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Use medium denomination unmarked nonsequential bills while having an unmemorable appearance, and remember your history.

HTH. HAND.

So radon gas kills 20000 people per year, they are still dead. Over here where they DO mine uranium it pollutes the water table. These are two points not one. Uranium mining STILL releases Radon gas, and radon gas STILL kills people.

This is entirely false. Light water reactors used in the west do not have this capability. In order to get weapons grade plutonium from a reactor, the fuel must be removed and the Pu-239 extracted before too much of it becomes Pu-240.

Yes, but heavy water reactors do. We could argue forever about the economic and political reasons the current generation of nuclear reactors were engineered and how much heavy water and light water reactors contribute to nuclear weapons production but it still would'nt change that fact that light water reactor produce huge amounts of transuranics and are grossly inefficient. That's not that ludicrous is it?

You say you are worried about plutonium production, yet you want to build breeder reactors? Huh? What do you think breeders do? They intentionally turn uranium-238 into plutonium-239 to burn for power.

Just because it's a fast reactor dosen't mean it's a breeder reactor. IFR is in fact the opposite it uses the TRANSURANICS for energy production.

They would still require uranium mining to operate, as they require uranium-235 to run and this must still be optained from the earth.

No, they can use the waste of the current generation of reactors as fuel. Yes they CAN use U-235 as a fuel, but they don't need to use U-235. They can also use weapons grade Pu as a fuel. That is why they are so appealing.

They are no more closed-system then current U.S. reactors, which store all of the waste they produce on-site.

You seem to be missing the point, IFR does not need to store the same volume of waste as it uses 99% of the element. It simply does not produce the transuranics that the Cold-War reactors produce. Put it this way, if 100 grams of element goes into a cold war reactor 97 grams of element is waste, if 100 grams of element goes into an IFR 1 gram is waste and that waste has a maximum half life of 500 years as opposed to 97 grams for 25000 years.

They are just as suseptible to terrorism as current reactors as well.

No,no,no,no they are not

The IFR pyroprocess was designed to be 'proliferation resistant'. Simply put, this means that fuel recycled with IFR technology can't be easily used as material for nuclear weapons. Attempts to extract material to produce a nuclear weapon would require a huge, easily detectable, investment in the same type of facilities and equipment that would be required to produce the material directly from spent fuel from any type of reactor.It's highly radioactive. It's highly heat producing. It has all of the characteristics that make it extremely, well, make it impossible for someone to make a weapon.

Read this http://www.anlw.anl.gov/anlw_history/reactors/ifr. html also this is from on of the inventors of IFR who can explain things a lot better than I can http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reac tion/interviews/till.html

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of using breeder reactors, but not for the same reasons as you espouse.While I commend your pro-nuclear attitude, you do need to get your facts straight.

I am not pro-nuclear in the form you are describing as there is no future in the inefficient fuel cycle that throws away the most usable part of the element(s) calls it "Waste" and leaves it for the next 25000 years of future generations to deal with. I am pro-evolution, I am pro-susta

A more reasonable standard (and the one currenly aimed for) is for the waste to become as harmless as the original unprocessed uranium ore that the waste ultimately came from.... which, I will point out, was not "stored" with any care. It also becomes simpler if you reprocess, and separate out the longest and shortest lived wastes by type. That brings it down to about a 10ky timeframe, which while a difficult criterion for a repository, looks achievable.

Hey, if mother nature can manage the problem, humanity ought to be able to figure it out.

What really seems to have been discovered is that there aren't sharks 5,280 feet below sea-level. The original study suspects this is because there's no fish to eat down there, which is a pretty obvious fact considering there's no light down there and very high water pressure.

There ARE fish there, but not in enough numbers to sustain sharks. Check here, or even better, see David Attenburoughs fantastic series The Blue Planet.

Imagine the cockroaches that are going to crawl out when those documents hit the court. Presuming of course that those documents haven't been lost, shredded or otherwise just become unavailable.

While I can't comment on whether that is or isn't technically illegal, it does show bad faith, contempt for the laws of the country (and by extension for the country itself), and a lack of ethics. But we knew those last parts already.

MS relies heavily on delay tactics anyway, so this method for destruction of evidence supplments them.

Find out here: http://www.pbs.org/tvschedules/

Rather than the 7-month-old press release referenced by the slashdot story, try the current PBS Monty Python page. The first special is scheduled to air tomorrow (February 22), and the series reruns start in April.

You'll have to check your local listings for the exact time. For all you MythTV users in Chicago it will be Channel 11 WTTW at 9pm CST.

Since the article didn't mention it, it might be good to point out that the first in the series starts tommorrow.

As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: ''In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!'' (Whitman, whose faith in Bush has since been renewed, denies making these remarks and is now a leader of the president's re-election effort in New Jersey.)

-2. Same article from New York Times magazine in 2004:

[Hungarian-born Holocaust-survivor and Democratic congressman from California] Tom Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.
''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.''
Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ''Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.''

-3.Same article in the New York Times magazine from 2004

Such challenges -- from either Powell or his opposite number as the top official in domestic policy, Paul O'Neill -- were trials that Bush had less and less patience for as the months passed. [...] Top officials, from cabinet members on down, were often told when they would speak in Bush's presence, for how long and on what topic. The president would listen without betraying any reaction. Sometimes there would be cross-discussions -- Powell and Rumsfeld, for instance, briefly parrying on an issue -- but the president would rarely prod anyone with direct, informed questions.

--http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/wilkerson.htmlFr om Lawrence Wilkerson, chief aide to Colin Powell who played a major part in planning the invasion of Iraq, in PBS interview with David Brancaccio

I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing.

Not entirely sure how much more eyewitness accounts of Bush's attitude, person

At the time, Michael Powell (son of Colin Powell) was the Republican FCC chairman.
3 out of the 5 FCCS commisioners were Republican.

Michel Cooperman also has fought against media consolidation and big megacorp buyups of the airwaves.

Quote:

"What is this medium for? It's to entertain, and it's to inform and it's to help us sustain the great marketplace of ideas that's the foundation of American democracy. We need to be using it to appeal to the better angels of our nature. And we can still be well and amply entertained and much better informed if we can get back to that. But I'm just worried now that commercialization of it, it's become, 'how do you keep people tuned in so they can watch the advertisements?'"

Sounds like a real villain.

Sorry, but you're just going out of your way to bash Democrats. Either that or you're a rabid Howard Stern fan (poor guy, crying over all his millions).

The funniest part of TFS follows:

"The Government, of course, has told the Court none of this. Instead, it relies on a
talismanic incantation that the standard of relevance is met 'so long as [the request] is reasonably
calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.'"

Talismanic incantion! LOL!

Google's lawyers appear to be a good job refuting the Government's "expert":

"The court should view the Cutts Declaration as standing in strong contrast to the
Government's declarant, Professor Phillip Stark, a statistician who apparently has been hired to
produce a study to support the Government's contentions. The Stark Declaration is vague,
cursory, and uninformed about the operation of Google's search engine. In any event, Professor
Stark's opinion ought to be viewed with some scrutiny. Although positioned as the Government's
expert, he has not yet been qualified as a reliable expert by the Pennsylvania court trying the
underlying case pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 702 or Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms.,
Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). The Pennsylvania court has thus not yet determined whether Professor
Stark's testimony is reliable and of any assistance to the trier of fact."

And I'd have to side with Google on this. I'd venture to guess that most of google's data is completely irrelevant when taken out of context, which Stark is trying to do. If Google does have to turn the data over, I wouldn't be suprised if Stark tried to strongarm his way into learning Google's methods, algorithms, etc.

Another good argument is the following:

"In addition, the Government will not be able to ascertain the content of a Web page from
its descriptive URL name. A Web site's name that suggests potential harmful material may be
benign. Conversely, a URL that seems innocent may actually return pornographic material. The
classic example is www.whitehouse.com, which was a pornography site. Here, the adage "you
can't judge a book by its cover" applies. A URL such as
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/prontline/shows/porn /etc/links.html contains the word "porn" but
actually provides links to anti-pornography organizations."

Is anyone keeping track of which of his write ups wind up being accurate?

According to the man's own review he does a reasonable job at around 73-80 percent depending on how critical you want to be.

The CNN piece is an opinion piece, and factually incorrect.

The first link above was by 'the Packet Rat' - not a great source, given that the author prefers anonymity.

The second uses a quote by a graphic artist as the only reference to Apple. Another opinion.

The third link is a tongue-in-cheek piece collating a bunch of 'death knell' reports printed about Apple over the years. Nothing to see there - Apple somehow survived despite the dire predictions of pundits across the industry.

Have a look at Apple's filings from NASDAQ, or find *real* news articles.

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-202143.html
"Analysts said that Microsoft's assurance of providing its latest applications on the Macintosh may be more important to the company's long-term viability than the $150 million investment."

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1997/aug9 7/msmacpr.mspx

http://www.allbusiness.com/periodicals/article/657 002-1.html

As an aside, when Microsoft bought those shares, they were around $26. I think when they sold three years later they made a pretty good profit.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19970814. html
Even Cringely doesn't get on board this bizarre "Microsoft Saved Apple" theory!

The facts don't fit your case, and the links you provide aren't solid enough to either. Microsoft didn't save Apple with their money. You could make a case that promising Office support saved Apple (and it's a much more solid case, to which I partially subscribe) but the money was irrelevant.

...to smoke a huge crack pipe and write about Apple?

(And while Cringely's stuff is interesting, his last fantasy column with a similar theory about an outfit called DVDstation which would purportedly let you download full-length movies to your iPod and take them home was missing several critical implementation details about how such a service could even work, with respect to DRM, playback, and so on...he totally overlooked all this, confident that this was true. Of course, DVDstation never had such a product and just wanted to ride the coattails of the video iPod introduction...but does he ever have to correct himself?)

There's an old ComputerWorld story that highlights how Wal-Mart was able to revamp their supply chain by essentially opening up their inventory and sales information down to the individual item. Combine this with their RFID initiative and they've also got a better way to track back room shrinkage in addition to a much more efficient mechanism for tracking individual items than scanning pallet barcodes ..

As for delivery, take a look at this Frontline PBS special .. I think you'll find a similar model in many of the large IT houses and how they're farming out labor costs associated with various code bases (both open and closed source) .. another chapter in the hands that built america ..

"Wal-Mart [...] has doubled its imports from China in the past five years alone, buying some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002. That's nearly 10% of all Chinese exports to the United States."

"Wal-Mart has a very close relationship with China," says Duke University Professor Gary Gereffi. "China is the largest exporter to the U.S. economy in virtually all consumer goods categories. Wal-Mart is the leading retailer in the U.S. economy in virtually all consumer goods categories. Wal-Mart and China are a joint venture."

I suppose that, just like all toilets swirl the other direction down under, when the poles swap these computers will run backwards... (hmmm, what would all that pr0n look like in reverse?)
;-)

I submit that "drastic enough measures" would be, and are, indistinguishable from "terrorism." To whit:

"Terrorism is defined by the US Department of Defense as "the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives. " (Source @ PBS)

Are the NSA wiretaps lawful? I wish I could ask that in the past tense, but have they stopped? What effect has the revelation of their use had on society?

Are no-knock, secret property searches a violation of the Fourth Amendment? What effect has the institution of this and similar tactics had on society.

Using the DoD's operational defintion of "terrorism," the present administration's own actions, and those of their lapdogs in the Legislative and Judicial branches, reveal them to be terrorists.

--
Sig null

I agree natural selection is complex. Nevertheless, we can observe it in action. For example, ring species demonstrate clearly how a series of small adaptations can lead to a new species.

Bill Thompson is wrong and so is Robert X. Cringley. Yes, I said Cringley is wrong. Here's why: This is EXACTLY what we need. Bellsouth and the other idiots should be allowed to do with "their networks" what they please. Sure, in the short term we'll suffer a little bit more.

But think about the long term.

Will Google, Microsoft and the others pay Bellsouth's extortion? NO! Google is already building their own network and toying with ISPeeing in San Francisco. This attempted extortion would result in the "The Internet 2.0". A REPLACEMENT FOR BELLSOUTH. It's already started here in Lafayette too.

Going up against the big boys like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! or Amazon is stupid. Taking them all on? All well as your CUSTOMERS? That's just SUICIDE.

Bellsouth is long over due for a smack down. Remember the phone company pre-breakup? Is your phone bill really less today? Ok, /. readers' bills may be due to VOIP. But the average person is still spending huge amounts. I'm not talking about internet either just phone. And have you called them lately? THE PHONE COMPANY IS BACK! Somewhere in the early to mid '90s, Bellsouth suddenly "got nice". Everyone that dealt with customers was suddenly happy, helpful, NICE. Not any more. The old attitude is back. Bellsouth survived the breakup and survived WELL.

But it's time for a change now. A change that can not happen as long as there's nothing better. Why am I posting this from a Bellsouth DSL account? Because there's nothing better. I've tried Cox. Cable might be great where you live. But my first 2 WEEKS with cable had more outages than TWO YEARS of Bellsouth. Add to that less speed and DNS Servers not being able to resolve the websites that I surf daily, and you quickly learn to take it from Bellsouth and almost like it. And where is Fiber? Maybe next year.

Anyway what's the big deal? Bellsouth is already blocking port 25. In the name of "Stopping spam". And after over a year of that and TWENTY THOUSAND ADDITIONAL unsolicited messages in my Bellsouth email account, I still use my own mail server and GMail to send mail. In the short term we'll all be annoyed, but we'll hack through it anyway. In the long term, we'll get Internet without surcharges for not having TV or phone. I see a market for proxy servers and tunneling routers popping up soon!

So we need this. It'll be for the better in the long run. And anyway. You'll never stop it. The phone companies hold all the governments phone lines. And therefore, THEIR BALLS. Resistance is futile!

Earth is way overdue for a magnetic field reversal. They have an average interval of 1/4 million years and it has been 3/4 million already since the last one. Some say it is beginning with the loss of a magnetic pole in certain places in the southern hemisphere. It could be the cause of the ozone layer loss because as the field weakens it radius at the poles grows. When the field is strong the field meets at the poles in a tight radius.

Here are some cool sims from Los Alamos National Laboratory.
 
As we lose protection more radiation gets through and mother earth gets a temperature. I'm not saying that 100 years of intense burning hasn't contributed but this seems to be an ignored fact that may be contributing in a large manner.

I first heard of this from watching a NOVA program. Here is the NOVA site on earths magnetic fields with some animations.

Ok, now where did I put the SPF 10,000?

Now for a final word on wiretapping, the NSA, and you, which were the primary topics of my last two columns. This last thought comes from an old friend of mine who is conservative in the very best sense and knows what he is writing about:

"Traffic analysis, at the NSA? I'm tempted to be sarcastic, but I won't be. As you might know, I started a company a few years ago with a former NSA guy -- somebody who was a cryptographer and Russian linguist on those submarines that snuck into Soviet harbors to tap their phone lines -- and we applied traffic analysis to Internet discussion groups to identify opinion leaders, conversation trends and so forth. We used a lot of techniques that were developed or applied to law enforcement. And we didn't use anything that violated anybody's security clearances... really!

"(My company) was acquired by a business intelligence company funded by the CIA venture capital outfit. Apparently the stuff I invented is now in the hands of a couple of intelligence agencies, including Homeland Security.

"I'll tell you what I think the most troubling thing about all this is. It's easy to see whatever pattern you're looking for. It's like curve fitting in the stock market -- looks beautiful historically and maybe even in the short run, but it's a disaster in the making. So we have these guys running the country who saw a non-existent pattern in Iraq that justified a war ... and now we're going to give them software that will make it easy to create the illusion of patterns of conspiracy.

"Your friend from the NSA was right, but it's worse than he suggests. It's not just that social network analysis casts a wide net. It's that without oversight by people who really grasp the mathematics and have some distance from the whole thing, they're going to see patterns where there aren't any.

"They have a history of that."

The concept of driving to the store to buy a plastic disc with data on it and driving back and popping it in the drive will be ridiculous

Isn't that what Larry Ellison, the head of Oracle, said on Triumph of the Nerds?

I hate the PC with a passion. Me going down to the store and buying Windows 95, I've got to get into my car, drive down to a store, buy a cardboard box full of bits, you know, encoded on a piece of plastic CD-ROM and you bring it home and read a manual install this thing - you must be kidding, you know, put the stuff on the net - it's bits, don't put bits in cardboard, cardboard in trucks, trucks to stores, me go to the store, you know, pick the stuff out, it's insane. OK, I love the Internet - I want information, you know, it flows across the wire.

I'm surprised we're not there yet, to be honest. That show's ten years old now.

"How fast would you try for that?"

Try out this applet to see how much time would pass on Earth if you traveled to another star at a certain speed.

One would think that search is Google's core competetency so there is little in getting the other guy to learn from him and his ways.

A9 grew out of Alexa. Cringely interviewed Alexa's founder who pointed out a difference in Alexa's and Google's approach

So Google is - uses as a ranking mechanism how many people link to an article. .... Alexa was also based around meta data. It was people who visited this site also visited this site. ... So using people's trails as a mechanism of finding what's important out of the net.

So perhaps pagerank will be / is informed by analysing individual websurfers?

Amazon (who own A9/Alexa) use the same technology to suggest purchase Recommendations to you.

Cringely interviewed Brewster Kahle - the man who created Alexa.

Great week. I learned that there was a cure for cancer and for AIDS. Yippee.

Maybe Verizon should think again. The last thing they want is Google to fire up all the dark fiber and use it to connect the entire US for free.

Obviously we aren't looking at the entire history of the Earth, we don't have that information. The levels of atmospheric carbon are calculated based on air bubbles trapped in artic ice. It only goes back 160,000 years or so. We have to extrapolate from the data we have. And the data we have says that any time in the last 160,000 years, whenever the level of atmospheric carbon has risen, the temperature has risen shortly afterwards. Look at the graph in the last section of this article. It's clear that there's been a correlation between greenhouse gasses and global temperature over the past 160,000 years. This does not absolutely prove that one causes another. They could somehow both be caused by fluctuations in sun activity or whatever. It's certainly possible. But for the moment, the wisest course of action would be to cut back on carbon emissions until we know for sure. "We don't know" is not a good reason to act recklessly.

It's as if we're in a car together going down a road and we don't know whether or not the bridge ahead is out. We have seen some signs which say it is and others which say that it may not be. Any sane person would slow down until we figure it out. That's the situation we're in. You admit that we don't know whether or not the bridge is out. So for goodness sake, let's slow down before we get to it. If it turns out that we can know that the level of carbon in the atmosphere doesn't have a big impact, we can still burn all those fossil fuels later. And if it turns out that it does matter, then we'll have averted disaster.

You talk about what you think. I don't care what you think. Until we know what the situation is, we shouldn't take unnecessary risks like filling the atmosphere with record levels of carbon simply because it's better for the bottom lines of influential companies.

Keith

While Westinghouse may be known for it's every day electronics (elevators, microwaves, TVs) and the Westinghouse Science Award (which is still a pretty cool and pretty geeky achievement) and it's defense contracting (nuclear power), I think it's most important achievement is bringing Tesla's idea of alternating current to the consumer.

Check out NOW from PBS. I know that it's cosidered liberal in general, but they covered this guy this week and they did a decent job of keeping somewhat in the middle. They, most importantly, devote an entire half hour to the subject. This allows people on the show to be heard in complete context and to clarify opinions.

http://www.pbs.org/now/ (This week's show is available in the podcast, but apparently not in the archive.)

Following your Google link, I found this interesting essay Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked - (one of the myths debunked is the 'The military uses video games' argument...)

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, was interviewed by Tavis Smiley of PBS station KCET in Los Angeles in January. One of the things he spoke of was spending much of his time with customer service. In particular he mentioned problems with New York City housing advertisers doing bait and switch. Perhaps charging for housing ads will also help fund dealing with these problems.

The entire "News" article is a combination of every major Google rumor in the last 6 months, most of the information coming from PURE SPECULATION.

From the article: It was also reported in November that Google was buying shipping containers and building data centres within them, possibly with the aim of using them at significant nodes within the worldwide cable network. (The link was in the article)

It was not reported, it was speculated. It has only been speculated, ever, about anything like this, and until Google actually says something about it themselves, with a human's name (none of this "Undisclosed source" crap), the article better have "Speculation (Everyone elses)" in the first line, it shouldn't be considered as valid as this article claims to be. Maybe if you renamed it "Google rumors for Dummies".

A little perspective. Probably just solidifies your thinking (I ain't saying you're wrong).

- Hitler on Line One: There's a Long History of Intercepting Foreign Communications, and Some of It May Have Been Legal
- The Falafel Connection: All Those NSA Wiretaps Are Just a Friendster in Disguise

Lastly, remember how things were in WWII. Letters going out of the country were opened, read, edited, and sometimes destroyed, before they made it to their destination.

A little perspective. Probably just solidifies your thinking (I ain't saying you're wrong).

- Hitler on Line One: There's a Long History of Intercepting Foreign Communications, and Some of It May Have Been Legal
- The Falafel Connection: All Those NSA Wiretaps Are Just a Friendster in Disguise

Lastly, remember how things were in WWII. Letters going out of the country were opened, read, edited, and sometimes destroyed, before they made it to their destination.

But if we look at the weaker forms of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it really isn't that interesting. All it is saying is that previous experience colours our view of the world and affects the ease of picking up new information according to how closely related it is to our previous experience.

Clarifying question - are you suggesting that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has weaker forms in publication, or that there are less extremist ways to interpret and apply the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? You are suggesting that prior experience is the active force here, but another interpretation of these types of results is that epistemology affects learning (in chemistry, physics, and biology [PDF or "View as HTML"]). Within this framework for science education research, cognition is modeled from a "knowledge-in-pieces" perspective, wherein certain cognitive resources are active when a mind is thinking in a particular context about some particular concept or field of content. So, although prior experience certainly shapes the development of personal epistemology and personal epistemological cognitive resources, these aren't actually prior experiences, they are "filters" that, in a very "Kant-ian" sense, determine what information is "read out" from the environment and also affect the way that information input is processed.

That's so obvious that it almost goes without saying! Everyone knows that someone who studied maths in school will likely pick up new mathematical concepts more easily than someone who studied art or history. Everyone knows that we have cultural and political biases from our background which affect our ability to interpret new information.

So, to continue looking at this from an epistemological perspective, we can see that it's much more complex than just prior experience, even within a given domain. If a student has taken a bunch of math classes, but has had horrible experiences in those learning environments, they won't necessarily be any better at learning new math than someone who doesn't have the same experience in the subject. Of course, you can substitute just about any subject in for "math" in the above scenario. I would argue that it's more appropriate to think about culture and political frameworks as influencing personal epistemological development than it is to say that they affect cognition directly.

The weaker hypothesis just really doesn't say anything interesting. And the strong form is ridiculously bad logic (a language where it is you have a concept that can't be understood by someone without pre-existing knowledge of that language, is a language that can't be learnt, and therefore can't exist. After all, nobody is born knowing a language!)

I'm not sure that I agree here, either. Imagination is a powerful cognitive resource. There is a further "extreme" to your logic game, and that's at the level of generating language itself. I think your argument breaks here, and the reason is that we can imagine, and then use analogy to build the new image for another brain. See recent developments in mirror neuron research.

So in the end, we are left with the weaker form that is almost a truism, and doesn't give us any predictive power towards the boundaries of previous experience as influence on new information

This pattern was set right from the beginning: Copy, clone, buy -- BASIC, DOS, Windows itself. The products they decided to clone were rarely the best of the bunch, so they don't show taste (as Jobs himself famously remarked*); and the company has pursued that trail of mediocrity until today. I don't think there is any category where M$ actually has the best product. All they have is volume, and most of that achieved illegally.

As gsfprez recently said: "You run Windows. I get things done."

* Triumph of the Nerds - "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is - I don't mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they they don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their product..."

Somebody should have though of using a PDA as a cell phone/computer before.

The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. I don't mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their products. I have no problem with their success -- they've earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products.

[Quoted from FoRK Archive.]

it is an extremely EMOTIONAL issue. most people don't want any advice on the subject - be they 100 lbs or 700 lbs.

i rave about the ultimate moderate diet (a skinny guy raving about a diet, think about it for a moment). it is called the zone diet. it gets lumped in with high protein diets like atkins, but it is far from it.

pbs did a study on diets and the lady on the zone diet lost the most (to be honest, she had a little more to lose, too).

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1401/features/robin.htm

a woman who just lost 45 lbs in 6 months was asked what she liked about the diet. her first thoughts might astound you...

"What I really like is how good you feel when you are "in the Zone". You are rarely hungry, and you just feel really, really good - it has a tremendous impact on your mood - unlike other diets I've been on."

a diet that allows you to lose 9 lbs a month and makes you feel great? yes, it is true.

i've been on a semi-zone for quite some time. i feel like like crap when i'm off it and i feel like a million bucks when i'm on it. i could even do a lot better by eating less sweets and more veggies - so i'm not even close to a perfect zone eater.

i'm over 20 years out of high school and i weigh 5 more lbs than i did in high school and, frankly, i have absolutely no concern about gaining weight b/c i know how to lose it and feel great at the same time.

i have nothing to gain by posting this information other than to pass on some information that has helped me tremendously - and will likely be ignored as you munch on your snickers bar and pop tarts. ;-)

i did my part, though. for those interested, there is lots of info on the web.

i helped a coworker get into the zone. i asked her how things went. she said she was disappointed she only lost 3 lbs (probably aout 1/2 water weight). i asked if she felt better and she said yes. i asked if she was hungry and she said no. i asked if she had increased energy and she said yes.

so, here is a diet that cause her to lose 3 lbs in a week, increased her energy and feeling of well being and didn't leave her hungry all the time... and she was "disappointed."

emotions all too often promote anti-intellectualism.

as always - be sure to consult a physician before making any changes to your diet.

Bob Cringely writes this week about the possibility that they're doing social networking analysis based on calling graphs.

The is the only hypothesis I've heard that makes a lick of sense, so it's the frontrunner for being true.

Nack when the Chernobyl accident happened, I had a girlfriend whom's dad is a farmer. Now, I live in western Europe, so quite a bit away from Chernobyl, but despite that, this farmer could throw away part of his products of that season due to contamination. He was nto alone in that.
A: Chernobyl was a flawed design
B: I was only listing reported deaths from the accident, which included estimated deaths attributed to increased cancer, primarily due to radioactive iodine release.
C: I'll fully admit that it was a widespread disaster.

You may have noticed (or heard) that there were quite a few people living in the vicinity of the power plant. They had to leave their houses, many of their belongings, and generally spoken, their livelyhood.
Yeah, like chemical spills and contamination haven't ever required relocation.
80% of black population of New Orleans may not return

You may have noticed (or heard) that there were quite a few people living in the vicinity of the power plant. They had to leave their houses, many of their belongings, and generally spoken, their livelyhood.
Like New Orleans? Heck, even like NO, some people stayed behind, and are still living there. The ones allowed to stay were older folks past child-bearing, but many are still around there, and they're dying at ages not much under residents outside the area.

If you believe that the consequences of Chernobyl were 56 dead and thats it then you are stupidly naive.
56 dead and billions of dollars worth of damage from lost crops, contaminated ground and equipment, relocation expenses, emergency measures to build the sarcophagus. Add some more millions for treatment for the treatment costs for the increase in thyroid cancer.

That is not to say that it was worse then Nohpal, it doesn't compare because it is an entirely different kind of accident. Comparing it to the death toll from coal mining makes as little sense because those deaths do not happen in a single accident usually.

People died. You can average it out over number of workers per year, per hours worked, per megawatt produced. While indeed, the big accident has more psychological impact, I care about rate and averages. For example, remember the whole 'air travel is safer than cars' thing? Any individual accident with a plane tends to kill more people than even the worst car wrecks, simply because you have hundreds of people on commercial planes.

Also, little of the fear for nuclear power is based on reason, and no amount of reason is going to 'fix' that fear.
Sadly true. Fortuantly, the two big disasters just keep getting older and older, so hopefully we'll be able to get some uncommon sense into policies soon.

It was too much, no film franchise could resist a fourth release without a big hit on quality. I hope this marks a trend on the industry.

I find also interesting the Cringely's take on the adquisition, as he says it's only a way for Jobs to diversify his income.

I couldn't agree more.

Sydney, Australia is currently powered by several large coal plants. In fact 78% of the power generated in Australia is from coal. Every year we spread a ridiculous quantity of carbon dioxide and other emissions in to the atmosphere.

Australia has no nuclear power plants. None at all.

To makes things even more ridiculous, Australia even mines uranium!

The main concern anywhere about nuclear power stations is the chance of a catastrophe. People point at Chernobyl and say "We can't have one of THOSE near us!". This is obviously garbage, it's well documented how safe a modern nuclear plant can be and how badly you need to stuff up to end up with an event like the one at Chernobyl.

What's more - Australia has a LOT of empty space. While building a plant in the middle of the outback wouldn't make a great deal of sense (hard to maintain, expensive to carry the power so far to the city etc), we could certainly find a balance point between distance and cost if it really worries people (personally, I wouldn't care if it was in the next suburb over from me).

There has been some thought of getting nuclear power in Australia, however as yet, the protests of an uninformed public have stopped any serious efforts.

'the top 3 percent' -- exactly -- as cringley said it in 'the best revenge'.

When Gates speaks about winning he means WINNING, the whole enchilada, mastery of the universe. At this point in his career, every thought that comes out of Bill Gates' mind is grandly strategic. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, thinks solely in terms of tactics, not strategy. His wins are today, tomorrow, next week, next quarter. He revels in every little chance to push people around and make things the way he wants them to be. He can't help it. It was a bad strategy, for example, to snub Gates with Vanity Fair, but in the tactical mind of Steve Jobs, it was brilliant.

In Steve Jobs' mind, he has already won. Those of us who last for a few decades in this business find our own kind of peace and Steve Jobs' is best exemplified by the George Herbert quote, "Living well is the best revenge." Apple's future as a boutique computer company is secure. He dominates Apple completely. When he doesn't feel like being a high tech mogul, he can be a movie mogul, something Gates will never be.

In Steve's mind, he has the best of everything. Apple software is cooler than Windows will ever be. Palo Alto, where Jobs lives, is trendier than Seattle. Even Jobs' plane, a Gulfstream V, is cooler than Gates' Challenger 604. It goes on and on. Gates has never even considered this latter point, but I'll guarantee you that Jobs has, and he revels in it.

The mind of a man is just better geared for the intensive focus required for these things, whereas the female mind is geared more towards a broader but less comprehensive mode of though.

Either you are trolling or you actually believe this. I'm going to assume that you are ignorant enough to buy into that mode of thought, and instead of reciting the stereotypical male/female model for a moment, you might want to consider these examples:

1.) There's evidence to suggest that Mileva Maric, Einstein's first wife, collaborated with him to produce some of his most important theories but was never given any credit for her work.

2.) Rosalidn Franklin discovered the double helix structure of DNA but her male colleagues took credit and publicity for her discovery.

yea, it was recorded on video in a lab. the researchers couldn't figure out why their specimens were dying, so they put in a camera and saw the octopi raiding the other tanks. the thing i thought was cool was that the octopi waited until the researchers left to do it, and were done by the time people came back. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/critters/octopus.ht ml

Although not related to this incedent, PBS has a video (Real format as well) of an octopus attacking and killing a shark. The story with the video claims this same octopus killed quite a few 3-4 foot sharks.