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St. Paul Central also has a accelerated-learning program that attracted the smartest kids from the entire city and graduated four National Merit Scholarship winners last year;

Well, goody. In my high school class of 24 students, we had two National Merit Scholars. As it happens, I was one of them. Big deal.

the academic program is regarded as being one of the best in the state.

When I was about to high school in the mid-eighties, that was anything but the case.

It is also predominently black.

Which means...zilch.

Something tells me that you're racist in addition to being a stupid elitist.

What? I chose to go to a private school, and to not go to a school that at the time was a basket case, and that makes me racist? You need to get out more.

What was really "racist" is the fact that at the time, the City of St. Paul was so fscking bassackwards that they had most black students go to Central and didn't do much to integrate their otherwise lily-white schools. (I don't know whether that has gotten any better -- I don't live in MN anymore.) It was pretty much "separate but equal" all over again.

Things have apparently improved there. Thank God for that. No kid, black or white or purple, deserves to be stuck in a shitty school.

Cheers,

Ethelred

You're a *great* example of a geek! Too delicate to go to public school. Yup, I knew the type... never learned hwo to deal with real people, so they intentionally shelter themselves ("Mommy, pleeeese let me go to the private school!!"). Quite honestly, you probably would've turned out much better if you did go to a public school and had to learn how to interact with people different than yourself.

Er, and just what provoked that comment? Good Lord, man, get the chip off your shoulder...

As to my choice of school, my parents were well aware of how shitty the available public schools were. Didn't take much convincing. (Hrm, shall we send Junior to the school that has a 30% dropout rate and zero chances of getting him into college, or send him to the school where he'll probably get shot or stabbed once a month?)

I'm perfectly happy dealing with other people -- I have to in my work, since being self-employed I have to deal with my clients and subcontractors a lot. A lack of people skills wouldn't get me very far in business, and I get along with my clients swimmingly. (At least they recommend me a lot to others, so I can't be all that bad to deal with.)

Why am I self-employed? Not because of a lack of people skills -- actually, I enjoyed my last job a lot and am still friends with my former colleagues and bosses. The reason was money, pure and simple. (Why have the company pocket $120/hr for work that I do, when I only get $25/hr out of it? Doesn't take a rocket scientist...)

There are plenty of other reasons why self-employment (and private school) were the right decisions for me. People skills, or the lack thereof, didn't factor into it at all.

Cheers,

Ethelred

I went to school down the street from Mounds Park Academy at a fairly expensive private highschool,

Aargh...I forgot the name of the place. It was a Catholic school, right?

In fact as I remember, MPA is in the building that your school moved out of in the mid-eighties. But I can't remember the name of the original school. (Was it Hill-Murray?)

but I have a good idea what your other two school choices were like (Were they North St Paul and...???)

No, they were Como Park (the football-mad school) and St. Paul Central (the metal-detector school). Central has since supposedly improved a lot, from what I have heard (though I'm pretty out of touch with Minnesota these days, now that I live on a different continent). But North St. Paul was pretty bad in those days, too...

I may have had a chance to get in at Highland (which had a fairly decent reputation), but it would have meant a lot of bitching at the school system and a long commute. So we went with MPA, which was worth every cent.

Cheers,

Ethelred

I think his point in the article was pretty accurate.

Summary for those who haven't read it: American public schools tend to be little more than prisons, with large classes and indifferent teachers, where the kids are more or less left alone to create their own sub-societies (with all the "Lord of the Flies" cruelty that ensues). The nerdy types aren't totally expending their efforts on popularity (unlike most others), so they end up on the bottom of the heap.

This describes the public junior high school I went to perfectly. Education was really a joke there; the main thing was to keep us little darlings under lock and key for some hours while our parents worked, and if we learned something, so much the better (if we didn't, oh well). I got pretty badly picked on, partly for nerdiness (I was taking college-level math at the time) and partly for just being very different (I had just moved from rural Virginia to urban Minnesota).

Before my 9th grade year, I toured the public high school that I was supposed to go to, and immediately my radar told me that I would probably not make it out of that place alive (or at least with all my bones intact). Football stuff everywhere, with glassy-eyed teachers who really didn't give a damn. The other school I could have gone to had just become the first in Minnesota with metal detectors and had a rep for open gang warfare.

I begged my parents to pay for a private school. Somehow, they scraped the money together through loands and so on. (Thank God for my parents.) The first I went to, a boarding school near my parents' home, was a disaster (buncha spoiled rich kids whose parents had dumped them there and never visited them -- Lord of the Flies, Mercedes Edition).

The next year I went to a small, recently founded K-12 private school, where my class was all of 25 students, and where the teachers were all basically rebels from another private school who where determined to make a better school. The kinds of things described in the article just didn't happen there -- the teachers actually gave a sh*t about us, and we didn't feel like we were in some kind of penal colony.

A lot of the reason the school was better was the small class size (harder to have a crushing pyramid hierarchy when you've only got a small number of students) and the teachers actually got involved like *teachers* and not *wardens*.

Another reason is we didn't have jocks. We didn't have a football team, though we did have soccer. And the school's pride and joy was its Quiz Bowl team (hey! I was on it! State Champs in 1989!). Those who had high SAT, PSAT and ACH scores were also publicly praised by the school director (who, by the way, spent lunchtime serving the students corn so he could personally chat with each and every one). So knowledge and nerdiness was actually rewarded, and there was actually positive contact between staff and students.

Sadly, since then the school has grown dramatically (their reputation spread like wildfire, and soon they had huge demand for the school), and the director retired, so I tend to wonder if it has fallen to the same problems as other large schools. But it can be done -- a school in America where nerds are actually valued. I just am very grateful my parents scraped together the money for the place -- otherwise I probably would have spent more time in lockers than in classrooms...

The school, by the way, was Mounds Park Academy, if anyone's interested.

At any rate, even though I tend to be leftish politically, I think the above is a pretty good argument for school vouchers. The public school system in America is so screwed that the only solution is to nuke it flat with vouchers, and let the parents and students sort it out through the market.

Cheers,

Ethelred

Just how is Pi calculated?

As a matter of fact, I happen to know that this system used a cunning mechanism containing a Canadian-built robotic arm, a No. 10 coffee can, a piece of string and a ruler. The machine measured the circumference and diameter of the can over and over again, and then sort of calculated the margin of error (correlated against 22/7) over and over again. And voila! It was discovered that pi is in fact 3.142857143...

Mind you, the article said they calculated pi to over a trillion places. They didn't say it was *accurate*.

Cheers,

Ethelred

Pretty far off-topic, I know, but late it's late in the thread: Germany has several other 'features' that I would highly recommend to any visitor:

1) Some of the best beer that I've ever had in my life (local breweries are very popular there, so there is much variety) - I discovered that I have a particular affinity for the "Dunkeles Hefe Weizen", a dark wheat beer that they serve only in 1/2 litre steins (don't mix this with the Autobahn, though) and which must, by law IIRC, be made only with 4 natural ingredients and contain no preservatives

2) Excellent (but expensive) food

3) Topless beaches ^-^ need I say more?

I would say that, in the context of driver safety, points 1 and 3 are very much doubtful as to helping safety, especially in combination. Driving after a few Dunkelbiere and goggling topless beaches along the way... ;-)

Though I agree that they are selling points. ;-))

Point 2, well, that's debatable...I'd say I have had much better food in, say, Oslo or Amsterdam or Utrecht. But maybe I'm hitting all the wrong restaurants in Germany. *sigh*

Cheers,

Ethelred

I wonder, do you think your sh!t smells better than the lowly plebes too?

Hm, no. I don't.

The two-second rule is a blanket concept, just like a speed limit is a blanket concept.

Ah, I see -- blanket concepts are evil. Let's get rid of both, then!

Unlike yourself, most human beings do not drive like a robot, and instead tend to take driving conditions into consideration.

Interesting. You claim to know a lot about my driving habits already. Are you psychic?

The two-second rule is all about giving yourself an extra safety net in the case of poor brakes or driver distraction, and can be an excellent rule to follow on single-lane streets with no medians, especially streets with parked cars.[...]

Everything you have written assumes that I suggest people use the two-second rule to the exclusion of all else. I never suggested anything of the kind. It is a rule of thumb that is easy to understand and use on-the-fly, and easy to explain to someone who's only had the usual drivers' training. And along with other good practices like the ones you list (look several cars ahead, check your mirrors every few seconds, etc. etc. etc.), by using the two-second rule, an inexperienced or intermediate driver can greatly reduce his/her risk of being in an accident. What's so terrible about that?

Cripes, someone points out a helpful way of driving safer, and gets jumped on. *shakesheadindisbelief*

Cheers,

Ethelred

Knock off the holier than thou attitude, that's the one thing I hate about most people who pass any sort of advanced driving test.

Wha? You yourself said you'd passed just such a test, and gave me grief that the two-second rule is a load of bunk (when it isn't, as you yourself said, as below:)

The two second rule is merely one arrow in the quiver of defensive driving techniques.

It's one arrow in the quiver -- so why dump it entirely?

Big deal, you passed the test, have you read RoadCraft?[...]

And now who's holier-than-thou?

Nowhere are you told how far behind someone are you supposed to drive, it is far too dependent on a wide range of variables, two seconds is an easy to remember, easy to implement plan. It is a very small part of defensive driving.

And in the context of talking to people who have not had any advanced training (meaning the majority of /. readers), the two-second rule is an ideal way of communicating a good driving technique. Guess what? It ain't perfect, but it works, especially if you aren't that familiar with the car and don't want to go calculating ideal braking distances in your head while driving.

Jeez, man, it's a rule of thumb, not an iron-clad eleveth commandment. Take it easy!

[...]

30kph an hour is roughly 25mph! I'm used to imperial so excuse my math if I'm off slightly. Using the formulas given by the UK Dept. of Transport. The reaction distance at 25mph is 25ft, the braking distance is ((25*25)/20) = 32ft total stopping distance is 57ft, given a maintained car with an alert driver on a reasonable road surface. The two second rule gives you 52ft, or so.

Like I said, it ain't perfect -- but it works as a good rule of thumb. The two-second bit is meant as a minimum distance at ideal conditions. A difference of five feet is pretty small in that context -- the idea being that you'd be driving at *more* than two seconds difference, which makes up for the margin of error.

You keep talking like I pulled the two-second bit out of my a**. This is something that is taught in drivers' training for a reason -- it's a quick and easily understood way of telling people a basic principe -- back off (and how much to back off).

[...]Defensive driving does not make you safe merely safer.

I never said anything to the contrary. The two-second rule doesn't by itself solve all problems with traffic -- but it can go a long way to get people to drive safer.

[...]

Getting bigger cars will not solve everything, in fact it would put me at greater risk! The reason for a new big car is that in accident crash tests the larger newer car nearly always comes out with the higher scores.

That is exactly my point -- all you are doing is entering into an arms race. It solves exactly zilch in the long run, indeed it makes driving all that much more dangerous with everyone driving cars with twice or three times the mass. (Not to mention the added danger to pedestrians and bicyclists...)

Cheers,

Ethelred

Two seconds behind the car in front of you ??? Are you sure about that. That is not alot of time. I driving instructor said 5 minimum.

Maybe it's different in Denmark, but I've done drivers' training in both Germany and the US, and in both places it's 2 seconds -- but that is the *minimum* recommended distance in ideal conditions. If it's rainy, foggy, dark or whatever, it goes up considerably.

Ah well, I never drive anyway, train, bus, bike or walking is more my still.

Actually, I also prefer the train, tram and bus to driving, but in many cases it just doesn't work without a car, even in Germany (where the public transport is as good as any).

Ever since I broke my wrist riding my bike in my teens, I've been leery of riding bikes in the city...just a phobia born of reckless car drivers who seem to ignore bike riders. *sigh*

Cheers,

Ethelred

I have driven in Germany many times, and can attest to fellow North Americans that the Germans take their driving far more seriously. They obey the speed limits right down to the km/hr.,

Uh, what part of Germany was that? I *rarely* see Germans pay much attention to the speed limit, unless of course they know there's a radar camera nearby (in which case they slow down for maybe a few seconds).

I've lived in Germany now for almost ten years (Hannover-Hamburg area) and speeding (and trying to run red lights) seems to be the national sport.

where they exist (secondary and city roads and many parts of the Autobahn), and on the stretches of Autobahn that are unregulated, they obey rules very carefully about slower traffic keeping to the right, proper signaling, passing etc.

That I agree with -- indeed it's often a shock to be back in the States and drive there, where passing on the right is pretty much normal (even if it's technically illegal).

OTOH it's not that big a deal, since the speed differential between any given car and the average speed is *far* lower (cars in the States drive about 70 +/- 10 mph; in Germany it's about 85 +/- 30 mph because of varying speed limits by type of vehicle) so passing on the right isn't that big a deal.

North American driving looks very sloppy in comparison. The sections of the Autobahn that are unregulated are (by comparison to here) beautifully engineered, built and maintained (flat, smooth, properly banked turns, etc.).

Yup, it never ceases to amaze me how perfectly built the Autobahnen are. But OTOH think about it this way: with the high speeds, you *have* to have a perfect surface -- otherwise the car would go flying at the first pothole (or take out the whole suspension).

Interesting curiosities: I was told that in Germany, if you come up behind another car and want him to move over, you can be charged for flashing your lights at him and that you can also be successfully sued for giving another driver the middle finger gesture.

Yes, both are true. Honking or flashing your lights at someone to get them to pull over is called "Nötigung" (basically means "forcing") and is punishable by law. Tailgating is also considered a mild form of Nötigung. In both cases you're encouraged to take down the license plate and turn them in (though I don't know if the plaintiff gets anything for doing it).

However, the converse is also true. If you're in the left lane and only doing 80 kph, others can sue you for blocking the road.

Using the finger is an offense in Germany on or off the road, actually, as is insulting someone (calling someone an a**hole is subject to fines). This results in rather interesting twists of conversation -- Germans have gotten rather good at verbally assaulting and insulting people without ever actually calling them anything...

Cheers,

Ethelred

Feeding the troll...

Are you for real?

Er, well, yes...

Having passed the advanced drivers test in the UK I can assure you that hardly anybody drives the two second rule in the UK and now I am in the states I know nobody does it here. The UK drives at about one second gaps and the Us less than that.

In some areas of the US, yes, that's true. But not all. And the question was, how far apart do cars drive from one another? Well, they are supposed to drive two seconds apart. What they really do is of course another issue entirely.

Yes, I stick to the two-second rule anyway. (It's called defensive driving.)

The problem is at motor/highway speed two seconds leaves enough of a gap for some dofus to pull into. There goes you're breaking distance and you're wonderful two second rule. Fall back and the next dofus does the same. Repeat ad nauseum until you get a clue that nobody else respects you're breaking distance.

Yes, people do jump in front of me -- but they also jump in front of you when you only leave one second (or less!). The point is, why not leave yourself and them enough space to do it safely?

Additionally, if you follow the two-second rule, once they jump in front of you, they will already be farther away from you than otherwise -- so you don't have to brake (just let off the gas a little). And if you don't have to brake, neither do the people behind you, and behind them, and so on (the good old accordion effect).

As an added bonus, you'll run far less risk of rear-ending someone -- and the driver who rear-ends another car is almost always at fault and has to pay the damages. So not only do you save risk in terms of safety, you save risk financially as well.

The key to safe driving is to be courteous, don't hurry and keep your distance (the two-second rule is to guide you in that). If you take the attitude that everyone else is automatically a doofus, and that it's your right to tailgate and drive over the speed limit, then you're clearly driving aggressively and contributing to the problem.

As an aside, I just *love* it when I see people getting out of their wrecked cars (where they had been speeding and tailgating) after rear-ending or spinning out or whatever, and protesting to the cops "I'm a really safe driver! All my friends say so!"

On crowded roads the two second rule is not possible to implement.

The hell it is. All you have to do is back off.

If traffic is only moving at 30 kph, like in a traffic jam, then the two-second rule says you should be 16m away from the next car -- a little more than two car lengths. That's not really that much. If you're only moving 10 kph, then it's about 5m. BFD.

Instead you pay far more attention to what's going on around you constantly have the escape route planned.

And guess what? The two-second rule gives you a built-in escape route automatically and buys you some split-seconds in which to make a decision when things get critical. That can mean the difference between a close call and a totalled car (and injuries).

It also helps to have the largest newest vehicle you can afford.

Ah. I see. Peace through superior firepower...yes, let's all get bigger cars! That'll solve everything!

Cheers,

Ethelred

Well, I don't know about germany, but here in america we certanly driver closer then 170 meters! Perhaps 170 decimeters :P

Ever learn the two-second rule for driving? The trick is, you're supposed to always be at least two seconds behind the car in front of you, three or four seconds if the roads are slippery or it's raining or dark (or all three).

You measure this by using bridges, signs, etc. as benchmarks -- wait until the car in front of you has passed the landmark, count "one-onethousand two-onethousand", and only then should you reach the same landmark. If you pass it beforehand, you're too close.

So suppose you're driving 120 kph (the usual speed limit on the Autobahn, if there is one defined). 120 kph ~= 33 m/s. So by the two-second rule, you'd have to be at least 67m away from the car in front of you.

Suppose you're doing a more typical speed on the Autobahn (even when there's a speed limit, it usually is roundly ignored). Most people drive around 140 kph (though you usually are getting run over by Mercedes and BMWs doing 200). That's a minimum distance of about 78m, assuming it's a bright sunny day with dry roads.

If it's raining, you should double that; near or below freezing, at least double that again; low visibility, double that once more. IOW if it's raining, freezing and foggy, you probably shouldn't be on the road at all. ;-)

Seriously, if you follow the two-second rule and keep in mind that you're supposed to double it in some circumstances, you're never rear-end anyone, and probably never get rear-ended either (since the person behind you *also* has more warning as a result).

Cheers,

Ethelred

You could be watching Friends, with a little "Pampers" ad on the bottom. This would allow for even more commercial time, and they could sell the time to sync to various moments in a program. (e.g Rachel is playing with the baby, roll the Pampers ad. They are in the coffeehouse, roll the Starbucks ad)

And all I'd have to do to block ads is take a strip of black construction paper and tape it to the bottom of the screen. Voila! Uninterrupted commercial-free TV!

And no TiVo hacking needed, either!

Then suddenly black construction paper is banned by the DMCA...

Cheers,

Ethelred

If you really think you want go up to the ISS, remember that there is no broadband Net access up there, and therefore no access to pr0n -- and even worse, there's no pizza delivery.

Cheers,

Ethelred

There *is* a difference. ALT tags are a boon to making websites ready for Lynx and text-only browsers for the disabled. So if you have a graphic button that says "Home", consider these two variants:

<img src="home.png" width="100" height="20" border="0" alt="This button takes you to the homepage">

and

<img src="home.png" width="100" height="20" border="0" alt="Home">

and

<img src="home.png" width="100" height="20" border="0" alt="Home" title="This button takes you to the homepage">

The first tag (which is what you suggest) would be a little awkward in a text browser, since "This button takes you to the homepage" would show up (when "Home" would do).

The second would look idiotic in Mozilla, since the tooltip would just say "Home" (well, duh), but it would work in Lynx and other text browsers.

The third is ideal, because everyone gets what they need -- Mozilla's tooltip would say "This button takes you to the homepage", but the text browsers see just "Home".

Cheers,

Ethelred

You forget (or did you read the article and the links provided?) that the Reg does have evidence of other e-mails, some of which are also harshly worded.

If you read the original e-mail (posted on Heise.de in German), the tone of voice in the original is not far off from their translated version. Indeed, they adopted a tone of voice that German bureaucrats *love* to adopt. Very imperious, arrogant and pointed, but at the same time they stay (as a German would say) "sachlich", meaning "factual" or "sticking to the facts". German bureaucrats love to insult you between the lines, while being able to claim that they were 'only' making statements of fact.

Ah, another German that perfectly describes EMI's e-mail: "Scheinheilig". Means something like "holier-than-thou". And another word that most people will recognize: "Schadenfreude".

In meagre defense of EMI, the person who e-mailed them to complain about their CD was at times a little rude (see the Heise post) -- but that does not excuse the snotty response they sent him back.

I think I'm going to boycott EMI and BMG music from now on. Which is sad, since Beatles CDs are published by EMI, if I remember right, but I have quite a few Beatles CDs anyway (and plenty of cassettes).

I'm not mad so much because I want to copy or rip CDs (though I do it sometimes for my own use), but what *really* ticks me off is the attitude that it's somehow my responsibility to make their damned crippled CD work in my Red Book standard (!) player, and if I can't do it, then I must be some kind of idiot.

OTOH most of the music I tend to buy is usually marked "Nice Price" and is in the discount bins 'cos they were popular 10-20 years ago (man, I feel old). *sigh*

I doubt The Man would bother copy-handicapping them...

Cheers,

Ethelred

"Aethelred, aren't you ready yet!?"

Booooo! Hissssss!

/me throws tomatoes at the stage

(Not to worry, my sense of humor is worse. *g*)

Ethelred, Ethelred
Spent his life bed
With one shoe off and one shoe on
Greatly loved by everyone

Cheers,

Ethelred

[Picture of Bill Gates]

Off with his head!

Signed,

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly

Cheers,

Ethelred

I do remember a brief period when I had problems with Mozilla (and had to use IE), but that seems to be more because they are constantly tinkering with their online banking system rather than a plan to exclude a browser (the site is constantly being changed and for the most part improved).

Hey, the online banking site even runs on WebObjects from Apple, so I guess they believe in alternatives. *g*

Cheers,

Ethelred

There is an interesting FAQ about Graventreuth (in German) that you might want to read.

Cheers,

Ethelred (who's glad he has legal insurance and a good lawyer)

No law is perfect. He seems to be able to cruise just below the radar and get away with it.

Cheers,

Ethelred

In Germany, and I believe in other EU countries, there is a law against mass lawsuits clearly designed to get money -- this is called an "Abmahnwelle" in Germany (literally means "wave of suits"). If some lawyer or company tried something like this, they'd get reprimanded and possibly even disbarred in Germany.

An example: about a year ago, a couple of clients of mine got notice of a lawsuit from some newly founded organization claiming to protect consumers; the clients' websites were supposedly in violation of an obscure and archaic bit of German law (basically they failed to note specifically on the site that information sent via an e-mail form is stored -- well, duh). Because of the "potential damage to consumers" due to "infringements on their privacy" (i.e. the theoretical number of consumers who could use the site was astronomical), the suit was valued by their lawyers at a high amount, thus theoretically forcing the clients to pay a minimum amount of damages to the organization if they chose to settle.

Word got around quickly that just about anyone with an e-commerce site got just such a letter, complaints were filed against said lawyer, and the lawyer got seriously shat on (and the suits were withdrawn) and the organization was dissolved.

Anything like this in the US?

Cheers,

Ethelred

I used to work in a couple of marketing/design agencies, and still work self-employed in design and marketing. I'd say it is highly unusual to use stock art to represent real people, especially if the people involved are officers of the company -- after all, corporate partners are most likely going to meet these people eventually, so it would make a strange impression on visitors to see that the people don't look like that at all.

I really wonder what your old employer's agency was thinking (smoking?). Using stock art for testimonials is already questionable (people these days are cynical and intelligent enough to notice the difference), using stock art to represent employees and officers is downright stupid.

This is, by the way, why the Apple Switch ads are so effective. The people look believable (especially Ellen Feiss ;-) ) mainly because they aren't rehearsed, look "average" and so on. As a result, they are more likely to be listened to that some celebrity or photo model. Maybe they are faked, but if so, it's a hell of a good fake.

Cheers,

Ethelred

*drumroll*

Gerald Holmes.

Well, maybe it wasn't him. He would have done a better job.

Cheers,

Ethelres

Quoth the article: Instant-messaging buddies are grouped to reflect their hierarchy in the company, or where they're logged in. E-mails, instant messages and Web pages can be grouped into "Info Clusters" and then e-mailed or quickly turned into a Web site.

Nah, this is more like "Metropolis" or "Brave New World" -- where everyone knows their place in the Great Corporation, and the technology is there primarily to enforce that hierarchy (oh, good Ford!).

Maybe MS should have been more honest and obvious and referred to the managers in the "widget factory" as Betas, with the bosses Alphas. And handed out lots of soma. Orgy-porgy...

So much for the Internet flattening out society. Looks like MS wants it to be the tool for The Man to keep us peons where we belong.

Cheers,

Ethelred

In the 1960s, Ford said we'd be driving atomic-powered cars in 20 years. In the 1930s, just about everyone assumed we'd all have our private helicopter or airplane by 1980. (Imagine the air congestion and accidents with that...soccer moms flying their SUV-copters.) And we're still waiting on our Mr. Fusion powerplants...

Yogi Berra said it best. "It's tough to make predictions. Especially about the future."

Cheers,

Ethelred

*laugh* Ballmer only seems to see things in terms of money. It should be painfully obvious that Linux didn't start off "bankrupt", it started off free, which is hardly the same thing.

Quoth kalidasa: StarOffice did not start out as a free product, iirc. And as for IBM promoting Linux, how is that any different from HP and Dell promoting Microsoft.

It isn't, of course -- well, there's one crucial difference. MS doesn't get any money out of it.

And does the first paragraph, as the Register asked, mean that Microsoft accepts liability for their own software?

They keep dancing around that issue. They have, one the one hand, tried with EULAs and so on to get out of liability -- but they are also starting to realize that that lack of responbility has meant that they release shoddy software and have no immediate need to fix it. But now their reputation for less-than-good software is starting to come around and bite them in the *ss. A symptom is all the buzz that Linux and UN*X is getting. So they are starting to acknowledge *moral*, as opposed to *legal*, liability for their software products ("Trustworthy Computing").

Which could be dangerous, 'cos you can't have it both ways, really. Eventually someone's going to start suing the bejeezus out of them, once some NT-based thing goes blooey and costs someone a fortune...

Cheers,

Ethelred

Just found the name: "The Big Ball of Wax: A Story of Tomorrow's Happy World", by Shepherd Mead, written before 1954. Apparently it's been out of print for ages. *sigh*

FWIW some people apparently claim that this book is the origin of the saying "the whole ball of wax" (cf. http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-who5.htm). Go figure.

Anyway...

Cheers,

Ethelred

This reminds me of an old sci-fi book, which I think was called "The Whole Ball of Wax" (I have forgotten the author's name and an Amazon and Google search got me nowhere). The book was set sometime in the late 20th century (written in the 1960s), when the "constellation Pepsi-Cola wheeled in the sky" -- supposedly Pepsi had made an artificial constellation out of satellites equipped with huge mirrors. The story also had a forerunner of virtual reality (and very much like Tekwar from William Shatner), where people donned a headset to experience recorded sensations. It also oddly echoed (foresaw?) a lot of things about society in America today, even if a lot of the details were wrong (vidphones and that sort of thing).

I last read the book years ago -- borrowed it from my aunt and uncle about 20 years ago -- but have no idea if the book is still available anywhere. Even when I borrowed it, it was old...

I also had to think of one old Pepsi commercial from the 1980s. Even as a diehard Coke and RC drinker, I was still amused by it: in the commercial, you see a bunch of students from the distant future being led around an archaeological dig by a professor; the "excavation" is of a 20th century family home. The prof rattles on about how rare it is to find a house from this era totally intact, and he enthusiastically shows an "ancient" TV set, stereo, etc. (all the while explaining to the students what they were for, while you see the students sipping from Pepsi cans).

At the end, a student spots a glass thing in the dirt, picks it up and shows it to the prof, asking, "Hey, Professor, what's this?"

Turns out to be a 16 oz. Coke bottle. The prof looks totally dumbfounded and murmurs, "I have no idea..."

Cheers,

Ethelred

Yup, that does work. I went and met my Congressman, Bruce Vento (since deceased), to talk to him about a couple of issues -- he was on the Banking Committee and was in hearings about new banknotes, so I talked to him about that, and also about the IT industry. We talked for a good 20 minutes in his office, face-to-face, nobody else there.

I also got to talk to my Senator's chief of staff -- getting to meet your Senator is pretty hard, but the chief of staff is the next best thing (talked to him about the same issues as well as immigration issues because of my wife).

An aside: this goes both ways. I was very happy that Vento and Wellstone's chief of staff met me and took a fair amount of time to talk (about 20 minutes each); both took notes and I got pretty detailed responses by mail later. That was good. So I didn't feel at all bad about voting for them -- I was glad that they at least seemed to care about what I was talking about.

The "other" Senator from Minnesota at the time was Rod Grams. His office wouldn't even give me the time of day. I probably wouldn't have voted for the twit anyway, but that really needlessly insulted a potential voter (and he's no longer in office ;-> ).

All you have to do is look in the phone book, call your congresscritter's office, ask for an appointment (but tell them in advance what you want to talk about so they don't think it's a prank), and they will usually take the time to meet you. Maybe even bring some fellow constituents along to drive the point home.

Much harder to ignore a gaggle of constituents in your office than a lousy e-mail or postcard, and makes a bigger impression because you took the time to go there and meet them.

Cheers,

Ethelred

Keaton's choice was also greeted with skepticism by fans, but I think he did a good job. Which is why I would be willing to give Keanu Reeves the benefit of the doubt. But unfortunately Keanu is a lousy actor IMO -- he did okay in Matrix, but he stunk in just about everything else (his "performance" in Much Ado About Nothing was embarrassing).

Maybe the Hollywood execs thought they were 'honoring' Christoper Reeve by having an actor with nearly the same last name play Reeve's most memorable role. ;-P

But Christopher Reeve will always be the "real" Superman for me -- he was born to play that role IMO.

Cheers,

Ethelred

That isn't necessarily true. Remember that .com != US. I have quite a few visitors from Europe with .com, .net and .org addresses, for example. I just happen to recognize the DNS entries as being from European ISPs.

Also, European visitors don't necessarily frequent US sites, and vice versa -- as an example, Germans are going to be all over spiegel.de, stern.de and so on, but probably won't bother much with cnn.com, news.com or wired.com for their news.

English-language sites still dominate the Net, but the vast majority of non-English speakers of course prefer to read things in their own language, even if they speak English. So your site, presumably in English, won't have that many non-English speaking visitors.

Cheers,

Ethelred

Actually, there were other fonts designed specifically for the screen long before Verdana. Susan Kare did the fonts Chicago, Monaco, Geneva, New York and so on for the original Macintosh in 1984 -- I believe long before Verdana and the others in Microsoft's library came out.

Verdana was one of the first scalable fonts specifically designed for the screen, that is true.

Also, as others have pointed out, Verdana, Tahoma and so on are not "lost" per se. Microsoft's own license on those fonts allows for free unlimited distribution (so long as the distributor does not derive profit from their distribution), and they also come pre-installed on Windows and Mac systems; anyone that installs Internet Explorer also gets them free.

Cheers,

Ethelred

"Who provides unlimited mobile calling (outbound) for one flat monthly fee to the public? I'd be willing to bet noone."

My experiences with this came from numerous angry europeans (from Germany in this case) who were enraged when I said that having a pre-determined number of minutes to use your mobile phone per month was not the same as a plan with no 'gotchas' and they told be about paying one price to use it as much as they want (for local calls) ... just like land lines in the USA and Canada.

Also someone else mentioned http://www.boomerangwireless.com/.

Oh, come on. That's nothing at all like what's available in Europe. Boomerang is only in a handful of cities, limits you to one kind of phone ( and you can't use your existing phone) and has only very basic features.

Here's what I get from E-Plus in Germany:

• Flat monthly rate, no minute limit
• I don't get charged when someone calls me (as long as I'm in Germany). If I'm outside Germany, I have to pay for the call to be forwarded to me via another carrier, but even then the rates aren't that bad.
• My choice of phone (most any model from Nokia, Siemens, Ericcson, Sony, Motorola, Alcatel...), most of which are more advanced than those in the States anyway. FWIW I have the Nokia 6210, which is a real workhorse.
• WAP, GPRS, HSCSD.
• SMS (19 Eurocents per message) with e-mail function. (I just send an SMS starting with an e-mail addy to 0177-SMSMAIL, and it gets sent.)
• 49 Eurocents per minute to anyone in Germany during the day, 9 cents per minute evenings and weekends.
• 95% network coverage of all of Germany, with similar coverage in other European countries. (And, of course, it's all GSM, so I don't need to change cellphones at the border.) FYI, Germany is about the size of Minnesota and a goodly chunk of Wisconsin.

There just isn't any comparison. Yes, Boomerang has a flat monthly rate -- but then they suck in just about everything else.

And I have no "gotchas" with my phone...so, sad to say, American cellphones really do suck. I shudder when I visit my family in the States and see what stuff they are using.

Then I salivate over their cable modem...ah well, you can't have it all. ;-)

Cheers,

Ethelred

What I don't understand is, in pre-OS X versions they DID support CVS (in combination with MacCVS). Since OS X, that support is gone.

Of course, MacCVS and the UN*X CVS included with Mac OS X work rather differently -- MacCVS would write the CVS tag info in the resource fork of each file, whereas UN*X CVS has a directory "CVS" to store that same info. But I can't imagine that it would be that hard to change BBEdit's old CVS support to look in a directory named "CVS" rather than in the resource fork.

Ah well...maybe they will have it again soon.

Cheers,

Ethelred

I look at a clock. Or maybe my (wind-up) wristwatch.

Sheesh. Geeks. If it ain't digital, it ain't.

Cheers,

Ethelred

For that to make sense, you have to believe that cellphones have not been widely adopted in the U.S. And that is simply not true.

I make no such assumption. What I am saying is that people often feel unsure about what they are actually paying for the services they use (have I exceeded my minute limit? have I exceeded my airtime limit? am I in a different roaming zone? etc.) and get sticker shock when the first bill arrives.

The system in Europe is just so much simpler, and has achieved much higher rates of acceptance (which is NOT the same as rates of deployment, which is what you're talking about).

Think about it. If you had only three different rates (in-network, local area, nationwide), no minute limit, no airtime fees (so you only pay when you call), simple and standardized fees for WAP/SMS/GPRS/HSCSD and so on, you would probably feel a lot better about using your cellphone as a real alternative to your fixed-line phone.

Cellphone use in Europe has gotten so widespread that it could really replace fixed-line phones in the next few years. There are already hybrid phones in wide use here -- while you're at home, it charges you fixed-line rates; while you're away it charges cellphone rates -- and this could lead to the subsumation of fixed-line phones. With the chaotic fees and competing technologies in the US, this could just not happen.

Cheers,

Ethelred

...you just pay $x.xx/month for so many minutes...

You're missing the point. The German plans don't have a minute limit. It works exactly like a fixed-line phone -- you pay for the time you call someone, and that's all.

The minute limit is just one "gotcha" I'm talking about. I pay one monthly fee for unlimited time, and I don't pay any airtime fees (so I don't pay if someone calls me). This is the standard way of doing it over here -- the providers compete on price on only two areas: monthly fee and per-second fee. Nothing else.

Which, as I said, is precisely how fixed-line connections work. So why not with cellphones?

Cheers,

Ethelred

The biggest reason why cellphones have not taken off in the US in comparison to Europe, at least, is simply price -- or in particular the *way* they are priced.

In Germany (and, I believe, in most other European countries), cellphones are charged exactly the same way a fixed-line phone is charged. You pay a basic monthly fee, and you pay per second or 10 seconds for calls you make. There are no "airtime" fees or other gotchas. The rates are also easy to understand, more or less -- for a call within your provider's network, you pay a "local" call; calls within your country are "long-distance"; and calls outside of your country are international. Quite rational.

My provider also has the added perk that I can choose either five fixed-line numbers or one area code to get discounted calls. So if I choose Berlin's area code -- 030 -- I can call anyone in Berlin for a much lower rate.

In comparison, my family in the States has a blizzard of confusing fee schedules, with plenty of "gotchas" built-in.

Another problem is the lack of standards across the States. Europe has the GSM standard, and your phone will work across nearly all of Europe. The USA has no such common standard, and even if you're smart enough to get a dual-band or tri-band cellphone, you get hammered on the roaming charges in the States.

I'm actually not that much of a fan of cellphones-as-portals, though -- WAP seems such an abortion of an idea and so far navigating the Web with a keypad is just a non-starter (and, like the article says, Americans tend to drive and not take public transport, so they have less time to fiddle with the things). But it is often a nice option to have. I use it to check what movies are playing (and to reserve tix), check train times (OK, that's not too useful in the States ;-P ) and sometimes to check the news, but that's about it -- I would never buy anything with it, because the technology is so far rather insecure.

i-Mode was also recently introduced in Germany by my provider (they licensed the technology from NTT-DoCoMo), so Europe is close to Japan's level now, though it remains to be seen if i-Mode and other 2.5G technologies take off in Europe (let alone 3G).

GPRS and HSCSD are also well-established, so I can go online at 56K digital with my Nokia and Powerbook via infrared and OS X (haven't gotten it to work with Linux, tho). GPRS is *very* expensive, though -- 2.5 Eurocents per 1K of data -- but HSCSD is fairly reasonable (why the difference, I don't know -- both give you the same speed AFAIK).

Cheers,

Ethelred

... except the massive flood which lasted 40 days and 40 nights was on mars not earth! now i wonder what happened to noah and all the animals?

That's easy. Noah's Ark was a spaceship. Duh!

Which reminds me of a German cartoon (http://www.nichtlustig.de/) recently: one sees the Ark in the background, and in the foreground is a small raft with a prophet-like guy and two unicorns. The caption reads "Noah's rival Ishmael was rather less successful", and one of the unicorns says to Ishmael, "By the way, we're gay."

Cheers,

Ethelred

Here in Germany, where high-speed trains are fairly common (the ICE2 goes up to something like 280 km/h, or about 170 mph, though only on top-quality track), there has been some debate for some years about building a maglev passenger train -- but the usual NIMBY problems keep coming up.

To add to the irony, the Greens -- who you would think would want to support mass transit, especially one like maglev -- have often blocked its implementation in Germany on environmental grounds (disturbing habitats, etc.).

There there is the situation in the USA.

On the other hand, maglev could in theory revive passenger train service in the USA. I believe that one of the main reasons it has failed in the States is simply economics -- because of the greater distances involved, the net cost per mile of track, the total cost to maintain a (much onger) average stretch of track, and therefore the ticket price for getting from point A to point B is higher than in Europe, where population density is far higher and a greater potential for train service exists. Another drawback in the States is again because of the distance: with Amtrak's usual trains (which are abysmally slow by European standards) it takes forever to get anywhere. So you pay more for worse (slower) service, and the train company has less surplus money to invest in new technology or track improvements. No wonder Amtrak is so terrible.

(Consider the irony that the USA is generally considered to have the most modern freight rail in the world -- but passenger rail is a joke.)

The initial cost of a maglev line is probably a lot higher, but I would imagine that its TCO would be much lower than conventional trains -- and given its far higher potential speeds, it could really compete with airliners (at least on the East and West Coasts, where there is a high enough population density to pay for it).

But the whole train-related mass transit infrastructure is missing in most American cities (thanks in part to the American love of cars) -- okay, so you got to the main station, but then what? How do you get around? Is there a well-integrated tram/bus/subway/coach system? Most cities just don't have that (certainly nothing like in Germany or France). So even if someone is willing to take the (substantial) financial risk and heavy investment load of building a maglev network in the States, there are still a lot of practical issues to deal with beyond just the train lines.

So, sad to say, even though maglev technology was developed to a large degree in America, I don't see it happening in the near future. In spite of the problems mentioned above in Germany, I do think that there will be several trunk lines running maglev service in Germany in the next few years (probably Cologne-Hannover-Berlin and Hamburg-Hannover-Frankfurt-Munich at the least).

By the way, one of the main companies working on maglev is TransRapid. Check out their site (especially the Projects section) for a lot of info about the subject, including about possible maglev lines in the States.

Cheers,

Ethelred

HTH

Ethelred

The story has been up on /. for 9 minutes, and still no "First Post".

Must be the network stoppage.

Therefore...

First Post!!!

Cheers,

Ethelred

Well, what you're talking about is pretty much how it is done in many German cities. I live in Hannover, where the system is very straightforward. You buy a ticket which covers all transit types (street tram, subway, bus, regional train) and it simply has a time limit -- usually 90 minutes, but you can also get day passes, monthly passes and so on. The price is then based on the number of zones, but the "zones" are so huge that you can almost always get away with buying a simple one-zone ticket (the "zones" are concentric rings around downtown Hannover, and the central zone covers basically the entire city and inner suburbs). For one zone, you pay €1.70 (about US$1.60) and you can travel all you want for 90 minutes in the central zone -- no transfers needed.

(Hannover is of course the home of the CeBIT computer fair, if you're wondering. For CeBIT visitors it's even easier -- the fare is included in the price of the CeBIT ticket.)

The way the ticket itself works is simple, too. It just shows where you bought the ticket, in what zone, and when. When the ÜSTRA employees check your ticket, all they have to do is look at the zone and time, and they know if you've paid correctly.

You can also pay for your tickets with your GeldKarte (cashcard), which is a smart card used for paying small amounts -- you book money onto it at any cash machine, and it literally carries your money (up to €100, if I remember right) without having your bank account info stored on it. (The "cash" has a unique digital watermark with the data used to verify if the cash is real -- which of course opens up all kinds of possibilities for tracking its use...)

Not all German cities have this worked out, though. Hamburg, for example, also has a centralized system, but the "system" is total chaos because of their rather bizarre zones. Like in Hannover, you pay for a set amount of time and number of zones, but in Hamburg the zones are miniscule. When I lived there, if I took the public transport from my flat to work, there were three different ways of getting there, all involving one transfer and all travelling the same distance and taking about the same amount of time -- yet each cost a wildly different amount. Of course, once I got a monthly pass it wasn't so bad, but I was still restricted to one part of the city with that passcard.

One thing about Hamburg's system that is relevant to what you said is that Hamburg also has a number of private companies running its transit system (Deutsche Bahn runs the S-Bahn, Hamburger Hochbahn and several others do the U-Bahn and several companies run the bus system), but you still have one fare system and one ticketing system. Same goes for Berlin. (Hannover just has one state-sponsored company, the ÜSTRA, that does everything.)

Berlin's system is similar to Hamburg's as well. Again you pay for one ticket regardless of what transit type you use (and no trasnfers needed), but at the departure stop, you have to look at a *huge* table of destinations to find the fare you need to pay (if you're leaving from Kurfürstendamm and travelling to Alexanderplatz, it costs so-and-so much). But the system works and doesn't need any high-tech at all, which has its advantages as well.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling for now...

Cheers,

Ethelred

Yes, Apple sued Apple, but not in the way you think.

Apple Records, the Beatles' record company, sued Apple Computer over the name. If I remember right, both Apples settled out of court. The agreement basically said that Apple Computer would keep the name "Apple Computer" and that Apple Computer would never get into the music recording business.

This is, by the way, the origin of the system sound on Macs called "Sosumi". Apple Records was not happy when Apple Computer started adding all kinds of sound capabilities to Macs, which Apple Records thought may violate the agreement. Ergo the cheeky name for the sound -- "so sue me".

cf. Wikipedia

Cheers,

Ethelred

This has been discussed to death by a lot of German linguists. Any native speaker will tell you (and my wife is one, and I speak German fluenty as well) that the form "ich bin ein Berliner" is perfectly acceptable, indeed in the sense in which Kennedy was speaking, it was the *only* correct way of saying it.

A German would say of a person who *is* from Berlin, "er ist Berliner" (without the article "ein"). But a German who means figuratively that a person is from Berlin would say "er ist EIN Berliner". Kennedy was not from Berlin, therefore he had to say "ich bin ein Berliner". There was no error, except on the part of non-German speakers who thought they caught Kennedy making an embarrassing mistake.

Take a look at http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa021 700b.htm to get the full explanation.

Furthermore, a person from Hamburg says "ich bin Hamburger". But no one would really think twice about saying it. A person from Frankfurt says "ich bin Frankfurter". So what? Just about any German city has a kind of food -- sausage (Braunschweiger, Frankfurter), beer (Dortmunder, or Berliner -- yes, it's also a type of beer) and so on -- associated with the name. That's not a reason to avoid saying "ich bin [insert city name here]". That's ridiculous. If the Wall had been in Rüdesheim instead of Berlin, Kennedy would in your theory have been saying "ich bin ein Rüdesheimer" and therefore saying he's a German version of Irish coffee -- which is silly. And wrong. If that were the case, there are a lot of German Irish coffees running around.

I have yet to hear a German say that Kennedy was wrong to say it the way he did -- on the contrary, all Germans I've spoken to (and given that I have lived in Germany for years, that's a lot) think it was a great speech.

This is, in fact, a classic urban legend. In other words, something that has been repeated so often that people believe it regardless of what the evidence may show -- and in spite of the fact that it's just plain wrong.

Cheers,

Ethelred

The "Ich bin ein Berliner" thing is actually inaccurate. Yes, there is a pastry in Germany called a "Berliner" which is sort of like a jelly doughnut -- for that matter, there is also a pastry called an "Amerikaner", which is like a large frosted cookie (don't ask). But Germans actually roll their eyes when American tourists laugh about Kennedy's quote, because the Germans not only perfectly understood what Kennedy meant, but also Berliners actually *do* call themselves Berliners.

Technically, he could have said "ich komme aus Berlin" (I come from Berlin) to avoid the theoretical confusion, but in the context of the speech it wouldn't have made any sense.

The Germans still revere Kennedy for having had the balls to stand up to Khrushchev and the DDR for putting up the Wall (or the "anti-fascist protection barrier" as the East Germans called it). Many German cities have a road or park named for him, more than any other American president or other foreign leader I can think of. There's even a memorial to Kennedy near the site of the Wall, which of course has "Ich bin ein Berliner" in huge letters on it. They hardly thought the quote was embarrassing. In context, it was a very stirring speech, one of the best he gave.

(Compare that to Clinton's rather lame "Amerika steht an Ihrer Seite, jetzt und fuer immer" -- "America stands at your side, now and for ever". Grammatically correct, but boring. Reagan didn't bother with German, but his "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" is at least more memorable.)

Anyway, see http://www.watzmann.net/scg/faq-25.html for a discussion of this.

Cheers,

Ethelred

I recently got a used K6-3/400 PC, which I promptly wiped. Problem was, I had no clue as to what was inside the thing (I originally thought it was a Duron 600 until Red Hat told me otherwise). and installed Red Hat 7.2. It installed like a charm -- hardware all recognized and correctly configured, Net configured and away we go.

Then I decided to install Windows 98 SE, which I need to test websites (other than this PC, I only have Macs running either Linux or Mac OS X). It was a nightmare -- constant reboots (usually without warning me or waiting for a confirmation) and it failed to recognize both the video card and the Ethernet card. I ended up having to reboot into Linux, do cat /proc/pci to find out what kind of cards they were (hardly anything exotic -- an old TNT video card and a Realtek Ethernet card) and trying to install drivers. The ones from the Windows CD refused to work, and of course with no Ethernet I couldn't easily download them...

So I ended up booting again into Red Hat (damn, GRUB is nice), downloading current drivers there, copying them to the Windows partition, rebooting and reinstalling -- and it *still* didn't work at first (with a reboot in between each attempt, of course). Eventually it finally decided to cooperate (I still don't know what happened -- after one of the many reboots the video card and Ethernet card suddently started working).

Red Hat took me about 30-45 minutes to install and configure (I just did a standard workstation install), mostly just waiting on the files to copy over to the hard drive. Windows 98 SE took over two and a half hours of PITA work.

OK, granted, Red Hat 7.2 is much newer than 98 SE. But remember that a *huge* number of people still use 98 SE as their primary system, and it's still more or less the standard most users look to. I'd say Linux has come a looooong way already as far as easy installation goes.

Best of all, my wife, who up till now has only used Macs and is techno-phobic, saw the GNOME desktop, got curious and soon I had her playing Civilization: Call to Power on Linux. And she fiddled around with surfing in no time.

I am now fantasizing about romantic evenings with my wife recompiling kernels. ;-)

Cheers,

Ethelred

There's no accounting for taste, anyway.

The obvious point is, if it's shown on German TV and Germans apparently like to watch it, it doesn't seem to be too insulting to Germans, now does it? (So much for your attempt at political correctness.)

You want to see something *really* politically incorrect about WWII? Try the British comedy "Allo Allo"...you know, the series with the "Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies by Van Klump", a gay German tank commander, a Prussian general whose idea of politics is to shoot French peasants and so on. (And again, my wife loves it, as do I.)

Cheers,

Ethelred

Cheers,

Ethelred