Slashdot Mirror

I got happy for a minute.

There were pretty good babylon 5 reviews on http://www.geocities.com/jenof.... But it doesn't look like his made the archive cut.

His Buffy and Angel reviews are pretty good. I remember checking each day after a new episode to see if his review was up.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/

Probably the same way that most popular operating systems store text files as a list of lines separated by newline characters, encoded as 0x0A on UNIX or Windows but 0x0D on Apple II or classic Mac OS. VMS is an exception in that its "non-stream" text files have each line prefixed by its length.

The conventions for line endings are based on history. DEC's operating systems and operating systems descended from them use CRLF because that is what you had to send to an ASR-33 teletype at the end of an output line. UNIX and its descendents use NL, which has the same code as LF, because they were targeted at later printers.

By the way, the VMS record length field was 16 bits, avoiding the limitation of 255 characters in systems which used only 8 bits for the string length.

if (a = b) assigns the contents of b to a and executes the code following if b 0. Who the hell thought that would be a good idea?

If b is an expression that returns a reference to a newly allocated resource, such as fopen or malloc, this if statement represents trying to allocate a resource and then skipping the following compound statement if the allocation failed. It's what they had before exceptions, and it's what they still have on microcontrollers too small to have the overhead of a full-featured exception handler.

strings terminated by a binary zero rather than their physical size. Who the hell thought that would be a good idea?

Probably the same way that most popular operating systems store text files as a list of lines separated by newline characters, encoded as 0x0A on UNIX or Windows but 0x0D on Apple II or classic Mac OS. VMS is an exception in that its "non-stream" text files have each line prefixed by its length.

The kernel is not structurally flawed.

It's just as sound as it was, the day Dave Cutler's team built an experimental port of VMS to CMU Mach. It's just as sound a kernel, as the day Microsoft ripped-off VMS from DEC.

It is the perversion of microkernel VMS by a flawed loadable driver model, and the .DLL nightmare that really sucks, and introduces "unpredictable" behaviors.

"Hey! PDP-11? Ask me how!"

If we assume that Netflix is paying about 2.5cents/gig (the 5-cents quoted is for a 2gb movie),
and from bell we learn that their overage charge is currently:
Usage overage charge (up to $60)1 $2.50/GB
Wow, that's about 100x more expensive than netflix is getting their bandwidth.
I get that we're paying retail and Netflix is buying at near-wholesale -- but I don't know any retailer that enjoys 10,000% markup.

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1244-defining-the-problem-of-elevator-waiting-times

http://www3.sympatico.ca/karasik/GF_evolution_of_legend.html

http://www.shmula.com/384/on-queueing-and-elevator-mirrors

Getting the definitive source will be neigh on impossible, but those are rough pointers. Either way its illustrative of requirements engineering/user perceptions/problem analysis.

they've been billing based on usage for years now, but they charge 8$/GB instead of 1.12$.

You're lying. http://service.sympatico.ca/index.cfm?method=bandwidthMonitor.plans

they've been billing based on usage for years now, but they charge 8$/GB instead of 1.12$.

You're lying. http://service.sympatico.ca/index.cfm?method=bandwidthMonitor.plans

Here is a collection of references. See also Readers Write: How Microsoft got Windows NT, Everything2: The similarities between VMS and Windows NT and Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (use googlebot useragent to view full story).

DEC did sue Microsoft, but they settled for royalties.

This is printing so 'works' and 'easy' are rare.

It sucks that manufacturers don't really make printer drivers for a lot of high-end equipment for Linux

On the flipside, if the printer is attached to an HP Jetdirect box, you only need to setup a network printer and have the custom paper type outputted to Postscript to print whatever you want, including labels.

Some of the nice Intermec and Datamax label printers work varying well. Some will take Postscript encoded as ASCII directly over whatever interface they have, sometimes Adapters are needed.

The expensive printers are meant for big industrial printjobs, though. You are more likely to find Oracle printer drivers (really just paper types) for them than Microsoft / Open Office support.

Dealing with a fixed-record length file structure is OS dependent

I can create fixed-record-length files in UNIX, Windows, Windows Mobile, or any other operating system that supports ANSI C. Writing a record looks something like the following (untested):

fseek(fp, recordNumber*recordLength, SEEK_SET);
int ok = fwrite(record, recordLength, 1, fp);

But after reading this file I'm starting to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. A "stream" text file under VMS is a familiar '\n'-delimited list of strings, but a "non-stream" text file is a list of 16-bit-aligned Pascal strings. Likewise, classic Mac OS had the '\r'-delimited list of strings (TEXT files and TEXT resources) and the list of Pascal strings (STR# resources), but I never thought of STR# as a "text file" as much as a "list of distinct strings".

I don't know, but several large isp's have beeen trying to convince their customers that slowing their data will speed up the internet for everyone. However, the customers don't seem to agree.

The "founding fathers" were not for "small government"

"Jefferson attempted to eliminate the national debt because of his wish for small government. He also decreased the size of the military" ""While smaller governments are better adapted to the ordinary objects of society, larger confederations more effectually secure independence and the preservation of republican government." --Thomas Jefferson to the Rhode Island Assembly, 1801. ME 10:262. "Compare Alexander Hamilton's views of national government with those of Thomas Jefferson.?" "A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." - Thomas Jefferson. Also on that page a quote from James Madison, "The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." Now notice I did not say all of the Founding Fathers wanted small government, Alexander Hamilton was one of them that wanted a strong and powerful federal government.

those we traditionally call the founding fathers were almost all Federalists

Both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison repudiated the Federalists positions. Thomas Paine wrote many books and essays in support of small government, his "Common Sense", yes I have and read it along with other writings of his, was a cry for small government.

The idea that the Federalists were for "small government" shows a laughable ignorance of the early history of the Republic

Can you show me where I said the Federalists were for small government, or where I said all of the Founding Fathers were federalists? Perhaps you don't know your history, or are you blowing smoke out of your ass?

Falcon

Oh, and while Thomas Paine wasn't a Founding Father like Hamilton, Jefferson, and Washington he wrote the line "These are the times that try men's souls" in "The Crisis" while serving under General Washington's command. It served to help keep the Continental Army from disintegrating.

I fondly remember figuring Atari's particular flavor of basic back in the day. It was fun making loops that used feedback variables assigned values from STICK(0) or PADDLE(0), etc. in order to make the screen flash or do other crazy stuff. And with SOUND statements driving any of the four channels, half the fun was driving the parents nuts. (Or at least until you had to stop or risk having the power adapter taken away.)

These links pretty much cover it:
Atari BASIC: The good, The Bad, The Ugly

Atari Basic Self Instruction Guide, (c) 1979

It was probably the only language I figured out (but have since forgotten). When moving to other computers (Amiga and then PC), it was just a lot easier to use software to achieve results rather than to puzzle together some code. (Not to mention there were plenty of other distractions in J.H. and H.S.)

The problem with the current ISP model is it is like an all you can eat buffet, where one in 10 customers eats all the food, one in 100 takes his chair home too, and one in 1,000 unscrews all the fixtures and fittings and loads them into a van as well.

"In February of 1796, he took his eldest son, John (12 years old), a team of oxen, and one cow, and travelled along the Bay of Quinte to what is now Presqu'ile Bay. Obediah stayed long enough to build a small log hut for his son and a shelter for the cattle, then strapped on a pair of snowshoes and hiked back to Adolphustown. For 6 weeks, John was left alone to fend for himself and to take care of the small, but vital, herd. Obediah returned by boat, along with the rest of the family, in the spring. Having secured a land grant while in Adolphustown, Obediah Simpson was to become the first settler in what is now the Town of Brighton. The Simpson Family of Brighton took root."

Take a look at this: http://www3.sympatico.ca/maury/games/space/spacewa r.html

Long live DEC!

Greetings,

The situation you have brought to our attention has been investigated
and treated by a member of our staff. We have enforced our
AUP(Acceptable Use Policy) against the offending account.

Sympatico always enforces a strong anti-abuse policy; customers who
abuse the network risk having their service terminated. Should you
encounter any Internet Abuse originating within the Sympatico network,
please do not hesitate to contact us again at abuse@sympatico.ca.

Regards,

Steve
Internet Security Analyst
Bell Internet Management Services
http://security.sympatico.ca/
abuse@sympatico.ca

Original Message Follows:

Dear Sirs,

Please view the attached unsolicited e-mail received on Wed,
25 Apr 2007 14:57:02 -0400, apparently coming from IP 74.12.79.139
(bas1-toronto02-1242320779.dsl.bell.ca), inside a network owned by you.
Please check it out, and handle your user according to your TOS/AUP.
Thank you.

There used to be a complaint website named U-hell.com (or uhell.com); as I remember it had a great graphic of a U-Haul truck with flames on the side. Unfortunately it appears to be gone, although the domains are registered. I found a post at http://www3.sympatico.ca/mike365/onthelist/uhallsu cks/ that says the domain now belongs to U-Haul (can't have the public complaining, now can we?).

No, no -- the U.S. spends more per capita (not per-patient) treating only the old and the poor than Canada spends per capita treating every citizen, including the old and the poor. See for example this comparison made in 2005, based on 2002 figures from OECD countries. It appears that one reason is that administrative costs are roughly three times higher, per capita, in the U.S. than in Canada. There are other more recent comparisons available but the numbers don't differ substantially.

I think you were trying to say that it's unreasonable to compare costs-per-patient in the U.S. Medicare and Medicaid systems with costs in Canada's (or any other OECD country's) national health care system where every citizen is a "patient" including the young. You would be right, except that's not the comparison the parent post was making.

"VMS + 1 = WNT" makes no more sense than "IBM - 1 = HAL" (see other web trivia regarding "2001: A Space Odyssey")

"Recently, a coworker tried to assert that encrypting a file twice with a 64 bit algorithm is equivalent to encrypting it once with a 128 bit algorithm. I know enough about encryption to know that isn't true, but I am having difficulties explaining why and how. Doesn't each pass of the encryption create a separate file header which makes this assertion untrue? Can anyone point me to references that would better help me explain this?"

First of all, what is a '64-bit encryption algorithm'? Is this a symmetric or asymmetric algorithm? Is it a block or stream cipher? Are you talking about block or key sizes? What specific algorithm are you referring to?

We can't analyze anything if all we're given are vague generalizations like "a 64-bit algorithm" and "a 128-bit algorithm". Some symmetric ciphers gain security under functional composition. We know that DES is one such cipher, since it has been shown that DES is not a group. However, it is not true in general that symmetric ciphers gain security under composition. For example, no matter how many times you encrypt something using a Caesar cipher (a generalization of ROT-13), there will always be a single key that decodes the resulting ciphertext. Ask your coworker to show that the specific algorithm you're discussing is not a group. If he can't, then what reason do you have to believe that you gain any security through what he proposes?

The second problem here is that your coworker seems to think that the onus is on you to prove that a given system is insecure. Every time an expert invents a new cryptosystem, there is a good chance that the system will be insecure; It is a near-certainty that any cryptosystem your coworker comes up with will be insecure. Bruce Schneier brought up this topic again in this month's Crypto-Gram :

Anyone can invent a security system that he himself cannot break. I've said this so often that Cory Doctorow has named it "Schneier's Law": When someone hands you a security system and says, "I believe this is secure," the first thing you have to ask is, "Who the hell are you?" Show me what you've broken to demonstrate that your assertion of the system's security means something.

Thirdly, even if your coworker's new cipher design---and that's what it is---miraculously has the security properties that he thinks it does, is that enough? If you're using 128-bit keys in a symmetric cipher, you're only getting 64 bits of security, thanks to the "Birthday Paradox". If you want an attacker to have to perform 2^128 steps to brute-force your key, then you should be using 256-bit keys anyway. Justin Troutman explains this in more detail in his two-part series, "Ideal-to-Realized Security Assurance In Cryptographic Keys".

Finally, all this talk about composing cipher primitives might well be irrelevant. What is this cipher being used for? Disk-based encryption, for example, has vastly different requirements than a typical secure channel. (See New Methods in Hard Disk Encryption for a discussion of some of the issues associated with hard disk encryption.) What mode of operation are you using? What are you using for authentication? How much information does your cryptosystem leak? How are you negotiating what protocol you're using? To what extent is your protocol switch vulnerable to a chosen protocol attack? What about implementation issues?

I suggest that your coworker read the first two chapters

Well the user agreement your referencing is for the "Unplugged Service" which is slightly different.
Here's the Sympatico Service Agreements & the Security & Privacy policy's of Bell.
Note that the Privacy policy still maintains they will only provide user information by court order
or warrant, guess they forgot to update these policy's.

You may be right that their only going to monitor Sympatico accounts.

However the previous Liberal bill was to require all ISP's to implement data retention & each ISP
was to foot their associated costs.
The the new bill (which I haven't yet read) may have been revised to require the network owners
to monitor all network traffic (they can afford the expense) as apposed to the smaller ISP's having
to foot the bill, which would bankrupt most if not all small IPS's.

By requiring all ISP's to implement data retention the government would violate various sections of
CRTC Acts regarding competition, since it would put the small one's out of business & stifle competition.

That was a direct quote from sympaticos user agreement, which states:

However, you agree that Your Service Provider reserves the right from time to time to monitor the Service electronically, monitor or investigate Content or your use of Your Service Provider's networks, including, without limitation, bandwidth consumption, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy any laws, regulations or other governmental request from any applicable jurisdiction, or as necessary to operate the Service or to protect itself or others.

Notice it uses the term "You Service Provider" in capitals. It is common in legal contracts to define terms at the beginning of the document and make reference to them throughout the document if the terms need to be condensed. In this case the user agreement states:

1. General. The Sympatico(TM) High Speed Unplugged service (the "Unplugged Service") is a broadband wireless Internet service further described in Section 6 below, provided by Bell Canada (and/or its affiliates, agents and suppliers) in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, Aliant Telecom Inc. (and/or its affiliates, agents and suppliers) in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and Northwestel Inc. (and/or its affiliates, agents and suppliers) in the Yukon (each of Bell Canada, Aliant Telecom Inc. and Northwestel Inc. are referred to herein, as applicable, as "Your Service Provider").

So as you can see, they define "Your Service Provider" as Bell Canada, Aliant Telecom, Northwestel or any of it's agents, etc.

The article doesn't quote what the user agreement defines "Your Service Provider" to be, so it may look like it means any service provider that uses Bellnexxia, but that is incorrect. For Bell to start monitoring Bellnexxia traffic it would be a monumental headache and ultimately worthless as Bell themselves would have no information on individual users, only their ISP would.

If you are talking about United States vs Microsoft, filed on May 18, 1998, then how do you explain the William H. Gates Foundation founded in 1994 (focusing on health issues in developing countries) or the Gates Learning Foundation founded in 1997? These two were later merged into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And he has not just given stock... in 1999 he gave $5bn from his own pocket. In 1998 he gave all his Microsoft Stock dividends to charity as well ~$3bn. This is not POTENTIAL INCOME, it *is* INCOME.

If you did any research you would know that while he gave some stock, the foundation's endowments are immediately converted to cash. He has donated $26bn of his personal fortune, yes some in the form of stock, but a large chunk in the form of cash to charity. As for your point #4, this is approximately 40% of his current net worth. I don't know *any* other americans that give that much. He is only 51 years old, and has at least 10, maybe 20 more years to continue giving away his personal fortune. He is also smart enough to know that just giving random organizations money does not solve problems, and that giving it all away in one chunk would probably be a bad move.

A better place to read about Bill's charity work

Who is more charitable? The Rich man that gives all his money away, or the Rich man that gives a percentage away every year. In the long run, you know the latter will give away more money.

Hometown Tales Because every town has one.

Bad Cop, No Donut A weekly summary of North American Police Abuse

Crap From the Past Music from the 70's and 80's that FUN to listen to. "A graduate course in Pop Music"

Polyamory Weekly Polyamory Weekly: a show about polyamory, or ethical non-monogamous relationships

Not safe for work, but Distorted View is a twisated, sick summary of the day's dumb news stories and the host's lack of money.

Wow! Now all that past work on Artificial Stupidity has REAL uses.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/sarrazip/nasa.html

In addition to the general terms set out above, you are prohibited from using the Service for activities that include, but are not limited to:

• Sharing of your Account UserID and password for the purpose of concurrent login sessions from the same Account.
• Causing an Internet host to become unable to effectively service requests from other hosts.
• Running and/or hosting server applications including but not limited to HTTP, FTP, POP, SMTP, Proxy/SOCKS, and NNTP.
• Analyzing or penetrating an Internet host's security mechanisms.
• Forging any part of the TCP/IP packet headers in any way.
• Committing any act which may compromise the security of your Internet host in any way.

From the Bell Sympatico acceptable use policy.

The wonderful peer to peer Internet is under attack from many directions; commercial service discrimination is just one - and IMHO, it would be more like the power company deciding how much (if any) juice and of what quality they'll supply, depending on who manufactured my toaster, kettle, TV etc. than the KFC/Pepsi analogy given by Wu.

John Walker describes other, related threats here: http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimat ur/

Well, it would seem that he's trying, but with $60 billion, it takes a LOT:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/truegrowth/gates1.html
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/ ...Enough so to be named Time People of the Year.
Setting aside the business ethics used to make the money, I'd say he's found at least one good way to use it.
Now about that Olympic swimming pool of puddding...

Hmmm - tiniest bit of evidence....

VMS
V+1=W
M+1=N
S+1=T

VMS +1 = WNT

Granted it's not really evidence of any sort, however, if you read around the internet, there are actually bits and pieces of evidence to be found.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Art icleID=4494

http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/docs/Windows-NT_i s_VMS_re-implemented.html

Now, whether any of it or not is factual, I cannot determine with any certainty, but there are certainly some clues to be found, and some items that make you go Hmmmm.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/truegrowth/gates1.html

That's the Gates Foundation plan for the next few years. He also gives money through several other organizations other than his own foundation. For example, I know he has given a pretty tidy sum of money to his wife's high school (Ursuline Academy in Dallas, Tx... it's my high school's sister school).

Gates also plans to give away the majority of his money before his death. He wants his children to be cared for, but doesn't want them to be stupendously rich. He wants them to have to work for a living.

Oh, and your math was wrong, Carnegie's donations would equate to ~$3 billion today, according to the Carnegie Foundation. Gates added $5 billion to the Gates Foundation's finances around the time of the lawsuit.

>but Carnegie gave away most of his money.

Bill Gates intends to eventually give away all his money. Buffett and him have the same attitude towards their fortune, they will only leave abit for their childern but want to see it put to good use in their lifetime.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technolog y/2003-01-12-gates_x.htm

http://www3.sympatico.ca/truegrowth/gates1.html

Down at the south end of the border between British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, is an area known as the Crowsnest Pass. Over on the Alberta side was the small town of Frank. Frank existed solely because the Crowsnest is choc-a-bloc full of coal.

Anyway, not to get into too much detail: the residents of Frank lived at the bottom of a mountain they named "Turtle Mountain," but which had a much older Indian name of "The Mountain That Moves." Throwing all caution to the wind, the mountain was soon being mined for coal.

Needless to say, thirty million cubic meters of mountain moved -- downhill, rapidly -- during the night of April 29, 1903, burying the town under hundreds of feet of rock. It's a great story, though sad.

It is well worth the effort of visiting the site. Fascinating history throughout the area, lots of superb dayhiking, and if you hump it up Turtle mountain (or even partway up) you get the most astounding view of the destruction. When that mountain moved, it moved a long way. There are house-sized boulders halfway up the opposing slope. It was a massive landslide.

Point of the Story: Listen to the myths, people! The natives weren't just making shit up for the helluvit! It was the bleeding Mountain That Moves! D-oh!

Through my family I've direct contact with people who have served in military intelligence. I know a few CSIS people and, I had the luck to spend ~14 hours locked in conversation with one of the architects of CSIS (he'd started out as a Polish citizen in WWII, was trained by what we came to know as the KGB, then he jumped ship to British Intelligence and finally came to Canada). He was an intelligent, insightful man but certainly far from a James Bond kind of a guy. His most telling trait, share by everyone I`ve met in the intelligence community, was a belief that things that needed to get done were best done covertly. I`ve been told that the best intelligence agents are inconspicuous. From everything I know I`d go with the "Danger Man" sort with the accent more on "The Prisoner".

The Russians in the Cold War were infamous for simply walking up to someone in the know at a cocktail party and innocuously asking pointed questions about sensitive material; the person being questioned might well be caught off guard by the social setting and laid back approach.

The only person I've known like a James Bond character was a Montreal vice cop who was an interpol agent, a martial arts expert and liked to review each violent episode he had lived through, but he wasn't anything like the intelligence people I've known. I doubt there are many, if any, James Bond types. There was a British sargent who, in the aftermath of WWII, was tasked with the assissination of deemed war criminals unlikely to be brought to justice. I saw him interviewed on the Discovery Channel. He was retired to a farm, spoke very unemotionaly about some of his excutions and showed a strong liking for Russian rifles as the then best assissination weapons. In the alternative, not to long ago, I met a British intelligence trained guy and while sharing a drink I brought up the subject of best gun for the job ( a 25 cal. in my opinion ). He dismissed the whole notion saying no one uses guns anymore. Theres a pin prick in your bottle of aftershave. You cut yourself shaving. Three months later you're dead.

cheers

Oh yes he's a demon.

Have a look at this site

It goes on about all the other non-profit activities Mr Gates does and the multitude of reasons people come up with for why he's doing it.

Basically the guy is still pretty young.... a spritely 50 in a couple of weeks, and for many years now he has been one of the (if not the) greatest philanthropist in history.

I guess there's nothing the guy will ever do that could get anyone on this site modded up for saying a single positive word about anything he does or has done.

I also made a bookmarklet to bookmark a paragraph in any html or text.

Of course this is only a solution for devices that can read html files and plain text and does not offer any special ebook functionalities.

Oops forgot to answer a couple

"Want EDUCATION about it? Here's a website / brochure."

Dude anybody who can use Google can find all the education they need about it. They don't need the Federal government or you getting on your high horse fretting over whether there are enough web sites on condoms, the pill or abortion for all the pitiful poor people.

"Fact #1: Meth mostly affects rural America."

Here is a random URL from 5 seconds of googling, indicating Meth abuse is getting just as bad in cities. It early appeal in rural areas was it was easy to make and get. There is no reason it isn't going to hammer cities just as much as it is rural areas other than that part of your obssession with the plight of the poor hillbillies.

" Fact #2: Rural residents tend to have worse health care"

Well I think you mean poor people have worse health care. Only hurdle rural residents have is there are fewer doctors per capita and they tend to be farther away. That is just a fact of life due to economics and geography, and you aren't going to change it. I doubt its much of a factor in access to birth control. Urban poor have dismal healthcare too.

All in all I'd say I'm left with the attitude most people have towards bleeding heart liberals, why don't you mind your own business and stop operating under the illusion anyone wants or needs you telling them how to live.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/stewy1/2000/ampsycho.jpg

in American Psycho to this:

http://www.comicon.com/thebeat/images/machinist3.j pg

in the Machinist to this:

http://www.mtv.com/shared/media/news/images/b/Bale _Christian/sq-bale-shirtless-mira.jpg

in Batman. He dropped 1/3 of his body weight (180 to 120) for the machinist. Supposedly he wanted to go to 100 but the producers wouldn't let him.

BTW, see the machinist if you haven't.

I was wondering which Canadian city they were using on Battlestar Galactica. My brother knew they were somewhere in Canada when he spotted the scotiabank logo on Cylon occupied Caprica.

THE TERM "ODD NUMBER" IS AMBIGUOUS. I
THEREFORE CHOOSE TO INTERPRET IT AS MEANING
"A NUMBER THAT IS FUNNY LOOKING."
USING MY AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT, I PICKED THE
NUMBERS 3, 8, AND 147, ADDED THEM UP,
AND GOT 157.

I GUESS I MEANT 158.

147 IS MORE THAN 10, ISN'T IT? SORRY.

I inherited this from my grandfather the machinist. People always ask me what I would need a milling machine for, but they've never seen my case mods.

Bill and Melinda, and their charity do give a shitload of cash out. About 2 billion (over 20 years) here.

A search for "bill gates charity" will show heaps of info.

See this page for some idea.

Lilliput 7" touchscreens are only $279 at www.mp3car.com. Prefect for and undercabinet mounting. Combine that with a mini-itx board and you have a great kiosk or mp3 car player.

Other links of interest:

Linux Touch Screen HOWTO
EPIA HOWTO
Gentoo EPIA HOWTO
Nehemiah Hardware Entropy Generator
VIA PadLock support for Linux

Sorry, OT. But still.

Well, I love Linux, but let's put things in perspective. A lot of people contributing to open source are students, or people who love programming. They are giving something (free time, programming talent) they have a lot of. So this quote from Jesus could be applied to us too.

This topic ("Well, as a percentage of his total wealth this is nothing") always comes up when Gates charity is discussed. First of all, he can't give away everything he owns at once, much of it (I presume) is tied up in stocks, selling all at once would cause companies and whole markets plummeting.

Besides, if you look at the total over time, as these people have done, you will see that it does in fact add up to quite a lot over the years. (Assuming, like I have, that the source is reliable).

* $1 billion over 20 years to establish the Gates Millennium Scholarship Program, which will support promising minority students through college and some kinds of graduate school.
* $750 million over five years to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, which includes the World Health Organization, the Rockefeller Foundation, Unicef, pharmaceutical companies and the World Bank.
* $350 million over three years to teachers, administrators, school districts and schools to improve America's K-12 education, starting in Washington State.
* $200 million to the Gates Library Program, which is wiring public libraries in America's poorest communities in an effort to close the "digital divide."
* $100 million to the Gates Children's Vaccine Program, which will accelerate delivery of lifesaving vaccines to children in the poorest countries of the world.
* $50 million to the Maternal Mortality Reduction Program, run by the Columbia University School of Public Health.
* $50 million to the Malaria Vaccine Initiative, to conduct research on promising candidates for a malaria vaccine.
* $50 million to an international group called the Alliance for the Prevention of Cervical Cancer.
* $50 million to a fund for global polio eradication, led by the World Health Organization, Unicef, Rotary International and the U.N. Foundation.
* $40 million to the International Vaccine Institute, a research program based in Seoul, South Korea.
* $28 million to Unicef for the elimination of maternal and neonatal tetanus.
* $25 million to the Sequella Global Tuberculosis Foundation.
* $25 million to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, which is creating coalitions of research scientists, pharmaceutical companies and governments in developing countries to look for a safe, effective, widely accessible vaccine against AIDS.

Oops, that article was from year 2000. According to the BBC, he has now given away $7.1 billion since 1994.

I've been to Europe a couple of times on vacation and the most dissappointing thing was the food.

Your results might depend upon your expectations and willingness to explore, or simply we visited different parts of Europe. For example, my personal all time favorite restaurant is a tie between two: Lyon de Lyon in Lyon, France and Atelier in New York City. But that is for the multi-course tasting menu (with a wine paired to match each course); if you go to either place for just a steak, you are likely to be unimpressed, especially for the prices.

On the other hand, in Southern France we still enjoyed ourselves when we just stopped into different restaurants that hit our fancy, some of them little hole in the wall places. The food was definitely fresh (I prefer seafood, and am extremely sensitive to any spoilage because I can smell ammonia starting in very low concentrations).

European restaurants definitely have different ideas of service than American restaurants, but I ascribe this to a cultural difference. More European restaurants are simply much more concerned about the total experience they offer to their patrons, and I'm not surprised some simply have a blanket no-toddlers policy. Whereas I've noticed American restauranteurs are generally willing to take a chance on all comers, and only confront parents if their children are really obnoxious; they usually politely ask the parents to restrain the children for their own safety because of all the hot plates running around, for example.

Most of my points of reference come from Southern France, Rhine Valley Germany, Belgium and Holland, so I'm curious what part(s) of Europe you had experience with.

Seriously, curing HIV is just dealing with a symptom of a problem. If the groups that promote AIDS and STD education in Africa could get just a tiny portion of the funding that goes into HIV medical research, the spread of AIDS would run into a wall. In South Africa, they have billboards that say things like "You can catch AIDS by having sex with an infected woman." Americans think, well, no kidding, but very few people have bothered to tell the South Africans that. AIDS is a problem that has to be attacked on all fronts.

so many unecissary regulations in the states, that nuclear power is impossible

Just what regulations on toxic and radioative material that can be used to create nuclear weapons and "dirty bombs" do you beleive unnecessary?

I myself wish I had enough money to buy a ship and put a nuclear reactor on it out in international waters and sell safe and simple hydrogen back to the mainland.

You might find "The Millennial Project" interesting.

And we should never forget: Those living 10,000 years ago were already Homo sapiens sapiens, so no less capable in thinking than we are today. Just because a group of archeologists can't think of a sufficient technology on the spot to fulfill a task humans fulfilled thousands of years ago doesn't mean that such a technology couldn't have existed then. Archeologists need a broad knowledge of different technologies, but so they often have to sacrify deepness. Often the appearent mystery solves if you have some non-archeologist look at the site, who is a specialist on a certain technology.

Thor Heyerdahl (ok, no archeologist at all, but an ethnograph) once tried to move one of the statues from the Easter Island out of the quarry it was still in, and all the methods he was trying failed, until one of the local people told him that the statues 'walked upright'. Finally an engineer showed him how you get a statue walk upright: Have it swing slightly from right to left, so one of the edges is on the ground and the other one is lifted. Then you can turn it slightly so that in the next swing the lifted edge lands a little bit further down the road. From a distance it looks as if the statue is swaggering forward. (I was using a similar method to get my washing machine into my house :), works like a charm, and you can do it for yourself, without too much help from others.) And the local people were glad finally someone understood what they were trying to tell them from the beginning. If Thor Heyerdahl had asked any moving contractor before, he would have been done long ago ;).

Often it's not the technology level itself that shows how advanced a civilisation is. Often it's all those little tricks, which use existing technology to its maximum, that makes a civilisation more successful than others. The middle age guilds of craftmanship were basicly competence centers which gave all those little tricks to the next generation of craftsmen. Just by looking at the tools you can't really say what was possible for a craftsman then.

And for the age of Stonehenge: The latest additions to Stonehenge were done around 1500 B.C., when all egyptian pyramids were already built long ago (pyramids as king's tombs were abandoned around 1900 B.C. with the demise of the XIth dynasty), and when the Sky Disc of Nebra (~1600 B.C.) was already cast in bronze.