some older articles (prior to the arrest, prior to Nina going missing). Although the decision is defendable on its own, don't ignore the fact that reiserfs has been under control of a workaholic mathematician in a tough divorce while $170K in debt for a quite a while. This must have affected development and as such had an indirect influence. In the end it's all related.