Having spent about 40% of the last 2 decades out on various oceans on oil rigs, I look at this and I think "who's going to repair the pumps in the ballast pontoons when they don't work". And "Who's going to shovel the rotting shit out of the plumbing system when it blocks up. Including that razor blade that you so forgetfully threw down the shitter last week?" And "Who's going to paint the underside of the helideck, before it rusts through from beneath?"
There are a LOT of skills necessary to running any machine on the high seas. Which means that your libertarian "Sea Steaders" are going to need a considerable staff on board, or easily on call. regardless of the weather.
Also, having spent a moderate amount of time at sea in 60ft waves and 150+km/hr winds (you know - when you get bodily picked up by the wind and are very careful to keep both lifelines hooked on), I wonder who's going to repair the switch gear for the "making way" motors when they're turned on for the first time in 3 years. Oh, Mr SeaSteader is going to be that conscientious about his maintenance jobs? Which government is going to provide the air-sea rescue when something goes pear-shaped?
[...] Scientology is certainly unorthodox and extremist. Then again, so are Islam, Bhuddism, Hinduism, Shintoism, and Judism (not to mention Atheism) in Britain (afaik), and Christianity is unorthodox and extremist in Muslim countries.
From living in Britain for most of my life, I'd say that the only "unorthodox and extreme" religions on your list are Scientology (both counts) and Shintoism (only on the count of being very uncommon, and hence an "extreme" of the range of religions available). I don't think I know a single avowed Shinto-ist, but all the others I know multiple examples of. Don't forget the agnostics either ; agnostics and atheists together would probably be the large majority of people that I know, but since no-one much cares about your religion in Britain, it's hardly a topic of conversation.
It is now illegal to discuss religion in Britain. If you are British and you post a comment in this thread, your government can throw you in jail.
I rather doubt that this case will stand. Not having bothered to watch the video, it's possible that the person arrested was otherwise completely innocent, and it's possible that the charge laid was just the first one that came into the copper's head when there were a range of possible charges under the Public Order Act(s). Or other acts. What you're arrested for is not necessarily what you're tried for.
Just as a FYI - when you're getting an entry visa or a desert access pass in Arab Muslim countries, you're probably better off putting down "Jew" as being your religion and/ or sept, instead of "Atheist" or "Agnostic". when I answered the question truthfully, I lost a day's work when the desert access pass had to be sent "upstairs" instead of being rubber stamped.
The posters may not be tarrists, but there is a connection in that they know someone who knows someone who knows someone who is the tarrist who filmed the video.
If you believe the "six degrees of separation" thesis (and not getting into holy Wars over whether it's 6 or 7 degrees, or what I believe the meaning of "believe" is when you read it), then your scenario would be encompassing either 3.5*10^9 people or 84000 people (depending on whether you look for a geometric growth, or a linear growth ; in either case, lots of people.
Investigating them is a matter of unpeeling the onion skin.
So, the US "intelligence" services are going to have to investigate 10s of thousands of people on the basis of each download/ view of a YouTube-hosted political video. Hey, I think I've just described a way for Joe Random SixPrayersPerDay to contribute to the bankruptcy of the US government just by spending a day going round the Internet Cafes of Cairo, drinking coffee with my mates and clicking on a YouTube link every now and then. Sounds like a good Return On Investment. (This post should have triggered your sarcasm detector ; as the original post triggered mine.)
(Just listening to the news : Woo hooo! Oil over $130/bbl ! Yeee ha! Ride it cowboys, and go get a motor with unacceptably low fuel efficiency - like 40mpg! Recent economic analysis suggests that each dollar on a gallon of petrol (gasoline in the States) may eventually reduce fuel consumption by 7% through less driving and more efficient cars. No sarcasm here.)
I'm sure engineers in the 40's said the same thing about computers and vacuum tubes, until solid state electronics were discovered in the 50's.
Solid state electronics were "discovered" in the late 1920s with the development of copper(I)oxide rectifiers and selenium rectifiers. (They may have had earlier research ; I haven't been exhaustive.) It wasn't until the late 1950s that the price of transfer resistors and diodes and such-like semiconductor active components fell below the cost of their valve-based equivalent active components.
If we make bills different sizes, the $20 bill had better still be ATM-sized (or else buy stock in an ATM company)
By ATM-sized, I take it that you mean "about 0.5m wide, 1m deep and 1.5m high"? At least that's the size of common free-standing ATMs over here, and I'd assume that the ones built into walls are about the same size behind the brickwork.
Well, it'd certainly be an interesting currency. It would probably vie with early post-barter systems based on large bags of elephant dung for the title of "most inconvenient currency ever".
I don't know who makes ATMs in America ; I know that the ones on the streets of Britain, Norway, France, Russia, Germany, Tanzania, and (if I recall correctly) Azerbaijan are made by the "usual suspects" such as Motorola, NCR and other multi-national currency-handling manufacturers. There may be others - I've not made any effort to be systematic in noting manufacturers logos even if they're visible.
Given that, are you seriously proposing that manufacturers actually produce one range of products specifically tailored for one size of notes in one country, and a different set of products with an overlapping specification for use in the rest of the world?
The big difficulty in ATMs isn't the area of the notes, or their dimensions ; it's counting the edges of the notes and making sure that the right number are dispensed. My bet would be that *that* area is where the patents are applied. The rest of the machine is just sheet-handling machinery - probably somewhat better quality than you get in a £100 laser printer, but not fundamentally different. So that means one product line, world wide, with the only localised differences being in logos and software.
Look closely at the next ATM that you can (without being arrested for having a terrorist-like excessive interest in valuable machinery) - compare the width of the cash-dispensing slot's weather-proofing with the width of the widest note in your currency : unless you live in a country with the widest currency in the world, you'll most likely find that the slot will accommodate wider notes than you use.
You'll probably find that the dimensions to which ATMs are built are now acting as constraints on the dimensions of note design.
touch (and multi-touch) technology -- which folks like Ray Ozzie enjoyed as undergrads way back in the early '70s -- has finally gone mainstream.
As far as I'm concerned, touch-screen technology went "mainstream" with the Psion 5 in about 1995. If you didn't notice it, then obviously you were in the wrong stream. One of the first responders makes points about - does the new interface offer advantages over the standard interface? and is the new interface fitted as standard? Good points, to which the answers are yes and yes for the Psion 5 (and of course, it's follow-up, the 5Mx, and it's follow-down the Revo).
What brought the Psion down it appears from the sidelines as a member of the UK user community, was poor after-sales support in the US, combined with a definite degree of fragility in the screens. Once rigid clamshells for the Psion became available (on the after-market), the issue of screen fragility was resolved. But by then the marketing reputation in the States was settled, and a little upstart company called (I think) Palm brought it's own limited tool onto the market and eventually won out with it's cramped form factor and lack of a keyboard. Oh, and the Palm's less-than-a-month of normal use on off-the-shelf batteries can't have helped them either.
There is still a significant after market in old Psions through eBay, but I've got my couple of spares, so I'm set for the next decade before I need to re-address the PDA question. That'll be 2 decades after the shut down of manufacture of the technology I use at the moment, so there's a modest chance of an improvement in the necessary technologies.
It doesn't matter how simple you make the process (e.g. "Just put in an X in one of these two boxes"), a certain percentage of the electorate (e.g. the mentally ill, the illiterate, the very elderly, the mentally handicapped) will screw it up.
Deliberate spoiling of the ballot paper is also an issue, particularly where there is no option for "I wouldn't trust any of these scumbags with my dog's full poop bag, let alone something of greater value."
That is, of course, solved with some rather elementary changes to the system.
But it is near Milton Keynes, and therefore impossible for anyone other than a local to find.
True. Unless you arrive by train.
It's a shame the place is continuing to go downhill. I visited it back in 2003 when I was visiting the family in the area. (and yes, it took a while to find - I think we followed the railway line, but Dad was driving. He still gets lost in Milton Keynes, despite having lived in the area since the end of the War, decades before Milton Keynes was built.) Foundations crumbling ; wooden walls of the huts rotting, roofs leaking. Really sad to see.
Unfortunately, there are only so many people who are interested in things like recent history, and that number seems to be too few.
There's precious little chance of getting the trampling hordes of human bovines interested, unless we could get a display of <what's that thick footballer's name> and <the bony slapper with the over-inflated plastic tit's> used condoms in Hut 69, or something equally appealing to the intellect of the average moron on the M1.
Which, in contrast to the opinions often expressed above, is the problem with supporting culture (and more specifically, the culture of science and technology) on a democratic basis. The set of {morons} and {disinterested} are in the majority.
Part of the problem, I suppose, is that the people to whom places like Bletchley Park is likely to appeal are also the people likely to remember their single, solitary visit. so, relatively little market for repeat sales. But I do see they have a "Friends of... " organisation, to which I'm just subscribing. Very strange that they don't have any online sign-up or donation service though... oh, hang on, yes they do http://www.cafonline.org/apps/Charities/charitysearch.aspx?dsp_keywords=bletchley+park ; pity they can't make it a bit clearer. Any web designers in the MK area, they look like they could do with a bit of a hand on the layout front.
Likewise. What chance do we have at creating imperishable media
You don't need imperishable media for a backup - you need a medium which is less perishable than the usable lifetime of the information being backed up. Horses for courses.
if even God is having troubles?
Can't he get a good psychiatrist? Hmmm, no, that may be too hard too. Perhaps your god can get himself a psychiatrist who claims to be good ; it's hard for the patients to spot the difference.
This is special, slightly longer type of underwear and is symbolic of continence and a high moral character.
Not needing a diaper is an article of religious pride?
Check out your friendly neighbourhood dictionary - "continence" has meanings other than the lavatorial one which you allude to. In particular, the phrase "sexual continence" is one that you could use without blushing in a public discussion with Maiden Aunt Sally, a handful of nuns of astonishing innocence (read as : ignorance about sex) and a room full of teenagers. The teenagers would have their predictable fit of communal giggles and need damping down with a fire hose, but that's because they're teenagers, not because there's anything inherently funny about the phrase "sexual continence".
I have a vague memory of John Cleese (the tall one in Monty Python) doing a sketch as a head master in front of a room full of teenagers, on subjects related to sexual continence, and not raising a single laugh. It may have been in "Meaning of Liff", rather than "Flying Circus", but I don't remember for sure.
If undermining the prestige of the state were punishable, Bush would have been in prison years ago...
Agreed, but... which Bush?
And would one (or both) of them get day-release for attending the awards ceremony for lifetime services to comedy arts, viz : making a laughing stock out of their country, twice.
This mutilation is getting worse and with some shows it's pretty easy to see where they have started to cut out even more stuff than they used to. Even without commercial skipping you are bound to want your own pristine digital copy.
Are you suggesting that the studios are deliberately making programs that will be so badly mutilated by the advert break-ins that the sales (by the studio) of the DVD versions of the program increase, adding to the studio's income directly without adding to the network's revenue.
My, we are being cynical this morning. Try a little of the milk of human kindness in your coffee in the mornings. You're probably right though.
I know China is potentially representing a LOT of money. But, at some point, don't we just say "Fuck China"...and all the rules and regulations and monitoring they are wanting to impose on a system that has worked just fine without them for decades?
... Then China calls in the debts that America has accumulated to it by buying goods in devaluing dollars, while starting to buy oil on the Iranian bourse in Euros. The resultant downwards spiral in the value of the dollar throws countries that are tied to the dollar into a 1930s-scale recession.
When you see the Canadians moving to distance their economy from the American budget deficit, that's when you need to get your personal wealth out of dollars. Actually, that might be a bit to late.
"War," the saying goes, "is diplomacy pursued by other means." By the same token, economics is war pursued by non-lethal and highly profitable means.
Somehow I doubt that many of the people that would be running such old computers such as ones from before 1970 would be reading Slashdot.
The question didn't mention electronic computers. Actually, the question didn't even mention computers. The question was about code and algorithms.
Looking back to the history of mathematics (a superset of computing), try for size the use of planimeters in mapping offices for measurement of land areas from plans. They've been manufactured and used since TTBOMK the mid-1800s. (Yes, you may feel free to object that they've been superceded by GIS-based satellite mapping projects. Which is true. If *all* the data in an area has been transferred from analogue storage systems (such as hand-drawn maps) into digital systems. Which it hasn't. I'll bet that there are still people using planimeters somewhere.
Leaping one step further back... Babbage tried and barely suceeded in making a general-purpose computer from mechanical parts in the early 1800s. But more limited computers, fully capable of implementing algorithms for multiplying together base-10 numbers, or adding mixed-base numbers (base-4+12+20 I'm thinking of), have at least as much history. I recall seeing one of the mixed-base machines being used in a pub in Derbyshire about 5 years ago.
Leaping one step further back... Jacquard cards for the control of looms were introduced in 1801 ; again, I'd suspect that there are still weaving companies and operations still using those same sequences of operations to achieve a desired end (thats an algorithm).
In fact, looking at the tartan weave on my shirt, you could describe the sequence of actions needed to acheive a tartan (or any other geometric woven pattern) as an algorithm. Archaeological evidence is that such coloured patterns have considerable antiquity, even if the algorithms are carried out by hand not by machine. If you build a half-adder circuit out of Lego and operate it, are you carrying out a different algorithm to the one in every binary half-adder in your computer? No.
Do you play chess? Fool's Mate is an algorithm that has probably got the guts of 2000 years history, and people are still getting caught by it.
Do you play Go? There is nothing but nothing that gives a better feeling than confusing a stronger player into playing a ladder because he's mis-counted the position of your ladder-breaker.
"Bang rocks together to get sharp edges" has considerable antiquity.
Tit-for-tat as an algorithmic solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma certainly predates humanity and quite likely predates the existence of land vertebrates.
Ribosomal DNA and the structures it encodes for has even more ancestry - maybe 4 billion years worth of it (and if it stopped working, you'd be dead in minutes and unconscious in seconds).
By the way - I used to run a PDP-11 which was designed while I was in nappies. I gave it to someone who was younger than me and who introduced me to SlashDot.
the plan is to create 'filtering technology that allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content.'
Some readers have pointed out the problem of playing back user-created content with this mindset ; I wonder how content downloaded from a "given away for free" supplier, like the BBC, would work? But since I'd no intention of getting a Zune, I don't care too much.
If the moon was significantly larger (or there was an additional moon of significant size) they system would become unstable and tend to lose satellites until it WAS stable.
Two points :
The Pluto-Charon system has two other components (un-named, the last time I cared to look) which are in resonance with the Charon-Pluto orbits around the system's barycentre ;
Losing satellites from a system involves losing energy from the system, which is why the system that is left behind is more stable.
I forget the name of the particular rare mineral/ore/whatever that defines the KT boundary, but is there a large amount of it on the moon?
In a number of globally-scattered locations, there is a narrow peak of concentration of iridium (element, atomic number 77, a platinum group metal) which is approximately coincident with the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. However this does not DEFINE the position of the "K/T boundary" - that is done by fossil content, and more specifically by the lowest position of certain marine microfossils and the highest position of others. (This is exactly analogous to the popular "dinosaurs before, mammals after" understanding of the K/T boundary, but more precise as you can get hundreds of microfossils in each gram of sampled rock while you don't get many dinosaurs fossils per gigagram of rock.)
Of course, IANAA (I am not an Astronomer) so I really have no clue.
I can't, off the top of my head, quote the exact micropalaeontological definition of what the K/T boundary is - IANA-micropalaeontologist ; however I do know precisely who to ask (if you want a 15,000 word answer) because I do have to work with such people every month or so. IAAG (I Am A Geologist).
Though less-reported by the popular press, there is a growing body of evidence that the "Alvarez" event (the iridium concentration-spike reported by Alvarez pere-et-fils in the early 1980s) actually pre-dates the K/T boundary (defined palaeontologically as above), perhaps by as much as 300,000 years. This is still a controversial area, with active research continuing ; I don't follow the debate too closely, because in my area of competence the K/T boundary is generally uninteresting. If I go back to working on the redevelopment of the Maureen field (which is well-known to be partly hosted in Maastrichtian/Danian sediments, it might be of some interest.
Work a dozen-or-so years ago on computer simulations of the moon-forming "Giant Impact" produced multiple moonlets in around 1/3 of simulation runs. Look for papers on Arxiv by Robin Canup and various collaborators (from my memory - Hal Levison, from SWRI in Boulder, USA). Around the same time there were several "deep searches" for material near the Earth/Moon/Sun's Lagrangian points, but I've forgotten the name of the Canadian (?) astronomer who reported negative results. The same researchers found the oddly-orbiting Cruithne as part of this programme.
I can't believe that after having essentially bankrupted his company with these ruinous lawsuits, he continues to attract naive investors who keep propping him up.
He hasn't bankrupted "his" company (it's owned by the investors) ; he hasn't lost any of his important investor's money (though he has spent it, and of course the minor investors don't get any significant say ; I don't know if that's legal in the relevant countries) ; his job isn't finished, and he's continuing to do it even on the witness stand (and maybe at the risk of charges of perjury), so one can deduce that he is personally sure of getting paid more. The only mystery about McBride's past and future behaviour is whether he's been paid to go to jail for his employers, and how much that pay has been/ will be. I doubt that we'll find out the latter because he'll be retired to a safe house on a very quiet little island somewhere.
Much though the things that he and his cow-orkers at SCO have been despicable, they have done their master's bidding faithfully, running a major part of MS's FUD advertising campaign over the last few years. Put in the context of the MS explicit and sub rosa advertising budgets over the same time period, the 40-million-odd bucks that they've spent becomes relatively small beer.
Depressingly, I have to admit that McBride and co have been giving his employers pretty good value for money.
Best bet might be the Dual Planet nature of the Moon - there can't be *that* many planetary collisions that result in a stable double planet system, and tidal pools seem to have had some effect.
Before 1978-06-22 the best estimate of the probability of forming a double planet in a developing solar system was about 0.11 (one example in a sample of 9 planets), though the orientation of both Venus and Uranus suggested that the true probability may have been a little higher.
After 1978-06-22 (the discovery date of Charon) the best estimate increased to about 0.22 (two double planets in a sample of 9).
Now, with an increasing number of double minor planets being known (on a fairly loose usage of the term), the estimate is slowly declining, but it's still only in the "mildly uncommon" range, not the "seriously improbable" range.
I live in a pretty bad area of town, so, for my part I agree with you: screw the cameras and buy a Remington-
A one of these? Verily, the pen is mightier than the sword.
but the question seems more concerned about gathering evidence, and frankly, video tape and self defense don't seem to mix well in the US of A. So my only advice would be this: get a gun XOR a camera, but expect to go to jail if you use them both.
On the logic (in court ??) that the installation of the video camera was evidence of premeditation? A prosecutor could certainly try that tactic, but any competent defence barrister would be able to be able to demonstrate that the camera installation was recording on automatic, and was as much evidence of premeditated murder as the steps which the assailant fell down and broke his bloody neck. After all, the steps were installed before the assailant came on site, and could easily contribute fatally to an otherwise non-fatal incident.
As long as the camera was on your property, filming your property, you had a warning sign on the normal entrance to your property, and used either automated motion detection or continuous recording, you should be all right. That something is captured on video isn't evidence of premeditation. WHAT is captured on video might be evidence of premeditation, so you'd need to be on your best behaviour - detain and restrain, but resist the temptation to kneecap the fucking thief - while the tape is running. But exactly the same constraint operates for policemen with a camera on his dashboard or a shopkeeper detaining a shoplifter, and it doesn't make their actions actionable. Unless they do a Rodney King special on the perp.
Videoing the car out on the street is a slightly different matter. You'd probably need to get some sort of permission and put up warning signs on the street. It might be legally easier to put together some sort of motion-detector activated filming of the doors (where the perps are more likely to come in) from the interior of the car, and set the car up with something along the lines of those "bait cars" to lock the doors, immobilise the engine, scream the horn and flash the lights. Oh, and call the cops (or you). You might need GPS too, but that's making a much more complex system.
A video viewing people visiting your front door (which is a public place by some definitions) is an intermediate level. What your local laws are probably varies from town to town.
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Wouldn't it be considerably cheaper to simply shoot the prisoner, all their friends, family and anyone who has ever been within 100m of them?
Oh, hang on, isn't that what's happening already in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Having spent about 40% of the last 2 decades out on various oceans on oil rigs, I look at this and I think "who's going to repair the pumps in the ballast pontoons when they don't work".
And "Who's going to shovel the rotting shit out of the plumbing system when it blocks up. Including that razor blade that you so forgetfully threw down the shitter last week?"
And "Who's going to paint the underside of the helideck, before it rusts through from beneath?"
There are a LOT of skills necessary to running any machine on the high seas. Which means that your libertarian "Sea Steaders" are going to need a considerable staff on board, or easily on call. regardless of the weather.
Also, having spent a moderate amount of time at sea in 60ft waves and 150+km/hr winds (you know - when you get bodily picked up by the wind and are very careful to keep both lifelines hooked on), I wonder who's going to repair the switch gear for the "making way" motors when they're turned on for the first time in 3 years. Oh, Mr SeaSteader is going to be that conscientious about his maintenance jobs? Which government is going to provide the air-sea rescue when something goes pear-shaped?
Could you write about it without thinking about it? After several years of journalism college, probably.
From living in Britain for most of my life, I'd say that the only "unorthodox and extreme" religions on your list are Scientology (both counts) and Shintoism (only on the count of being very uncommon, and hence an "extreme" of the range of religions available). I don't think I know a single avowed Shinto-ist, but all the others I know multiple examples of. Don't forget the agnostics either ; agnostics and atheists together would probably be the large majority of people that I know, but since no-one much cares about your religion in Britain, it's hardly a topic of conversation.
I rather doubt that this case will stand. Not having bothered to watch the video, it's possible that the person arrested was otherwise completely innocent, and it's possible that the charge laid was just the first one that came into the copper's head when there were a range of possible charges under the Public Order Act(s). Or other acts. What you're arrested for is not necessarily what you're tried for.
Just as a FYI - when you're getting an entry visa or a desert access pass in Arab Muslim countries, you're probably better off putting down "Jew" as being your religion and/ or sept, instead of "Atheist" or "Agnostic". when I answered the question truthfully, I lost a day's work when the desert access pass had to be sent "upstairs" instead of being rubber stamped.
If you believe the "six degrees of separation" thesis (and not getting into holy Wars over whether it's 6 or 7 degrees, or what I believe the meaning of "believe" is when you read it), then your scenario would be encompassing either 3.5*10^9 people or 84000 people (depending on whether you look for a geometric growth, or a linear growth ; in either case, lots of people.
So, the US "intelligence" services are going to have to investigate 10s of thousands of people on the basis of each download/ view of a YouTube-hosted political video. Hey, I think I've just described a way for Joe Random SixPrayersPerDay to contribute to the bankruptcy of the US government just by spending a day going round the Internet Cafes of Cairo, drinking coffee with my mates and clicking on a YouTube link every now and then. Sounds like a good Return On Investment.
(This post should have triggered your sarcasm detector ; as the original post triggered mine.)
(Just listening to the news : Woo hooo! Oil over $130/bbl ! Yeee ha! Ride it cowboys, and go get a motor with unacceptably low fuel efficiency - like 40mpg! Recent economic analysis suggests that each dollar on a gallon of petrol (gasoline in the States) may eventually reduce fuel consumption by 7% through less driving and more efficient cars. No sarcasm here.)
Solid state electronics were "discovered" in the late 1920s with the development of copper(I)oxide rectifiers and selenium rectifiers. (They may have had earlier research ; I haven't been exhaustive.) It wasn't until the late 1950s that the price of transfer resistors and diodes and such-like semiconductor active components fell below the cost of their valve-based equivalent active components.
Well, it'd certainly be an interesting currency. It would probably vie with early post-barter systems based on large bags of elephant dung for the title of "most inconvenient currency ever".
I don't know who makes ATMs in America ; I know that the ones on the streets of Britain, Norway, France, Russia, Germany, Tanzania, and (if I recall correctly) Azerbaijan are made by the "usual suspects" such as Motorola, NCR and other multi-national currency-handling manufacturers. There may be others - I've not made any effort to be systematic in noting manufacturers logos even if they're visible.
Given that, are you seriously proposing that manufacturers actually produce one range of products specifically tailored for one size of notes in one country, and a different set of products with an overlapping specification for use in the rest of the world?
The big difficulty in ATMs isn't the area of the notes, or their dimensions ; it's counting the edges of the notes and making sure that the right number are dispensed. My bet would be that *that* area is where the patents are applied. The rest of the machine is just sheet-handling machinery - probably somewhat better quality than you get in a £100 laser printer, but not fundamentally different. So that means one product line, world wide, with the only localised differences being in logos and software.
Look closely at the next ATM that you can (without being arrested for having a terrorist-like excessive interest in valuable machinery) - compare the width of the cash-dispensing slot's weather-proofing with the width of the widest note in your currency : unless you live in a country with the widest currency in the world, you'll most likely find that the slot will accommodate wider notes than you use.
You'll probably find that the dimensions to which ATMs are built are now acting as constraints on the dimensions of note design.
One of the first responders makes points about - does the new interface offer advantages over the standard interface? and is the new interface fitted as standard? Good points, to which the answers are yes and yes for the Psion 5 (and of course, it's follow-up, the 5Mx, and it's follow-down the Revo).
What brought the Psion down it appears from the sidelines as a member of the UK user community, was poor after-sales support in the US, combined with a definite degree of fragility in the screens. Once rigid clamshells for the Psion became available (on the after-market), the issue of screen fragility was resolved. But by then the marketing reputation in the States was settled, and a little upstart company called (I think) Palm brought it's own limited tool onto the market and eventually won out with it's cramped form factor and lack of a keyboard. Oh, and the Palm's less-than-a-month of normal use on off-the-shelf batteries can't have helped them either.
There is still a significant after market in old Psions through eBay, but I've got my couple of spares, so I'm set for the next decade before I need to re-address the PDA question. That'll be 2 decades after the shut down of manufacture of the technology I use at the moment, so there's a modest chance of an improvement in the necessary technologies.
That is, of course, solved with some rather elementary changes to the system.
It's a shame the place is continuing to go downhill. I visited it back in 2003 when I was visiting the family in the area. (and yes, it took a while to find - I think we followed the railway line, but Dad was driving. He still gets lost in Milton Keynes, despite having lived in the area since the end of the War, decades before Milton Keynes was built.) Foundations crumbling ; wooden walls of the huts rotting, roofs leaking. Really sad to see.
Unfortunately, there are only so many people who are interested in things like recent history, and that number seems to be too few.
There's precious little chance of getting the trampling hordes of human bovines interested, unless we could get a display of <what's that thick footballer's name> and <the bony slapper with the over-inflated plastic tit's> used condoms in Hut 69, or something equally appealing to the intellect of the average moron on the M1.
Which, in contrast to the opinions often expressed above, is the problem with supporting culture (and more specifically, the culture of science and technology) on a democratic basis. The set of {morons} and {disinterested} are in the majority.
Part of the problem, I suppose, is that the people to whom places like Bletchley Park is likely to appeal are also the people likely to remember their single, solitary visit. so, relatively little market for repeat sales. ... " organisation, to which I'm just subscribing. Very strange that they don't have any online sign-up or donation service though ... oh, hang on, yes they do http://www.cafonline.org/apps/Charities/charitysearch.aspx?dsp_keywords=bletchley+park ; pity they can't make it a bit clearer. Any web designers in the MK area, they look like they could do with a bit of a hand on the layout front.
But I do see they have a "Friends of
Check out your friendly neighbourhood dictionary - "continence" has meanings other than the lavatorial one which you allude to. In particular, the phrase "sexual continence" is one that you could use without blushing in a public discussion with Maiden Aunt Sally, a handful of nuns of astonishing innocence (read as : ignorance about sex) and a room full of teenagers. The teenagers would have their predictable fit of communal giggles and need damping down with a fire hose, but that's because they're teenagers, not because there's anything inherently funny about the phrase "sexual continence".
I have a vague memory of John Cleese (the tall one in Monty Python) doing a sketch as a head master in front of a room full of teenagers, on subjects related to sexual continence, and not raising a single laugh. It may have been in "Meaning of Liff", rather than "Flying Circus", but I don't remember for sure.
And would one (or both) of them get day-release for attending the awards ceremony for lifetime services to comedy arts, viz : making a laughing stock out of their country, twice.
My, we are being cynical this morning. Try a little of the milk of human kindness in your coffee in the mornings. You're probably right though.
When you see the Canadians moving to distance their economy from the American budget deficit, that's when you need to get your personal wealth out of dollars. Actually, that might be a bit to late.
"War," the saying goes, "is diplomacy pursued by other means." By the same token, economics is war pursued by non-lethal and highly profitable means.
Looking back to the history of mathematics (a superset of computing), try for size the use of planimeters in mapping offices for measurement of land areas from plans. They've been manufactured and used since TTBOMK the mid-1800s. (Yes, you may feel free to object that they've been superceded by GIS-based satellite mapping projects. Which is true. If *all* the data in an area has been transferred from analogue storage systems (such as hand-drawn maps) into digital systems. Which it hasn't. I'll bet that there are still people using planimeters somewhere.
Leaping one step further back ... Babbage tried and barely suceeded in making a general-purpose computer from mechanical parts in the early 1800s. But more limited computers, fully capable of implementing algorithms for multiplying together base-10 numbers, or adding mixed-base numbers (base-4+12+20 I'm thinking of), have at least as much history. I recall seeing one of the mixed-base machines being used in a pub in Derbyshire about 5 years ago.
Leaping one step further back ... Jacquard cards for the control of looms were introduced in 1801 ; again, I'd suspect that there are still weaving companies and operations still using those same sequences of operations to achieve a desired end (thats an algorithm).
In fact, looking at the tartan weave on my shirt, you could describe the sequence of actions needed to acheive a tartan (or any other geometric woven pattern) as an algorithm. Archaeological evidence is that such coloured patterns have considerable antiquity, even if the algorithms are carried out by hand not by machine. If you build a half-adder circuit out of Lego and operate it, are you carrying out a different algorithm to the one in every binary half-adder in your computer? No.
Do you play chess? Fool's Mate is an algorithm that has probably got the guts of 2000 years history, and people are still getting caught by it.
Do you play Go? There is nothing but nothing that gives a better feeling than confusing a stronger player into playing a ladder because he's mis-counted the position of your ladder-breaker.
"Bang rocks together to get sharp edges" has considerable antiquity.
Tit-for-tat as an algorithmic solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma certainly predates humanity and quite likely predates the existence of land vertebrates.
Ribosomal DNA and the structures it encodes for has even more ancestry - maybe 4 billion years worth of it (and if it stopped working, you'd be dead in minutes and unconscious in seconds).
By the way - I used to run a PDP-11 which was designed while I was in nappies. I gave it to someone who was younger than me and who introduced me to SlashDot.
In a number of globally-scattered locations, there is a narrow peak of concentration of iridium (element, atomic number 77, a platinum group metal) which is approximately coincident with the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. However this does not DEFINE the position of the "K/T boundary" - that is done by fossil content, and more specifically by the lowest position of certain marine microfossils and the highest position of others. (This is exactly analogous to the popular "dinosaurs before, mammals after" understanding of the K/T boundary, but more precise as you can get hundreds of microfossils in each gram of sampled rock while you don't get many dinosaurs fossils per gigagram of rock.)
I can't, off the top of my head, quote the exact micropalaeontological definition of what the K/T boundary is - IANA-micropalaeontologist ; however I do know precisely who to ask (if you want a 15,000 word answer) because I do have to work with such people every month or so. IAAG (I Am A Geologist).
Though less-reported by the popular press, there is a growing body of evidence that the "Alvarez" event (the iridium concentration-spike reported by Alvarez pere-et-fils in the early 1980s) actually pre-dates the K/T boundary (defined palaeontologically as above), perhaps by as much as 300,000 years. This is still a controversial area, with active research continuing ; I don't follow the debate too closely, because in my area of competence the K/T boundary is generally uninteresting. If I go back to working on the redevelopment of the Maureen field (which is well-known to be partly hosted in Maastrichtian/Danian sediments, it might be of some interest.
Work a dozen-or-so years ago on computer simulations of the moon-forming "Giant Impact" produced multiple moonlets in around 1/3 of simulation runs. Look for papers on Arxiv by Robin Canup and various collaborators (from my memory - Hal Levison, from SWRI in Boulder, USA). Around the same time there were several "deep searches" for material near the Earth/Moon/Sun's Lagrangian points, but I've forgotten the name of the Canadian (?) astronomer who reported negative results. The same researchers found the oddly-orbiting Cruithne as part of this programme.
He hasn't bankrupted "his" company (it's owned by the investors) ; he hasn't lost any of his important investor's money (though he has spent it, and of course the minor investors don't get any significant say ; I don't know if that's legal in the relevant countries) ; his job isn't finished, and he's continuing to do it even on the witness stand (and maybe at the risk of charges of perjury), so one can deduce that he is personally sure of getting paid more.
The only mystery about McBride's past and future behaviour is whether he's been paid to go to jail for his employers, and how much that pay has been/ will be. I doubt that we'll find out the latter because he'll be retired to a safe house on a very quiet little island somewhere.
Much though the things that he and his cow-orkers at SCO have been despicable, they have done their master's bidding faithfully, running a major part of MS's FUD advertising campaign over the last few years. Put in the context of the MS explicit and sub rosa advertising budgets over the same time period, the 40-million-odd bucks that they've spent becomes relatively small beer.
Depressingly, I have to admit that McBride and co have been giving his employers pretty good value for money.
After 1978-06-22 (the discovery date of Charon) the best estimate increased to about 0.22 (two double planets in a sample of 9).
Now, with an increasing number of double minor planets being known (on a fairly loose usage of the term), the estimate is slowly declining, but it's still only in the "mildly uncommon" range, not the "seriously improbable" range.
Or possibly you change your politics, or stop eating the gram flour.
Or you move out of Denmark.
A one of these? Verily, the pen is mightier than the sword.
On the logic (in court ??) that the installation of the video camera was evidence of premeditation? A prosecutor could certainly try that tactic, but any competent defence barrister would be able to be able to demonstrate that the camera installation was recording on automatic, and was as much evidence of premeditated murder as the steps which the assailant fell down and broke his bloody neck. After all, the steps were installed before the assailant came on site, and could easily contribute fatally to an otherwise non-fatal incident.
As long as the camera was on your property, filming your property, you had a warning sign on the normal entrance to your property, and used either automated motion detection or continuous recording, you should be all right. That something is captured on video isn't evidence of premeditation. WHAT is captured on video might be evidence of premeditation, so you'd need to be on your best behaviour - detain and restrain, but resist the temptation to kneecap the fucking thief - while the tape is running. But exactly the same constraint operates for policemen with a camera on his dashboard or a shopkeeper detaining a shoplifter, and it doesn't make their actions actionable. Unless they do a Rodney King special on the perp.
Videoing the car out on the street is a slightly different matter. You'd probably need to get some sort of permission and put up warning signs on the street. It might be legally easier to put together some sort of motion-detector activated filming of the doors (where the perps are more likely to come in) from the interior of the car, and set the car up with something along the lines of those "bait cars" to lock the doors, immobilise the engine, scream the horn and flash the lights. Oh, and call the cops (or you). You might need GPS too, but that's making a much more complex system.
A video viewing people visiting your front door (which is a public place by some definitions) is an intermediate level. What your local laws are probably varies from town to town.