Slashdot Mirror

... here..

Basically discussing accounting shenanigans before the bubble burst, and I remember reading it at the time (though this comes from this weeks' article links)..

"The late Frank Gaudette was Microsoft's first-ever Chief Financial Officer. He was also Microsoft's first head of Human Resources, first head of Facilities, first at running just about every department that had to do with operations but not product development, sales, or marketing....

My question was based on the idea that nothing goes up forever and there must come a time when even Microsoft is no longer a good buy. How can we tell when that time has come? ... He explained that Microsoft carried on its books no value at all for its software. Assets like Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office, which might be given some book value and depreciated over time were carried on the books as valueless. This contrasted at the time with IBM, which valued its software assets at billions of dollars.

"Watch for any changes in our accounting," said Gaudette. "If I need to I can start, depreciating the software and maintain earnings growth for years on flat revenue. Watch for the accounting changes, wait for the next uptick in the stock price, and then sell.""

Read the whole thing, very interesting stuff...

The article is saying that most of the undersea "damage" occured at very great depths. I'm worried that some black smoker habitats were wiped out. It would probably take years for them to re-establish. It'll probably be a while before they find out the results of so much land shifting underseas.

This: is all you need to know. Please get in the loop.

This weeks I, Cringely also touts cell processors as the NextBigThing.

This is what Scott Ritter was saying in 1998:

WILLIAM SCOTT RITTER, JR.: Well, I mean, the list is actually quite long over the years. But since November there-since November of 1997, I would say that there have been a half dozen or so inspections, which have been either delayed or postponed or canceled outright, due to pressure exerted on the executive chairman by the United States...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-de c98/ritter_8-31.html

That's right, it was the US, not Saddam, who was preventing the proper completion of the weapons inspection process.

The same thing happened again in 2003. It was Bush, not Saddam, who forced Hans Blix and Unscom to leave Iraq.

It's too late to do anything about North Korea, because they have nuclear weapons and can deter a US attack. On the other hand it wasn't too late to do anything about Iraq, because they didn't yet have nuclear weapons that could deter an attack.

Actually, it's more subtle than that. Iraq certainly had chemical weapons before the first Gulf War, but was 'convinced' not to use them.

(Interview with Tariq Aziz)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/ aziz/3.html

On the other hand, even before Korea had nukes, it had enough conventional artillery pointed at Seoul to deter a US attack. Nukes don't really change things.

this source

The first footnote is not inconsistent with the source, as 300km^2 is considerably less than the 400km radius area that I cited for 90 centigray exposure. Also note that the second parts of your estimate are accrued over a very long timespan, while the PBS numbers are only over seven days. The PBS scenario is more realistic, because we are talking about an attack here, not long term environmental impact, and any survivors would be evacuated long before the seven day period was over.

With regards to your very last point, it should be noted that these reactors use a graphite core covered in SiC. They won't burn, unless the mob in question had specialized tools.

There's a great PBS interview with the inventor here.

A poster cites nuclear proliferation concerns as a reason for the IFR being cut by Clinton.

The real reason for the IFR being taken off-line is almost entirely political. Clinton's base is not pro-nuclear, despite the fact that it is some of the cleanest and safest energy possible.

If you read the interview, you'll see in no uncertain terms that the IFR (as designed and operated at Argonne West) is proliferation proof
------
Q: Now, what about the issue of proliferation, the issue of making plutonium available to terrorists?

A: The object in the IFR demonstration was to invent, if you like, a process that did not allow separations of pure plutonium that would be necessary for weapons. In order to recycle, you need some kind of a chemical process. And the chemical process that was invented here at Argonne used quite different principles than present processes do. It allows the separation of that group of things that are useful, but not one from the other, so that you cannot separate plutonium purely from uranium and the other things. You can separate uranium, plutonium, and the other useful things from the fission products. So it does exactly what you want it to do. It gives you the new fuel, and it separates off the waste product, but it doesn't allow careful distinguishing between the materials that are useful, such that you could use one or another of those materials for weapons.

Q: So it would be very difficult to handle for weapons, would it?

A: It's impossible to handle for weapons, as it stands.
--------

That's not actually the point I'm discussing. I'm not suggesting (and I don't believe Mr. Kempler was either) that homosexuals themselves were evil, bad, criminals or anything else. But I do believe that homosexual behaviour is harmful in and of itself. (To the person themselves as well as to the rest of society). This is what is meant by "loving the sinner and hating the sin" as you phrased it. Some use "love" to mean acceptance without criticism or accountability. This is not love. Would a parent be showing love to their child if they'd didn't correct their self-destructive or wrong behaviour? What sort of friend is it that "loves" without holding their friend accountable for wrong actions? Love does not mean that I tell someone how wonderful they are just the way they are. You may not see this as possible, but I know that it is. I do it every day. Sometimes it's harder than other times. With homosexuals I find it quite easy. With Islamist terrorist I find it a lot harder.

Quoting the beatitudes is fine, but I it's a little dishonest to suggest that that represents all of Christ's teaching. The story of Jesus' encounter with the woman caught in adultery gives us a much better understanding of how would have addressed our situation with homosexuals. Both adultery & homosexual activity are considered to be similar sexual sins and both were punishable by death in Jesus' culture. He shows compassion and forgives her sin but at the same time he also tells her to "sin no more". At no point does Jesus say that she's alright just the way she is. He approaches her as he approaches all of us, (as we are) and then tells us to change our ways. I believe in doing the same when discussing homosexual lifestyles or adulterous ones. This is what I demand the right to say and what you're talking about punishing me for.

Comparing political speech to religious speech is not an apples to oranges scenarios. Both are part of the fundamental freedoms protected by the charter. Your statement that "such people ought not work in the public sector" is disturbing. You're talking about excluding anyone with religiously based values from participating in public life. This is very very wrong. (Not to mention a gross violation of charter rights if it was implemented). You might also consider that Abraham Lincoln & William Wilberforce would have been excluded from the public sector by your logic. (Wilberforce was the driving force behind the abolition of the international slave trade in the 18th Century and he was explicity motivated by his Evangelical Christian beliefs and he used Christian morality to argue his case in parliament).

You are right that I ignored your "replace 'homosexual' with 'black'" question. I ignored it because it was confusing the point by blurring the distinction between criticism of persons and criticism of lifestyle. Both Kempler and I are critical of the actions of homosexuals, not the people themselves. An appropriate comparison would be a white person saying the same things (in a public forum) that Bill Cosby did when he caused that controversy a while back by criticising the actions of the black community in the US.

But what if someone said something about the people rather than about lifestyles? (I will say again that this is NOT was Kempler said, nor is what I'm Saying with regards to homosexuals). Perhaps a teacher wrote a public letter suggesting that "

A troll dem is a Democratic Party troll, like like this hot-head. You probably mean to say trolldom

Ok, I this is the second article that I've read (within 5 minutes of each other!) that, while unrelated, both contain the word steganography.

This can't be a coincidence... there must be a hidden meaning... I'll get back to you once I discover what it is...

PS: Don't wait up.

I just glanced through the PSP specifications and features listing and saw this in the Codec section:


[Video]: "UMD": H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Main Profile Level3
[Video}: "Memory Stick": MPEG-4 SP,AAC
[Music]: "UMD": linear PCM,ATRAC3plus(TM)
[Music}: "Memory Stick": ATRAC3plus(TM),MP3(MPEG1/2 Layer3)


UMD video is H.264/MPEG-4. Everyone here remember the weird Sony president cameo at Macworld? And if you haven't already read Bob Cringley's article regarding the future of the Mac Mini, do so. I wonder if there might be some further connection with Apple & Sony and video playing using Sony PSP as the portable hardware. Steve Jobs doesn't want to have any part of the portable video player game, so maybe he'll let Sony have it, as long as Apple gets the digital content distribution rights. How long before UMD burners become available?

Being a safe driver is more than just reaction times. It's being able to anticipate the need to react. IMHO, this is not something that is maximized after only 4 years of driving. The evidence that this is true comes from the insurance industry, who charge very high rates for anyone under 25. Why? Because even though a 20 year old (on average) probably has better reaction times than a 25 year old, the 25 year old has more experience to know to avoid certain situations that require the use of that reaction.

Which is why the older you get, the more likely (on average) you are to slow down. After driving for 20 years, you have a lot more memories of close calls than you do after driving for 1 year. After driving for 50 years, it's even worse. AND you know that your reaction times have slowed down so you compensate by trying to give yourself more time to react.

My point is that safe driving is a lot more than just reaction time. Scientific American Frontiers says so, too.

A while ago, I saw a TV show which suggested that George W. Bush has ...eviscerated the Presidential Records Act and FOIA... for "national security" reasons?

Can anyone substantiate this argument? If so, how can an act that is used at least two million times a year be killed without any outcry from the public?

I'll bet they're clueless about Selective Service too, which is what the conscription system is called in the USA.

Somebody needs to point out to them that they are the slack in the system between US troop delpoyments and the robot soldiers.

strides forward in the fields of Digital Rights Management

You should not call DRM "Digital Rights Management", the term is "Digital Restrictions Management". This isn't just a linguistic trick, it's framing the debate. "Rights" has a positive connotation, "restrictions" has a negative one. The idea is that you define the debate in your terms, so that your opposition has to defend itself using your terms.

The master of this is Frank Luntz. His way of framing debate with words is called "Luntz Speak". I don't agree with his politics, but I admire his methods tremendously.

have you considered... you know... actually subscribing

All models that are capable of reproducing the last 1000 years or so of climate fail to reproduce the recent global temperature increase (the 'hockey stick') unless they include the effects of human CO2 emissions.

It has been shown that all it takes to produce a graph similar to the famous hockey-stick graph is random data because the mathematics used in that analysis are flawed. I believe this was even mentioned on /. earlier, but here is the article.

That the recent uptick is due to human CO2 is no longer an area of dispute (amongst those researchers with some grasp on reality, who actually know something about the subject, and are capable getting published in respectable peer-reviewed juornals, anyway. Supermarket tabloids and AM radio shows may not agree...)

This also is simple bullshit. The so-called consensus is a political invention. There is a great deal of debate over whether or not global warming is caused by human activity. Unless of course you want to tell me that the staff of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change is not qualified on the subject. Here's a summary report that contradicts your assertions pretty nicely. Some quotes:

There has been no certain demonstration of global warming due to accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Rather, the entire subject is on the political agenda because scientists have forecast that there will be warming if gases produced by human activities are allowed to continue to accumulate...

...the evidence is not clear-cut. There are large uncertainties in the interpretation of the evidence, first of all about the basic conclusion of a demonstrable anthropogenic "fingerprint"...

Thus, both the evidence of change and the risks involved are characterized by high levels of uncertainty...

Note that this is not a paper simply bashing the claims about human activity causing global warming. It is an excellent paper discussing the theories, the uncertainties, the political process in the U.S., and the international process. I simply lifted the above quotes out of context to highlight the uncertainty. Yes, the paper is a bit old--but since then there have continued to be highly-distinguished scientists pointing out that science has in fact not established that human activity is causing global warming. It is a leading theory, but there are alternative theories that are also very viable.

Let me just get in one last dig at the hysterical greens on this. Here's an article about an incident where an MIT professor of meteorology and atmospheric sciences disputed the conventional opinions we all read in the papers. Now check out this hilarious quote:

Oliver Bernstein '03, student chair of the Environmental Conservation Organization, was not convinced: "It was upsetting to see someone who is that qualified using pretty advanced science to try to disprove global warming..."

Think about that for a minute. It is "upsetting" to hear a highly-qualified scientist use "advanced science" when discussing our knowledge of global warming??? Are you familiar with the meaning of the word "dogma"??? Think about it!

MCI is hurting and Sprint clearly wants to focus on wireless.

MCI is hurting and Sprint clearly wants to focus on wireless.

Apple knows very well how to design a case for memory upgrades. They must've made it so hard to open by design, and not just to soak folks on that memory upgrade. My guess is that Robert Cringely has the future plan for the mini nailed. It's the iPod for your HDTV and part of an iTunes Music Store for movies and television. The unserviceable case is part of the data rights management security package.

Separating two English texts that have been XORed together is quite possible. That's been known since Vernam two-tape systems of the 1940s were cracked. The paper described in Footnote 2, "E. Dawson and L. Nielsen. Automated cryptanalysis of XOR plaintext strings. Cryptologia, (2):165-181, April 1996.", covers the technique. This is a statistical technique, based on the fact that English is so redundant that two English texts XORed together can usually be separated.

You won't get 100% recovery. You'll probably get back most of the English words. Images, no. Formatting information, no. The end result will look something like what you see if you look at a Word file in a text editor, only worse.

For a classic example of this mistake, see Venona. The KGB's New York resident reused one-time pads in the 1940s. Cryptanalysis of that produced the information that A-bomb design data was being leaked, and after several years of frantic work, where the leak was.

I'm still waiting for my fake/real diamonds! $5 a carrat my ASS!

There are people working very hard on this. I think the show Nova did on creating diamond synthetics is one of their best.

DeBeers purposely hoardes diamonds to keep the price up ala OPEC. In fact, none of their executives can step foot inside the US as they would likely be arrested.

Sadly, the Bush administration may let them off the hook on this.

Only if there is honest and real competition in the diamond market (even with the synthetics) will you see $5/carat diamonds As it stands now, many of the synthetics seem to cost as much as the real.

Now you need to recoup that money, but supply and demand dictates you can only raise prices so high.

You keep asserting this, but the classic monopolies, the trusts from which the antitrust laws take their name, managed to effectively control supply through tactics that are now illegal. This is basic economics, and your assertions otherwise are unconvincing.

In either case, your notion that a competitor must have as much money as the monopolist is incorrect. Look at the software business [...]

We were talking about bakeries, which are a pretty traditional product. I agree that software is entirely different. Digital information, once you have the first copy, costs basically nothing to duplicate. Software adds further complications in that network effects can be very important.

So whether Microsoft is "really" a monopoly in the classic sense of the term is an interesting theoretical question. Also interesting is whether it might be net beneficial for their to be a privately owned OS monopoly: there are certain benefits to everybody using the same things.

Personally, I think the answers are "yes" and "no". Reasonable people might differ, but until you show some undertstanding of economics, I doubt you'll be differing in an interesting way.

I can get software with more features, for less money (in real dollars) than I could in 1979 when there were a number of competitors in thw home PC market, none of which were anywhere close to a monopoly

Which means absolutely nothing. The question isn't whether the world is better than it was in 1979; it's whether the world could be better still if we stop Microsoft from using its position of incredible desktop dominance to crush competitors and to take over new market spaces.

Having worked for a number of startups in Silicon Valley, I can assure you that Microsoft's dominance reduces the amount of innovation. Entrepreneurs here know what happens when you go up against Microsoft. Bob Cringely accurately conveys that. I think that's a huge loss to the economy as a whole and computer users in specific.

The 'nice' thing about a Charitable Trust, is that you can give your vast sums money to charity, but maintain control over the stock of the company you founded. People said many mean things about Carnegie in his day (most of it was fair), but he's remembered today mostly for his charitable giving (Carnegie Hall, et al).

The man who dies rich dies disgraced. - Andrew Carnegie

And if you believe what Cringely has to say, iTunes may be already ramping up to do just that, in conjunction with the Mini Mac. (refer to a previous Slashdot article)

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 don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their product ehm and you say why is that important - well you know proportionally spaced fonts come from type setting and beautiful books, that's where one gets the idea - if it weren't for the Mac they would never have that in their products and ehm so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success - 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. - Steve Jobs

Hardly has that video been lost. Slashdot's favorite pundit writer, Robert X. Cringely, put together a documentary a few years back called "Triump of the Nerds". In the documentary, the video linked in this news story, appears in it's entirety.

Some of this footage was used before in the doumentary Triumph of the Nerds.

Take a look at these graphs.

Yeah... Wal-Mart is what you just described.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walm art/'

I know this is a technological site and the nerds are on the side of the robot overlords but these robots won't replace men having to kill other men or men being killed by other men. Men are needed to deal with other men. I will actually rephrase that statement and say professional soldiers are needed to protect some members of society because of the nature of other sociopathic men.

There will be constant fighting for the next 50 to 100 years or so in Central Asia, the Middle East and South East Asia whether we like it or not and REAL human beings, as in the professional soldiers of the world, are going to be there policing on the ground against the tribal warlords, drug dealers and militias that rape and pillage these areas.

Robots, IMO, are a pipe dream of the generals of the US army and goes to show that they have no idea of what goes on at the killing level of conflict. The generals, scientists and engineers need to interact more with the soldiers. The soldiers are the guys who know the reality of conflict. The Generals and scientists view of conflict are abstractions. The generals make conflict an abstraction by seeing it as grand strategy and the scientists view war as a playground for new technology. Throughout history man has attempted to counter the brutality of war through weird ways because of this level of abstraction and complete detachment from the fact that men slaughter each other. An example here http://www.jonronson.com/goats_04.html

Fighters will find a way around this technology like they always have e.g http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wartech/nature.html.

This isn't a new idea and many a strategist in the last twenty years has pointed it out. Do google search of "Ralph Peters" Parameters or "Martin Van Creveld" "The transformation of war" for an example.

Even some of the public are starting to get 'it', war nerd as an example.

http://www.exile.ru/archive/by_author/gary_brecher .html.

I'll finish with the wise words of COL. John Boyd "People and ideas first then followed by technology."

As any PBS junkie knows, there is a market for everyday people willing to hawk a merchant's wares. What is disturbing is that it appears such people are in no short supply.

Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. What bothers me is that characters that push agendas under the guise of neutrality are becoming more prevalent all the time.

Here's hoping that one of the community's most revered icons never sells out.

As any PBS junkie knows, there is a market for everyday people willing to hawk a merchant's wares. What is disturbing is that it appears such people are in no short supply.

Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. What bothers me is that characters that push agendas under the guise of neutrality are becoming more prevalent all the time.

Here's hoping that one of the community's most revered icons never sells out.

It must be nice to be cringely. Just make a different totally random prediction every week, and you'll be hailed as a visionary because just by the law of averages at least some of your predictions will turn out to be true, sort of, eventually.

To be fair to him he makes fairly specific predictions, for a specific timeframes (although he clarified a few 2005 predictions because delays burnt predictions from 2004), and he sets out his reasoning for his speculation. His reasoning is sound, and his prediction definite, so-much-so that if there isn't a major announcement about Apple and streaming movies with Sony and Mini-Mac, in the next 3-12 months, he'll have to write this prediction off. That's pretty tough.

I wouldn't eat that just yet...Let's see here. We have a timeline: right here. Kennedy was the new liberal on the scene, which would be the start of your "pendulum swing." What's that under 1965? First American combat troops arrive? Granted we were there training South Vietnamese troops, but we weren't in a war yet.

Now in another timeline outlining the early 60's and another policy of Kennedy (here), take a look at 1961. The Bay of Pigs. Another military action, one that we all know went terribly wrong.

My point: conservatives are not the only ones who have policies that actually involve military action. A government will do what is necessary (as did Kennedy and Johnson, as well as Eisenhower) to achieve their agenda. Clinton attempted to do this in Somalia, Bush went to Kuwait, and W. Bush is in Afghanistan and Iraq. If you look at history, both sides of politics have gone to war and/or had military actions, some terribly gruesome (Somalia, Vietnam, Iraq), but one side has not been the instigator and the other the saint.

Not directly involving the iPod, but this week's I Cringely has a discussion of how the new Mac Mini may be a move by Apple to get into the movie distribution business, trying to repeat with video the success they've had with the iPod for audio. He has some interesting speculation on synergy from Pixar (which Jobs also controls) and Sony ("...you don't get the head of Sony at your event just to sell camcorders"). Well worth a read.

Jacked: If it was public money, yeah, I'd have an issue with it, since it's partly my money.

The District of Columbia, which voted 9 to 1 against Bush, is footing the $17M security bill.

La cringely begs to differ HD is in Steve's sights and iFilms - that's the future.

While they're putting out the fire in whatever server they were running, you can read this,a 27-page Wired article from 1995.

Also check this, that, and the other.

The traditional Hippocratic Oath defined the responsibilites of the healer and a system of practice something like a medieval guild, in which medical knowledge is transmitted from father to son and other male apprentices. It did not require you to offer your services for free and offers no guidance on how to organize and fund research, development and manufacture that may need to draw on the talents of thousands or tens of thousands of workers outside your own profession.

This would be my main question - what are they going to fuel these giant planes with in 20 years? Or 10 years? Or even 5 years? Already, fuel prices are causing airlines headaches, and most airlines are operating in the red as it is.

I suspect the future of flight might look more like this than this.

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer had a discussion on the declining trustworthiness of the media in various opinion polls. Turns out that they think the public either cannot or chooses not to distinguish between reporters who report facts and pundits & commentators who offer opinions. They also pointed out that a lot of so-called reporters (the Anderson Coopers, Christiane Amanpours, Wolf Blitzers... recognizable names from CNN, Fox News, etc.) have gone out of their way to inject opinion into what they report.

I think this trend can be found throughout all media. I understand blogs to be purely opinion-based; I would not rely on them for any pure factual reporting. Same can be said of Armstrong Williams, although that says to me more horrible things about the Bush administration than it does the media. The media has always been a tool for manipulation by politicians and governments, even here in the land of the "free press". Ask Valerie Plame how she feels about it.

Someone needs to tell O'Reilly that "mook" is already a word. And, um, a derogatory one at that.

Another example of modern usage:

The Mook is what critics call the crude, loud, obnoxious, in-your-face character that can be found almost any hour of day or night somewhere on MTV. He's a teen frozen in permanent adolescence. There's MTV's Tom Green of the "Tom Green Show"

And the daredevils on "Jackass" who indulge in dignity-defying feats like poo diving. The Mook is also found in the frat boys on MTV's ubiquitous "Spring Break" specials. And, the Mook has migrated to MTV's sister network, Comedy Central, where he's the cartoon cutouts of "South Park," or the lads on the "Man Show."

There is a great website here - the companion to the TV series of a few years ago. The book is a great read too.

There is a very interesting section that shows the evolution of the eye in several phases and how in fact (oops I mean in theory) it is a series of simple steps each better than the previous one. There is a link to a video popup in the top left hand section of the text.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/pag e03.html

The most interesting thing about the eye is that it has evolved at least three times - or at least has evolved the complex form three times. Vertebrates, Mollusks (Squid/Scallops) and Arthropods (Lobsters, spiders, insects)

And the bit I love best is that Vertebrates have probably the worst eye of the lot - but compensate for it with an exquisite nervous system to process all the crap data. My mum got a detacted retina - yikes what a mess. Squid don't have that problem!.

Here is the start of their web page on the development of the eye - very cool...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/ind ex.html

There is a great website here - the companion to the TV series of a few years ago. The book is a great read too.

There is a very interesting section that shows the evolution of the eye in several phases and how in fact (oops I mean in theory) it is a series of simple steps each better than the previous one. There is a link to a video popup in the top left hand section of the text.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/pag e03.html

The most interesting thing about the eye is that it has evolved at least three times - or at least has evolved the complex form three times. Vertebrates, Mollusks (Squid/Scallops) and Arthropods (Lobsters, spiders, insects)

And the bit I love best is that Vertebrates have probably the worst eye of the lot - but compensate for it with an exquisite nervous system to process all the crap data. My mum got a detacted retina - yikes what a mess. Squid don't have that problem!.

Here is the start of their web page on the development of the eye - very cool...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/ind ex.html

There is a great website here - the companion to the TV series of a few years ago. The book is a great read too.

There is a very interesting section that shows the evolution of the eye in several phases and how in fact (oops I mean in theory) it is a series of simple steps each better than the previous one. There is a link to a video popup in the top left hand section of the text.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/pag e03.html

The most interesting thing about the eye is that it has evolved at least three times - or at least has evolved the complex form three times. Vertebrates, Mollusks (Squid/Scallops) and Arthropods (Lobsters, spiders, insects)

And the bit I love best is that Vertebrates have probably the worst eye of the lot - but compensate for it with an exquisite nervous system to process all the crap data. My mum got a detacted retina - yikes what a mess. Squid don't have that problem!.

Here is the start of their web page on the development of the eye - very cool...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/ind ex.html

This $500 Apple is still insanely overpriced.

For a Macintosh, this is cheap.

You meant to say, "This $500 computer is still insanely overpriced." The cheapest Mac prior to this was nearly twice the cost, AND it wasn't small enough for most PC users to add it to their desk to try out the Macintosh, which is the whole point of this machine.

Too bad Cringley wasn't right. A $250 subsidized Mac would put an insane dent into marketshare.

Linux appliances and MythTV both figure into Cringely's 2005 predictions -

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050107. html/

Here are a couple of time-series graphs that attempt to quantify the rate of growth in mindshare -

http://www.browardhorne.com/mememiner/preinflectio n/linux%20firmwareDejanews.png/

http://www.browardhorne.com/mememiner/preinflectio n/mythTVDejanews.png/