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VHS beat Beta because of proliferation, NOT because of quality

VHS had two hour capability, Betamax had one hour.

Sony kept Betamax to themselves. VHS was a consortium and many companies built VHS machines.

The vaunted quality of Betamax was only on the video, and not enough to really notice, given how crappy TV is anyway; the audio was worse. A small loss in quality, probably not even noticeable most of the time, in exchange for double the time was a pretty good deal to most people, and then throw in competition from multiple manufacturers and lower prices and different features and lots of choices, and Betamax was doomed.

Here are some links:

Guardian
Wikipedia

Father Ted is third, beating out Fawlty Towers. All is well with the world of algorithmic sitcom ratings.

Here is the original article, complete with scores for the top and bottom 5 shows.

Wonder how long you've got before it topples. /glad I'm european.

Thinks aren't exactly all rosey across Europe either.

Here in the UK we've only recently got rid of our raving mad home secretery David blunket a big fan of a two tier legal system.
In the one tier we had the rule of law, and in the other tier the rule of David - lock em up with no charge or access to evidence. The general idea seemed to be that the Home Secretary would get to pick which tier you went down presumably based on whether he was having a bad day or not and if anyone had shouted terrorist at you recently.

He's gone now of course. And why did we get rid of him? Beacuse this was clearly a violation of basic human rights? No, because he rushed through a visa application for his Nanny's lover (yes really).

And who did we replace him with? Charles Clarke, more of the same but smoother. We're looking forward to those ID cards we're all apparently desperate for.

Ok, we do everything on a smaller scale (hey we're British) but we're doing the lot of the same things as the US.

At least we still have a free mainstream media however. http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Imagine what would happen to a nation if most of its population got its news via fox . . .

Probably worth reading this, also:

Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians

However, when a paper is presented which says that jews and palestinians are genetically the same, that's a bad thing.

If the paper had said that this subset of the jewish religion was dumber than others due to genetics would people still have the same reaction or would they have dismissed it as anti-semitic?

On-chip hardware in support of security system for intellectual property protection.

Each Cell is given a GUID, a global identifier.

Some will no doubt be turned off by the fact that DRM is built into the Cell hardware.

on-chip hardware DRM support

It also has built-in on-chip digital rights management (DRM)

It seems that details on this DRM system are still secret, but I would wager strong odds that is it exactly compliant with the Trusted Computing Group specification. Exactly compliant with the Intel La Grande DRM system, exactly compliant with the AMD Presidio DRM system, exactly compliant with the Transmeta Security eXtensions DRM system.

One DRM to rule them all, One DRM to find them,
One DRM to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

One Trusted Computing system to bind a network of software running on different CPUs.

-

By that definition the Amish of Pennsylvania and Ohio are a distinct ethnic group. They have their own language, culture, most certainly clothing and are sharply separated from other groups.

However, I defy you to find anyone who classify the Amish as a distinct ethnic group.

Besides, it is has been shown that jews are genetically similar to palestinians and other groups of the region. Which of course makes sense since if one uses the biblical story of the egyptians using jews, and others, as slaves, it would logically follow that the jews were people already living in the region and thus would be genetically related to the overall arabic population (I'm using arabic in the widest possible term even though the Iranians would, given the chance, slit my throat for calling them arabs when Persian is the more correct term).

The only reason jews are jews is not because of genetics but of religion. Or maybe you would like to think that the jews were spontaneously created rather than adopting their ways for religious purposes?

Well that there sounds like you support dictatorships, either passively or actively, even the one in North Korea. And with keeping your head in the sand with respect to North Korea, read this
it should open your eyes quite a lot. There's a LOT more horrific activities going on there than the Disneyland you might say it is.

A sandbox would make the system more palatable, but it's hard to see how it could work, with malware by definition out of reach beyond the sandbox. But people installing the malwarectomy SW also by definition must trust the provider. Which is why I suggest Norton and McAfee, trusted brands which can be held accountable (monetarily) for any insecurity they introduce.

Another model is insurance companies which subsidize free malwarectomy apps. But that introduces economic inefficiency, in a profit layer which inevitably exploits innumeracy and fear to nearly cancel any economic savings for their own benefit, which then powerfully twist personal behaviour (cf. "protection racket"). I don't want my computer to become like my car: a machine that eats money by exposing vulnerability to irresponsible users of other machines like it, all cooperating to make insurers rich, and me straitjacketed.

Freedom {fries,toast} creator repents

OMG now he hates our freedom!1!!1ELEVENTYONE!!

And a double standard apparently also applies for Israelis and Retarded New Zealanders.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1262 362,00.html

Interesting story I remember reading related to this.

The jist is that the government asked a couple of highly educated men (both Physics PhDs) to see if they could figure out how to develop a nuclear bomb without access to any classified information back in the 60s. The idea is that any random country could get a hold of people like this, so what are the odds any random country could develop the bomb.

The results, the hardest part of process would be access to the fissle material, but the bomb they developed would've been on the scale of the Hiroshima bomb. An interesting article overall.

"Handbag Studio". Bevery Hills.

Thomas Keneally tells how he stumbled on the story that became Schindler's List

What the... "To confirm you're not a script, please type the text shown in this image"
haven't seen that before

The aim of getting the same microchip is to ensure compatability [sic] in screening terrorist suspects.

Did this spelling mistake leap out at everyone else? I assumed it was the article submitter, but it's in the original too. Tut tut, Independent - you're turning into the Grauniad! :-)

Especially if you're a freelance woodworker taking some work home, and you'd better be careful when you cross the road, you never know when some speeding wanker might be going past. ..

The one that can't even get member states to vote for the body's Constitution?

The EU is not a country, it is a conglomeration of countries. What is their actual power to enforce these laws? Especially seeing as how banning Microsoft on a continent-wide level would be an infringement of each country's right to self-determination.

I think that someone is going to get a huge wakeup call and I doubt it is going to be Microsoft this time.

"the nucleus from the cell being cloned squeezed into an empty egg and then encouraged to begin dividing. (Unlike Dolly, human embryos created in this way must be destroyed after a few days and would never be implanted.)"

Not to mention Oil Profits:
Shell2003. Shell 2004. Exxon2003. Exxon 2004.
I'm sure you can find others by googling.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/st ory/0,9865,1486811,00.html

And an artificial womb. It's only a matter of time before all that will be required is a sample of genetic material, skin scraping etc.

Dear Slashdot Patriots:

Please contact your senator and urge him-her to support the Don't Let George W. Bush Clone Himself and Any Of His Progeny Act.

The world has enough religous extremists.

Patriotically from a secure, undisclosed cave in Maryland,
Kilgore Trout, CEO

Chavez, the subject of the coup, has implicated the U.S. repeatedly. Moreover, there are plenty of facts all around that say the U.S. had its fingerprints all over it. Don't be so trusting of the official line. It's not like this was unprecedented as previous posters pointed out.

Apparently there was a plan to assasinate Sadam Husein like that. Well, it was with a missle instead of a laser; but the harmless tagging part is the same.

You are right that the famous "tank guy" wasn't run over by the tanks, but there most definately are reports of people being run over. See this article in the Guardian, for example. A survivor whose legs were crushed by a tank as he fled Tiananmen square reports that five others were run over and killed.

The Grauniad is a "loony left" paper in the UK with a political axe to grind (let's bash the Yankee moneymakers!) and little time for any SF, good or bad.

You are aware of their SF books section right? As far as I'm aware, they're the only major newspaper in the UK that devotes a column to the genre. Clearly you're not a frequent reader of the paper.

Here:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story /0,6903,1483969,00.html

The Networker
Lesson number one: get rid of Microsoft

John Naughton
Sunday May 15, 2005
The Observer

Drive past any secondary school in the UK and you'll see an institution that is struggling. No: this is not a column about academic standards, dumbing down, bureaucracy, Ofsted or any of the other obsessions of the Daily Mail .

In fact, many of these struggling schools are academically excellent. What they are having difficulty with is something much more mundane than teaching or learning. They are trying - and failing - to manage their IT systems.

How come? Most British schools are hooked on networks that consist of hundreds of PCs running various flavours of the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office software. Now it is perfectly possible to run an effective Windows-based network, just as it is possible to dig your garden using a teaspoon - provided you employ a hundred gardeners to do the work.

The problem is that keeping such a network up and running requires a great deal of technical support - the equivalent of three full-time trained technicians for an average secondary school. And upgrading the system to keep track of changes in Microsoft's operating systems is expensive. Basically it boils down to throwing out a third of your computers every three years and buying new machines that can run the latest version of Windows.

Nathan Myrhvold, Bill Gates's former technology guru, used to joke that 'software is like a gas - it expands to fill the space available'. The programmer Martin Reiser put it better: 'software gets slower more quickly than hardware gets faster'. (In other words: 'Intel giveth, and Microsoft taketh away.')

Although the corporate world complains about this virtual arms race, it generally pays up because it can afford to. But schools cannot - which is why when you talk to ICT co-ordinators in education you regularly hear phrases like 'running to keep still' and 'struggling to stay on top of it'.

You hear stories about how difficult it is to recruit and retain IT support staff on the salaries schools can afford, about staff spending much of their time rebuilding crashed or vandalised PCs, about teachers who are contemptuous of the level of IT support, about up to a quarter of PCs being unavailable at any given moment, and about dissatisfaction with the Microsoft-supplier compa nies, which enjoy a semi-monopolistic hold on the education market.

And you hear head teachers wondering what will happen when Longhorn - the much-delayed new version of Windows - arrives and renders most of their existing computers obsolete. The state of ICT in UK schools is a public scandal.

In part, this is due to the fact that head teachers are expected to be chief information officers without being given any training or support. As a result they are easy meat for commercial companies touting Microsoft 'solutions' to their ICT problems. They fall for upfront discounts and wind up with systems they can't afford to support or upgrade. Only later do they realise that between 50 and 60 per cent of their annual IT budgets will have to go to keeping their discounted networks running.

This last statistic comes from Becta (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency), which describes itself as 'the government's key partner in the strategic development and delivery of its information and communications technology and e-learning strategy' for schools. Until comparatively recently, Becta seemed to function mainly as a cheerleader for the proprietary status quo, effectively functioning as an agency for negotiating discounts from suppliers. But now, after a major shake-up and the installation of David Hargreaves as its chairman, Becta is finally waking up.

On Friday, for example, it released the fi

Israeli doctors experimented on children, is an article I found on The daily grail today by the Guardian Unlimited. http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1481 159,00.html

Well actually the Guardian (http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,14 85232,00.html ) reports that the BBC is looking for 5000 broadband users (in the UK only, sorry foreigners!) to trial their new Interactive Media Player for 3 months starting in September. Email imptrial@bbc.co.uk if you're interested, giving your name, contact details, age, and postcode.

VHS was better for a number of reasons, the most important being that you could actually fit a movie on one tape.

Really, I wish people would stop using it as an example of something it's not.

This is a common urban myth that BETA was superior to VHS. Maybe it was in terms of picture quality (which is a controversial fact), but more importantly, the maximum length of BETA video tapes was 1 hour, making it unsuitable to record any full-length movie. Additionally, there were more VHS video movies to rent and VHS tapes were cheaper than the BETA video tapes.

More information: Why VHS was better than Betamax

Are you they shut that down? Maybe they just outsourced the goats?

1. The Songwriter
2. The Artist
3. The Label maker and producer

I wonder how fast Daniel Tammet could factor this number. It's amazing that this man could be able to factor an RSA200 number in milliseconds while it takes combined computing power 50 years to do.

Truly, the mind boggles.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903 ,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903 ,00.html

"Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. "

http://www.optimnem.co.uk/letterman.htm

He learnt icelandic in a week from scratch.

(By the way, isn't it really annoying when someone will say absolutely anything, even if it contradicts something they said earlier, depending

You have your answer.

RRrrrrr!

Excuse me.....when has Microsoft ever really gotten there first? Their signature business method is to buy some small or unknown software company in a given market and then use their monopoly influence, price undercutting, and FUD to drive out or hinder competitors while they hurry to catch up with whatever software they bought. Years later, they have little competition and a product that is "good enough" (read: Marketing has convinced enough people to buy it and put up with all the bugs that remain).

They've already bought their search technology but apparently it's harder than it looks. Of course, they would have preferred to eliminate the competition outright.

The real problem here is that Microsoft can't cut their price below free and Google has at least one software generation or so head start (that, coupled with the other Microsoft bug-a-boo -- FOSS). Billy boy is never so pissed than when a company points out just how uninnovative Microsoft really is...

Their next slogan? "Microsoft -- following the leader like usual."

According to the Guardian operations will continue pretty much as they are now. Moreover IBM owns 18.9% of Lenovo, so they will contine to have an interest in continuing to support their PCs and Laptops.

What kind of money can you make delivering ice?

i remember hearing about someone trying to toss around an idea to tow an iceburg to solve a fresh water crisis, ah here it is so apparently is costs 3.3m euros, and you gross an estimated 10.2m euros, if you use the iceburg to generate electricity as well as water. So to answer your question you can make 6.9m euros as an ice delivery person nowadays.

Let me tell you a joke:

If you find randomly scattered leaves in a forrest you call it chance.

If you find neatly stacked leaves in a forrest you know someone or something created it.

Then how can people look at the world and not see it?

I must say i do have trouble with the evolution theory, but it really is a theory. And when there is proof that contradicts that theory you all just joke over it.

Well, for starters. Here's pictures of the actual car.

I don't see 400 bullet holes there, much less anything that would indicate being hit by a 4" Tank round.

As for the statements, how am I supposed to prove it to you? The BBC is a respectable news source and they quote her.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4324251.stm

"We had no signal. We were just on the way to the airport. They started to shoot at us without any light or signal. There was no block, there was nothing. It was so immediate. I didn't know how I was alive after all that attack. "

Here she claims there was no "light or signal" but in another story from the guardian, again another respectable publication she says:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story /0,6903,1431436,00.html

"The Americans shone a flashlight at the car and then fired between 300 and 400 bullets at if from an armoured vehicle."

Right there are two conflicting statements. They can't both be true, not to mention the lack of bullet (much less tank rounds) in the car itself.

The point is not Giuliana Sgrena. She is not a weapons expert and I don't expect her tale to be accurate to the last technical detail, as the whole episode lasted only a few seconds and during these she probably thought of otherwise than writing the next story.
The point is an hostage being retrieved through a paid ransom.

1. Insurgents kidnap Italian
2. Italian government pays ransom
3. Hostage is freed, resistance gets money
4. Insurgents kidnap another Italian since the Italian government pays, go back to 1

It would otherwise be interesting to actually see those satellite pictures, not just a link by an American to an American news site quoting an American TV station about an American satellite.

And no, she did not like the US, nor did the experience much to improve her views. Same can be said for the majority of Italians.

Here are a few links to muddy your perception of events:


http://www.energy.gov/engine/content.do?PUBLIC_ID= 16141&BT_CODE=PR_PRESSRELEASES&TT_CODE=PRESSRELEAS E

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0604/152311.html

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/06/25/sprj.irq .centrifuge/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,894550 ,00.html


It's all a matter of how deep you're willing to dig for the information. You won't see this stuff repeated on the news... because it might just make the War in Iraq justified. Can't have that now, can we?

But since these stories don't fit the party line that's been coming from the press... I guess they're lies. I'm not saying this is definitive evidence, but these stories show at least a plausible explanation for invasion, not to mention shooting holes in the "cut and dried" we shouldn't have gone to war, camp. And it has CERTAINLY shot down the "full compliance with UN resolutions" camp that has popped up lately. Compliance? If you mean kicking out inspectors so he can hide his banned equipment, then... yes. :)

Not to mention Jan. 27th 2003, Hans "I never said that" Blix told the UN that Iraq had shown "NO EVIDENCE of FULL compliance" with disarmament. (And we all know, the Security council authorization for retaliation as a result of non-compliance was not more sanctions... but then again, who listens to the UN?)

He later recanted, denied, claimed he was misquoted, when it was impacting his book sales.... but that's another story.

Here and here.

Look at how "badly" her car was "shot up" and decide for yourself if this "journalist" is a lying sack of shit for saying that the car was shot at 300 or 400 times.

Now, use the information you have just learned to judge her credibility as a whole.

Apparently, it was the most controversial film of it's time :).

Nearly exterminate? There are still more than a few news organisations with online presences:

Reuters
The Times
The Guardian (interesting... the content is free but if you want to read it in a paper format you can subscribe)
The Sun
The Mirror
ITN Sites, e.g. Channel 4 News
The Scotsman (a surprisingly large online presence)

The sites you mention: FT and Telegraph, it isn't surprising they charge as they have concentrated readerships with higher levels of disposable income, so why not go for a straightforward revenue model?

I have no doubt that the popularity of BBC news is for reasons consistent with the popularity of their television and radio news: high quality and impartial in a way commercially sponsored news could not be (commercial news also remains very popular: the total cross-media circulation of ITN, Times, Sun, etc is massive).

You can also watch Fox News on Sky somewhere (channel 524-ish). If that's "Fair and Balanced" then I'm a banana.

Sky News may be from the gutter but at least they don't get done for lying, unlike Fox News.

Two memorials by Richards Dawkins from 2001 are here ("a keening lament, written too soon to be balanced, too soon to be carefully thought through") and a eulogy here.

The latter piece includes this quote from Adams:

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.

It's a reminder that the best way to remember Adams is to re-read what he wrote.

bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the "reliable" partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.

Others point out that the military contribution of the 'Arabs', as the overseas volunteers were known, was relatively small. 'The fighting was done by the Afghans and most of them went back to their fields when Kabul fell to the mujahideen,' said Kamaal Khan, a Pakistani defence analyst. 'Ironically, the bulk of American aid went to the least effective fighters, who turned most strongly to bite the hand that fed them.'

Libraries in the US are getting closer to censorship than ever. Take for example this new Alabama Bill targeting Gay Authors from an elected Republican representative in the state legislature, Gerald "book-burying " Allen. Consider other minor incidents like the New Mexico Book burning party . Can you spot a trend?

Google already succumbed to China censorship pressures. Would they resist censorship pressures from the Christian right, inside the US? Yea, right, just like Microsoft did .

Don't fool yourself, folks. US companies are no longer a reliable for such a task. If Google is allow t create another de facto monopoly in Library Search, we risk gay books, Evolution volumes or the freaking Harry Potter adventures disappearing anytime now.
Let me ask you, who's going to preserve Western Culture heritage if the US completes it's path towards fascism bushflash.com/14.html? India!? The Chinese!!? Well, apparently it's going to be the French. Good for them.