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"What is Critical? To what degree is critical defined as a matter of principle, and to what degree is it defined operationally? I am distinguishing what we say from what we do.

Mainstream media love to turn a spotlight on anything they can label “hypocrisy,” the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary meaning of which is:

'[T]he act or practice of pretending to be what one is not or to have principles or beliefs that one does not have, especially the false assumption of an appearance of virtue.`

The debate topic I propose here can therefore be restated as calling out, “Hypocrisy!” on the claim that the Internet is a critical infrastructure either drectly or by transitive closeure with the applications that run on or over it" Dan Geer June 2013 ...

That's almost certainly a translation error. The University of Tampere press release states that "these studies clearly show that members of the group B coxsackieviruses are associated with the risk of type 1 diabetes", and the offending sentence in the Yle article would be the same in Finnish irrespective of whether the virus found is the only one or not (e.g. "löytänyt viruksen" would be "discovered a/the virus"). Finnish grammar doesn't have the concept of definiteness, meaning that a translator working from a Finnish source text would in many cases have to guess the intended meaning or look it up elsewhere. For similar reasons, many Finns have problems figuring out whether to use a definite or indefinite article when writing in English.

I just developed an algorithmic composition applet, very similar to the first application by Harmonix. The users can control the music dynamically with the mouse. I thought it was unique idea, but these guys did it already 15 years ago!

I think their earlier ideas were much cooler than the Rock Band franchise, too bad they couldn't sell them.

I had much the same set of problems and found decent universities in Tampere, Finland, Luleå, Sweden

Well, I'll have to chip in my 2 eurocents and plug my own alma mater in Finland, TKK. The last I looked, it too was part of ISEP (or at least it offers the ISEP program to students). All (or almost all) of our graduate courses are lectured in English and those that aren't can still be taken in English through special arrangements.

Not that Luleå is a bad choice at all. My sister is going to go there for an exchange in 2010.

In Finland and Sweden the tuition costs are only nominal (< $100/year).

I had much the same set of problems and found decent universities in Tampere, Finland, Luleå, Sweden, and Accra Ghana that all participated in the ISEP program. My school offered a couple of different programs, but this one was notable insofar as it didn't require you to pay hardly anything extra. Unlike programs that expect you to pay massive chunks of cash for their own overhead and then full rate for tuition abroad, this one (and others like it?) just have the student pay tuition and room and board at the local university. They then get the same stuff from the receiving university.

On a related note, I ended up in Luleå which had the strongest English language CS program I'd ever seen. They also had a rather sizable community of foreign exchange students and a well-developed Swedish language program.

On a slightly less related note, no matter where you go you should make sure to take some non-engineering/non-CS courses. Studying international organizations and management abroad, even if only briefly, looks far better on a resume and will give you far more than any single engineering course. Be sure to make time for it.

There are very strong English language masters programs available in engineering schools and universities in Sweden and Finland (also this one), and presumably the rest of Scandinavia as well.

You haven't lived till you've biked over a frozen lake or read a book in perfect daylight at 2AM. Some schools have industries right next to campus to tap the student labor force and nearly all the universities have ample jobs for masters students right there on campus. This is also the perfect choice to allow you to maximize your vacation opportunities - Cheap student rates and lengthy school breaks. A university is also the ideal environment in which to study the language, both in a formal setting and with the students that are much more used to dealing with foreigners on a daily basis than the rest of the population.

That said, there's plenty of sysadmin jobs abroad under the employ of the US government, if you're willing to give up on coding at work for a while. See usajobs.gov and careers.state.gov. Simplifies dealing with visas and such.

the terrible thing about that is how lame Unistrokes are...
look at the image 1/3 of the way down http://www.cs.uta.fi/~scott/text/Unistroke.html --
the cool thing about Graffiti is that most every stroke has some physical similarity to the letter it represents.

I don't know the details but it feels like an abuse of the patent system to me.

Quite easy actually.
First, let us tackle the verb and the subject.

Throw = Heittää
Chair = Tuoli

Now, the interesting thing is that the basic form of this verb is only used when speaking of 3rd person perspective. F.ex. "Ballmer heittää tuolin".
Also note, that in this case the basic form of "Tuoli" is not used. The 'n' suffix indicates a possessive form. Which makes no sense so it must mean some other form. Which, I have no idea. No one but the men of language sciences know all of Finnish forms of words.
Then, let's have a look for first person action. "I throw a chair" -- "Heitän tuolin".
Again, have a look at the suffixes. Lord only knows why, but now we threw out one T and added an N to the verb. The subject has the N suffix again. the subject is actually useless without a form. Basically only thing you can do with a subject without form would be edumacation like "This is a chair" -- "Tämä on tuoli".

To give something to chew. Let's list the normal presens form:
Heitän tuolin (I throw a chair)
Heität tuolin (You...)
Heittää tuolin (He/She...)
Heitämme tuolin (We...)
Heitätte tuolin (You (in plural))
Heittävät tuolin (They...)

And to indicate the possessive:
Tuolini (My chair)
Tuolisi (your...)
Tuolimme (Our...)
Tuolinsa (His...)

Any combination of these is valid.
More interesting things to do with 1st person declensions.

And here's the 15 basic cases to finnish language:
nominative, genitive, accusative, partitive, essive, translative, inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, allative, abessive, comitative, and instructive.

And 12 adverbial cases:
superessive, delative, sublative, lative, temporal, causative, multiplicative, distributive, temporal distributive, prolative, situative, and oppositive.

You don't just throw chairs in Finnish! Prepare for lifetime of torture with the grammar before you can simple things correctly!
From http://www.helsinki.fi/~jshermun/language.htm:
"It is an essentially logical language. The rules are absolute and reliable in all situations, except exceptions."

Using the word 'euros' is perfectly acceptable. It's widely used across Europe.

http://www.uta.fi/FAST/PP3B/euros.html

If you play the games, take half an hour and complete the questionnaire.

http://www.cs.uta.fi/~johanna/DDRS/

This follows just after the 2nd annual European Cup in Norway, hosted at world's biggest computer party, The Gathering. Hm, no /. report about it this year. Just look at some photos, then: .nl, .pl, .be.

/me waves hello to Tepples

This is about deliberately soliciting proprietary information without concerning for the ethics/standards of journalism.

The ethics/standards of journalism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_standard s
http://www.spj.org/ethics_code.asp
Canadian Journalism Standards:
http://www.caj.ca/principles/principles-statement- 2002.htm
European standards:
http://www.uta.fi/ethicnet/

Did he perform proper fact checking/checking his sources? No. Did he look at balancing right to privacy versus the public interest? Was it really in the public interest? No.

Journalists routinely make decisions not to publish information which involve national security or Police stings.

Do you see serious journalist publishing trade secrets? No.

I see they skipped Phoenix, the sixth largest city in the U.S. http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US2/REF/50-top.html and one of the fastest growing.

So we changed the spelling of "aeroplane" after the revolutionary war to distinguish ourselves from Britian?

Given that "after the revolutionary war" means from the end of the war until present day, yes that's exactly what it means.

This from wikipedia: The first American dictionary was written by Noah Webster in 1828. At the time America was a relatively new country and Webster's particular contribution was to show that the region spoke a different dialect from Britain, and so he wrote a dictionary with many spellings differing from the standard. Many of these changes were initiated unilaterally by Webster.

More links if you want to ready more about the why:
American_English
American_and_British_English_differences
Basic Differences and Influences of Change

Complexity is not the same as bureaucracy. Even in F1000 companies, bureaucracy is a bug, not a feature. (It's just harder to eliminate in larger companies.)

Large government contractors and suppliers fall somewhere between private enterprise and government in this scale; they have to be efficient enough to actually build a bomb that goes "boom", or a plane that flies, but they also have to be bureaucratic enough to fill out the reams of paperwork that come as part of the Faustian bargain: If you want a chunk of the taxpayer's money, you've gotta dedicate at least 20-30% of your manpower to jumping through the government's hoops.

In government per se, bureaucracy is not merely a feature -- it's practically the raison d'etre for the whole enterprise. What good is open source if we can't have studies on it, build fiefdoms around approving and sharing it, and make other people from other fiefdoms fill out paperwork to get their hands on it? What good are space shuttles unless we build space stations for them to go to, and space stations without space shuttles to ferry the parts up there $500M at a time?

Remember, there's Fedland from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash

NEW TP POOL REGULATIONS I've been asked to distribute the new regulations regarding office pool displays. The enclosed memo is a new subchapter of the EBGOC Procedure Manual, replacing the old subchapter entitled PHYSICAL PLANT/CALIFORNIA/LOS ANGELES/BUILDINGS/OFFICE AREAS/PHYSICAL LAYOUT REGULATIONS/EMPLOYEE INPUT/GROUP ACTIVITIES. The old subchapter was a flat prohibition on the use of office space or time forr "pool" activities of any kindm whteher permanent (e.g., coffee pool) or one-time (e.g., birthday parties). This prohibition still applies, but a single, one-time exception has now been made for any office that wishes to pursue a joint bathroom-tissue strategy. [ ... ]

And there's the Real McCoy: (Excerpted from Meat, Poultry, Egg Produce Labeling Review Process)

FSIS streamlined the system in a final rule issued on December 29, 1995, (60 FR 67444) that became effective July 1, 1996, by expanding the categories of products for which labeling can be approved generically by industry. For example, the rule allows Federal establishments to design and use labeling that conforms to the regulatory requirements for meat, poultry, and egg products that have standards of identity and composition defined in the regulations (9 CFR 319 and 381) or in the Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book.

Everyone who's worked in both a Fortune 1000 company and government, and who has obtained approval for the funding of a working group to ascertain the value of conducting a study on the relative levels of bureaucratization, please contact your union steward for permission to obtain form G3122 ("Application for Exception to Standard Rule 7431, section 8, supbaragraph 6") before even thinking about raising your hand.

Unfortunately, the 2004 USA Election has been a victory of FUD over Facts.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts"- Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

The mainstream forth estate news organizations, on both sides, have utterly failed to hold either Democrats or Republicans accountable for claims that diverge widely from the known facts. In cases where journalists have made a consistent argument, the news organization has allowed that position to be "shouted down" by political camp followers repeating the same lies over and over again though the same outlet. In those same replies, there was very rarely comments by the news organization when known facts obviously contradicted the opinion. Many news organizations seem unwilling to publicly chastise either party for continuing to avoid addressing serious questions when the facts do not concur. The result has been an outright failure of the concept of journalistic ethics.

Some alternative sources, be they partisan or bipartisan organizations, individuals, websites, documentaries, forums or the blogosphere, have done a better job at holding both sides accountable. Sadly, even the most popular alternative source reaches a small fraction of the audience covered by the mainstream media. However, to even that small fraction, those same sources have utterly failed to present an overall palatable, concise and coherent position to the opposing or undecided viewers.

The resulting output from both mainstream and alternative sources has only polarized each sides opinion of each other, further dividing the nation.

Democracy is effective only when a large majority of voters are capable of making an informed choice. In my opinion, the majority of voters, despite who they voted for, were badly served by those organizations who claim they are responsible for keeping the public informed. It's not as if the same could not be said for past elections in any country, but this election cycle the "Whopper" mud slinging has been so much worse than any election since the introduction of television.

What does this mean for the tech industry?

In a lot of ways, both sides campaigns are mirrored by Microsoft's unabated campaign of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt ( commonly referred to in the information technology sector by the acronym FUD ). Microsoft's advocates probably consider the use of the same strategy by both Democrats and Republicans a green light to continue to spread FUD, despite the evidence which contradicts the claims, including Microsoft's own internal research. Any forum attached to an article that even hints at Linux being used on the desktop results in a similar barrage of FUD that is familiar in form to that spouted by the political camp followers. Microsoft's advocates claim the same thing happens whenever Microsoft's record of security is mentioned.

Whether choosing a political or consumer platform, it is possible to make an informed choice when the mainstream political or technical media performs its role to certain ethical standards.

From the International Federation of Journalists:

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES ON THE CONDUCT OF JOURNALISTS

Adopted by the Second World Congress of the International Federation of Journalists at Bordeaux on 25-28 April 1954 and amended by

Unfortunately, the 2004 USA Election has been a victory of FUD over Facts.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts"- Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

The mainstream forth estate news organizations, on both sides, have utterly failed to hold either Democrats or Republicans accountable for claims that diverge widely from the known facts. In cases where journalists have made a consistent argument, the news organization has allowed that position to be "shouted down" by political camp followers repeating the same lies over and over again though the same outlet. In those same replies, there was very rarely comments by the news organization when known facts obviously contradicted the opinion. Many news organizations seem unwilling to publicly chastise either party for continuing to avoid addressing serious questions when the facts do not concur. The result has been an outright failure of the concept of journalistic ethics.

Some alternative sources, be they partisan or bipartisan organizations, individuals, websites, documentaries, forums or the blogosphere, have done a better job at holding both sides accountable. Sadly, even the most popular alternative source reaches a small fraction of the audience covered by the mainstream media. However, to even that small fraction, those same sources have utterly failed to present an overall palatable, concise and coherent position to the opposing or undecided viewers.

The resulting output from both mainstream and alternative sources has only polarized each sides opinion of each other, further dividing the nation.

Democracy is effective only when a large majority of voters are capable of making an informed choice. In my opinion, the majority of voters, despite who they voted for, were badly served by those organizations who claim they are responsible for keeping the public informed. It's not as if the same could not be said for past elections in any country, but this election cycle the "Whopper" mud slinging has been so much worse than any election since the introduction of television.

What does this mean for the tech industry?

In a lot of ways, both sides campaigns are mirrored by Microsoft's unabated campaign of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt ( commonly referred to in the information technology sector by the acronym FUD ). Microsoft's advocates probably consider the use of the same strategy by both Democrats and Republicans a green light to continue to spread FUD, despite the evidence which contradicts the claims, including Microsoft's own internal research. Any forum attached to an article that even hints at Linux being used on the desktop results in a similar barrage of FUD that is familiar in form to that spouted by the political camp followers. Microsoft's advocates claim the same thing happens whenever Microsoft's record of security is mentioned.

Whether choosing a political or consumer platform, it is possible to make an informed choice when the mainstream political or technical media performs its role to certain ethical standards.

From the International Federation of Journalists:

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES ON THE CONDUCT OF JOURNALISTS

Adopted by the Second World Congress of the International Federation of Journalists at Bordeaux on 25-28 April 1954 and amended by

If you write, "a man assulted three people..." but fail to mention that he also killed them, you're guilty of negligent reporting.

In fact, in the UK this breaks the NUJ's Code of Conduct (rule 3):

"A journalist shall strive to ensure that the information he/she disseminates is fair and accurate, avoid the expression of comment and conjecture as established fact and falsification by distortion, selection or *misrepresentation*."

Well while true to do "real" 16:9 editing you would at least need Final Cut Express. But you would also need a true 16:9 camera. The Sony widescreen (16:9 format) is doing nothing more than limiting the video written to tape and actually you have much LESS video (lines of resolution) You are just cropping off the top and bottom. I have a "true" 16:9 camera (Sony VX-2000) BUT to actually get it to use the whole tape (true widescreen) is like a $700 upgrade to the lens.

You can get around your issue in iMovie by using a 16:9 effect for your transitions, titles, and effects. Available from both GeeThree or Stupendous software, as iMovie will not alter the original DV you pulled off tape.

MPEG is a touchy subject for Apple and I am sure it has to do something with the licensing. You will get one of the best MPEG encoder is you buy either Final Cut Pro or DVD Studio Pro. It is called Compressor. Quicktime will crop your video anyway you want just not output to MPEG-2 without the MPEG-2 codec.

I think once you start figuring your Mac out you will be much happier and if you actually pay for professional results you will get them. If you are tenacious enough the are PLENTY of free MPEG encoder available on VersionTracker. Here are the instructions.

--
Daniel C. Slagle
Keeper of the "Unofficial" iMovie FAQ
Tell Apple how you feel about iMovie

are Americans so lazy that they can't walk anymore?

In Finland, building of commercial wireless ARP (car radio phone) network started in 1969 and network was in use a year later.

In early 1980s first multinational cell phone network (NMT) was already in use in Scandinavia.

More information about telecommunication history can be found here.

I'm very skeptical of these kinds of devices. For example, how many people really want stock quotes on their watches? Is there real value in that? How is a stock ticker on a watch significantly better than a stock ticker on a PDA or cell phone? Also, beyond the cool factor, how important is atomic time to Joe Sixpack? Let's face it, if it isn't significantly better, then only technogeeks will care about it. It'll die a quick death. But wait, there's more. The other factor is this. Even if the product is significantly better in terms of functionality, if the usability sucks then uptake of the product in the market could be minimal. IMHO there are many strikes against these products becoming mainstream products any time soon.

1. More on usability: webword.com (Disclaimer: This is one of my web sites.)

2. Bell Labs Reports on Progress Towards "Dick Tracy" Watch

3. Check Out a Watch Dick Tracy Would Envy

4. IBM stuffs Linux into "Dick Tracy's watch"

5. A User Interface Toolkit for a Small Screen Device

6. Is Timing Ripe for Wrist PDAs?

[from Australian slang] Yet another approximate synonym for broken. Specifically connotes a malfunction that produces behavior seen as crazy, humorous, or amusingly perverse. "That was the day the printer's font logic went wonky and everybody's listings came out in Tengwar." Also in `wonked out'. See funky, demented, bozotic.

1. v.,n. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flame s; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbie s" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT

1. v.,n. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flame s; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbie s" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT

1. v.,n. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flame s; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbie s" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT

1. v.,n. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flame s; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbie s" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT

Geeks who are still using so-called "multi-tap" input should be ashamed of themselves. Dictionary based methods, T9 (from Tegic/AOL), and iTap (Motorola's equivalent) have been standard on phones for a couple of years now, even if they do have their short-comings.

If you're not into the legacy layout* you could go with MessagEase or this new thing, but the smart money is on a company called Eatoni, since they have two products (LetterWise and WordWise) which they back up with a big stack of research. There's also Zi Corp. who make eZiText and eZiTap for SMS input.

If you're interested in the HCI aspect of all this you could do worse than looking at the work of I Scott Mackenzie, Poika Isokoski or Mark Dunlop.

* 1-800-GOFEDEX anyone? Probably explains why Europe is ahead of the US in this field. That and our ridiculous txt addctn...

He's selling them for 1,500 bhat.

Based on this list of exchange rates, they cost about $34.80 in US dollars.

$64.83 Austrailian, $23.76 UK, $54.47 Canadian, $38.21 Euro, $330.35 Mexician.
And if I didn't list your country, oh well. You'll just have to look it up :)

Interesting, but I think the price may need to come down to really catch on.

-

Any geek worth his salt has read Neal Stephenson's description of "Fedland" in Snow Crash.

Any geek who's ever seen the work processes in place in the real government (either through knowing someone who works there, or by morbid curiosity and reading policy/procedure manuals that describe to government workers how to process forms filled out by the public, for instance) has realized that Neal Stephenson's imaginary "Fedland" wasn't an exaggeration.

Stephenson's Demented Imagination: Fedland

NEW TP POOL REGULATIONS I've been asked to distribute the new regulations regarding office pool displays. The enclosed memo is a new subchapter of the EBGOC Procedure Manual, replacing the old subchapter entitled PHYSICAL PLANT/CALIFORNIA/LOS ANGELES/BUILDINGS/OFFICE AREAS/PHYSICAL LAYOUT REGULATIONS/EMPLOYEE INPUT/GROUP ACTIVITIES. The old subchapter was a flat prohibition on the use of office space or time forr "pool" activities of any kindm whteher permanent (e.g., coffee pool) or one-time (e.g., birthday parties). This prohibition still applies, but a single, one-time exception has now been made for any office that wishes to pursue a joint bathroom-tissue strategy. [ ... ]

Random Excerpt From The Real Thing: Meat, Poultry, Egg Produce Labeling Review Process"

FSIS streamlined the system in a final rule issued on December 29, 1995, (60 FR 67444) that became effective July 1, 1996, by expanding the categories of products for which labeling can be approved generically by industry. For example, the rule allows Federal establishments to design and use labeling that conforms to the regulatory requirements for meat, poultry, and egg products that have standards of identity and composition defined in the regulations (9 CFR 319 and 381) or in the Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book.

I actually thought European companies brought forth WAP, but i could be wrong on that one. However, Ericsson, Nokia, Siemes, and other big European players are still coming out with WAP phones and touting the technology, although perhaps not with the same magnitude of hype as two years ago.

There are also people out investing time and resources in producing WAP services. Take a look at BioWAP for instance! (I have heard that it is pretty easy to set up a WAP service though.)

What you claim is a main problem is nothing less than the regular course of tech business in general, and has certainly been done before in the telecom business. One can argue that GSM was created that way (although apparently there also were practical needs behind the standard), and certainly SMS was created before there was demand!

One of the researchers commented their findings on TV when this was first reported earlier this week: "we've injected substansial amounts of taurine to test animals and we've been dissappointed because of the lack of effect".

In her opionion coffein is much more effective ingredient in Red Bull (no matter what the producer tries to tell you).

S/PDIF for AudioPCI

I don't know why this bothers me, but I'm really sure that Mosaic wasn't the first browser. Arguably it was the first one that mattered to a lot of people. I've found lots of web pages that say Mosaic was the first browser and even one page that claims Lynx was, but they surely were not, so I've gathered some evidence to prove my point.

• Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau wrote the first browser in 1990
• Tim Berners-Lee claims the first browser was sketched out in 1990