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Regarding people getting along, I do not see how having 6 million, or 6 billion, or 60 billion would make a difference. I do not believe shrinking the population would solve the problem. Heck even married couples often do not get along. Dostoyevsky knew it: it is easy to love someone you do not know, but the more you know someone, the more flaws you find, to the point the most insignificant trifle detail can terminate a relationship.

Regarding consumption, that is the argument Thomas Malthus made in the XIXth century. His argument was that human population increased at geometric rate whereas the food supply grows at an arithmetic rate. According to Malthus this would mean each person would have less and less food until there would be mass starvation. It did not pan out. Turns out there is more food per person now than then, even after over a century of population growth. Why?

Julian Simon described it well: people eat animals and plants, which are themselves biological entities which also grow at a geometric rate. We only need space and energy for crops. If there is not enough soil, we can use hydroponics, start cultivating the ocean, genetically modify foodstuffs to boost output, the works. We use the Sun for energy usually, but people have been growing vegetables with artificial lighting for some time now.

Regarding clean water: given enough energy, you can purify all the drinking water you want from the ocean via distillation, reverse osmosis, etc.

Energy is the problem, basically. Thankfully we have a large fusion generator around that we call the Sun, plus some other stuff.

People won't care about outer space until we can get a competent group of people to create a space program (here's hoping South Africa http://cooltech.iafrica.com/features/870976.htm) that:

(a) Doesn't waste all kinds of public funds (1.6bil requested for fy2007 http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/index.html) (b) Isn't surrounded by an aura of bad PR.

Until either that happens, or NASA pulls off something incredible to regain the respect of millions of people, our feet will be planted firmly on the ground.

It's a shame, really, I've been hoping to reenact the plotline from Firefly at some point in my lifetime...

'And to think that Microsoft decided not to launch the Xbox 360 in Brazil because of the high piracy rates!' Are you high? The XBox 360 is coming to Brazil later this year. MS wants the 360 in EVERY market.

Well I lived in SA during apartheid, the unbanning of the ANC, voted for the first democratic elections etc. I personally think that Apartheid fell because the West stopped supporting the National Party government here with the fall of the Soviet Union. Prior to that SA was doing business happily with the US, Israel, UK, Taiwan,
Japan etc. We had everything here, from the latest Hollywood movies, to PCs, MS software, games, clothing, etc. The South African militay could easily handly any
treat posed by the ANC, PAC and other movements. Funnily enough the courts were fair
however, if a white killed a black, he was hanged too, and if there wasn't enough
evidence against a black suspect he was released. The West needed a strong pro-Western SA, and SA was just that. The Soviet Union fell and Communist influence was no longer seen as strong enough to cause problems here, the ANC became capitalist,
and at present is having many issues with their former trade union allies.
  Now the new SA is congratulating HAMAS
http://iafrica.com/news/sa/862645.htm supporting Mugabe and generally criticising the West especially USA/Israel over every possible thing.

As it seems some fish like meat, too.

It depends on whether or not they were actually outside the courthouse. It's not clear from the article posted if that's the case or not.

From the article, it says both "The line leading into..." and "...as the queue wound into the court..." I would agree the first makes it seem like they were outside, but the second clouds the issue a little. I know it's semantics, but in the context of the law they were charged under, the semantics (ironically, as we're talking about lawyers here) are vital.

What I find more interesting is what's not mentioned in this version of the article. If you read here, it goes and mentions that one of the guys was going to court to answer a drunken driver charge from his past. As others have mentioned, they often use "confrontational" tactics.

The bottom line is virtually every county/state/federal court has laws on the books to prevent disorderly/loud/disruptive conduct from disturbing the business of the courts. I'd guess that what we don't know is these guys were making more of a ruckus than the articles state (as it's far more newsworthy and entertaining to make it sound like they're getting busted for telling lawyer jokes - makes it more Leno or Letterman worthy of reporting), and they're getting busted for it. If that's the case, there's nothing outrageous about it.

Of course, this version of apparently the same story by Newsday adds a comment from one of the guys that they were standing outside the court. So who knows? :-)

Given that these guys have already picked up a popular talk radio host (Ron Kuby) as their own lawyer, I smell publicity stunt....

http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/309033.htm [iafrica.com]

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http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/309033.htm [iafrica.com]

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http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/309033.htm [iafrica.com]

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http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/309033.htm [iafrica.com]

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Police in Lithuania's second largest city Kaunas has found the body of a 74-year-old man, who committed suicide in an electric chair he made himself

http://www.iafrica.com/news/worldnews/392799.htm

Already in progress sir ;)

"It is, however, an estimate that is based on very different methodology from standard methodology for assessing causalities, namely on the number of people reported to have been killed at the time,"

Best of all, there's the people that work for him, like the corrupt David Hendershott, a man so fat that he once had to be cut out of a car with the jaws of life- a vehicle that had been impounded by sheriff's office, in fact.

Believe me- Sheriff Joe comes across as a hard-hitting lawman, but he's corrupt, morally bankrupt, and out to make a splash rather than fix the problems in his jails. Unfortunately, more money is spent in litigation and settlements than should be, taking officers off the street.

check out and read entire books via the internet

make video phone calls

perform remote heart surgery

Uh, done

They could actually be doing this to live rats, does that count? US researchers are poised to carry out the first tests of a silicon chip designed to replace a damaged part of the brain, New Scientist says. The implant aims to stand in for the hippocampus, part of the forebrain that is vital for storing long-term memories, it says. It will shortly be tested on tissue from rats' brains, then on live rats and laboratory monkeys, and if all goes well could one day be used for people who face memory loss due to Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy or a stroke. The prosthesis mimics the way the hippocampus encodes experiences before sending them to be stored elsewhere in the brain as long-term memories, according to the report, published in next Saturday's issue of the British science weekly. To make the chip, the team first sliced up sections of rat hippocampus, and stimulated these slices with electrical signals. They did this millions of times over until they could be sure which electrical input produced a corresponding output.

In 2000, its rival Honda Motor Co. Ltd. unveiled ASIMO, the world's first two-legged walking robot, and Sony Corp. revealed its QRIO, the world's first jogging robot, in December.

Earlier this week QRIO appeared for a photo opportunity conducting the Tokyo Phiharmonic Orchestra as it performed part of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/309033.htm

...already, when two Australians copyrighted all phone numbers way back in 2001.

Just make sure that the bits don't get transmitted through the MidEast or Islamic controlled Africa. People will freak out, break into server rooms and start beating those evil routers. The Christians or Jews will retaliate and sooner or later someone will end up dead. If a rumor that a party was going to be a beauty pagent caused this to happen, the real thing, even if it was virtual, would probably do the same thing.

Despite Microsoft's press releases to the contrary, Windows machines are not secure and need decent firewall and antivirus software. I see others have already mentioned the Kerio firewall, so I'll just add that it can be easily extended with Sponge's excellent, freely available filters. (I'm using set 2, but there are versions that are both more or less rigorous). I've also AVG Antivirus installed it seems to work well enough.

Some other useful free utilities:

Tclockex
A small utility that greatly increases the usefullness of the system tray clock. You can have the date as well as the time, as well as a resource monitor that lets you know at a glance how the system is doing.

AboutTime"
A little applet that sets the system clock from a list of time servers. Works well and unobtrusively.

7-zip
An easy to use explorer plug-in that understands most kinds of compressed files.

CDex
A great tool for ripping / converting CDs and mp3s.

X-teq>
A very powerful utility that lets you change pretty much everything that's changeable in Windows. Allows you to set Windows update registration done, which would only be useful to pirates and won't be mentioned here.

The Proxomitron
A web proxy that strips out ads, pop-ups and other garbage.

I'm more familiar with Redhat, but I have no doubt Mandrake will come out of the box with programs that are functionally equivalent to the ones listed here.

What we really need are 'kill' 'xkill' 'ckill' killer programs for clippys (and, hopefully, clippies).

On the same vein, instant "sleeep" irradiators for all these "intelligent" helpers popping up everywhere. ( Dibs ! *I* got dibs on calling that program / system / method "Alurac". Ok ?!" :).

When the Hectors, Skynets, HALs, etc. start bossing you through those neat-o wearable intracranial implants, well, don't say you were not warned. Besides, I do *not* want anything external controlling my intraviagra implant system ("From root to cortex. Hitting all the right spots!"). There is absolutely *no* need for some stupid, er, "intelligent" machine deciding that my attitude towards it is too cool and aloof and that I never take it anywhere anymore and that I never enjoy it like I used to.... etc. and so on... :)

Of course, the system might "intelligently" and helpfully stop you from remembering it. For your own convenience, and to keep you any unecessary stress, naturally. All via that "oh so useful" hippocampus memory-control chip. Such as in here , or here , or, or , etc.

All I have to say is... Hail Tesla ! :)

That's why I've pretty much given up gaming completely. I've become way more productive and constantly learn new, productive skills. At first I had decided to stop gaming for 3 month to get some work done, but at the end of 3 months I didn't want to go back to playing 2-3 hours of games a day. It really is a huge waste of time.

The only main point I see in that article is that taking breaks helps productivity. I agree with that completely. I think that taking a break and talking a walk would probably be much more beneficial than taking a video game break. Has everyone already forgotten this article?

http://cooltech.iafrica.com/science/993832.htm

Derg is a google Master

arguing that people convicted of computer-related crimes tend to get stiffer sentences than comparable non-computer-related offenses.

Only in US. Convicted hacker Raphael Gray, who stole 23,000 credit card no. and sent Bill Gates boxes of Viagra, was only sentenced to three years of community rehabilitation. As he told BBC:

"...Kevin Mitnick was stopped from going near computers, even from working a cash register, but they can't do that in this country.

I've had two job offers - one from the guy who tracked me down..."

• BMI Declare that all their future music CDs will be copy protected
• While EMI Germany do likewise, they also insult the complainant. (I'm informed it is even harsher than the translation)
• And soon you won't be able to return the CD if it doesn't work (UK)
• And beware of innovations (this article, beat you to it slashdot - nyah nyah!), as they may be slipping DRM in the back door
• Web radio was getting very popular, everyone was getting in on the act. Not any more. Only the big radio stations still broadcast.
• Microsoft joined the party with their "Trusted Computing" initiative, meaning *you* can trust MS software, Which in reality is a DRM thing (MS software can't trust you)
• Oh, and extending copyright. Courts admit that it can't be extended indefinately, but how long is a piece of string?

• Reuters sued for linking to a URL
• They haven't been the first to be sued for deeplinking. Check out This particularly fine example.
• How a single sniper is more dangerous than all the world's hackers combined

• Getting sued for silence
• Thanks to the CBDTPA, nearly everything *must* embed DRM. This includes cockpit voice recorders, digital speed cameras, hearing aids, and big mouth billy bass
• Even phoning a friend can breach copyright, 2 musicians copyright 100,000 phone numbers (dial tones).

• A review of the technologies shows that it is futile to protect CDs, (based on the assumption that new devices will more likely circumvent protection rather than enforce it)
• Richard Stallman (Free Software advocate) jumps in with a cautionary tale
• And a felt tip pen can bypass some protections

Building a Computer the Size of a Credit Card
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,106247,0 0.asp

Sharp is showing off an LCD with a built-in CPU, and plans to use it in a new breed of mobile display devices by 2005.

Sharp and its partner Semiconductor Energy Laboratory unveiled Tuesday what the companies claim to be a world-first prototype of an LCD with an 8-bit CPU on its glass substrate.

Sharp runs computer on piece of glass
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/22/10345614 95445.html

Japan's leading liquid crystal display maker Sharp Corp said yesterday it had made an "epoch-making" step toward making ultra-flat "sheet computers" after it succeeded in running a computer on a tiny piece of glass.

The prototype it unveiled was a functioning tiny circuit board - from a Sharp central processing unit (CPU) originally made in 1977 - imprinted on a piece of glass some 15 millimetres square and one millimetre thick.

Running a PC on a piece of glass
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/178311.htm

Japan's leading liquid crystal display maker Sharp Corp. said on Tuesday it had made an "epoch-making" step toward making ultra-flat "sheet computers" after it succeeded in running a computer on a tiny piece of glass.

The prototype it unveiled was a functioning tiny circuit board - from a Sharp central processing unit (CPU) originally made in 1977 - imprinted on a piece of glass some 15 millimeters (0.6 inches) square and one millimeter thick.

Screw virtual super computers. Make the equivalant of a beowolf cluster of telescopes!

'Virtual telescope' is world's best
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/167248.htm

Several international teams of astronomers have joined together to create a "virtual telescope" roughly the size of Earth and the most powerful in the world, researchers have announced.

The new array can detect features 3000 times smaller than the finest detail observed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The virtual telescope was created earlier this year by linking signals from radio telescopes on several continents. Scientists have subsequently found radio signals from galaxies over three billion light years away.

Great free programs I always install on windows boxes:

TclockEX A genuinely useful enhancement to the taskbar clock. It can show the date and has a resource monitor option, so you can tell at a glance if it's getting to be time for a pre-emptive strike (reboot). Very useful for all versions of windows.

Whisper Whisper is a password manager for windows. It's convenient to have all your passwords stored in one place, and the program itself is intuitive to use.

Transparent Makes icon text backgrounds transparent on the desktop. It's a small thing, but it really improves the look of windows. I've used it on 98 and 2000 and it works well.

Programmer's File Editor For people who need more power than notepad but are unwilling to learn vim, there's PFE, a very nice text editor. It's not vim, but it sure beats the hell out of notepad.

There is nothing wrong w/ a little portable porn.

Mass transit isn't as safe as you'd think.

Cars kill fewer people at once.

I guess if something happens while you are on some mass transit you can at least expect it to be on the world news (small comfort).

>It's a pitty that the US government so heavily subsidizes automobiles and gives other forms of transit the shaft

As a Canadian who has been to the states often enough to understand mass transit in both countries, I quickly realised that mass transit ONLY works in huge cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Atlanta, Detriot, New York, for example. And since a large amount of the population in both countries lives in cities where ANYTHING and EVERYTHING (especially work) takes a minimum of a 15 minute drive (often 1/2 hour) mass transit is NOT a viable choice. I refuse to wait an hour (each way) to get my groceries by bus. Heck, where I live I have to drive 20 minutes just to pick up groceries, and I'm only 5 minutes out of a city of 300,000. This is normal in a not-so-big-but-growing city.

Rail: Won't work because you'd have to stop for 3 minutes every 3 rail minutes to pick people up, due to urban sprawl. It will take twice as long to get to the destination (assuming traffic on the roads isn't bad -- and in the smaller cities it usually isn't).

Bus: A better idea, but still much too slow. The amount of buses needed to take so few people ends up pumping more crap into the air than the individual cars, from what I see now.

Supersonic Transport: Great for going to other cities. But that isn't really the problem, is it?

Subway: Not unless your city population is in the millions. The price is just way too high.

Basically, these ideas work well for most other developed countries because their population in most cities is high enough to support them. The United States, and Canada (especially) don't have enough population density to make these ideas work.

I think if you want to solve the problems of the under 1/2 million population cities you need to pack people in more tightly and fix the roads so that people can get where they need to go quickly. Oh, and you need to encourage more really local business (like a 5 minute walk local), rather than have patches of houses, and (far away) patches of stores.

Just my 2 cents.

It amazes me that you could write so innocently on this topic. You unknowingly gave a revelatory insight into the way MS programmers think, and how they are able to justify the work they do.

Before you can understand anything I will write in this short essay, you must realize that MS programmers think fundamentally differently than most free software/open source programmers. And that way of thinking is clipped by a desire for money which does not exist in the Open Source environment.

In essence, as you so eloquently made clear, we open sourcers do not work for money. We work primarily for passion, with money as a secondary issue. MS employees are the opposite, they tend to work for money first, and passion second. Thus 'they were continually amazed at the amount of work that is poured into free software,' as you said. To Open Sourcers, this is not a source of amazement. This is simply a moment of recognizing the fact that others enjoy programming as much as I do. Lots of others.

Work For Money vs. Work For No Money? It's not quite that simple, but you can understand a lot if you use that as a reference point in building principles to understand what is happening. Here is why I prefer this as a reference point:

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

If you stand back from the whole MS/Open Source debate from any distance, this kind of generalization becomes possible, and necessary if you want to comprehend it in a meaningful way. There are many complicated issues stemming from this single duality, none of which I want to address here.

My point is that MS employees work within the "old" American Dream, where all you need to do is get a decent job making money, work at it for a number of years, and voila! You're retired, driving your RV around the country, untrammeled by the daily woes of the great masses.

This doesn't work for the artist. The artist doesn't want to live a life dreaming of the future. The artist LIVES in the future, and makes his own life beautiful each day. Thus, you'll never find an artist in an RV. He can't afford one, and thus has no desire for one. Instead, he creates something beautiful each day, and sleeps well that night.

Sleeping that well at night is a mystery to the man who seeks money. Artists have all kinds of problems we don't need to get into, so I'm not glorifying the art of being an artist, I'm only presenting it side-by-side with the typical MS programmer, who works for money, not for passion. I work for passion. I create an entirely different kind of product than my co-worker, also a programmer, who works for money. Sure, he has passion, but it is sublimated beneath his desire to fulfill his portion of the "American Dream." I chuckle wrily at his earnest efforts to get something THAT ALWAYS MOVES AWAY FROM HIM.

I say, Major Burrito, latch on to the American Dream which is not an illusion. Let Nikola Tesla be your role model, not Thomas Edison. Both were phenomenal inventors. But a close study of their two lives reveals that one worked for money and the other worked for passion. (Both were money hungry, but one more than the other). Same with Salieri and Mozart, Plato and Aristotle, Freud and Jung, and so many other great dualities.

The point I want to make is that the MS perspective is only half the spectrum. The other half is populated by people who wonder what MS would be like if it were programmed by people with REAL passion, not one sublimated by other desires.

This is an easy thing to see for most Open Source programmers. As for whether Open Source programmers have talent or not... we do it the hard way. -Water Paradox

"Huntingdon's chorea is one characteristic of Huntingdon's disease which is completely different from Parkinson's disease in ways which will be apparent if you read the article in conjunction with this."
Btw, That's A Link On What The Hell That Is.

Unless something commercially viable happens in Africa, they are unlikely to get Internet and Linxu access in the near future.

technology.iafrica.com

Ever bothered to actually notice how Africa is working today? None of its countries are highly succesful, industrialized, technologically advanced nations like the U.S

Let's be rational here.

Instead of, God forbid, sending these poor Africans the food, Bibles, medical supplies, and contraception they need

mbendi.co.za

iafrica.com

assuming of course the people can stop killing each other, reproducing like rabbits every minute, and actually grow their own food

You expect an illiterate tribal savage to learn how to compile a colonel

Sorry to sound so harsh, but the truth hurts.