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I haven't the time to look up every acronym and backronym on the entire internet.

According to this quick search "AMOLED" has been mentioned 4910 times on this site. I'd say this term has moved into the realm of assumed knowledge, and that you've moved into the realm of assumed stupidity.

I can't say that this situation is all that unusual. Parents, particularly parents who are stay-at-home, have way too much time on their hands and involve themselves up to their armpits in the lives of their children. I have worked at schools where parents arrive at the schoolgrounds at lunchtime, and hang around on campus until the end of the day. For several weeks, parents lined up against the windows of one of the classrooms and stared at their children in class for the hour and fifteen minutes from the end of lunch to the end of the day. This continued until the teacher posted artwork blocking the parents view into the classroom from those windows. The parents promptly complained to the principal, and the teacher was ordered to take them down. That teacher (and almost every other teacher at the school) refuses to teach in that exposed classroom.

I've been the subject of ridiculous complaints also. I was too hard on a kid when I separated him for calling one of the girls a "cheating dog" (for using a calculator during a maths activity where I had explicitly allowed the class to use calculators). I take the roll at the wrong time of the day. I set too much homework (and, conversely, I don't set enough homework; a complaint made by the same parent). I don't hand notes out (I prefer to lay out the notes at the front of the class, and the kids are meant to pick them up as they leave). I don't insist that someone's little baby (senior elementary student) wear a raincoat if it looks rainy outside, and I don't help that student to put that raincoat on. I drink Ginger Beer which comes in a bottle that looks like it's a bottle of real beer (that it isn't is beside the point also, because Ginger Beer has the word "beer" in it, and therefore, I'm setting a poor example to students). I advocate the use of facebook (which is actually Edmodo, which, I'll admit, does look a lot like facebook, but isn't). I am biased against or for particular students because I select them for debate teams, public speaking competitions or sport (sometimes I am still biased against particular students when I'm not involved at all in the selection or non-selection of them for various opportunities). On and on and on. Most of these complaints are, as other commenters have noted, housewives with too much time on their hands. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that I have had a good principal who, for the most part, only wastes a little bit of her and my time every so often to investigate and respond to these claims.

That being said, I think that teachers and educational institutions have to acknowledge some responsibility in allowing this to happen. We encourage a dialogue between parents and teachers on an equal level, and we don't say all that much when unqualified pundits make educational claims that are simply wrong. Anyone, no matter how unqualified, will happily make claims about education and expect that those claims have equal footing with qualifie

I can't say that this situation is all that unusual. Parents, particularly parents who are stay-at-home, have way too much time on their hands and involve themselves up to their armpits in the lives of their children. I have worked at schools where parents arrive at the schoolgrounds at lunchtime, and hang around on campus until the end of the day. For several weeks, parents lined up against the windows of one of the classrooms and stared at their children in class for the hour and fifteen minutes from the end of lunch to the end of the day. This continued until the teacher posted artwork blocking the parents view into the classroom from those windows. The parents promptly complained to the principal, and the teacher was ordered to take them down. That teacher (and almost every other teacher at the school) refuses to teach in that exposed classroom.

I've been the subject of ridiculous complaints also. I was too hard on a kid when I separated him for calling one of the girls a "cheating dog" (for using a calculator during a maths activity where I had explicitly allowed the class to use calculators). I take the roll at the wrong time of the day. I set too much homework (and, conversely, I don't set enough homework; a complaint made by the same parent). I don't hand notes out (I prefer to lay out the notes at the front of the class, and the kids are meant to pick them up as they leave). I don't insist that someone's little baby (senior elementary student) wear a raincoat if it looks rainy outside, and I don't help that student to put that raincoat on. I drink Ginger Beer which comes in a bottle that looks like it's a bottle of real beer (that it isn't is beside the point also, because Ginger Beer has the word "beer" in it, and therefore, I'm setting a poor example to students). I advocate the use of facebook (which is actually Edmodo, which, I'll admit, does look a lot like facebook, but isn't). I am biased against or for particular students because I select them for debate teams, public speaking competitions or sport (sometimes I am still biased against particular students when I'm not involved at all in the selection or non-selection of them for various opportunities). On and on and on. Most of these complaints are, as other commenters have noted, housewives with too much time on their hands. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that I have had a good principal who, for the most part, only wastes a little bit of her and my time every so often to investigate and respond to these claims.

That being said, I think that teachers and educational institutions have to acknowledge some responsibility in allowing this to happen. We encourage a dialogue between parents and teachers on an equal level, and we don't say all that much when unqualified pundits make educational claims that are simply wrong. Anyone, no matter how unqualified, will happily make claims about education and expect that those claims have equal footing with qualifie

Mass transit isn't intended for places like Montana. It is intended for cities with large populations.

Having been to many developing nations in Asia, there is often a municipal bus that runs around town in circles all day and most of the night. People pay about $0.20 ish of the local currency for every turn the vehicle makes. The size of the city only influences how many of these vehicles are in operation. In Thailand for example, only the largest cities like Bangkok will operate a proper bus service, smaller cities will run Songthaews or Baht Busses. Although every municipality tends to have it's own little variant of the system.

There's no reason a municipal transit system cant be applied to larger towns in western nations.

Really?

Seen that photoshop before. The saddest thing about it is that it's a fake

Heres the real photo of the two. You may notice the Galaxy II is larger, has the big words "samsung" written on it and a widget displaying the time and date. If you didn't notice them, you need your eyes examined.

Here is Samsung's official marketing on the S2 Here's the comparison chart between the two

Try linking to something other then CultOfMac. So nice troll, but it's nothing but a troll.

Sorry if reality doesn't fit in with your warped world view, but that's reality for you.

So, some sort of cockroach grizzly bear hybrid... like a giant tardigrad.... you think we should engineer the human race to become giant tardigrads?.... to look like this? http://www.google.com.au/search?q=tardigrades&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=TPYtT5OwGqS4iQfPxriDDw&ved=0CEcQsAQ&biw=1257&bih=621 That's one hell of a birth video for our first homo-grad. Can't wait to see that one... and then when someone says "aaaaarrrrgh kill it!" we won't be able to kill it with anything because of it's impenetrable exoskeleton and hardy resistance to every possible lethal condition we could think of. This is why you are not currently occupying any office in the space program wisebabo.

Yes you can

Perhaps this is why text books are updated. English is a fluid language and changes over time, http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Irregardless&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a, 2,070,000 results, quite significant for a non-word.

Just straight shifting text books to computers is pretty pointless. The real idea is to create interactive tutorials and simulations backed up with reference material, typically reports covering specific subjects within a body of work that covers the topic. This more readily allows far broader input into the topic and avoids having thousands of text books covering the exact same material, in pretty much the same manner, with the only difference being the prejudices of the instructors.

By far the most insightful discussion I've seen on this topic is this book: http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Autopoiesis_and_cognition.html?id=nVmcN9Ja68kC&redir_esc=y Basically, it argues that life can be identified by it's circular organisation. It dismisses listing properties of living things. It also dismisses the idea that life must replicate or even evolve. Life is simply a particular kind of organisation. If it evolves and replicates, great. If it consumes something and expells something, great. But it's important not to list these as requirements of life, or we risk staring life in the face and not recognising it.

Is anyone on record of having died from a dirty keyboard? I never heard of it. Germs are rarely dangreous. What about when you walk out your door into the coutryside, no one ever sterilises that. If we follow the logic behind this, we should sterilise that to.

google agrees with you.

"died from a dirty telephone" only gives HHGTTG references. Even "died from a dirty toilet" scores only 6 results, and most of those seem to be people asking if anyone died that way.

I guess germs aren't that dangerous after all... or they are so dangerous that nobody lived to blog about it ;)

You do realize you're giving poisonous plant as options here, right ? Yes using massive automation (not available in large parts of the world) it can be made mostly safe ... but come on ! You're arguing that poisonous plants are a solution to eating healthy ...

Also, taking nutricional advice from a propaganda site like that ... what can possibly go wrong, too bad like with all these "good for nature" policies, others must suffer for your delusions.

Not that what the google search reveals unfortunately happens about 5 times yearly in Europe and America, and is entirely 100% avoidable. There's no shortage of issues with veganism and pregnancy either. Sadly, if children suffer nutrient deficiency in the womb, they hardly ever recover.

rainer partenan's nanotech aluminium-based battery

I got curious so I looked this up.

1. He is Finnish not American so why should he get US research dollars
2. He is a convicted criminal for fraud .... the whole thing was a scam.

Rainer Partanen

Conventional car companies don't have to pay for accidents resulting from driver error.

Maybe.

http://www.google.com.au/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=toyota+speed#pq=toyota+accelerator+problem&hl=en&sugexp=kjrmc&cp=26&gs_id=4&xhr=t&q=toyota+sudden+acceleration&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&safe=active&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=toyota+sudden+acceleration&aq=0&aqi=g4&aql=f&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=e6e6b11bd2647b75&biw=1280&bih=711&safe=on

Guess you never used a Palm Pilot?

Which one? All I can see is ones with buttons ranging from few in number to heaps.

I see vast open space on my commute to work and every time I travel.

I've seen almost the same words on several post, how can so called "educated" people be so ignorant about where their food comes from? The empty space you see is called "farmland", there would be no city for you to commute to without it. Globally, we have run out of new farmland, food prices have sky-rocketed over the last decade causing food riots in many places, including Mexico which borders the US. The only thing that will stop this from becoming worse as our population grows is a new green revolution that does not depend on oil to create fertiliser.

Walled gardens do us no favors.

I don't know about you, but I kind of like not having to worry about running malware scanners on my phone.

Whoever think it is hard to encrypt backup tapes, should learn how to use google. The following link will give a few pointers, but my first suggestion is “Get a real operating system” http://www.google.com.au/search?q=man+tar&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=PTX&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=unix+encrypt+backup+to+tape&pbx=1&oq=unix+encrypt+backup+to+tape&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=32114l42412l0l42758l27l27l0l3l3l0l452l7019l0.1.13.8.2l27l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=afa2de594e6bb2dc&biw=1920&bih=917

Seems there's really not much information on this "Movie Rights Group" - a website with an anonymous host with minimal functionality and some buttons not working (and according to wayback, barely touched since created last year), a spokesman who's linkedin profile jumps from "Australian Air Force - 1980" directly to "VP Sales & Marketing Movie Rights Group - 2010", a head office in a suite off broadwater on the gold coast (not exactly the bustling commercial hub of Australia!).

Interestingly, the original website has this wonderful snippet (god I love wayback)

"If, however, you decide not to settle and wish your matter to be heard in Court, we strongly suggest you engage a lawyer as soon as possible. Be aware that you may be exposing yourself to civil damages of up to USD$150,000 plus costs, per infringement."

However I guess when this story broke they thought it would be safer to change it to

"If, however, you decide not to settle and wish your matter to be heard in Court, we strongly suggest you engage a lawyer as soon as possible."

I guess my internet investigation skills are not l33t enough to find much real information on the company :)

It would be interesting to know if this is a proactive launch by the MPAA into Australia, or is this just some guy who saw what was going on in America, set up a website, flew over there and shopped around until he got a client who thought "why not, this guy wants to take the risk, we know nothing of Australia" - he's not even a law firm as far as I can tell (he's using a Brisbane one).....the website claims "the directors" have been working in IT for over 15 years, anyone from Brisbane/Gold Coast worked with this guy or know the directors?

About all it seems to do is enable Google to watch what I purchase. Sorry, I'm going to need something of benefit to me first.

Yeah but the average Joe doesn't know that and if he did he probably wouldn't care. Soon enough Google will get enough ignorant or apathetic Joes so that most Cashiers will want to support it and bam it'll be convenient for you. Then the only other downside will be its hard to buy hookers with Google Wallet.

Really? The local brothels take credit cards - they don't even show "brothel" on the bill (I set up their POS, and yes, brothels are legal here). I'm told the local drug dealer (for one of the brothels) takes credit cards - they named two restaurants (one in Manuka) that appear on the receipts.... I'm tempted to believe the brothel manager given the owner of the restaurants has since been busted (released on bail) for importing a large amount of cocaine. Google Wallet transactions for the same things is no big stretch. Google around and you'll find botnets that rent out to credit cards.

It's a mistake to think "legitimate" business and "criminal" business live in different parts of town... HINT: Wall Street would collapse if drugs were legalised in the US.

Sounds like the perfect organisation to examine Senator Inhofe's misuse of government resources to conduct his personal witch hunts.

Hmm... thats weird. Just tried http://www.google.com.au/?q=flights+from+mel+to+syd (ie using google Australia) and it also includes a selection of matching flights at the top of the search results. Is this new feature something other than this?

Can we please leave "the western world" out of this ? Every eastern world committed slavery and child-rape on a massive scale. Islam committed massive genocides is in addition to their long-lived (and even currently practiced) "holy act" of child rape (their prophet fucked a 6-9 year old girl against her will, as anyone can verify in their "holy" texts, and of course it's an accepted sharia rule that you are free to rape (and sell) babies) (oh and one difference between "peaceful" sufi islam and sunni/shia is that sufi's practice child-rape on both boys and girls. Apparently it's the only way to "experience the true beauty of allah"). Muslims ... well let's just say that before their actions, northern africa was entirely 100% black (except for parts of Egypt). As anyone can tell, it's now 0%. Reading the history books you find out immediately what caused this : massive slave trade (as in at the very least 100x more people than America ever touched), and worse : all the black slaves transported into the muslim world, were exterminated. Reading the. history books you will find that a lot of muslim states had slave hunts, for fun, genocides, executions and worse for fun. Worse you say ? It's not hard to find books describing the practice of killing a female slave *while* you're raping her. Apparently that's fun, and morally right (after all, the quran explicitly states that you can rape slaves, which their prophet did, and explicitly says you can kill them for any reason, why not combine both practices, right ?). Thousands of people died that way. The previous "western" world, is divided in three parts : indians, which liked to commit genocide on their neighbors, executing any survivors by tying them to the ground, then skinning them alive, then leaving them for animals to eat. I am sure they had other, equally inventive practices applied to anyone without the power to militarily resist them. And on the souther pre-western front we have mayans and incas, who regularly went out and "conquered" prisoners, tortured them for months, and then finally cut out their hearts on sacrificial altars. The western world, even during it's very worst and as fucked up as it is, is pretty fucking moral compared to pretty much any successfull alternative. But of course, you could say that's not at all that hard, after all, the nazi holocaust was one hell of a lot better than what most non-western states do on a regular day.

Why are you starting this discussion ? The one and only relevant question is :

If alternative energy is indeed cheaper to produce, why doesn't this firm have more money than the US government by now ?

Because the default answer is simply that the detractors are right and alternative energy is worse than coal *and* nuclear, both in terms of EREI (exp. return on energy investment) and EROI.

If we think like the thread starter, that a $500 million failure simply means we need to try something bigger, then we'll simply waste all our resources on a wild goose chase of whatever is popular of the day. Let's please not go there. It's also pretty much proof of the exact statement that he seemingly wanted to avoid : pro-"renewable energy" people have at least one religious nutcase among them.

See, when one hear stories of Americans not knowing how to use single lane roundabouts like these, it's quite difficult not to think the entire continent is populated by imbeciles... Mean? Maybe; but this is a very clear example of how having such powers (like road rules) in the hands of small inexperienced local governments can result in inconsistency, disorder and downright disaster.

The American system, the "American way", may have worked in the past when people and communities kept to themselves, but it's failing miserably now.

No, roundabouts shouldn't replace all intersections, and even in some cases here roundabouts have been converted into traffic lights. Roundabouts are for low to medium traffic areas, not main roads or in CBDs; save the massive signalled roundabouts, which are quite effective.

Mad props to the Dutch for the turborotonde. Imagine putting one of those in the US; there'd probably be someone in a massive city 4x4 driving over the median strips to turn left from the right lane...

For the record, I'm from Sydney, and I by no means think that our system is perfect; but I can be assured that wherever I drive across the entire country, I don't have to worry about who has the right of way or any other crazy shit. The worst is in Melbourne, where they've started implementing hook turns... but that's about it. Consistency is key to sanity; both of which the US seems to lack.

I believe your research is worth LESS than a sack of warm shit because Hansen strongly recommends nuclear power, Jones and Mann advocate "reducing emissions" but AFAIK do not advocate any specific technological solution as to how to achieve that.

I don't agree that nuclear power is the silver bullet you seem to think it is, but I do recommend that you actually listen to what these scientists say in their own words before you gulp down any more of that anti-science kool aid you're drinking.

Just become somebody clicks through to the site doesn't mean the search result was a success.

Just because somebody doesn't click through doesn't mean the search result was a failure, either. Google often turns up many more results, and relevant results at that, than Bing. Try this experiment...

Go to Bing Image search and search for the following:

Asterodon miliaris

Bing gives you a grand total of two search results and neither of them are correct. The first is an Coscinasterias calamaria (eleven-armed starfish) and the second is an Coriaster granulatus (Pink cushion).

Repeat the same search on Google Image search and the first eight results are correct or relevant. The next score or so of results appear on pages that at least mention Asterodon miliaris.

In the Google world you're probably spoilt for choice and your answer may directly appear in the search results - no click throughs.

For those not in the US, Google says* that the target in TFA is equivalent to ~4.3 litres/100km.

That figure is very close to the' 'official' stated fuel consumption of the Toyota Prius. So it's a pretty ambitious target considering we are talking about light trucks here.

* (Google's unit conversion feature continues to surprise me with what it can do - in this case turning a distance per volume and turning it into a volume per multiple of a different distance. Nifty.)

Use Google Scholar instead of plain Google. He looks to have plenty of real science to his credit. (Although I'm betting those 1930s papers were someone else...)

eastern-european migrants taking over the few remaining jobs.

I have to argue with that point, with an official unemployment rate of 7.7%, it's not like the Thatcher era. Unemployment rates are relatively low, so you can't argue that unemployment is a factor here without ignoring the facts.

Does your rant still hold if you substitute CO2 with Sulphur and Gore with Reagan? How did Gore get the Iron Lady on his side?

I'm speaking from personal experience of 3 people I've known. Alcohol and Zoloft don't mix, it has the opposite effect to Zoloft alone.

Some reason? The guy created the Lotus Notes. Compared to that Windows 3.1 should be hanging in The Louvre.

• "Survival of the unfittest | Technology | The Guardian"
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/feb/09/guardianweeklytechnologysection
• "Damien Katz: 70 Reasons Lotus Notes Sucks"
  http://damienkatz.net/2005/02/70-reasons-lotus-notes-sucks.html
• http://lotusnotessucks.4t.com/
• http://www.ihatelotusnotes.com/
• http://www.google.com.au/search?q=lotus+notes+sucks

I wonder how many 'incentives' Securency gave out for Canada to adopt it. They seem to be doing that alot lately.

I see a desperate need for a stupid idea wiki.

Must be right

Yep. They're definitely all words in common usage.

Must be right

irregardless About 1,390,000 results
gashblanab Your search - gashblanab - did not match any documents.

You have a bit of catching up to do before your exciting new word falls into anything close to common usage. Until then, everyone who uses it is a gashblanab.

irregardless About 1,390,000 results
gashblanab Your search - gashblanab - did not match any documents.

You have a bit of catching up to do before your exciting new word falls into anything close to common usage. Until then, everyone who uses it is a gashblanab.

Hell, Google Maps can't even figure out how to get there!

Yet some how it can figure out how to get from Tokyo to LA.

Hell, Google Maps can't even figure out how to get there!

Yet some how it can figure out how to get from Tokyo to LA.

Darwin is pretty far away from Christchurch. I guess they could get someone from there to volunteer, but I doubt anyone who has won some prestigious award would be into it.

Hell, Google Maps can't even figure out how to get there!

Hmmm.

Xerox can copyright a shortening of the term Xerography ("dry printing").

Xerox isn't a shortening of Xerography. Its a bit of a play on it but definitely not a shortening.

Apple has been using the term and suffix .app since it bought NeXT.

And? .app mean application, ie. Paint.app would be the application called Paint...

Microsoft copyrighted a network centric API called .Net and uses that suffix.

Irrelevant. .Net (referred to as dot net) is used to refer to the application framework. Microsoft hasn't (afaik) tried to sue any websites in the net TLD for using .net. Heck, they haven't even sued Paint.Net.

Microsoft copyright a window manager called Windows. (recall that the original Windows was not really an OS but just a GUI window manager for DOS.)

They almost lost the "Windows" trademark (its not copyrighted) in the Lindows case. They settled rather then chance it.

It seems to me that apple winds on many grounds.

Huh? How does Apple win or lose with this list? Is it a competition about who has the most trademarked words? Remember that Apple will sue anyone who uses iSomething to refer to a computer related product and they will sue anyone who tries to market a device which may look similar to their devices.

the term application has many meanings so it's use in the narrow term for an application on a computer is similar to the narrow usage of the generic words Apple or Amazon as company names in their fields not as fruit or rivers. Apple would probably get in trouble if they opened a store in the amazon basin and called it the Apple Amazon store.

I don't know what you are trying to say here but trademarked terms are relevant only to their particular niche. I could open a cafe down at the local shopping centre and call it "Amazon" without getting into a trademark dispute with the Amazon online media company as long as I didn't try to fool people into thinking I was related to them.
The term application is a generic term regarding computers. It has been in use for at least 10-20 years to refer to a program or set of programs. It cannot be trademarked due to this. App is a common contraction of application.

So if Windows can bar Lindows and Amazon could bar apple from calling one of it's regional stores Amazon since they are in the same field why can't Apple bar amazon from re-using it's coined app term.

As before, Microsoft was running the risk of losing its trademark on windows in the Lindows case which is why it got settled rather then fought out in court. Apple could not call one of their stores Apple Amazon because it would create confusion about whether the store was a Apple store or a Amazon store.

Likewise apple wins because App is a word invented like Xerox.

But you said before that Xerox was just a contraction of Xerography not a invented word (even though it is actually a invented word which was not in use).

Just because someone used a slang term "killer app" does not mean the slang can't be copyrighted.

It's trademark not copyright and it cannot be trademarked if it is a generic term. It has been in use for years before Apple thought of using it. People have been telling people to "open the paint app" or "start the app then..." for years. It is a pure contraction of application.

Go ask Yahoo if Yahoo is copyrighted.

It is not. It is trademarked. Goto United States Patent and Trademark Office and search for Yahoo. It will tell you what field the term is trademarked in.

The onus is on you to provide citation not on me to find it.

So now we have ARC. Some compression algorithm that doesn't even show up in a quite logical google search, that most people haven't heard of and isn't supported by any common program.

Better still you call me a dishonest arsehole for not using great googlefu, yet you still haven't provided a citation. www.freearc.org doesn't even exist.

Stop wasting my time idiot.

That meme is even stupider that this report. You do know what the CC in IPCC stands for, right? If anyone tried to change the nomeculture it was Frank Luntz who was advising the Bush admin on strategies to play down the treat of AGW.

In one of the books I read as a young person, self gratification was depreciated as a viable form of expression because if overused it could prevent the development of reasonable normal form of social interaction.

Funny no one gave me a book, I was just told I'd go blind ;-)

But who needs a book when you have Futurama - http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBUQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DBtqGTn7PCBw&rct=j&q=futurama%20don't%20date%20robots&ei=5GCmTb2-FIbnrAfG6KXkCQ&usg=AFQjCNHBXgfWk00y6IcQcfjgDcLclyhhRg&cad=rja

But dating is just going out and having fun. Not Expensvie.

Are you kidding me? Or do you just watch downloaded movies and take your dates to Maccas?

Even if you go dutch, a good date can be expensive. I would take my wife whale watching, to the zoo etc. when we first got together. No regrets at all.

Photoshop does batch processing and custom macros. It would not be hard to do this in Photoshop at all. Oh look!

The UK government has already said they don't like the plan. From the BBC UK rejects EU call for city centre ban on petrol cars:

But UK Transport Minister Norman Baker said it should not be "involved" in individual cities' transport choices.

"We will not be banning cars from city centres anymore than we will be having rectangular bananas," he said.

It's certainly an interesting idea. And it seems, using the example of London's congestion charge, that it wouldn't be a bad thing. I certainly encourage more people to use public transport, and ride bikes.

And for the Yanks who will complain they live in the suburbs, maybe lobby your local government for better public transport? And stop complaining, this is an article from Europe.

Well the UK government can always change their mind - they only need to hire some Japanese agricultural experts and they won't have even broken a promise: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=square+watermelon&tbm=isch

http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=unethical+behavior+by+Microsoft

About 45,500 results (0.24 seconds)

You're right - that number does look a bit odd. There may be a few dupes in that list.

How about this? http://www.jammer-store.com/gps-blockers-jammers.html Don't know if these are actually available in the US. Could be they are blocked like high-power laser pointers etc.

What happened to electronics as a hobby thats how I made my first radar detector which were made illegal for sale in my country a while back and these days its easy to find the howto http://www.google.com.au/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=gps+jammer+circuit+diagram&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&ei=9a52TaixDoaxcbiG9P8E

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=free%20hat%20southpark&hl=en&meta=
Free Hat (you NEED to see the episode if you like Star Wars or Indiana Jones)

"Free Hat" is episode 88 of the animated series South Park. It originally aired on July 10, 2002. The episode ridicules Lucasfilm's digital altering of George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy and Steven Spielberg's E.T.. The episode also shows huge criticism towards remake movies.

The Adam has been shipping for a month, and people have them in their hands.

The Xoom will be available in stores Feb 24th, i.e. tomorrow (after a week's delay). Is that close enough for you? It's a little more expensive than the iPad, but has far more features. The wifi-only version is equivalently priced but further off, yes.

A rooted Nook Color is certainly a geek's toy; I'd agree it's not a mass-market product. Luckily, we're all geeks on Slashdot, yes? It's definitely a valid option for many people here.