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Getting an error on the first page, I clicked through for the full video on the page (http://video.aol.com/video/news-switched-shirky/2011535) and got an error message: "We're sorry, but this video is not available in your area." I didn't realize that AOL had to ship the video to England in order for me to see it. I guess I just don't understand how the internet works.

-Grey

A mile on a bike takes about 10 minutes, is good for you, consumes no energy, and is manageable in all but the most extreme weather conditions.

From the article: The refrigerator-sized machine stored just 5Mb of data. Hoagland's PowerPoint presentation on the restoration project, at 9.16MB, would have crashed it.

I'll bet that the old guys who wrote it were smart enough to actually check the size of a file before copying it -- you know, actually worrying about resource management. Not like these young pups who think that CPU speeds and hard disk space are so large as to be infinite and not worth bothering with.

-Grey

Here's a HIT task

"We are the Dread Pirate Robots. There will be no survivors."

Now there, I think you're giving the Americans a little too much credit. We're not a particularly well-dressed culture, unless you count the extremes.

We're also really, really, really fat.

So, no. Americans don't tend to give a damn about what other people think of them.

But meeting the person in real life can be a disaster.

It won't be bloat-free for long.

And you wonder why their temples bin plundered? It is because pirates do be the natural enemy of lawyers. It is true, pirates be holy creatures. Arr!

As a physics teacher in the UK, I didn't think things could get any lower. I wrote an article on how crap the new science syllabus is that's gotten a lot of attention. Glad to hear that they think the tests should be easier. Perhaps they should look at the test that I made up as an example.

-Grey

As a physics teacher in the UK, I didn't think things could get any lower. I wrote an article on how crap the new science syllabus is that's gotten a lot of attention. Glad to hear that they think the tests should be easier. Perhaps they should look at the test that I made up as an example.

-Grey

and so does every European country.

When the whole world is converted to ODF then maybe America will change too.

Honestly, how hard is it to sign up for a facebook account now.

There are better locks in parts of the Third World.

Get a 3M Ergonomic Mouse. I switched to one two months ago when I started a project to reduce my RSI and it's worked great. -Grey

Get a 3M Ergonomic Mouse. I switched to one two months ago when I started a project to reduce my RSI and it's worked great. -Grey

We should also take side bets on whether or not Duke Nukem Forever will be released before this comes out.

Then it will ship, after a four year development cycle (see, we beat Vista's development time!) and it will be wash rinse and repeat as people actually see it and realize it is Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows Vista all over again.

Microsoft is scoping Windows 7 development to a three-year time frame...

Somehow I think, like Visa, this will take a hell of a lot longer than expected. Anyone else think that MS will have to endure lots of we'll-see-it-in-seven-years jokes?

-Grey

The best place is "near an exit door".

Rarely does an airplane back into the side of a mountain.

For those of you interested in the origins of the name, wikipedia refers to him as a 'founder-hero'.

-Grey

Perhaps if, instead of fear-mongering for political gain, we educated people about which threats are real and which are imagined, the psychological effect brought upon us by exaggerated dangers of radiation exposure would be entirely negated. Just as informed people no longer believe their shadows are demons to be feared, people might use their reason instead of their feelings in response to terrorism.

35 Different Ways of Looking at Social Networks, and every one starts and ends with 'Join my friends list! Lolz!

-Grey

I am glad the phone won't be available ever in Venezuela.

There's a difference. If microsoft funded people to write about microsoft products on wikipedia, it would be to help microsoft. Germany is funding people to write about things that would benefit the government of Germany.

For the first time, the German edition of the open Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia will be receiving state funding. Germany will be setting aside part of its budget to improve information about renewable resources in Wikipedia.

Paying people to edit wikipedia does not count as donating money. Would we say wikipedia is 'receiving funding from Microsoft' if MS was paying employees to write about MS products?

-Grey

Oh good. It always works out well when the government mucks about in science.

I was really talking about the standard of science education in Britain. The subject has been gradually changing in this country for various political reasons. Sadly, the nation that produced Fleming, Newton and Darwin seems to have decided to rest on its laurels.

Or, to sum it up in a diagram: http://wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/2007 -01-15%20--%20science%20vs%20faith.html

While this is indeed a win, the watering down of the sciences in the UK is horrifying. I've written an article about the physics exams to try and bring some attention to this topic. On the biology side, I was shocked by the most recent GCSE paper on which the last question described an experiment on lab animals and the effect exposure of a hormone had on them. The students where then asked: ''How does this experiment contradict the theory of evolution.'' Also they are asked questions like ''Who would oppose contraception'' and they get a mark for writing ''Certain religious groups.'' It's really sad.

Perhaps you missed the word 'unusual.'

Federal agents are visiting some of the New England's top universities... to warn university heads about the dangers of foreign spies and terrorists stealing sensitive academic research.

FBI is offering to brief faculty, students and staff on what it calls "espionage indicators" aimed at identifying foreign agents.

Unexplained affluence, failing to report overseas travel, showing unusual interest in information outside the job scope, keeping unusual work hours, unreported contacts with foreign nationals, unreported contact with foreign government, military, or intelligence officials, attempting to gain new accesses without the need to know, and unexplained absences are all considered potential espionage indicators.

What a paranoid and counterproductive list. Isn't the information in bold just about everyone who works in academia?

-Grey

Apple has dropped just enough information at just regular enough intervals to create a level of anticipation for the iPhone that can only be described as off the hook.

There were and still are teachers who do the same thing, only they handed the students a library instead of the internet. It isn't about technology, it is about teaching.

When we have strong AI teachers will be outdated because they won't be able to give students the one-on-one time the computer can.

I notice that you're using a pseudonym rather than posting under your full, legal name. What are you hiding?

Google should implement this in the same way they do for Blogger. Just let people use their AdSense accounts on YouTube

How does germany plan on enforcing this?

Adding insult?

Education is not about modern equipment. In fact modern equipment may seriously hinder education at times,

The UK won't be far behind.

Consensus isn't a threat to democracy, students who don't know learn anything about science are a threat to democracy.

http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/ 2007-05-27--the-truth-about-wireless-devices.html

In fact, theology and science really occupy totally different parts of many people's lives.

Not sure when this became fact, but in my day, a teacher was someone that (a) would teach, and (b) would not do unnecessary harm. I probably missed the memo where indoctrinating them to a particular way of life (the parent's responsibility) were offloaded to the teacher.

Speaking of subtle, anyone noticed the ads in the newly reformatted Wired? They've made them look very much link the normal content. So much so that I have my suspicions that the new look was done with this in mind. Wired's always been ad heavy, but I never minded, until they started to try and trick me.

-Grey

we cannot haphazardly dismiss all concerns about electromagnetic interaction with biological systems as "obvious hogwash", like is so frequently done on Slashdot.