U-571: another great example of historical accuracy in big-budget hollywood movies. Lest we forget that the Americans had nothing to do with the raid that got the German codebooks. We got them at the cost of the lives of several good British men - not by the luck of some Americans. And what about the entire series of M*A*S*H - yeah, I know its supposed to be humorous, but what about all the untold horrors of that war. I love how they "casually" forget all the innocent sivilians they killed.
Let's face it people, historical movies are only made in the US when the history being present goes down well with them. Heavens we think that a nation that's NOT the USA did somthing good or important in a war, or that they got bested by some Japanese.
Firstly, I think this ruling is a crock of shit. I don't want Amazon (or anyone) sharing my details, especially if I told them that I don't want them to. Now that that's out of the way, let's look at this from an economical/Amazonian perspective.
Amazon has a huge database of customer information. They never forced you to give them your full address and phone number - if you didn't want to, you could walk your ass down to the local BookCity and buy whatever it was that you wanted. So you gave them that information of your own free will. Also bear in mind that address/mailing list sales is a hugely profitable business, especially selling to demgraphics/research firms, and even more so to those guys who conduct surveys online and ask "so, when's the last time you bought a book witten by a woman?" Not to mention spammers. Selling contacts is a profitable business, regardless of the morals of it. Realize also that Amazon ain't making any money. The market is down, the.com boom is over, and they don't have a hope, let alone a business plan. They need to generat cash, and to do so, they wanna sell some stuff that people gave them freely. Regardless of what they said when you gave it to them, you gave it to them of your own free will.
How about this? A man sits outside a bookshop, makes a not of all the books that people buy and takes a picture of who bought what. The then scours various archives to put names to those faces. He then uses a phone book to put addresses to those names to those faces to those books. They had the choice weather to bo on this list - they could have gone elsewhere. But he did the hard work (as Amazon did), and should be able to sell his work.
It all boils down to this: you freely gave Amazon your personal information. You had the total choice of weather to do so, and could have freely gone to a physical bookstore where they don't need to know where you live. You gave them the information, so you don't have the right to complain when they do what they want with it.
Have you ever been given a gift you didn't like (or need), and returned it to the store for somthign better or sold it to your friend? If so, then you're doing exactly what Amazon has done. Taken somthing that one person will give away for free, and sell it to somone else who will pay big money for it. If Amazon even has your data to sell, it's no one's fault but your own.
God, I really wish this particular AC either paid any attention to politics, or perhaps less of a request, graduated from High School. Capitalism and Communism are not the only systems that exist. In fact, Capitalism and Communism share one central thing: their distain for government. Capitalits say that government should keep their hands out of business as regulation is simply opression of the working class, and die-hard Communists say that there should be no government, as it's simply a way of opression of the workers. Communism is actually Marxism, with some extrimism thrown in by Stalin.
I'm also wondering if this guy has heard of words like "anarchism," "utilitarianism," and "mercantilism." They're all perfectly valid schools of economic thought. In fact, the world ran for quite a while on mercantilist principles. Granted, we soon thereafter decided they were wrong, but they're still valid.
Get a grip; read a social studies textbook. And realize that the world is NOT The American Way vs. The Communist Menace.
And I'm not even getting into why Communism (properly executed) isn't a bad thing.
Why is this relevant or revolutionary? Compuserve and AOL (among others) come with Win95, and when I download BearShare it installs some other bundled software too (unless I do advanced and tell it not to). If it's in exchange for exclusive use of IE, again - so what? MS wants some for of compensation for such good product palcement; more power to them.
And stop whinging about Netscape/Mozilla. We may all use it, but most of the world dosen't. Just as PDF has become the de facto standard for publishing whole documents on the web, (unfortunatley) IE has become the standard web browser. Accept it - Netscape's gone from the majority of computers.
I just had 6 units in 35 minutes - the opinions expressed may be those of beer.
First off, they didn't get a patent for "watching one program while recording another" as the topic says, they got one for watching one program and recording the other via turning it into a MPEG and then spereating off the video and audio streams, and storing them in some form (be it on a tape, your HD, or a DVD-RAM). They also got it for compressing teh content to fit on a tape by droping frames, if it's too long.
This isn't that bad of a patent, if you really read the thing. Yeah, it's a fairly simple idea, but no one's done it before (look carefully again at the convert to MPEG and then spilt part of the patent). The thing that pisses me off here is that many of the posts are "it's not a bad patent because we like our TiVo and they're l33t" - this shouldn't matter. If it's a crap patent (which this one isn't), then it shouldn't matter what the usage of it is.
In my experiances with various sleep durations/patterns, the main thing that has remained constant is that I feel phenomenally better if I sleep the same way (ie. in the same cycles) for a while. Our bodies are cyclical (think back to HS Biology and the digestive system), and I'm assuming that sleep works that way too.
As an example, I used to be on the rowing team. I would fall asleep at about nine at night, and wake up at five in the morning. very painful for the first week (ended up napping in class), but then it was all good. Much like during vactions I go into a 2am to 2pm sleep cycle, which leaves me feeling hungover for teh first while, but good after that.
Also, I love using those airline eyeshades. Yes, they distort the natural light (so you don't wakeup with the sun), but I've got old enough ones that they don't really cover my eyes, just dull the light so that when the sun is filly out, it seems like its just coming out (through the eyeshades).
Lastly, I can only really sleep well if I don't have somthing on my mind. If, after getting into bed, I remember somthign that has to be done (liek a deadline), I'll get up and put it on a Post-It on my monitor, otherwise I'll be too busy worrying if i'll remember it to concentrate on sleep.
Personally, I have no ned to understand how analytic number theory can be used to prove the prime number theory. I'm sure if you showed me the proof, I wouldn't have a clue in hell what it meant. And I would have thought the refernece to the integral symbol (is there a specific name for it?) would be a clue to what the most advanced math I understand is: moderate Calculus (the AB exam, to be precise). I don't know number theory, I don't know waveform equations, and right now, I don'tparticularly care about either of the above (when I'm taught them, I'm sure I will).
And as for pi, I still stand by my beleif that it's one of the funkiest mathematical symbols in common usage that most people understand and recognize. As was said earlier; it's not worth having some hugely complex formula on your shoulder if you have to explain it to everyone that sees your shoulder on a beach. Both of the above formulas I suggested are compact, simple enough for most ppl to understand, and are important.
I've been looking at some of the suggestions, and most of the/. community have forgotten about two of the most fundamental equations that got us here today:
(pi)r^2 and c^2=a^2+b^2
I don't think that anyone can deny that these two equations form part of the basis for all math, not just modern stuff. While Pythagoras has the advantage of being longer, I'd go with the area formula because it's simple, short (so when you decide that having a math quation on your arm isnt what you want, it'l be easy to remove), and has the added bonus of having the funkiest symbol (with the possible exception of either the sum or integral symbols) in there: pi.
I'm not too sure how long your equipment would fare in the middle of a lake on a boat. Most webcams are pretty crappy pieces of hardware, and not designed for that kinda stuff. I also question the image quality you'd get - would it be enough to make it viable (especially in times of rain). And if you wanna transmit the signal over a cellular network, can you do it (while maintaining a practical refresh rate).
As you can see, I'm not too hot on the idea. A posible solution could be to buy a bunch of those security camers that find at Canadian tyre. Run them through a PC that triggers the record function when a certain amount of motion (greater than the norm) is seen. Put a voice-sensitive microphone next to the computer's speakers and have the mic connected to some CB radio at an odd frequency that you're monitoring, and and have it anounce somthing when motion is detected. Or to eliminate the CB bit, have the PC use a satellite modem/radiotelephone to SMS you when movement is seen.
Enough said. This is similar to the RCMP agent posing as a drug dealer, selling a guy some crack, and then arresting him once the transaction is complete. If I remember correctly, the definfition of entrapment is somthing like "it's entrapment if the crime comitted would not have been commited if it had not been at the behest or suggestion of the police officier" - somthing the Dupreme Court deemed illegal long ago. And shouldn't what the guy have typed into the Invicta computer have been copyrighted to himself (gotta love the Berne Convention), and thus the Feds wouldn't have the duristiction to look at it whithout his permission (as he could deny them the right to record it).
Note that my entrapement definition is the Canadian one, btu I think it's the same as with the USA. I'm seeing several challenges to this if the Ruskies have a good lawer.
The string of events I've always wanted to do with my Palm V (but have never found out if possible) is as follows:
from a foreign country HotSync my Palm with my computer at home by way of using the Palm's IR port to go to my Motorola Timeport's IR port, and use the Timeport as the modem to dial into my PC and Sync.
Hey Americans! Think all this "invasion of privacy" couldn't happen in the US? Rember the Superbowl, where every fan that entered the stadium was caught on film, and had their facial features fed into a computer that deteremined if they were likely to cause trouble? Just as bad as what's going on in the UK (from your perspective - I don't mind all the CCTV cameras here), but less noticible.
Just remember: the US is not immune to the government syping on its people.
I'm a North American (read: Canadian) who now lives in the UK, and I've come to grips with the CCTV system that covers London. While I can't say that it overjoys me to be filmed everywhere, I'd prefer to be filmed walking into Charing Cross than having it blown up in the next few hours by some nutty Irish terrorists. CCTV *IS* useful here, and stops/solves crimes quite well.
For those of you that follow London news, think of the whole Damilola Taylor thing. The only way the Met got anything to go on in that case was from all the CCTV cameras in the area: that was their evidence and lead to start looking for people. Or the BBC studio bomb: they caught the Red Cab on tape, and that allowed them to put out pictures of it.
And I miss garbage cans on the Tube. I always have some wrapper with me, and feel guilty (remember the Canadian bit) about throwing it on the ground. Somone should come up with a good bomb-resistant garbage can for the Tube.
Firstly, this argument is in no way about a spy plane crashing into a fighter. It's simply a quasi-valid reason for the US and China to get out the pressure that they have been building up against each other. China's bitter about the Taiwan thing and the fact that they're not number 1 on the international scene. The US is bitter because China doesn't worship them like the rest of the world and Europe do, and becuase Jiang is will to stand up to GW and not listen to what he has to say. This is a rather large pissing match between two guys with big bladders. The US will win by not appologizing, or China will win by taking a year to send back the crew and "accidentally" destroying the spy plane in the process.
But now getting to the meat of the matter, the plane incident itself. As far as we know, the crach took place on the western side of the South China sea, an area that most people consider international waters, but that China claims as their own. China claims a lot of things as their own, so this isn't particularly relevant. The first big sticking point is that the plane didn't ask to land on Hainan. The question is largely a formality, because some UN convention (don't remember which) said that you have to help out a plane that's gonna crash. So they would have said yes, but they should have asked before they landed. Since they didn't, this gives China one more reason to hold them: they violated Chinese airspace by not asking.
The other big issue is GW's handling of the issue. Several times he's said that China "should do the right thing" and hand the pilots back. What about the US "doing the right thing" and not sp[ying on the internal communications of China. Also, he shouldn't be trying to intimidate the Chinese with these threats. When you have a culture (like the Japanese) who are HIGHLY ritualized and love their honor, you don't wanna keep threatening them and giving them more things to keep their pride up over. I think it's clear that the hawks, rather than the doves, are in control.
Lastly, imagine the situation is reversed. A Chinese spy plane is three miles out of California, and it's clipped by a US fighter sent to intercept and watch it, and the American dies. You can be quite sure of several things in this situation. Firstly, that the Chinese would have been "encouraged" heavily (by an armed escort) to land at the local military base. That the operators would be totally grilled by the (insert favourite government organization here). That the plane would not be going back to China any time soon. And that the Gov't would start going on about how evil China is for spying on the innocent USA, and how they're violating (insert various conventions here), and that's it's ungodly.
Bush should suck it up, appologize, and remember that Jiang owes him one the next time they go to an arms or environment conference, or a touchy security council issue comes up.
And on the popular/, subject of Jon Katz bashing, I actually like this piece. Not too much content and lots of fluff, but pleasently readable fluff.
As opposed to building somthing stupid like this, IBM could be inventing me a supercomputer to fit in my cell phone, and Carrier could be coming p with a way to make my air conditioner quiet.
From looking at this idea, it seems like it will appear on the high-end models. Now, high-end models of air conditioners have fast response times. I can press the cool button in my hall, and that hall will be cool within a minute or two. My whole house will be cool within ten minutes. It's not like I need to use my phone to tell my house to cool before I leave the office - ACs are fast. Definit waste of time...
It seems to me that your main beef with the metric system is that everything is arbitrary about it. I've got bad news for you: the world is arbitrary. I could invent a measurement called a Fnord that would be the length from my foot to my bed (right now), and it would be equally valid. That's the entire point of measuring units - to take somthing that's totally arbitrary yet needs to be the same everywhere, and standardize the arbitraryness of it. That's why my Fnord isn't a real mansurement - beause it's not regular (my foot has moved since I wrote the above) and no one knows about it.
As to the benefit of the metric system over the Imperial/UK system? It's dead simple. Take one basic word, and throw on some prefixes to get the scaled-up or -down units. And conversion between units is a matter of playing with ratios of ten that can be done on one hand by adding and substracting zeros (the factor-label method, my chem teached called it).
The metric system is not inspired by god (as you seem to infer it is), nor it is perfect (I still meausre my heigh in feet/inches, but it is significantly simpler than anything out there.
Living in the UK and watching Robot Wars religiously (and having seen BB when I was in Canada on holiday), I can honestly say that RW is phenomenally better.
Firstly (and most importantly), the robots on RW don't suck. When I was watching BB with my cousing (who is a fanatic of it), I was struck at how much shit Hypnodisk (for those of you who don't watch RW, it was last year's series winner) would have been able to stir up, had he been there. The RW robots are significantly more hardcore, and (for the most part) are much more elegant.
Secondly, the arena/commentators. While I do enjoy the various obstacles of the BB arena (I"m a big fan of the saws that come up from the floor), the RW one is superior. Not only is it much bigger, but less cluttered. And threre's the house robots. In each corner there's a badass robot controlled by the show, that has the right to beat on you if you come into the corner zone (demarcated on the floor). Not only does this look cool, it gives rise to interesting tactical situations: if a weakened robot can force a stronger one into the corner, then he can come back and win. And the commentators don't sound like football players. I also like how each robot gets a little bio and examination of its guts.
All in all, RW is significantly better. If they don't fuck up the translation, you're all in for a treat.
You need more than simply "good" and "bad" people - you need the people with good, clean, American accents killing those with evil foreign ones. What accents did all Imperial officiers speak with? British. Whan accent did the Bad Guys in Ep. 1 speak with? Asian. What accent did most evil James Bond villians have? Soviet/German. Who was the object of ridicule in Ep. 1? A dumbshit CGI with a Jamacian accent.
God may be good, and bad may be bad, but in American (and American-induced) cultures, it's all about the villian's accent being different from your own.
That means that this Ray Girvan holds the copyright on his writing up of the work - NOT the work itself (done by the Monk). If you don't beleive it, check the referenced sources. I haven't (and am too lazy to do so), but I would assume that they would clearly tell wether the thing is genuine or not.
If we ignroe all the horrible innefficiencies in the workings of the UN, why would having them run it be so bad a thing? Put one guy from each nation that has, say, greater than 5% of its citizens hooked up to the net in a room and tell them to decide what should happen. If the guy from Saudi dosen't like porno and the Swedish guy does, have a 2/3 majority vote and winner takes all. You know it's gonna happen.
Infomation may want to be free, but there's a whole lotta people who think they know what's best for it.
I'm not sure I agree with you in respect to having a software company sponsor a program. I think that if done well, it can be great, but if done badly, it will be the death of the graduates.
A program that seemed to work well (as far as I could see) was the CS/CompE program at the University of Southampton (in the UK) - I just saw the tour and talked to some kids, so if there are any Soton students here, feel free to correct me. For the most part, Microsoft 0wnz the place. there are huge MS banners in various labs, they have enough licences to give any student that wants a copy of any MS OS, and you can get pretty much any piece of MS software that you could possibly want (like Vis, Interdev, O2K, you name it) by simply going to the CS office and borrowing the CD for the night, and you were encouraged to burn yourself a copy if you needed.
If the situation was only what I have described above, then this would be very detrimental to the prospects of Joe Student. Innundated in a one-company (insert RedHat/Corel/NA/Symantec instead of MS if it makes you feel better) environment, the kids will learn to do all their Database programming with Access. Why? It may not be the best, but it's so easy for them to get it and get support for it. They will code everyting using Vis, because it's there. This situation, however, screws them because it's not like that in reality. Entities use many types of software, and they usually don't all interact like the MS suites.
To continue the Southampton scenario, it gets better (in a way that I think is fabulous). If it was MS-sponsored only, it would be bad. But it's not. Red Hat also 0wnz them, but to a lesser degree. They run RH where needed, and MS where needed. Again, I'm not saying that this is good BECAUSE it's Linux, but because it's variety and somtthing totally different. It also allow ppl who just don't like MS software an alternative.
This is what I think a sponsored program (public-private partnership?) should be like. Sponsored yes, but not by one company only, and NEVER exclusively.
Slashdot Mirror
George W. Bush announced that he is, in fact, a redneck hick.
RMS likes Free Software - why is this news to me?
Let's face it people, historical movies are only made in the US when the history being present goes down well with them. Heavens we think that a nation that's NOT the USA did somthing good or important in a war, or that they got bested by some Japanese.
Amazon has a huge database of customer information. They never forced you to give them your full address and phone number - if you didn't want to, you could walk your ass down to the local BookCity and buy whatever it was that you wanted. So you gave them that information of your own free will. Also bear in mind that address/mailing list sales is a hugely profitable business, especially selling to demgraphics/research firms, and even more so to those guys who conduct surveys online and ask "so, when's the last time you bought a book witten by a woman?" Not to mention spammers. Selling contacts is a profitable business, regardless of the morals of it. Realize also that Amazon ain't making any money. The market is down, the .com boom is over, and they don't have a hope, let alone a business plan. They need to generat cash, and to do so, they wanna sell some stuff that people gave them freely. Regardless of what they said when you gave it to them, you gave it to them of your own free will.
How about this? A man sits outside a bookshop, makes a not of all the books that people buy and takes a picture of who bought what. The then scours various archives to put names to those faces. He then uses a phone book to put addresses to those names to those faces to those books. They had the choice weather to bo on this list - they could have gone elsewhere. But he did the hard work (as Amazon did), and should be able to sell his work.
It all boils down to this: you freely gave Amazon your personal information. You had the total choice of weather to do so, and could have freely gone to a physical bookstore where they don't need to know where you live. You gave them the information, so you don't have the right to complain when they do what they want with it.
Have you ever been given a gift you didn't like (or need), and returned it to the store for somthign better or sold it to your friend? If so, then you're doing exactly what Amazon has done. Taken somthing that one person will give away for free, and sell it to somone else who will pay big money for it. If Amazon even has your data to sell, it's no one's fault but your own.
This isn't a troll or flambait, it's reality.
God, I really wish this particular AC either paid any attention to politics, or perhaps less of a request, graduated from High School. Capitalism and Communism are not the only systems that exist. In fact, Capitalism and Communism share one central thing: their distain for government. Capitalits say that government should keep their hands out of business as regulation is simply opression of the working class, and die-hard Communists say that there should be no government, as it's simply a way of opression of the workers. Communism is actually Marxism, with some extrimism thrown in by Stalin.
I'm also wondering if this guy has heard of words like "anarchism," "utilitarianism," and "mercantilism." They're all perfectly valid schools of economic thought. In fact, the world ran for quite a while on mercantilist principles. Granted, we soon thereafter decided they were wrong, but they're still valid.
Get a grip; read a social studies textbook. And realize that the world is NOT The American Way vs. The Communist Menace.
And I'm not even getting into why Communism (properly executed) isn't a bad thing.
And stop whinging about Netscape/Mozilla. We may all use it, but most of the world dosen't. Just as PDF has become the de facto standard for publishing whole documents on the web, (unfortunatley) IE has become the standard web browser. Accept it - Netscape's gone from the majority of computers.
I just had 6 units in 35 minutes - the opinions expressed may be those of beer.
This isn't that bad of a patent, if you really read the thing. Yeah, it's a fairly simple idea, but no one's done it before (look carefully again at the convert to MPEG and then spilt part of the patent). The thing that pisses me off here is that many of the posts are "it's not a bad patent because we like our TiVo and they're l33t" - this shouldn't matter. If it's a crap patent (which this one isn't), then it shouldn't matter what the usage of it is.
As an example, I used to be on the rowing team. I would fall asleep at about nine at night, and wake up at five in the morning. very painful for the first week (ended up napping in class), but then it was all good. Much like during vactions I go into a 2am to 2pm sleep cycle, which leaves me feeling hungover for teh first while, but good after that.
Also, I love using those airline eyeshades. Yes, they distort the natural light (so you don't wakeup with the sun), but I've got old enough ones that they don't really cover my eyes, just dull the light so that when the sun is filly out, it seems like its just coming out (through the eyeshades).
Lastly, I can only really sleep well if I don't have somthing on my mind. If, after getting into bed, I remember somthign that has to be done (liek a deadline), I'll get up and put it on a Post-It on my monitor, otherwise I'll be too busy worrying if i'll remember it to concentrate on sleep.
And as for pi, I still stand by my beleif that it's one of the funkiest mathematical symbols in common usage that most people understand and recognize. As was said earlier; it's not worth having some hugely complex formula on your shoulder if you have to explain it to everyone that sees your shoulder on a beach. Both of the above formulas I suggested are compact, simple enough for most ppl to understand, and are important.
(pi)r^2 and c^2=a^2+b^2
I don't think that anyone can deny that these two equations form part of the basis for all math, not just modern stuff. While Pythagoras has the advantage of being longer, I'd go with the area formula because it's simple, short (so when you decide that having a math quation on your arm isnt what you want, it'l be easy to remove), and has the added bonus of having the funkiest symbol (with the possible exception of either the sum or integral symbols) in there: pi.
Yes, it has. And how do you plan on getting your X10 feed from the boat to the land?
As you can see, I'm not too hot on the idea. A posible solution could be to buy a bunch of those security camers that find at Canadian tyre. Run them through a PC that triggers the record function when a certain amount of motion (greater than the norm) is seen. Put a voice-sensitive microphone next to the computer's speakers and have the mic connected to some CB radio at an odd frequency that you're monitoring, and and have it anounce somthing when motion is detected. Or to eliminate the CB bit, have the PC use a satellite modem/radiotelephone to SMS you when movement is seen.
Crude but it (should) work.
Note that my entrapement definition is the Canadian one, btu I think it's the same as with the USA. I'm seeing several challenges to this if the Ruskies have a good lawer.
from a foreign country HotSync my Palm with my computer at home by way of using the Palm's IR port to go to my Motorola Timeport's IR port, and use the Timeport as the modem to dial into my PC and Sync.
Anyone done it? Is it possible?
Just remember: the US is not immune to the government syping on its people.
For those of you that follow London news, think of the whole Damilola Taylor thing. The only way the Met got anything to go on in that case was from all the CCTV cameras in the area: that was their evidence and lead to start looking for people. Or the BBC studio bomb: they caught the Red Cab on tape, and that allowed them to put out pictures of it.
And I miss garbage cans on the Tube. I always have some wrapper with me, and feel guilty (remember the Canadian bit) about throwing it on the ground. Somone should come up with a good bomb-resistant garbage can for the Tube.
But now getting to the meat of the matter, the plane incident itself. As far as we know, the crach took place on the western side of the South China sea, an area that most people consider international waters, but that China claims as their own. China claims a lot of things as their own, so this isn't particularly relevant. The first big sticking point is that the plane didn't ask to land on Hainan. The question is largely a formality, because some UN convention (don't remember which) said that you have to help out a plane that's gonna crash. So they would have said yes, but they should have asked before they landed. Since they didn't, this gives China one more reason to hold them: they violated Chinese airspace by not asking.
The other big issue is GW's handling of the issue. Several times he's said that China "should do the right thing" and hand the pilots back. What about the US "doing the right thing" and not sp[ying on the internal communications of China. Also, he shouldn't be trying to intimidate the Chinese with these threats. When you have a culture (like the Japanese) who are HIGHLY ritualized and love their honor, you don't wanna keep threatening them and giving them more things to keep their pride up over. I think it's clear that the hawks, rather than the doves, are in control.
Lastly, imagine the situation is reversed. A Chinese spy plane is three miles out of California, and it's clipped by a US fighter sent to intercept and watch it, and the American dies. You can be quite sure of several things in this situation. Firstly, that the Chinese would have been "encouraged" heavily (by an armed escort) to land at the local military base. That the operators would be totally grilled by the (insert favourite government organization here). That the plane would not be going back to China any time soon. And that the Gov't would start going on about how evil China is for spying on the innocent USA, and how they're violating (insert various conventions here), and that's it's ungodly.
Bush should suck it up, appologize, and remember that Jiang owes him one the next time they go to an arms or environment conference, or a touchy security council issue comes up.
And on the popular /, subject of Jon Katz bashing, I actually like this piece. Not too much content and lots of fluff, but pleasently readable fluff.
Will I be able install Linux on my air conditioner, and I can I install SETI@home on all the units in my building?
From looking at this idea, it seems like it will appear on the high-end models. Now, high-end models of air conditioners have fast response times. I can press the cool button in my hall, and that hall will be cool within a minute or two. My whole house will be cool within ten minutes. It's not like I need to use my phone to tell my house to cool before I leave the office - ACs are fast. Definit waste of time...
As to the benefit of the metric system over the Imperial/UK system? It's dead simple. Take one basic word, and throw on some prefixes to get the scaled-up or -down units. And conversion between units is a matter of playing with ratios of ten that can be done on one hand by adding and substracting zeros (the factor-label method, my chem teached called it).
The metric system is not inspired by god (as you seem to infer it is), nor it is perfect (I still meausre my heigh in feet/inches, but it is significantly simpler than anything out there.
Firstly (and most importantly), the robots on RW don't suck. When I was watching BB with my cousing (who is a fanatic of it), I was struck at how much shit Hypnodisk (for those of you who don't watch RW, it was last year's series winner) would have been able to stir up, had he been there. The RW robots are significantly more hardcore, and (for the most part) are much more elegant.
Secondly, the arena/commentators. While I do enjoy the various obstacles of the BB arena (I"m a big fan of the saws that come up from the floor), the RW one is superior. Not only is it much bigger, but less cluttered. And threre's the house robots. In each corner there's a badass robot controlled by the show, that has the right to beat on you if you come into the corner zone (demarcated on the floor). Not only does this look cool, it gives rise to interesting tactical situations: if a weakened robot can force a stronger one into the corner, then he can come back and win. And the commentators don't sound like football players. I also like how each robot gets a little bio and examination of its guts.
All in all, RW is significantly better. If they don't fuck up the translation, you're all in for a treat.
All your GL(tm) are belong to us...
God may be good, and bad may be bad, but in American (and American-induced) cultures, it's all about the villian's accent being different from your own.
Think before you post, foo.
Infomation may want to be free, but there's a whole lotta people who think they know what's best for it.
A program that seemed to work well (as far as I could see) was the CS/CompE program at the University of Southampton (in the UK) - I just saw the tour and talked to some kids, so if there are any Soton students here, feel free to correct me. For the most part, Microsoft 0wnz the place. there are huge MS banners in various labs, they have enough licences to give any student that wants a copy of any MS OS, and you can get pretty much any piece of MS software that you could possibly want (like Vis, Interdev, O2K, you name it) by simply going to the CS office and borrowing the CD for the night, and you were encouraged to burn yourself a copy if you needed.
If the situation was only what I have described above, then this would be very detrimental to the prospects of Joe Student. Innundated in a one-company (insert RedHat/Corel/NA/Symantec instead of MS if it makes you feel better) environment, the kids will learn to do all their Database programming with Access. Why? It may not be the best, but it's so easy for them to get it and get support for it. They will code everyting using Vis, because it's there. This situation, however, screws them because it's not like that in reality. Entities use many types of software, and they usually don't all interact like the MS suites.
To continue the Southampton scenario, it gets better (in a way that I think is fabulous). If it was MS-sponsored only, it would be bad. But it's not. Red Hat also 0wnz them, but to a lesser degree. They run RH where needed, and MS where needed. Again, I'm not saying that this is good BECAUSE it's Linux, but because it's variety and somtthing totally different. It also allow ppl who just don't like MS software an alternative.
This is what I think a sponsored program (public-private partnership?) should be like. Sponsored yes, but not by one company only, and NEVER exclusively.