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You said that horsepower doesn't mean a whole lot and torque is for getting shit done. Torque is just a twisting force, if there is no movement, there is no work. Torque with no work is useless. When there is movement you have work, and power (often measured in HP in the auto world) is the rate at which work is performed. Horsepower is what gets shit done.

Seems like the grid icons are actually from palm pilots...

Umm, did you ever see Apple's Newton? Its icon grid preceded Palm by years.

Did you ever see a Xerox Star? Grids of icons are as old as GUIs themselves.

If they don't look similar, then the iPhone and Android don't look similar.

This is what a stock Android phone looks like:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Nexus_S.png
This is what a stock iPhone looks like:
http://blog.wirelessground.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/white-iphone-4.jpg

Any comparisons to the Samsung TouchWiz UI are not comparisons to Android.

<apple_fanboy>The Apple Newton was prior art for Palm Pilots!!!!</apple_fanboy>

Also, the IBM/BellSouth Simon would be prior art for touch on a smartphone.

No. 1998 was a local maximum. The temperature, on average, has increased since then (e.g. the 5-year mean has been increasing pretty consistently).

Best of luck in your future trolling... but you should really come up with your own lies instead of just spreading the standard go-to falsehoods.

Having one body setting down standards benefits everybody.

Sure, but why does this have to be accomplished via coercion under color of law? It seems your argument is predicated under the assumption that entities won't cooperate without government coercion.

For example, RAM standards are set by JEDEC, which is an open industry coalition. I wouldn't call the industry's experience with DDR SDRAM over multiple generations an example of failure & fragmentation due to lack of governmental control. The x86 ISA (such as it is) has also been a success over multiple evolutionary generations (albeit litigated at some points) despite lack of legal mandate.

So, while your electrical grid example is a potential threat if standards weren't mandated, it isn't very likely... imagine the PR fallout Oregon would get in your case: "Come to Oregon, none of your electronic devices will work!". There is a natural incentive for compatibility in those cited examples of railroad gauge, electrical gauge, and roads.

Besides, lack of coercive standards offers the potential for smaller-scale "experiments" that can be paradigm shifting. There is no law that says that DDR SDRAM has to be used on every motherboard, and that allowed the (admittedly vile patent troll) Rambus to attempt to promulgate a different standard that the market could evaluate as a competing standard. Rambus was an idea that was tried and largely discarded, but by the same token should ARM be banned by law because its ISA isn't x86-derived? I believe the market is better for allowing the possibility of experimentation (and possible failure!)

Furthermore, mandated standards can easily be overreaching. Imagine, if you will, that all roads had been fully standardized long ago: lane widths, lane counts based on traffic formulas, etc. You can easily imagine that such a regulatory regime might have squelched the ability of California to develop HOV lanes in the 1970's.

It's not the end of the world if there are widespread competing standards that eventually coalesce. When the US South finally decided to convert to standard gauge railroad from broad gauge, they coordinated its rollout quite well (they pulled off the conversion in 36 hours in an impressive feat of coordinated engineering).

This is an extremely common misconception. Torque and Horsepower are directly related.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Horsepower#Relationship_with_torque
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Torque#Relationship_between_torque.2C_power_and_energy

This is an extremely common misconception. Torque and Horsepower are directly related.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Horsepower#Relationship_with_torque
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Torque#Relationship_between_torque.2C_power_and_energy

Diaspora looks like it has the best chance of becoming what you want. I do agree with the sibling comment that said that a communications protocol should support p2p communications so you could sync between cell phones or whatever without having to rely on the internet.

Here, take 3.5 minutes out of your very busy schedule and minimally educate yourself:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education

Pay special attention to:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Functions

You might also be interested in:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Establishment

if you're laboring under the illusion that federal involvement in education dates from 1979 (as opposed to 1867).

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Opposition

is interesting if you'd like to understand what a punching bag ED is. Understanding why would requiring understanding the dog-whistle of conservative US politics.

Here, take 3.5 minutes out of your very busy schedule and minimally educate yourself:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education

Pay special attention to:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Functions

You might also be interested in:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Establishment

if you're laboring under the illusion that federal involvement in education dates from 1979 (as opposed to 1867).

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Opposition

is interesting if you'd like to understand what a punching bag ED is. Understanding why would requiring understanding the dog-whistle of conservative US politics.

Here, take 3.5 minutes out of your very busy schedule and minimally educate yourself:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education

Pay special attention to:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Functions

You might also be interested in:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Establishment

if you're laboring under the illusion that federal involvement in education dates from 1979 (as opposed to 1867).

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Opposition

is interesting if you'd like to understand what a punching bag ED is. Understanding why would requiring understanding the dog-whistle of conservative US politics.

Here, take 3.5 minutes out of your very busy schedule and minimally educate yourself:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education

Pay special attention to:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Functions

You might also be interested in:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Establishment

if you're laboring under the illusion that federal involvement in education dates from 1979 (as opposed to 1867).

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education#Opposition

is interesting if you'd like to understand what a punching bag ED is. Understanding why would requiring understanding the dog-whistle of conservative US politics.

You forgot communications satellites, supersonic jets, atomic and nuclear bombs....

You forgot communications satellites, supersonic jets, atomic and nuclear bombs....

The problem is that it is coming to a choice: medical care for the poor or USGS. Housing for the poor or USGS. Investigation into the mating habits of obscure owls or USGS.

Is there an award for best example of false dichotomy?

Sure. It's only recently that pedophilia has been demonized. It was actually a custom in ancient Greece and Rome. Having been a victim of rape myself at age 5, I can't say I stand up for pedophilia. However when I see people accusing each other for non sexual images of children (like the old Coppertone ad, for example), cartoon images (like say, Lisa Simpson), or for statutory rape when say an 18 year old goes out with a 17 year old, I just have to shake my head and conclude that people are over-reacting and not sane. There's a difference between feeling sexual attraction for a 16 year old girl in a tight bikini and raping a 4 year old child. If people can't see this then they are not much better.

Really.

That link you provided says nothing about frequency.
I'm pretty sure that the 6.2 million Koreans named Park dwarfs the number of anglo Parks by practically two orders of magnitude.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/Cave_troll.jpg

http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u46173/steve-ballmer.jpg

The bailout was action to save the country from disaster.

Highly debatable, considering the current state of the country.. The savings and loan crisis (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis) of the 80s/90s saw 747 out of the 3,234 banks fail. And at worst we weathered the early 90s recession because of it: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Early_1990s_recession. The economy weathered that WAY better than it is weathering this clusterfuck of attempting to bailout/inflate our way out of a necessary correction. What has it been? 4 years now? And we're still at ~9% unemployment and the economy is still going at a snail's pace. There's frequent talk of a "double dip" and inflation is picking up heavily. Nor tell me how this bailout "saved us from disaster"?

Without the bailout, we'd be in the same damn place we are now. The only difference is that we wouldn't be battling a sovereign debt crisis, increasing inflation, and a bunch of pissed off OWS protestors due to bailouts. Oh yeah, and a bunch of crooked CEOs would be broke and out of business as well instead of having their malignant ways rewarded by the government.

GPS includes a (currently disabled) feature called Selective Availability (SA) that adds intentional, time varying errors of up to 100 meters (328 ft) to the publicly available navigation signals. This was intended to deny an enemy the use of civilian GPS receivers for precision weapon guidance.

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/10140

President Bush has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational technology, the White House said Wednesday.

So from what I understand, the accuracy of GPS can be degraded for civilians whenever the US government wishes to do it, and GWB tried to make it possible to switch off the network whenever a terrorist attack hits U.S. You have to admit that this doesn't make non-US users of the system feel very secure. I guess that in case of a terrorist attack, the US would not be very concerned about an ongoing French military operation in Ivory Coast for instance, and would switch off or degrade the system without a second thought.

Before Galileo was decided, US did not give the ability to use the full precision of the GPS to non military US units. It also has the capacity to unilateraly switch off GPS on a zone. Galileo will be a civilian system, for anyone to use. Presumably always on.

About redundancy, note that 2 other positioning systems are currently deployed :
Chinese Beidou : https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Beidou_navigation_system
Russian GLONASS : https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/GLONASS

Before Galileo was decided, US did not give the ability to use the full precision of the GPS to non military US units. It also has the capacity to unilateraly switch off GPS on a zone. Galileo will be a civilian system, for anyone to use. Presumably always on.

About redundancy, note that 2 other positioning systems are currently deployed :
Chinese Beidou : https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Beidou_navigation_system
Russian GLONASS : https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/GLONASS

Funny, my map doesn't do that...

My engineer friend points out that if this saves fuel for large shippers, that should decrease global warming, resulting in a future closing of the passage to these largest ships, right? :)

Only if bulk shipping used an appreciable fraction of global fossil fuel use. From the Wikipedia article:

3.5 to 4 percent of all climate change emissions are caused by shipping.

Furthermore, bunker fuel is high in sulfur. While sulfur dioxide pollution is generally not considered a good thing, it does produce aerosols that reflect light back into space and create some bit of cooling (think volcanic eruptions).

What level of success does TCP/IP owe to your glorious beard?

And a followup question: You were playing Asteroids on MAME in that wikimedia photo, weren't you?

But, perhaps more importantly, the end bill, and specifically the removal of the public option, was the result of several compromises with actual, real, elected Republicans.

That is simply not true. http://benefitmatrix.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=154:health-care-reform&catid=41:top-headlines
"After a revolt by a conservative group of "Blue Dog'' Democrats that led to more exemptions for businesses, the plan was adopted by three committees without Republican support."

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/59839-pelosi-nixes-deal-with-blue-dogs-on-healthcare
"Democrats are to discuss the public option at a caucus meeting Thursday. That discussion will include replacing the public option with nonprofit "cooperatives" that would compete with private insurers but would not be run by the government"

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mike_Ross_(politician)#The_Blue_Dogs_and_health_care
"Because many Blue Dogs, especially Ross, had serious concerns about the bill's potential harmful affects on rural doctors and rural hospitals, the group forced House leadership to accept that the government would negotiate rates with health care providers instead of using Medicare rates in any so-called public option."
"After Congress' August recess, Ross announced that he could not support a bill with a Public Option.[14] In a letter to constituents, he claimed that "An overwhelming number of you oppose a government-run health insurance option, and it is your feedback that has led me to oppose the public option as well."

Although Republicans opposed the public option, they were a nonfactor in any changes made to the bill. Those changes were made to appease blue dog democrats

Fourth, you idiot, the OWS protestors are not protesting the bailout. They're protesting the behavior of the banks who got the bailouts and then refused to loan anyone any money and handed the cash out to the presidents. They're protesting the fact that institutes exist that cannot be allowed to fail.

"Cannot be allowed to fail"? If there WAS NO BAILOUT, they WOULD HAVE FAILED. That means they are protesting the bailout. If you're going to give the banks a shit ton of free money with no strings attached, what do you expect? It's no different than any other government handout. Hell, the vast majority of Americans took their "tax stimulus" and shoved it into savings as well instead of spending it. How is this different? The government simply passed a shitty bill with no stipulations and people are directing their ire in the wrong direction.

Significantly more terrified after invasions of two of its largest neighbors, it should be noted.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Iran_(orthographic_projection).svg

I hope everyone knows which country is Iraq and which one is Afghanistan. And which one is Pakistan, whose relationship with the USA since 2001 must be unnerving to Iranians as well. Knowing Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Oman, Uzbekistan and Georgia are bonuses, all of whose USA bilateral ties must be unnerving to a government which, as you noted, has been terrified of an invasion since its founding in 1979.

It should also probably not be forgotten that a US navy ship shot down a passenger jet full of Iranians over the Persian Gulf in the 1980s, which is pretty terrifying an idea in general, and especially so to Americans who should be able to relate, considering the eerie similarity to the USSR downing of Korean Air flight 007 which killed almost 300 people, including a sitting US Congressman.

In any event, while the current Iranian government may be legitimately crazy, especially certain political blocs inside it, their fear and general malaise caused by American presence in the region is perfectly reasonable.

Yeah, man. I used to play 90125 when I had trouble sleeping.

No. There are only 3 steps.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hogel

What level of success does TCP/IP owe to your glorious beard?

Maybe if you actually read the patent and had some imagination

Maybe if you'd read the 'patent' you'd know, it, ummmm, isn't a patent.

It's a registered design that's being disputed, ie. the shape.

Here it is: http://www.scribd.com/doc/61944044/Community-Design-000181607-0001

If you're going to argue that that particular shape is radically different from dozens of others which came before it or that it's somehow not obvious or simply the next step from designs like the one below then you're an idiot.

eg. Take away this device's keyboard (which is needed because it's Windows and people expect to be able to do some work, not just 'browse') and it looks an awful lot like an iPad to me: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Tablet.jpg

Note date of that photo: 2006

And what you don't get is that "form follows function". All tablet designers were headed in that direction:

eg.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2006/03/samsungpictureframe.jpg

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Tablet.jpg

I would love to find a source of sashimi grade fish here in my part of the UK.

What's wrong with time since the Unix epoch? I'm using that and I'm doing fine!

2038 called (it uses neutrinos). There is a bit of an issue.

So add another 32 high-order bits of "since the Unix epoch":

$ cat foo.c
#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int
main(void)
{
printf("%zu\n", sizeof (time_t));
return 0;
}
$ gcc foo.c
$ ./a.out
8

Yeah, if I compile it 32-bit, that has a Y2.038K issue:

$ gcc -arch i386 foo.c
$ ./a.out
4

but hopefully by 2038 vendors will have dropped support for 32-bit code if for no other reason than to help get rid of Y2.038K bugs.

Another quick history lesson - https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bonus_Army - Sometimes this shit just means shit.

People get pissed, they make noise. That doesn't make change, having leaders who has the ability and will to get pissed people to follow them makes change. As much as OWS is something I enjoy seeing, I'm not pretending it's the fall of Rome.

Also, the pest affected different areas quite differently. See this map (green: no or minor occurrences of the Black Death). As far as I can see, the areas unaffected by the pest were not special in any way (not specially poor or uninhabited or anything) as far as my - admittedly small - knowledge goes.

Maybe someone there got the "hygiene" or "quarantaine" thing correctly, though.

Nice map - thanks.

I have heard it claimed that part of the reason for the pogroms against Jews during the plague was that Jews would kill rats (because they were unclean) and this led to lower plague rates in Jewish communities - which of course led to accusations that they were responsible (as they say, no good deed goes unpunished). Not that a reason was needed given the attitudes of the time...

I was reminded of this because of the large green area in central Poland. IIRC there were many Jewish communities in that part of the world and I wondered if it could have kept the infection rate down.

The article was about the future of computing. Most industry leaders believe that we are on the threshold of creating machines that actually think. This is not actually "computing" because the hardware used is not ordinary CPUs but rather circuits that mimic the way that neurons work. Such machines are not programmed and will have their own motivations. There is a summary discussion of this on wikipedia: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Technological_singularity

What's wrong with time since the Unix epoch? I'm using that and I'm doing fine!

2038 called (it uses neutrinos). There is a bit of an issue.

But is capsaicin the active ingredient in all 'hot' dishes or are there others?

Yes. But more seriously, capsaicin is what makes spicy food spicy, or rather all capsaicinoids are what make spicy food spicy.

source

.

If someone hoards a lot of money, they typically put them in a bank or other investment, which invests the money in business who hire people. They might hire them in China, of course, but somewhere people are getting jobs :) If they manage to take them out of the economy (placing them in say gold), then the remaining money should be worth more, making everyone who has money richer. Follow that line to the end if you please.

When mentioning adblockplus you should also mention BetterPrivacy

ABP rocks for preventing most ads and cookies.. but BetterPrivacy controls flashcookies - LSOs.

Ghostery is also a must.

You joke, but this wouldn't actually be hard.

It's natural to assume that one can't calculate the n'th digit of pi without first calculating all previous digits, but this isn't actually the case.

The same applies for 'e'.

"Spigot algorithms" are where it's at.

The radius of the part of the universe visible to us is about 46 billion light years or about 4*10^26 meters. The planck length, assumed to be the shortest length there is, is about 1.6*10^-35 meters. That is, the radius of the known universe is 2.7*10^61 planck lengths. Thus with just 62 digits of pi you are as accurate as the laws of physics allow. In practice you'll never need even that. Indeed, you'll not even measure cosmic distances to the meter (27 digits), or even to the kilometer (24 digits). Even measuring to the light year (12 digits) is probably impossible for objects that far out.

Since when was Meego a Microsoft product? Last time I checked Nokia N9 is the first, and probably, one of the last Meego handsets.

Since when was Meego a Microsoft product? Last time I checked Nokia N9 is the first, and probably, one of the last Meego handsets.

To quote Niccolò Machiavelli from The Prince:

"It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new."

To quote Niccolò Machiavelli from The Prince:

"It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new."

I think the current record in size naming is Overwhelmingly Large. However that's for optical telescopes.