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A) electricity does not always propagate at the full speed of light.

The speed of light in an optical fiber is about 60-70% of c. This can be divined from fiber's refractive index (1.50). Or you could just Google it.

So light travels at about 200,000,000 m/s in an optical fiber. That would make the propagation time to encircle the equator (40,000,000 m) about 200 ms. NYC to Beijing (11,000 km most directly, 14,000 km westerly) around 50-75 ms each way. Overall, propagation time in long-haul situations is still about 1/2 the total latency. But there are lots of situations that use fiber in the short- and medium-haul, and oftentimes several hops along the way, where the propagation time is negligible compared to the time lost in switching.

Neither the article or the Google thread says this. All that it says is that's a video of "basically just me walking and talking, outdoors, away from any possible source of music." Maybe you can also hear birdsong behind him, maybe you can't, or maybe he added it after the fact. We don't know.

Droughts occur frequently in this region, the Mayans had reservoirs but it wasn't enough. Most likely is that the population had grown during a wet period, then couldn't be sustained in a drought cycle.

The 760 AD drought signaled the end of a 200 year ‘wet’ period in the Yucatan, during this time the cities prospered, but populations grew to such great numbers that agricultural production became over stretched.

That's because Jobs didn't suspended the dividend. It was ended by Gil Amelio:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19960214&id=sRYcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6HwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3973,6289068

The Java equivalent of Capsicum is Joe-E: http://code.google.com/p/joe-e/

Canadian Genocide is, in some ways, worse than the Nazis. Harper is just the latest figurehead propping up the genocidal, colonial regime for HRH Liz II: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6637396204037343133

Google offloads this kind of thing onto their partner ecosystem. Here's an example: Office 365/BPOS to Google Apps Migration.

The link to the n-gram viewer in the submission is wrong. The Ngram Viewer is case-sensitive. The link goes to the uncapitalized sarch using terms "spock, skywalker". If you correctly capitalize the terms, you get results higher by 2 orders of magnitude.

This is especially true in countries where farms haven't evolved into 'super-farms'.

That doesn't sound right.

What can brown do for anybody?

UPS might have something to say about that.

Could be true. However there are quite a few other stories out there from other sources that appear to corroborate the same... (.e.g here, translated in English) ...Sweden has a crazy, politically stacked Justice system.

There is trouble with nämndemän from the political party Sverigedemokraterna. They are often previously convicted (usually for violent behaviour (mostly domestic violence, but often also from being involved in brawls and robberies; the Sverigedemokraterna themselves only want to talk about nämndemän that have been convicted of hate speech and make them seem like martyrs in a strife for "truth", but all those Sverigedomokraterna politicial nämndemän (sans one) have also been convicted for a lot of other crimes), don't follow the letter of the law when acting as nämndemän and judge people different for the same crimes depending on what cultural and ethnic background they have.

In summary: They are ass-hats with no respect for the laws of Sweden, equality in front of law or democracy.

Unfortunately, they received a lot of votes in some local political elections. The nämndemän that acts like lay judges in lower level courts of the Swedish justice systems is mostly appointed proportionally from the different political parties based on local elections.

Most Swedish news media is afraid to report that it is just nämndemän from one political party that cause this problem (and the rest of most of the few other troublesome nämndemän is also from similar Neo-Nazi parties, taht have scored high enough in local elections). Sverigedemokraterna love being attacked by media, that give them opportunity to point out how bad they are treated by the establishment (but of course not how badly they treat almost everybody else, and that is really fucking, ridiculously badly) and it makes it possible for them to portrait themselves as martyrs.

This problem have been detected. A majority of the other nämndemän is very involved in rectifying the problem by reporting any misuse of power in the court, and different strategies for reforming the nämndemanna system is being evaluated. Also, the problem haven't spread to higher courts yet, just local low level courts.

You need to have a way to get rid of bad teachers.

RIght now, in New York, it is so difficult to fire teachers, that even after demonstrable problems, (multiple DUIs, etc) the process can take years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here is a chart that demonstrates the point. I agree this is not the best way to handle this, and some good teachers will be harmed as a result, but it is a natural attempt to get around a system that makes it extremely difficult to get rid of bad teachers.

Ultimately, any system for evaluating teachers is going to be somewhat unfair. But we need to remember that schools are there for kids, not for teachers, and there needs to be a way to get rid of the bad ones. Hopefully this will lead to reforms that achieve that goal.

Could be true. However there are quite a few other stories out there from other sources that appear to corroborate the same... (.e.g here, translated in English) ...Sweden has a crazy, politically stacked Justice system.

That is not secure enough. I encrypted it again with the same measure for double the security:

you have the right to remain silent. you have the right to remain encrypted. anything you say, do, or decrypt can and will be held against you in a court of law. you have the right to speak to an attorney. if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?

Site used here

I have a US$9 10ft HDMI cable that works flawlessly. I can't imagine that the 15ft $15 cable from Amazon wouldn't work perfectly too. I'm watching _A Scanner Darkly_ now as I work.

I have a WD Live HD Plus (US$80) for 100% silent 1080p steamed content from local SMB sources. The UI is not too fancy, but the playback is as good as my HTPC for much less cost. I don't worry about 3rd parties tracking everything I watch either.

Here's a better playback device table via google-docs https://spreadsheets1.google.com/ccc?key=tjY1oj6WVMRfdgjpDyPbBSg&authkey=CMWSqM8P&hl=en&authkey=CMWSqM8P#gid=0
It has many more options.

They're using the DIYDrones ArduPilot, the image in the article shows the ArduPilot Mission Planner software. For a few hundred dollars you can turn an RC aircraft into an autonomous craft, it's a very nifty project.

I'll have to get some of that! I've got an RC plane I don't use much because I don't like paying for repairs when I inevitably crash it.

I found them in about two minutes: http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/wiki/Hardware http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/wiki/IMUHardware Scroll to the bottom of each page, you'll find schematics and Eagle files.

I found them in about two minutes: http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/wiki/Hardware http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/wiki/IMUHardware Scroll to the bottom of each page, you'll find schematics and Eagle files.

Here's Popular Science from September 1980, though unfortunately they don't call it "email" -- they abbreviate it "EM."

They're using the DIYDrones ArduPilot, the image in the article shows the ArduPilot Mission Planner software. For a few hundred dollars you can turn an RC aircraft into an autonomous craft, it's a very nifty project.

Unfortunately, those trademarks were actually filed after this guy claims he invented the term EMAIL. But you're onto something. Here's an issue of Popular Mechanics from August 1983 where, on page 107, it says very clearly: "Both The Source and CompuServe (the two largest computer networks) ... began their services by offering electronic mail (called EMAIL on CompuServe and SMAIL on The Source)..." So not only was CompuServe more than likely operating a nationwide email network before 1982, but it actually called it EMAIL (all caps), just like what the guy claims he "copyrighted."

and honestly, have you tried google it's meaning? https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=FRAND

I have and I still do Not know what the R stand for.

Do you? Care to share?

The first result is the wikipedia entry that clearly states the 'R' stands for 'Reasonable'.

The only way to really make things hard is with hardware DRM (which is basically what the satellite TV providers have done for years)

... And which doesn't really work as well, it just needs more sophisticated attacker. And after it's cracked, you get either decrypted content posted by the pirate, or an easy method for everyone to decrypt it.

The only working DRM method is to never let DRM module and protected content in user's hands, and it only works for net services like MMO games, not for video/audio.

All the DRM protection now is hinged on illegality of disabling it.

Here it is, in Mountain Pass, California.

Little known fact: State constitutions override federal law.

Little known possibly because you just made it up and it hasn't had to time to percolate yet. No worries, I'm sure misinformation can travel faster than facts.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=5155054279368574623&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2984439589202067076&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1635&context=faculty_scholarship

Little known fact: State constitutions override federal law.

Little known possibly because you just made it up and it hasn't had to time to percolate yet. No worries, I'm sure misinformation can travel faster than facts.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=5155054279368574623&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2984439589202067076&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1635&context=faculty_scholarship

If moto owns the patent they can charge whatever they like for it (so long as they charge everyone the same). They don't have to justify the price to anyone.

You're not aware of what the 'R' in FRAND stands for?

Well, i did a quick google and all i could find so far is FRAND means Fan & Friend and crap like best friend.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=frand

and honestly, have you tried google it's meaning?
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=FRAND

I have and I still do Not know what the R stand for.

Do you? Care to share?

Since the info above was informative, here are a few other statistics that interest me and help put minority issues into perspective. They're at best tangentially related to TFA, though.

There are perhaps 100,000 furries in the US, or around 1 in 3000 people. [Furries at a glance: the majority are young white men; they're pretty much evenly split between hetero and homosexual, with many at varying degrees of bisexuality; very few own fursuits; to be clear, furries primarily have an interest in anthropomorphic characters, so "it's not about sex" (though as always it can be).]

30% of those over 24 in the US have a bachelor's degree. Only 3% have doctorates or professional degrees.

Around 25% of all people in Swaziland have HIV/AIDS. The number jumps to over 50% for women 25-29. [Yes, this is unbelievably tragic.] Around 0.4% of the US population has HIV/AIDS, though around 20% of men who have sex with men do (accounting for around half of all cases; receptive anal sex spreads it more quickly than any other common sex practice; interestingly, fellatio is almost entirely safe in this regard; condoms reduce transmission rates by only ~80%, depending on specifics).

Around 1% of the US population is some variety of Native American. Around 15% are poor.

Did you even try a search?

The problem were the safeguards that failed to exist in the first place. Enough emergency generators, sufficient distance between those to ward off common cause failure (you may notice research going on in that area for decades in nuclear power), filtered containment vents (aka safety valves, as you would find them in any pressure cooker) and passive autocatalytic recombiners to prevent hydrogen explosions, no matter if the vents work or not (as they also vent the hydrogen from both the containment and the building). And that's before considering such things as reinforcing the condensation chambers that were found to be too weak (and fixed) decades ago.

Japan, at least with regard to nuclear power, is anything but a modern country. That's part of the result of losing two decades of economic development.

The problem were the safeguards that failed to exist in the first place. Enough emergency generators, sufficient distance between those to ward off common cause failure (you may notice research going on in that area for decades in nuclear power), filtered containment vents (aka safety valves, as you would find them in any pressure cooker) and passive autocatalytic recombiners to prevent hydrogen explosions, no matter if the vents work or not (as they also vent the hydrogen from both the containment and the building). And that's before considering such things as reinforcing the condensation chambers that were found to be too weak (and fixed) decades ago.

Japan, at least with regard to nuclear power, is anything but a modern country. That's part of the result of losing two decades of economic development.

The patent in question is EP 1010336 (B1) (aka US patent 6,359,898 - it is more often referenced via its EP number because the court cases have happened mostly in Europe so far).

And here is Motorola's ETSI IPR declaration of this patent as "essential" for GPRS - the link at the bottom is to the PDF of the declaration form. It lists the patent in question among several others, and has the following verbiage at the beginning:

It is my belief that the IPRs listed in Annex 2 are, or are likely to become, Essential IPRs in relation to that Standard [GRPS].

The signatory and/or its affiliates hereby declare that they are prepared to grant irrevocable licenses under the IPRs on terms and conditions which are in accordance with Clause 6.1 of the ETSI IPR policy, in respect of the standard, to the extent that the IPRs remain essential.

Finally, here is the ETSI IPR policy:

6.1 When an ESSENTIAL IPR relating to a particular STANDARD or TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION is brought to the attention of ETSI, the Director-General of ETSI shall immediately request the Page 35 ETSI Rules of Procedure, 30 November 2011 owner to give within three months an irrevocable undertaking in writing that it is prepared to grant irrevocable licences on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions under such IPR to at least the following extent:

- MANUFACTURE, including the right to make or have made customized components and sub-systems to the licensee's own design for use in MANUFACTURE;
- sell, lease, or otherwise dispose of EQUIPMENT so MANUFACTURED;
- repair, use, or operate EQUIPMENT; and
- use METHODS.

The above undertaking may be made subject to the condition that those who seek licences agree to reciprocate.

In the event a MEMBER assigns or transfers ownership of an ESSENTIAL IPR that it disclosed to ETSI, the MEMBER shall exercise reasonable efforts to notify the assignee or transferee of any undertaking it has made to ETSI pursuant to Clause 6 with regard to that ESSENTIAL IPR.

I agree with the parent poster, your ideal option is to leave.

That probably isn't your easiest option, naturally. You do have the option of making the best of your current job, while looking for other opportunities. If you're in a low performing district, I'd imagine you can get away with pushing the crap you get on down the supply chain, and playing the part of the BOFH when the users start bitching. Making sure to keep a solid email and written memo trail to CYA is excellent advice.

Keep in mind that a low performing district is symptomatic of a poorly run organization. Wealth != superior IQ, and despite the challenges outside of school, the kids are capable of being taught, if the organization is willing to focus on it. Unfortunately, humans are susceptible to subconsciously writing off kids they assume are stupid. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make the overall situation better. This leads directly to improvements in your situation.

This involves the kind of grunt work our current President got a taste of when he first moved to Chicago, and can be a real PITA. Plug into the PTAs, the district board, talk to the teachers, etc. Get to know more about what makes your district tick, and then offer to be part of the solution. In a positive way, scratch other people's backs, and eventually you'll be able to suggest how they can help you.

Consider that the core product your district is trying to deliver to students is sufficient mastery of the 3 Rs to be productive adults, and for a lucky few, a chance to not spin, crash, and burn during their first year in college. You may find that most teachers and staff consider any computers outside of the office staff to be a waste of resources, and in most cases, they won't be wrong. So, it may be that your best course is to help get the computers out of the classrooms, and focus on administrative IT. That also helps you get IT out from under the "asst. superintendent of curriculum and instruction", since the business rationale for that person's oversight is removed.

EXCUSE ME, BUT...

Google doesn't, or barely, owns Motorola yet. This action was set into motion long before Google has ever taken control. You might fairly be able to complain about Motorola, but not Google.

Google openly admits that it's buying Motorola for its patent portfolio.

In any event, one call from Mountain View would put this policy on ice until the merger is either completed or rejected. Google won't make that call, because this is Google's fight.

they have a track record of starting projects and abandoning them without much warning

Sure, Google will sometimes abandon projects that they offer for free to users. But Google Apps for Business is a product that they sell. They won't be abandoning a revenue stream like that any time soon.

After the first page (which starts at entry 0):

https://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=1000

just start from increasing entry numbers, like:

https://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=1000&start=960

After the first page (which starts at entry 0):

https://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=1000

just start from increasing entry numbers, like:

https://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=1000&start=960

Hey Tharsman, try: https://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=100 where you can replace "num=100" with "num=100000" or whatever... didn't test for upper limit, but I will later :D (info from http://www.dataliberation.org.../ if this is a dictatorship, it could be worse)

It would appear so. I logged into youtube and then went over to google's history page and saw I was signed-in. I was then able to delete the history

Do you have a cite for that study? It sounds interesting. I could only find a passing reference to the study here. I also learned that Googling Monkey Juice Economics is not particularly safe for work...

The late 'Joan Veon' did quite a bit of work researching the UN takeover plans. Never seen this detail of information available anywhere else.

Anyone interested should watch some of her videos (that are still available) which show the structure of these different groups from top to bottom in a detailed way.

Here are some links to get you started in understanding the bigger picture:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=504526035342184251/
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vEJdeWvGIZU/
http://www.womensgroup.org/videos.htm/
http://www.youtube.com/embed/7oKs35vrPAQ/
http://www.goldmanbanksters.com/heroes/joan-veon/
http://kingmannafta.com/Veon.aspx/
http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/29262016/
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v415828EXyCxeTm/

(ignore the random religious stuff offered unless you believe in such, which given the current state of world affairs wouldn't be hard)

If the government stops disrupting the economy possibly corrective measures simply won't be required? It's never been tested.

I disagree with this premise. Google "panic of" and you get plethora of results on the first page. Note how the last panic was 1907 - over 100 years ago. Note how many panics happened between 1800 and 1907.

Anyway, the dot-com bust happened in 2000. That recession officially lasted only 8 months, ending Nov 2001. The Fed lowered interest rates right around when the recession ended.

By 2003 (when the second round of "Bush tax cuts" passed Congress), the recession had been over for almost 2 years. While the first round could be considered marginally Keynesian, this second round was definitely not.

By 2005 (when the Fed finally began raising interest rates) the recession had been over for almost 4 years.

It's not that the government isn't competent enough to pull this off. They don't *want* to pull this off. When the dot-com bubble was growing, they should have raised rates instead of holding them steady. They should have raised taxes then, too. But it was unpalatable at the time, for whatever reason. Just like when the housing bubble was growing.

... will they automatically enable it?

You can delete the service through here, which means you have no history for them to even have.

https://www.google.com/accounts/DeleteService?service=hist

From Google's privacy FAQ page, they conveniently dodge the question of what pausing does.

What happens when I pause the service, remove items, or delete the Web History service?

You can choose to stop storing your web activity in Web History either temporarily or permanently, or remove items, as described in Web History Help. If you remove items, they will be removed from the service and will not be used to improve your search experience. As is common practice in the industry, Google also maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users. For example, we use this information to audit our ads systems, understand which features are most popular to users, improve the quality of our search results, and help us combat vulnerabilities such as denial of service attacks.

I recall the same things being said about America's voting system. Around 2004, there was this big hoopla that Bush was rigging the election, even the EU was asking to have oversight of the US elections. Bush won that election, fairly and by a landslide. The people who didn't see their candidate win didn't like it, and made a LOT of noise about it.

Being the libertarian that I am (my chosen candidates never win,) I can observe this kind of bullshit and call it for what it is, but in the case of the US I haven't seen any sufficient evidence of rigged elections. Some voter fraud here and there (which democrat supporters have done a lot of, ironically) but not enough to influence the results in any election in my opinion.

I don't know about Russia's system, but I'm not going to be so arrogant (as the EU was) to demand that America take oversight of their elections; if they have voter fraud, that's their problem. Much in the same, I think it is pretty arrogant of the Russians and Chinese to demand that the UN get regulatory powers over the internet.

Go to Google History and follow the instructions.

If you're not signed in, they store your history for 180 days, but you can opt-out of that without a Google account: http://www.google.com/history/optout

They write on vehicle positions here: https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs-realtime/vehicle-positions Now just wonder how polling a staticly generated file is going to help here.

Google's Swiffy (release notes: http://www.google.com/doubleclick/studio/swiffy/releasenotes.html) is the answer to that. I'm sure it's not the most efficient, and it's by no means complete (sound support is the big thing missing at this point, line thickness is still not right), but it's fast enough to, for example, watch a Homestar Runner cartoon at a normal level of performance. Of course, Homestar Runner isn't all that interesting without sound.

NextBus has been providing real-time bus data for years, and doing it better than Google. NextBus did all the hard work to make this work - they developed the position-reporting boxes that go on buses over a decade ago, got transit systems to adopt their technology, and developed a prediction system that figures out when the next bus will show up, based on live data and history. They even put signs in bus shelters that tell when the next bus will arrive.

NextBus and Google Transit are different, and orthogonal.

Google Transit tells you how to use to the transit system to get where you're going, based on published schedules.

NextBus assumes you know how to get where you're going, but tells you when the bus is actually going to arrive.

The services clearly have great potential synergy. If Google Transit could plan near-future routes based on actual bus position, and traffic forecasting, it could be much more useful.

As others have said, though, I think the biggest immediate way to improve Google Transit would be to provide multi-modal routing. Google Transit currently refuses to provide routes for me in several situations, because it assumes I'm not willing to walk as far as I am, and doesn't consider the possibilities of driving or biking for a portion of the trip. Granted that multi-modal is non-trivial -- it would need to know where parking is available and which buses/trains accommodate bicycles -- but it could be done and would be very useful. Transit also needs to integrate cost information and factor that into route calculations, and to do that properly it will also have to know about passes and whether or not you have one.

Someday it'd be really cool if it could also include air travel (Google has flight data now, with http://google.com/flights) and taxis and rental cars as well, for long trips. When planning a business trip I'd love to give Google Maps my home address and my hotel address and then have it find me a set of routes between them, complete with cost and time information and the ability to choose which factors to optimize.