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See the 'Electronics on Board' section: http://www.faa.gov/passengers/flyingsafe.cfm

The FCC and FAA ban cell phones for airborne use because its signals could interfere with critical aircraft instruments.

My relative at the FAA who has 25 years of civilian airline experience before working at FAA tells me that the 'critical instruments' in question are indeed the ground radar.

if somebody crashes the plane

Well it's nice to see that you read my post before replying. CELL PHONES DO NOT CAUSE THE PLANE TO CRASH. WHICH PART OF THAT WASN'T CLEAR? By interfering with the above ground radar landings can be MUCH harder but any pilot good enough to get a license won't actually crash the damn plane for crying out loud. Hard landings have all kinds of implications, from someone bumping their head to a faster maintenance cycle for important (and expensive) parts like the landing gear assemblies.

I'm reminded of the STNG episode where the people who were in cryogenic suspension were revived. The bad caricature of the business magnate used the intercom and the captain fussed at him for using it. 'Why isn't there a lock on it?' asked the magnate. 'Because we're capable of exercising control,' replied the captain. How pathetic that people can't just turn off their phones on planes without needing them to be confiscated and/or banned.

But his movies are WAY too pretentious to have fun! I love stupid fun movies. I watched Starsky & Hutch a couple of days ago and it was a great movie to simply turn off your brain and have fun. But Ben Stiller knows it was not supposed to be high art. It never hit you over the head about the alleged dangers of suburban conformity in the way Edward Scissorhands.

My problem with Burton is that each and every one of his movies is covered with a veneer of surrealism. Because of that, nothing in his movies seem real. His movies have no characters, merely caricatures. And because they're not real, it's impossible to have any emotional attachment to them. They're just pretty images on a screen.

There was a time I thought he'd drop the totally fake looking sets, create some real characters, and most importantly, add a human element to his films. But I've given up on that a long time ago.

The original C&C was innovative for its day, but the gameplay is, by modern standards, slow and without variety. Play it for its storyline, the movies are quite good. Kane is a badass, it cannot be denied.

C&C: Red Alert has dated graphics, but the gameplay is still surprisingly solid. Play as the Soviets, you'll be rewarded with excellent cutscenes courtesy of Comrade Stalin.

C&C: Tiberian Sun does not significantly advance the series' graphics, despite being 4 years newer than RA. Surprise! You may or may not like the gameplay; I remember it as disappointing. The cutscenes have high production values, and try really hard to be good, but they don't stack up to Red Alert. James Earl Jones.

Red Alert 2 is what you'll probably end up playing. It is divorced from the rest of the C&C games in art direction and storyline: it is cartoony and takes Red Alert's premise, then makes a completely different story out of it. The gameplay is spot on though, lots of options in armor and infantry, elite units, upgrades and promotions, fun superweapons, etc. The cutscenes are more tongue-in-cheek than the other games, their characters are humorous caricatures of previous C&C characters. You'll defintely laugh at at least one point.

RA2 also has an excellent expansion pack with an entirely new playable army and three campaigns; the other games have expansions, but they are really mission packs.

Please folks, reg free links. No one wants to (or should) register for news

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The battle over digital copyrights and illegal file sharing is often portrayed as a struggle between Internet scofflaws and greedy corporations. Online music junkies with no sense of the marketplace, the argument goes, want to download, copy and share copyrighted materials without restriction. The recording industry, on the other hand, wants to squeeze dollars - by lawsuit and legislation, if necessary - from its property.

The issue, of course, is far subtler than this, but one aspect of the caricature is dead on: the artists are nowhere to be found. A survey released yesterday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an arm of the Pew Research Center in Washington, aims to change that. The report, "Artists, Musicians and the Internet," combines and compares the opinions of three groups: the general public, those who identify themselves as artists of various stripes (including filmmakers, writers and digital artists) and a somewhat more self-selecting category of musicians.

Most notably, it is the first large-scale snapshot of what the people who actually produce the goods that downloaders seek (and that the industry jealously guards) think about the Internet and file-sharing.

Among the findings: artists are divided but on the whole not deeply concerned about online file-sharing. Only about half thought that sharing unauthorized copies of music and movies online should be illegal, for instance. And makers of file-sharing software like Kazaa and Grokster may be unnerved to learn that nearly two-thirds said such services should be held responsible for illegal file-swapping; only 15 percent held individual users responsible.

The subset of 2,755 musicians, who were recruited for the survey through e-mail notices, announcements on Web sites and flyers distributed at musicians' conferences, had somewhat different views. Thirty-seven percent, for instance, said the file-sharing services and those who use them ought to share the blame for illegal trades. Only 17 percent singled out the online services themselves as the guilty parties.

"This should solve the problem once and for all about whether anyone can say they speak for all artists," said Jenny Toomey, the executive director of the Future of Music Campaign, a nonprofit organization seeking to bring together the various factions in the copyright wars.

Ms. Toomey, whose group helped draft part of the survey, believes that artists are usually underrepresented in the debates about the high-tech evolution of the industry.

"These decisions need to be made with artists at the table," she said, adding, "it's not enough for both sides to reach out and get an artist who supports their position."

Indeed, big-ticket acts like Metallica and Don Henley have famously denounced illegal file sharing. And the Recording Industry Association of America, which has filed thousands of lawsuits against individual file-sharers, often invokes musicians as prime movers in its crusade.

"Breaking into the music business is no picnic," its Web site reads. "Piracy makes it tougher to survive and even tougher to break through."

File-sharers, on the other hand, often point to high-profile performers like Moby and Chuck D who acknowledge that the online swap meet has provided them with valuable exposure.

"I know for a fact that a lot of people first heard my music by downloading it from Napster or Kazaa," Moby wrote in his online journal last year. "And for this reason I'll always be glad that Napster and Kazaa have existed."

Without questioning the convictions of artists who feel strongly one way or another, however, the Pew survey appears to show that the creative set is both mindful of the benefits the Internet promises and ambivalent about the abuses it facilitates.

"The overall picture," said Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Project, "is that the musician-artistic community has a much wider ran

Pew File-Sharing Survey Gives a Voice to Artists
By TOM ZELLER Jr.

Published: December 6, 2004

The battle over digital copyrights and illegal file sharing is often portrayed as a struggle between Internet scofflaws and greedy corporations. Online music junkies with no sense of the marketplace, the argument goes, want to download, copy and share copyrighted materials without restriction. The recording industry, on the other hand, wants to squeeze dollars - by lawsuit and legislation, if necessary - from its property.

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The issue, of course, is far subtler than this, but one aspect of the caricature is dead on: the artists are nowhere to be found. A survey released yesterday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an arm of the Pew Research Center in Washington, aims to change that. The report, "Artists, Musicians and the Internet," combines and compares the opinions of three groups: the general public, those who identify themselves as artists of various stripes (including filmmakers, writers and digital artists) and a somewhat more self-selecting category of musicians.

Most notably, it is the first large-scale snapshot of what the people who actually produce the goods that downloaders seek (and that the industry jealously guards) think about the Internet and file-sharing.

Among the findings: artists are divided but on the whole not deeply concerned about online file-sharing. Only about half thought that sharing unauthorized copies of music and movies online should be illegal, for instance. And makers of file-sharing software like Kazaa and Grokster may be unnerved to learn that nearly two-thirds said such services should be held responsible for illegal file-swapping; only 15 percent held individual users responsible.

The subset of 2,755 musicians, who were recruited for the survey through e-mail notices, announcements on Web sites and flyers distributed at musicians' conferences, had somewhat different views. Thirty-seven percent, for instance, said the file-sharing services and those who use them ought to share the blame for illegal trades. Only 17 percent singled out the online services themselves as the guilty parties.

"This should solve the problem once and for all about whether anyone can say they speak for all artists," said Jenny Toomey, the executive director of the Future of Music Campaign, a nonprofit organization seeking to bring together the various factions in the copyright wars.

Ms. Toomey, whose group helped draft part of the survey, believes that artists are usually underrepresented in the debates about the high-tech evolution of the industry.

"These decisions need to be made with artists at the table," she said, adding, "it's not enough for both sides to reach out and get an artist who supports their position."

Indeed, big-ticket acts like Metallica and Don Henley have famously denounced illegal file sharing. And the Recording Industry Association of America, which has filed thousands of lawsuits against individual file-sharers, often invokes musicians as prime movers in its crusade.

"Breaking into the music business is no picnic," its Web site reads. "Piracy makes it tougher to survive and even tougher to break through."

File-sharers, on the other hand, often point to high-profile performers like Moby and Chuck D who acknowledge that the online swap meet has provided them with valuable exposure.

"I know for a fact that a lot of people first heard my music by downloading it from Napster or Kazaa," Moby wrote in his online journal last year. "And for this reason I'll always be glad that Napster and Kazaa have existed."

Without questioning the convictions of artists who feel strongly one way or another, however, the Pew survey appears to show that the creative set is both mindful of the benefits the Internet promises and ambivalent about the abuses it facilitates.

"The overall picture," said Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Project, "is that the musician-ar

Don't blame this phenomenon on the Lawyers, it's the Republicans who are driving it. They do away with regulation claiming that "the free market will solve it, if someone harms you, you take them to court, don't rely on regulation....", and then they are shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, when there are swarms of lawsuits because the coal plant down the street decided against installing pollution control and gave a whole town black lung. Amazing how that works. Of course the next step is utterly predictable.... "It's the lawyers causing all these lawsuits, we should ban lawsuits so that people can't impoverish wrecklessly irresponsible corporations..."

It was all a plan from the very beginning to make corporations, CEOs, Doctors, etc... totally immune to any liability no matter how careless or flat our murderous their actions.

For instance, take another simple example, malpractice lawsuits. I ask you this, if I'm a civil engineer, and I design a building that is faulty, it falls over one day and kills someone, what happens? At the very least I get sued, and with very high probability I get a criminal case against me and I go to jail. Now this sort of thing is more of a risk for doctors (they play with life and death every day), so they get the BENEFIT of going to civil court rather than criminal court if they kill someone. Of course the republican party would love to get rid of that too so that your local HMO could hire Dr. Nick of the Hollywood medical school and ice cream shop, and not have any worries about his incompetence causing lawsuits. This has been the goal all along.

It seems that there are two choices. Either effective regulation to prevent mistakes, or lots of lawsuits to punish the screwups. You can't have a system where corporations are immune to regulation by the government, and immune to lawsuits from private citizens. They are already effectively immune to criminal prosecution, so what's left? Why wouldn't your local firm dump pure cyanide in the river if it knew that nobody on earth could make them pay one solitary cent for killing off a whole town?

As I said before, don't blame the trial lawyers. This caricature of justice was created by the republicans specifically so they could dismantle the whole system by pointing to how sucky it is.

This came to mind, when I after looking at these pictures read your post. Perhaps our brain needs some sort of caricature or simplified image of faces for us to recognize them, but this layer of vision is hidden in uninjured brain from our conscious mind.

Now, the works of Woolfe, Joyce, and hundreds of authors who are mostly forgotten are read primarily by 'experts' in the field or by lit majors, while Tolkien and Lewis are two of the most recognized fiction writers in the world.

I'm sorry, but Tolkien and Lewis (CS Lewis?!?) are not great writers, and won't be considered as such in the future. Writers feted in their own time (by the public or the authorities) are often forgotten about a century later. In fact those you cited as 'read by experts' were largely ignored or vilified during their own lifetimes.

Tolkien is famous right now because of the film, and will fade back to insignificance in a few decades. He is not a great writer, and will never be considered as such, because his work really isn't that good. I read it when I was 10 (twice) and was enthralled by it, but the standard of writing is not very high; the characters are caricatures, the dialog is flat, and the jokes are tortuous buffoonery (esp the dwarves). However the plot is full of archetypal myths, and the linguistic references and languages are interesting. This doesn't make it a classic, just interesting. Huge hollywood films or comments on Slashdot claiming it's 'The best book of the 20C' will not it make a classic either.

Rowling is a mediocre writer. Just because her books have been made into blockbuster films and are popular right now doesn't make them better than average. There's a lot of other more deserving talent in Childrens' books - take a look at 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' for example. Unfortunately the way media hype works makes fame and accolades accrete on 'stars' and is divorced from any notions of quality.

The influence of Joyce on writers in this century alone means he's not going to disappear any time soon. Woolfe is also far more interesting than Tolkien (or CS Lewis, or Rowling) both in the characters she tackles, the social issues, and the language - have you read any of her books? If you want to choose someone from this century who is a 'great writer' Grahame Greene would be a good choice - accessible but writes very well.

You're assuming there's such a thing as a "mature Java based solution." Pretty much every Java application I see/work with just reaffirms my belief that the language and the JVM are Busch league caricatures of real solutions. Why would one choose Java over Perl or PHP for web apps? For speed? Java certainly isn't giving you a speed boost over PHP or Perl. Is it because people enjoy System.stuff.morestuff.thisthing.and.thatthing that span 80 columns so much? Don't even get me started on Swing. "Complicated" Swing apps (which would be reasonably uncomplicated in any other "architecture") fail to run properly even on fast systems with 512MB of RAM. Java is a joke and everytime I hear someone try to defend it, I laugh.

We can also go into the fact that Java is not free, but I'll leave you to analyze that on your own.

If I had a dollar for every idiotic caricature of Republicans that I've read or heard over the past couple weeks, I could put Bill Gates out on his posterior...

Rememeber, we suffer for your gain.

oh Please, only on Slashdot would this kind of rah-rah All-American bullshit get modded insightful.
Americans are NOT suffering so that Canadians (or anyone else for that matter) can live a life of plenty, living off the hard work of freedom loving libertarians who pay their way with an honest buck. Drug companies may be powerful, but they can be and are regulated or ignored by governments. Witness Brazil allowing generics to be created, against the will of said Multi-National drug companies. They also can't afford to just leave markets as some kind of retaliatory gesture.

Prices and working conditions are controlled all over the world, including in America. Fully free markets are not pretty (see Somalia right now), and your caricature of 'market forces at work' has very little to do with reality in any case.

The logical (and absurd) endpoint of your argument that 'regulation encourages outsourcing' is to do away with all regulation, unions and workers rights and live with the consequences, allowing the world to descend into a hell where money is the only measure of value. We'd end up choosing the lowest common denominator of conditions/rights/wages because that's where the jobs will 'flow' to. Is that really what you're suggesting?

The sensible alternative is to impose some restrictions and tarrifs on companies who use child labour or otherwise exploit their workforce (wherever that may be if they sell to western markets they can be controlled), and gradually try to adjust their behaviour so that they improve working conditions for their workers. Conditions are improving in India (for example) partly because of pressure from elsewhere, and partly because the country is maturing. The growth of outsourcing there has everything to do with a burgeoning IT industry centered on Bangalore, with workers who are relatively (for the country) well paid, and nothing to do with sweatshops.

Protecting children from porn is no different in my eyes than protecting them from cigarettes.

And, in a similar vein, let's face it, protecting childern from porn is no different from protecting them from forms of violence. And what is more natural?

What leads to greater worries? What is more damaging? Hell, what is more informative?

Personally, I'd rather teach my kids through visual media sex than how to kill, maim, torute people.

Why do we perceive a natural act to be less suitable for our kids to view?

We let our kids see caricatures of violence, but shield them from perceptions of sex, personally I see that as being a little bit strange.

I know that Law & Order, for example, will do similar things, where they remove fuzziness from photos or video. But that's more acceptible because that is just a portion of the investigation. In CSI, it is the entire investigation. So when they get one so wrong, it completely ruined it for me.

I know it's only one episode and only amateur shutterbugs like me would even be offended by it. But damn that was stupid.

No, but in this case they have become enamoured with a gross caricature of knowledge, not knowledge itself.

People get really excited about Star Trek physics, too.

"My point was that even counting their long hibernation cycles they should have had 1,000 years of awake-time to improve their technology."

Given the desire to do so, and given that they actually invented it in the first place. They appear to be a degenerating society with ultimate longevity that might not have the same imperatives. What I was suggesting was that their empire fell due to a lack of resistence; when you're top of the food chain you don't have to strive too hard.

Given that they may not have a social imperative to 'become better', then it does seem conceivable that their technology would have moved forward that much. Ancient technology certainly didn't move that far forward in the time it took to traverse to Pegasus.

"Perhaps I should have been more precise."

Nah, I would've been a pedantic sh** if you had.

"made 10,000 years ago by people defeated by (presumably) the wraiths."

Defeated is such a definate word. Driven to a stalemate? Bear in mind that we still don't know why they abandoned the city in the first place.

"On the other hand, the difference in complexity of travelling through a force field and a lump of titanium is something I have no direct experience with, so I'm willing to concede this point."

Titanium is a collection of empty space sparsely populated with nuclei and electrons, whereas a forcefield seems to have no problem stopping anything. It's like a sci-fi law or something.

Regarding the Tolan advance vs the Ancient advance; there does appear to be parallel development along certain lines. But I don't think that any of the races encountered really had the same blend of technology. Consider aboriginal hunters from Australia, South America and Africa and their different approaches, environments and basic technology of wood and stone.

"since any race with technology that rivals the Ancients must also have the ability to synthesise food indistinguishable from the real thing on a molecular level at a negligible cost."

True enough, but bear in mind that there may be objections about doing that. They do seem particularly arrogant, but we haven't yet established that their technology was on a par with the ancients. All we know is that the Ancients 'lost', which could come from superior tactics or the ability to take a beating and still keep coming.

"Relegating them to the rôle of subject-race"

I can see that coming, but I don't think it would be the end of series one; for one thing that would echo the mistake they made with SG-1. They just destroyed a fricking unkillable nasty and may have just made the first entrances to systemlordhood. That's impressive.

"The Atlantis crew would then be caught in the crossfire between two ascended races at war"

I like your idea with a couple of caveats; the ascended stuff was more of a plot device to keep Jackson's job alive and appears to be a more personal affair than sublimation (Iain M Banks, esentially sublimed races just get out of the business of mucking about with spacetime.) I never liked the idea of ascension.

The other one is that I don't know how the jiminy you'd express a space opera with the 'squad-based' stuff that the series revolves around. If you've never read any Iain M Banks, you should take a look. Right up your cul de sac.

"Remaining more amorphous, perhaps with a caricature human shape for communication, would have reduced the amount of anthropomorphism."

Yeah, I can't understand the consistent pinocchio desire for artificial organisms to become human.

Why? Learning to create compelling images is hard. It takes about five years of fairly intensive practice and study - figure drawing, observation, caricature of the world around you.

Anyone can learn to draw, just as anyone can learn to program, but whatever the discipline, they have to put in the time to practice. Being able to make effective small-scale graphics like icons is harder than it looks at first; theres little space to get the point across in. (Blow up screengrabs sometime; take a look.)

If its appropriate for your program, consider some kind of skinning mechanism - that can net a number of looks for the thing from users, for little visual effort on your part. Especially if youre willing to run a little archive on your site.

A cynic would say they are making sure the billions stay in their cold scaly hands by freezing out opportunities for "other Micro$ofts" - or more likely (since the last thing the world needs is another M$), by freezing Open Source, the only truly innovative game in town.

One has to ask. Is it necessary for the mega-rich to continue to enrich themselves beyond caricature, at the expense of human progress. How can I cast my vote against this nonsense? Uh, wait...

The slashdot-created caricature notwithstanding, Microsoft doesn't work like that at all. It's almost complete bureaucracy-free, as corporations go. Need something, ask for it, get it.

It was great when Hot Wheels and Matchbox used to coexist, as different companies, as they were completely different takes on the miniature diecast car idea. It was almost like a version of Ford vs. Chevy played out in miniature!

When Lesney created the first Matchbox car (sometime in the 1940's I think) in England, it was a revolutionary idea. The vehicles were somewhat crudely made, with thin wheels that freely wobbled about think axles, and no interiors to speak of, but they were tough and durable. They also were pretty small, and in fact could fit in a Matchbox: hence the name.

Throughout the 50's and 60's these cars gained popularity throughout Europe, and people started bringing and them importing them to the US. The choice of vehicles was almost exclusively European, however the detail and quality of castings improved steadily over time.

When Mattel came out with Hotwheels in 1968, it was a direct attempt to capitalize and Americanize (yah, kind of redundant, I know) on the Matchbox phenomenon. Mattel made certain that their cars would be faster by using thin wire axles and thick wheels that were not quite cylindrical; indeed most Hotwheel wheels have had a slight conical essence to them as a tangential edge provides the least rolling resistance. Whereas Matchbox cars were true authentic miniatures of the real thing, Hotwheels (and then even more cartoonish Johnny Lightnings released a couple years later) were at best often just passable caricatures of real vehicles. However, Mattel set the stage by consistently keeping their product at an inexpensive price point... to this day they still do not cost more than 1 dollar... whereas Matchbox cars were a bit pricier.

This strategy paid off big time for Mattel... the American designs and "it's cheap enough for me to buy 4 of them so my damn kid will shut up" pricing helped rocket them into one of the truly genuine toy product success stories of the last century, and these colorful fast-rolling cars captured the imaginations of a generation, and continues to capture their wallets decades later.

These two philosophies reached an interesting nexus in the 70's. Now competeing directly with each other, Matchbox cars became faster with crazier paint schemes, and Hot Wheels gradually became more realistic. Yet in comparing pouplar castings done by each company from, says, 1974-1992 (such as the 57 Chevy, fastback Mustang, Porche 911, Mercedes sedans, etc) Matchbox clearly had the upper hand in terms of casting fidelity, what with defined head and taillights, molding trim, and better interiors. Hotwheels were still not as well done in most cases. Matchbox always listed the exact scale equivalent on their cars, Hotwheels have never done so. Lesney eventually started making their cars in cheaper asian plants, to compete on a cost basis with Mattel. The variety of subproduct lines was great too... with different wheels, paintjobs, and other gimmicks reglary coming out year after year. Matchbox even started the current trend of super-realism in 1/64 with their "World Class" collection of the late 1980's.

But what really made Matchbox cars the cherished choice in for me, was that fact that they had a damn good suspension! You could drive over all sorts of crap, simulate braking and cornering, or even have a rockin' good time with a van, and those wheels would always spring back to neutral! Whereas a hotwheel car became instant, nonrolling garbage as soon as you tried. My bin became filled with hotwheels where the wheels were bent under the frame, and those were the cars that eventually met their maker via sledgehammer or train... ;). They also were of more consistent relative size compared to each other, and just a little bigger than Hotwheels.

Over time it seems that Lesney just could not compete with Mattel's economies of scale. The company went into receivership a few times starting in the 1980's, and was eventually sold to Tyco (of slot car, cheapass junky toy train, and R/C car fame) in th

The Union's job is essentially to stop management from putting a [possibly illusory] chance of short term profit ahead of the longer term interest of the employees (and the company as a whole).

Don't unions collectively bargain for pay rates? Doesn't that ensure that every employee at a position category will receive the same pay no matter how well/poorly they perform?

A union may ask for any deal that is in the interests of the membership as a whole - and many unions happily work with systems that reward performance. They may demand that the systems be fair (and avoid victimisation), or that the overall increases be good, or that no employee be too badly disadvantaged. But that's quite compatible with rewarding excellence.

Unions protect the employees by making employee termination much more difficult to the employer. While the advantages are probably pretty obvious, this puts additional burden on the employer to build a case against an employee for termination if the employee truly deserves termination?

Unions typically prohibit companies from hiring non-union employees...

Unions see overtime as potential for another worker rather than an opportunity for current union members to pick up additional income.

I guess if I were an underachiever, I'd probably welcome a union.

Personally, I didn't used to be a member of our union - but I joined because I thought it was doing a pretty good job.