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Symbian started to crash to quarter before Elop took over. Sure, him killing it didn't help, but he didn't start it. Their strategy at the time was to leave Symbian going to Meego, which probably wasn't going to be any better than WP. Tomi talks about the loved N9, but the fact is that Lumias have far outsold them.

I've been reading Tomi's blog for a few years now, and while he has some points, i started to question him when he talks about symbian as a top smartphone OS. Then i found another ex-Nokia employee who writes counters to Tomi and actually debunks some of Tomi's statistics. The blog is: Dominies Communicate
Turns out that Tomi sometimes just makes stuff up - eg, Only 40% of all smartphones sold are not touch screen. Unfortunately people believe Tomi's word. He was right about WP7, but wrong about Android and very wrong about Symbian. I'm not Elop isn't at fault, or has been exemplary, but Tomi's word shouldn't be taken at face value.

I've been reading Tomi's blog for a few years now, and while he has some points, i started to question him when he talks about symbian as a top smartphone OS. Then i found another ex-Nokia employee who writes counters to Tomi and actually debunks some of Tomi's statistics. The blog is: Dominies Communicate
Turns out that Tomi sometimes just makes stuff up - eg, Only 40% of all smartphones sold are not touch screen. Unfortunately people believe Tomi's word. He was right about WP7, but wrong about Android and very wrong about Symbian. I'm not Elop isn't at fault, or has been exemplary, but Tomi's word shouldn't be taken at face value.

Betting on Android always seems like a stupid long term idea to anyone except google. In the short term, sure. See Samsung making money hand over fist. In the long term, lets wait and see what Google's plans with Motorola is (not to mention eventual price erosion of all Android handsets as everyone just starts competing on price)

As an end-user (and an employee of Nokia at the time), I would've preferred Nokia going it alone with MeeGo or even Android. But it made zero sense logically.

And I'd ignore Ahonen on Nokia related news. Most of his opinions are taken apart here: http://dominiescommunicate.wordpress.com/

Anyway, it's blatantly obvious the WP7 decision was not by Elop. The board that needs to approve any of the decisions hadn't changed (and still held the past two CEO's). Could a new-comer (Elop) really change everyone's opinions that quickly? More likely that the board had decided to move to WP7, needed someone new to make the changes, and hired an ex-Microsoftie to do the business.

Elop is just the fall guy.

I've been actually missing a good Ahonen troll story.
Lately even comments citing his long-winded ramblings have become rare. Not every story about Nokia gets one that is moderated sufficiently high. I've been almost afraid that he has lost credibility even among Linux zealots. That point-by-point debunking has been published that made the majority of people concerned about Nokia think rationally again. But no, this one has made it again, and how timely: just before Q3 results, and the start of Windows Phone 8 sales. Think of it: even if Tomi will be proven a total ass in the next few years, he will be a well-to-do ass, because of all your traffic generating ad revenue. Help him, he's trying really hard.

Windows 8 is far more powerful than windows 7, and runs twice as fast. It is also much harder to pirate, and this point more than anything else has the Linux crowd in a panic.

It wont be long until Windows 7 is no longer supported, and when that happens, what is Linux going to do ?

Linux will have to find a way to work under Windows 8 from here on, since it wont be able to rely on Windows 7 being readily available anymore.

Linux may seem like a good alternative to Office, but all that is happening in linux is that the windows interface is cleverly hidden away. It still needs the drivers and software services in order to run, and in most cases - that happens WITHOUT a valid windows licence.

This is just plain piracy.

Windows 8 will finally put an end to this blatant abuse of intellectual property, and linux should decline, taking the pirates with it.

Anyone that supports the continuation of Windows 7 in place of Windows 8 surely has a hidden agenda .. and you will surely be caught out.

Haha, love it! Had forgotten about that one. ;)

yes, Pirsig and Zukav (The Dancing Wu Li Masters) helped to towards a point where I could begin to form an understanding of the quantum era.

A very good site to monitor is Retraction Watch - https://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/

They not only follow retractions in journals, but dig into them, and track them to other papers and publications by the same authors.

For those of us in industry, we forget there are areas of Academia that are dog-eat-dog, publish or perish.

Under such pressures, authors make up data, manipulate data and/or images, and more.

Take a look at Retraction Watch for the sordid details -- for us outsiders, it's like a soap opera for the geeky set!

Oh.. I don't know the first passed health care reform in almost 100 years.

Oh, except that's a total lie. First, we have had health care reform before: Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, ADA, FMLA. Second, and more importantly, what Obama signed was not health care reform. It was health insurance reform. When the problem is the lack of affordable care and a for-profit health insurance industry jacking up rates, that is no small distinction.

Ended Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Another lie. Congress passed a bill ending the codification of DADT, all Obama did was sign it. Three more problems with this:

1) Obama could have halted discharges until legislation was passed with the stroke of a pen, by issuing a stop loss order
2) Meaning over a thousand gay personnel had their lives and careers destroyed while Obama fiddle-farted around telling Congress not to rush repeal
3) The anti-discriminatory language that Obama opposed was removed from the bill, meaning that President Palin is free to go back to discharging gays with a stroke of her pen

Restarted the hunt for and killed Osama bin Laden

Yes, killed an unarmed old man suffering from failing kidneys while he was on the ground. So much easier to avoid the embarrassment of a trial where the defense could present evidence of CIA shenanigans or argue that the U.S. had long been making war on muslims by overthrowing their governments or killing half a million children with sanctions.

Oh, and giving third world paranoia legitimacy about the "real" purpose of vaccination programs by running a fake one to try and find Bin Laddin. Meaning thousands of children will die and another lifetime will pass before we have a chance of eradicating polio.

Smashing, yea capitalism!

He has pretty much done the majority of the items he promised to do on election day.

On what planet? Restoring rights and liberties: promise broken. Ending DADT and DOMA: promise broken (see above). Passing the EFCA: promise broken. No more dumb foreign wars: promise broken. Ending the Bush Tax Cuts: promise broken. Protecting whistleblowers: promise broken, and then some - he's prosecuted more than all previous presidents combined. Backing off state-based medical marijuana: not only has he broken that promise, he's raided 13 times as many dispensaries in thee years than Bush did in eight.

Maybe I'm just young, but most of my adult life has been under Bush, and now Obama. Bush seemed to mostly screw things up. Obama seems to mostly push things in a better direction.

Pushing for cuts to Social Security and Medicare is pushing the country in a better direction? Prosecuting fewer bankers than Bush is pushing the country in a better direction? Arranging the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the planet - from the poor to the rich - with bank bailouts is pushing the country in a better direction?

Unemployment is far higher than when Bush was in office, debt is higher than Bush was in office, wealth inequality is higher than Bush was in office, and we are in more foreign wars than when Bush was in office. Yes, much of this is due to Obama's inheritance of Bush Administration policies.

Policies Obama has chosen to continue.

True... Bat fish eat turtle poo:
http://fishileaks.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/turtle-crap-its-whats-for-dinner-if-youre-a-batfish/

But the bat fish evolved to do this. Dumping significant amounts of pig feces into a fish farm sounds like a good way to cause problems.

Which BASIC are you talking about though, this one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Programming

OK, so that is probably NOT what you meant, but seriously, there is some really good coin to be made in BASIC programming and I'm not talking just for the Trash80, C64 and Timex Sinclair.

Try this company to start, http://www.osas.com/
They have great accounting products based on Business BASIC, http://www.basis.com/

Programming in the accounting field "was" very lucrative for me.
WAS, because it was not my dream life to sit in a chair and stare at alpha numeric characters spilling down my screen like the Matrix all day long. Now I'm retired on a sailboat, living the life of a pirate, pun intended.

Oh, and just to be pedantic, BASIC is an acronym, Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, as you surely know.
Putting "Basic" on your resume may create some "semantic noise" for the reviewer.

And one last thing, you might consider moving on up the ladder,
With your grey hair and overall experience, you are sure to land a job as a "Consultant" and still get to program.
Differences between programmer and consultant explained here http://namingexception.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/dont-be-a-programmer-be-a-consultant/

Whoever wins, we lose

This is nothing new.

Obama Plasmids

If you read more of the alleged instances of plagarism, the pattern is pretty clearly that she copied structure and content including footnotes and references but mostly re-worded everything. I still think this qualifies as plagarism. One pretty clear example of plagarism, or at least "scientific mis-conduct" is e.g. this part which is written to look like 4 books were used to write the section, with titles of the books given in the foot nodes. But apparently only a single secondary source was used, with all foot notes lifted from that source, as indicated by multiple errors and inaccuracies that were copied as well (with no mention of the secondary source itself).

Oh, it sems that I switched tabs and copied the wrong text:

For the following text from Schavan's thesis:

Dabei haben sich – vergröbernd dargestellt – zwei unterschiedliche Verhältnisbestimmungen herauskristallisiert: [...]

the text claimed to be the original is:

Man kann drei verschiedene Ansichten über das Verhältnis des Menschen zum Tier unterscheiden[FN 2].

The conclusion is exactly the same.

The text I have accidentally copied seems to have come from the next page with alleged plagiarisms, which was open in another browser tab.

Sorry for that.

Please refrain from calling other people names, btw. Thank you!

Bullcrap.

See: here

You are a liar. The text you are calling "allegedly plagiarised" does not appear on the wiki page having your quotation from the thesis.

Indeed. I'd say if this is what he likes doing, perhaps he should get a blog and spare the rest of us.

Yeah, and I remember well when Berkeley Uni on their shiny expensive-disks SAN had their whole email system go up in flames for over a week due to a single failed drive and the extra IO hit to recover. When the same thing happens to me with the cheap SATA crap we use, I just move all the masters from that machine to other machines and let it rebuild. No loss of service, minimal impact spread over a large pile of users.

Apart from a really bad batch of 300Gb 10kRPM drives a couple of years ago, it's been very easy. Roughly one failure per month. Systems designed for rapid failover. No worries.

Even in the horrible case where I lost a whole machine and had to rebuild from scratch, only about 5% of users were affected by noticable slowdowns because they were on the source drives for the re-replication, and had to compete for IO. I could have reduced the impact on them by slowing the replication, but that's longer without full redundancy.

(this is all RAID1 as well)

There's more than one way to do it. I care about our users' data plenty, which is why it's on 6 separate live spindles PLUS backup.

http://whatwouldazen.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-three-types-of-data/

Peta sure is one sided, what about the cells in Vegetables, they have the same rights as humans, what about single celled yeast or atoms!!!!! Those monsters ( Peta ) don't care about them.

I've wondered about this for years. They are actually quite speciesist. They love all the cute, furry animals, but you never hear much from them about saving the Pygmy Hog Sucking Louse (which are just as endangered as those big-eyed baby seals.)

Who says plants want to die being eaten? Those spines and poisons and hard shells tell me they don't.

I think A. Whitney Brown said it best:
"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants."

This is pretty much what I think about the presidential election:

http://jaypgreene.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/alien_vs_predator_quad_movie_poster_l.jpg

And of course:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAT_BuJAI70

Just make your own Arduino mobile. You remove all of the firmware threat. http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/tutorial-arduino-and-gsm-cellular-part-one/

FWIW, I wrote a blog post showing in a simple, graphical manner that the variation between the treatments in the Seralini study isn't statistically significant. The study isn't conclusive at all and it really shouldn't be used as the basis for anything. It's just too bad that it got so much attention (thanks to the press conference and sensational pictures) while its multiple flaws seem to have much less traction in the media and public discussion.

127.0.0.1

Pics:

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/colourful-honey-france.jpg

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/colourful-honey.jpg

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/green-honey-france.jpg

From this article:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/05/french-beekeepers-blame-mms-candy-for-mysterious-blue-and-green-honey/

Pics:

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/colourful-honey-france.jpg

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/colourful-honey.jpg

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/green-honey-france.jpg

From this article:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/05/french-beekeepers-blame-mms-candy-for-mysterious-blue-and-green-honey/

Pics:

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/colourful-honey-france.jpg

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/colourful-honey.jpg

http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/green-honey-france.jpg

From this article:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/05/french-beekeepers-blame-mms-candy-for-mysterious-blue-and-green-honey/

Headlines like "Internet accounts for 5 million jobs and 4% of the economy" are misleading because they do not say how many jobs the internet made obsolete or how much older economic activity is no longer needed. In the same way that agricultural labor went from 90% of the US workforce (200 years ago) to about 2% (although lots of people still garden as a hobby), manufacturing etc. is going from around 35% of the US workforce (50 years ago) to around 10% now and probably, like agriculture, around 2% fairly soon. The decline of paid manufacturing labor is inevitable given flexible robotics and 3D printers and so on. Just look at a stream of slashdot articles on robotics and such. I agree that thinking the "service" economy is going to provide jobs, like some say, is ridiculous -- but I feel it is because service robotics and AI and free information exchange is proliferating. We need to fundamentally rethink the notion of an income-through-jobs link as the main thing granting a right to consume the fruits of our increasingly automated agricultural, industrial, and service sectors (see the 1964 "Triple Revolution Memorandum" and Marshall Brain's recent story "Manna"). We need to some combination of a "basic income", a proliferation of personally-owned means of production (like gardening robots, 3D printers, and solar panels), an expanded gift economy like via GNU/Linux and Wikipedia and the Creative Commons, and better internet-facilitated participatory government planning at all levels. More details are here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

For good or bad, the wage-based economy as we knew it is in its final death spiral. The stronger the demand for decent wages and good working conditions, the faster most jobs of any sort will be automated. For example, here is a robotic system under development that can replace most fast-food workers:
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/fast-food-robotics-an-update/
There may be some jobs that will be exceptions to automation for longer periods of time (for example, ones at Google developing AI to replace more jobs), but overall that is the trend. Here is a related video parable I made about that:
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA

"Another possible characteristic of the new species, Dr. Sereno said, is that its body might have been covered in quills, something like those of a porcupine. If so, he pictured that in life Pegomastax would have scampered around in search of suitable plants, looking something like a “nimble two-legged porcupine.” http://bioteaching.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/img0.jpg I love reading about dinosaurs but its hard to consider some paleontologists serious when they decide to just make shit up to make their discoveries more interesting.

rockmuelle's reply is excellent, and gives a fairly accurate assessment of the field.

My view is that Bioinformatics/Computational Biology is not a bubble, simply because these disciplines do not reflect a *job market* but rather a shift in how all of biology will be done in the future. Just as molecular approaches transformed the way biology is done during the 1970s-1990s, computational approaches will likewise transform how biology is done in the 21st century. And just as molecular techniques in biology have not (and will not) go away any time soon, neither will computational techniques. The crucial thing to recognize is that there is still a relative underrepresentation of *good* computational biologists (i.e. with strong skills in biology AND computing) so I would strongly recommend this career path for your son.

For more on why I think PhD students and post-docs should train in computational biology, please see: (Top N Reasons To Do A Ph.D. or Post-Doc in Bioinformatics/Computational Biology). Some of these should apply directly to undergraduates, and should factor into his decision making process for the long-term.

They both grow in dirt (organic and conventional), they are the same plant, they don't, on balance, have more or less of anything than the rest of the fruits and vegetables

Aside from the fact that your claim is completely, utter and demonstrably false, it neglects to take into consideration that most of the soil on commercial farms in the U.S. has not only been depleted of essential trace elements but has also been so thoroughly abused and mismanaged over the years that even the basics need to be supplemented by appliying synthetic fertilizers.

Bottom line if you want to pay 3X as much for your food buy organic.

Yes, sometimes there's a 200% (or greater) premium for organic produce but in many cases, it's more like 25 to 50%. A more useful metric would be determine the value that buying organic adds, and that depends on the item. For example, the growing methods for conventional and organic tropical fruit (pineapples, mangos, bananas and avacados come to mind) likely don't differ much if at all; it's about the auditing, certifying/verification. etc. In other cases, (peaches, strawberries, leafy greens), it's common-knowledge that the quantities of pesticide resides in convenionally-grown varieties are through the roof (no doubt a non-issue for a shill such as yourself but for those of us watching our health or that of our children, it's something we might want to take into consideration). Of course, these are the very same items that often require exhorbitant premiums like you stated - but you get what you pay for (where have we heard that before?).

And don't forget, we can't feed the world's population organically. Can't be done!

This is a partial truth which ignores the bigger picture (which, of course, at the end of the day, means it's still a lie): doing things the way "Big Ag" currently does them, yes, you're right: organic farming simply can't be scaled up and achieved using the wasteful, petroleum-dependent methods and practices that are currently employed (as I said above, the dirt just won't allow it). Nope; you'd have to change how you go about it (imagine that).

For those who aren't paid shills and have a genuine interest in the subject, I suggest looking through some of the following:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating/latest/organic-foods-benefits-460110-5

http://eartheasy.com/blog/2011/10/7-ways-organic-farms-outperform-conventional-farms/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/07/10/us-farming-organic-idUSN1036065820070710

http://environment.about.com/od/healthenvironment/a/organicfarming.htm

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4060

http://youngagropreneur.wordpress.com/

http://theurbanfarmingguys.com/our-story

http://seedstock.com/2012/02/01/wisconsins-future-farm-sustainable-cow-powered-aquaponics/

http://bioponica.org/

Slashdot linked to the blog's homepage instead of the specific blog entry with the video, so the link isn't going to give the right result if they post anything else to the blog.

http://nextpoint.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/learn-how-to-avoid-a-case-killer/

There's a big difference, though. The judge did effectively say that both companies should be considered to be acting in such a manner, but the instructions against Samsung (as the defendant) obviously carried far more weight. And it allowed (legally) personal feelings to be part of the decision making process at that point by the jury. At that point, from a practical standpoint, Apple didn't really have to show everything (that's what the upcoming counter-suit is all about - watch Apple get reamed for the same reasons, most likely) to make its case at that point. If the Jury could basically be as impartial to both as it wished, well Samsung simply loses, as I said.

Samsung also has a history of doing this in 2004.
Apple's errors were of omission and basically refusing to show all of its evidence.(basically being asses and cock-blocking everything) Samsung's errors were clearly destruction of evidence on a massive scale, as is their long-standing policy. They basically chose to ignore discovery laws in North America and follow what's legal in South Korea. Which is apparently almost anything you want to do by comparison. Thumbing your nose at the courts in the U.S. and refusing to comply pretty much gets you a pounding every time. Samsung's misdeeds here are far more severe than Apple's.

To clarify:
Judge: "They both were lying asshats. Assume Samsung is guilty and unable to make an adequate defense against the charges. Assume Apple's claims are overblown. Feel free to be as impartial as you see fit. I'm done with this."
Jury:"Awesome. "We'll be back in a few hours after we figure out what charges Samsung can't defend against and which ones Apple is going overboard on."

Physical copies are a different story. Almost nobody expects physical copies to exist any more since emails and computers have been the norm for a few decades now. Note - if you did run a business purely by phone and on paper, you could get around much of this. But it would have to quite literally be 100% offline. Of course, failure to have physical copies at that point pretty much tanks your case. It's why a lot of companies that are still paper-based have sometimes decades of files in storage. Just in case.

Electronic copies are to be kept for whatever is required by law. Any gaps are considered to be essentially willfully done or done via negligence by the courts. If there's say, a fire, then it's more of a gray area, of course. A lot of companies aren't remotely in compliance with data retention laws, unfortunately, and get an earful (or more) when they get in front of a judge. Some just settle as well because the second that they look into the laws and realize that they never did anything correctly, it's better than get reamed in court.

It used to be a lot more lax, but in the last decade, the laws have gotten almost a bit crazy.

Obviously the rules differ by industry as well as for data type. Also, by jurisdiction (with, for instance, California and New York being among the most strict about it) Government projects, defense contractors, and so on have a lot more leeway. But 98% of the time, we're talking about email and database records that mysteriously go missing (which is all the courts really seem to actually care about unless it's relevant to the case itself, like a specific patent or piece of code). The general consensus is that you keep email backups forever. Some mid-size companies even have a dedicated person in IT who manages all of this and knows the laws regarding this.

http://www.dredlaw.com/2009/07/new-e-discovery-rules-in-california.html
As I said, it's gotten a bit crazy as of late.

http://nextpoint.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/learn-how-to-avoid-a-case-killer/
Improper data retention was a major factor in the Samsung vs Apple case, in fact. And this same messup will likely crush them in their counter-suit since the judge will likely tell the jury to assume the worst concerning Samsung since they pretty much destroyed documents on purpose.

0) It's ok... I don't accept legal advice from strangers anyway. ;) 1) Yes. 2) Yes, but there are many questions of fact. For example, are the scanners effective (since effectiveness is a part of the balancing test in deciding if a search is reasonable)? See my video on that: http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/1b-of-nude-body-scanners-made-worthless-by-blog-how-anyone-can-get-anything-past-the-tsas-nude-body-scanners/ 3) 11th Circuit. The wires have mistakenly reported me as a Michigan resident since I used a Michigan mailing address on court documents. I live in Miami Beach, FL. 4) Thank you. :)

Thank you, and you're quite welcome! There's a donate button on my blog: http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/ I'm considering trying Kickstarter/Indygogo, but for now, just PayPal. :) --Jon

Hello, filer of the lawsuit here. There's perhaps a little bit more to read than what you've read... the first page of my SCOTUS petition or 11th Circuit appellate brief would have cleared things up. :) The brief summary is that my lawsuit was filed in District Court quite intentionally: District Court is the only federal court that has a trial by jury, as well as discovery and witnesses as-of-right. After filing, the TSA invoked a law that was not designed to send challenges to agency "orders" to the US Court of Appeals. The idea behind the law is that some administrative agencies have proceedings with administrative law judges that legitimately should be challenged in the appeals courts. For example, if you try to bring a knife on a plane, the TSA has administrative law judges to assess a civil penalty against you, and you can appeal that decision to the appeals court. However, the TSA has now successfully argued that ANYTHING THEY WRITE DOWN CONSTITUTES AN "ORDER" THAT CANNOT BE THE SUBJECT OF A JURY TRIAL. Think about that for a second: the gatekeepers of our constitutional rights are supposed to be *the people*. Instead, it is now a group of men that are appointed by the President, who happens to be the guy who appoints the head of the TSA who started this mess. My fight against the TSA will continue on in the appeals court, which is the only good news here. You may read more at: http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/supreme-court-declines-to-consider-whether-nude-body-scanners-deserve-a-trial/

The plaintiff was hoping to get a jury trial in the district court. All suits regarding TSA in the DC circuit court go straight to appeals, meaning no jury trial is possible there. This is the same court that has been so deferential to DHS in the EPIC suit on the same topic. The plaintiff seemed to think a jury would be more receptive to his arguments.

Is another suit in the DC court worth the trouble? If not, then Mr. Corbett has been about as effective as Jesse Ventura was in his suit.

Does seem somewhat calculated to trigger outrage.
On his actual blog he attempts an explanation of the IP tracking by saying it is similar to a method described here:
http://evertb.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/tracking-a-troll/
but the method described is far from convincing.

Was that JUST the canal regrown or the Cochlear as well??

Just the outside cartridge. You can see photos of the whole procedure here, including the arm surgury (warning: gruesome):
http://cbsbaltimore.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/sw-microvascular-ear-recon-rfff.pptx

It is a Powerpoint slideshow, but opens fine in LibreOffice 3.4.

yes. It is extremely expensive to create new forms of anti-depressants, and treatments for erectile dysfunction... meanwhile tropical diseases don't have a business case. If that's all patents cand fund, it would be more straightforward to fund merit-based research into worthwhile causes directly with taxes (NIH), rather than have the market invent more profitable problems to address and completely avoid the ones that would do the world the most good. ... http://canadasworld.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/orphan-drugs-for-orphan-diseases-the-non-profit-pharmaceutical-model/

Don't forget lightning and thunder. According to Hollywood, they *always* happen at the same time.

Oh, that is such a good point. What does it say about us that what we see on the screen is more real to us than what we see looking out the window?

I wonder if this was done explicitly to address the question of FTL

I seem to recall Whedon saying that it was.

celestial mechanics wouldn't easily allow so many worlds to be in the habitable zone..

That assumes that the sun is the only source of heat in the star system. I believe that most of the worlds were orbiting gas giants (as shown in the opening scene in "The Train Job") which could have been major heat sources, Also, the terraforming (which is never described) might have included installation of some kind of "greenhouse field". Heinlein used the same gimmick in "Farmer in the Sky."

Firefly was never about the technology, but the characters and story.

I don't quite agree. FF was Joss Whedon's attempt at "hard" SF (he said so), and that subgenre, if done right, is about characters, story, and technology. And, in many cases, it's about historical parallels, though in this case the browncoats are significantly less racist than their Confederate analogs.

To me, the second biggest disappointment in FF (the first being the way the network totally destroyed it through meddling and stupid scheduling) was that it demonstrated Whedon's inability to deal with the complexities of doing this kind of story. He just doesn't care about the nitpicky details that much — he's a comic book kind of storyteller, and he always ends up sacrificing logic and plausibility if it gets in the way of the story going the way he wants it to go.. That's why I finally got bored with Buffy, after years of being a rabid fan.

The only way to distribute Metro apps (x86 or ARM) is via the Windows store. "Side loading" (with is just a funky name for installing Metro apps outside the windows store) is only available for Windows enterprise and server editions. See http://richfrombechtle.wordpress.com/tag/windows-8-sideloading/ or google for "sideloading windows 8"

I don't know you guys that are talking about tablets got the memo that Windows 8 also (unfortunately) runs on the desktop.

This is a path that goes a lot further then Apple as I'm still able to install software freely on my Apple desktop. With Windows also, but not the new Metro apps they are trying to push or I should run the enterprise version.

There's no known attacks against WPA other than dictionary and brute-force which will work on anything

You mean, apart from known attacks on WPS, which is commonly enabled on access points using WPA.

"Innocence of Muslims" was produced by Islamists.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is Meth-dealer-Egyptian-Coptic-anti-Muslim-activist-fundamentalist-Christian. Then on the other hand, Eiad Salameh appears to be a Muslim-fundamentalist-Palestinian-scam-artist-terrorist.

We're being duped again (and that includes me as well) by the ill-informed Media.

Walid Shoebat has the drop on these guys on his blog.

Here's a crazy idea or two ...

1. You know, maybe they could stop wasting money on an inanimate object called "terror". And/or stop trying to kill people who think different.
http://freemarketmojo.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/dat2010mint.jpg

2. Or maybe stop wasting money on undeployed and under-developed tech ...
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/how-to-blow-6-billion-on-a-tech-project/

"cost growth and execution problems were based on the fact that no GMR radios were ever even tested by potential users until 2010. After 13 years in the pipeline, what those users saw was a radio that weighed as much as a drill sergeant, took too long to set up, failed frequently, and didn't have enough range."

Nah, that's just crazy talk ...

Get in the plane.

http://mostlymargaret.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/spruce-moose.jpg

This is not enough to complain on /. about how bad things get at the airport, and more action is required. I would support a good cause and I found a guy who runs TSA Out Of Our Pants blog. Consider donating a coffee cup to him (there's paypal button). I'm not affiliated in any way with the site, but looking at how quickly our freedoms are dissolving, I do want to make sure that people like do not disappear:
http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/

... too big and don't have the population density. I'm sure the Australians will run into the same problem sooner or later.

Australia ran into that problem a long time ago...

http://petergrantfineart.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/aust-usa-map.jpg

Population is about 22 million people according to google.