I'm sure that many SS soldiers who were excecuted for there crimes would (if they were still alive) argue that it apparantlyh IS against the law to follow orders on ocassion!
Note: I am not comparing the war in Iraq to anything that hitler did, just pointing out that it is not allwase legal to follow the orders of your commanding officer, even if refusing might very well mean your life.
I think you have missed the point- you took the rather obviously incorrect assumption that old growth lumber is unnatural and caused by human intervention; But the very nature of old growth (being more then 400 years old) precludes that
Then you set up this strawman argument (Which don't get me wrong is as far as I can tell truthful and accurate) which dose not address they key issue:
Old Growth lumber is not unnatural and has nothing to do with human intervention.
There now that I've said that; I'd also like to point out the difference between softwoods and hardwoods (Which is an odd difference, because balsa wood is considered a hardwood!); Hardwoods traditionally do not require fire to spread because they bear seeds by themselves (Walnuts, oaks, mustards, chesnut, balsa) these trees seed without the aid of fire, and are in the catagory of hardwoods. Softwoods (woods traditionally having a cone; like pine, spruce, blue spruce) do extensively use fire in there spreading methods, but otehr softwoods (willow for instance) will spread just fine without the help of fire.
Perhaps I should have explained in more detail; Bulk coding in north america will become more scarce; someone will design the specifications for the engine, and ship it off to india to be fleshed out. Some jobs will remain in north america for people to work out specifications for there engines, integrate the final engine with the graphics, and perhaps do some on site debugging, but most of the coding will take place elsewhere because it's cheaper.
I think that you overstate this; Coding jobs will allwase be avalible; but 'bulk coding' will start becomming more scarce (IE the type of people who program a game engine).
However I think that what will really happen to coding is that it will largely get amalgamated into other IT positions; at several of my previous jobs, programming was part of a myrad of other duties I had to perform, and it was a minor part of my day (Perhaps 2 hours a day on a project that would at that rate take about 3 weeks)
In fact NYPD blue released a special bondage episode today to honour gimp's 2.0 release
Taken from http://abc.go.com/primetime/nypdblue/ Tuesday, March 23, 10/9c
"Old Yeller"
The search is on for a man who kidnaps, rapes and tortures women and locks them in a dungeon, and Medavoy becomes attracted to a much older woman (Ellen Geer) who may be addicted to sex.
That said, it's important to remember that computers have allready entered the nanotech age quietly and without really telling anyone. The gapping that is possible with modern lithography is a mere 70nm across.
That's right; 70nm; in other words not only are most modern computer chips measured in nm, there measured in mere tens of nanometers!
If MS flatly refuses to comply and 'pulls out it's european opperations'- it would have to do it FAST (because the EU could cease there (european)holdings if they thought they were trying to evade a court judgement), and even if sucessful the EU could attempt extridition of the funds from the US microsoft (weither or not the US would actually do that leaves to be seen, but the treaties for these extriditions are in place)
Even in the scenario where they mannage to pull out and the US dosen't honor extradition; the EU dosen't loose it's microsoft products, they don't 'self-destruct', they just cannot be updated to new purchased versions, piracy runs rampant (perhaps with government sanctions: Since the product is not a legal peice of software in the EU)- and over several years the slow change to another system takes place.
The EU becomes a nation that is either running several years old MS oses, or non-MS oses, and is surviving- that's a scary thought to MS, which is why they won't do it.
but the point is; there could be dozens of 'sleeper' hemophilia carriers out there, with the recessive non active gene; just because one poor shmuck happens to be a non-recessive carrier should not have his ability to reproduce be stomped on by poorly applied eugenics.
Now if you were to genetically scan everyone, and say that no one with hemophila carrier genes may breed- then I might say 'sounds reasonable if inhumane'
Instead I would say that they should continue to be allowed to breed; but should not argue when gene treatment is developed to remove hemophilia genes from children (technically pheasable in the near future)
While I'm all for the microsoft bashing, the US bashing, the EU and Chinese hyping, and all that- I have to, at least partially, disagree with you.
In the US microsoft files it's taxes for it's global revenu, it employs thousands of individuals, it makes dozens of donations to charity organizations, and it's an american grown startup company; these factors I'm sure played in to (if you want to assume that you have honest judges; at least sub-conciously) there decision to regular the US based anti-trust violations to a mere slap on the wrist.
The EU dose not have microsoft filing massive gains in their tax system, dose not have them making massive donations tolocal charities, they are not an EU based startup company- these factors may be contributing to a (once again sub-concious) more harsh assault then may be warrented (note: MAY, not is; they may still be going too soft for all I know); either way this outlook may be what's giving them there 'spine' as it were.
He mentioned that they were the ISP, and had provided the e-mail to him as a customer; he then converted it to a work e-mail; Hence the e-mail was on there servers
You know, I read the headline, and I honestly could not figure out WHO'S sql server was being delayed. So I said to myself while opening it; why diden't the author of this specify which SQL server is being affected?
On a slightly more seious tone (though I did honestly not know who's server was being delayed; I thought it was some no named server that I'd never heard of!), do not allow microsoft to pull another 'we own the word windows'; never shortern Microsoft SQL server, into SQL server- at the absolute least call it MS SQL, so that this way in 5 years they can't turn around and sue everyone who has SQL in there name!
ahh, but the truth is in the pudding; it can dynamically choose which program it NEEDS to emulate; it cannot 'dynamically choose which program to emulate'; those two words make it a different implimentation not subject to the limitations of the patent
As mentioned above; this is simmilar to microsofts method to avoid Eolas patent if they needed to- it woudl load a page saying 'this is a flash object, click here to run it [ok]'- it still automatically detected that it was a flash object, and it still ran it, it just now required a user intervention before doing so (interestingly: This is considered a valuable feature on Mozilla that people install a plugin to get!)
I think the trick with the web site copying is not that it's 'not as bad' so much as it is the actual stealing of that persons work.
Example; If I steal a song from the band Barrage because I apriciate there aleternative stylings- the song is still from Barrage, and anyone who asks me what that is will hear 'it's by Barrage'- hence, while I have stolen there work for monitary value, I have not 'stolen' there art.
If I were to take a song of Barrage's and remove the vocals, add my own vocals and release it as my own song, THEN I would be doing the eqivalent of stealing someone's webpage- I'm taking their art, and claiming it as my own!
I'm seeing a lot of questions out there for 'who would actually buy porno', and I'm suprised that no one is stating what (to me at least) would be the obvious answers
I'm going to point out that I heavily considered positing anonomusly cause I'm a coward; but decided not to.
1-People who want to dictate things; most porn sites mention that when your a paying member you can request seeing your faviorate 'actress' in different scenarios- If you've got a fetish for a green haired version of your faviorate internet-porn actress in a pumpkin patch (most ridiculus but likely to take place example I could come up with) and your a paying customer; you can get it.
2-People who want to get involved in things, at least superficially (being a 'web cam director at a 'mere 2.95 a minute on top of your regular membership')
3-For the really creepy stuff; buying things that your faviorate porn actress has worn (lots of porn sites advertise this bizarr activity; then again, apparantly they sell worn girls panties in vending machines in japan)
4-Full Length Videos; Ignoring illegally downloading them off of P2P networks, if you like videos signing up to these places is often the way to go; even over P2P networks the video's are often portions of larger clips
5-Video Purchase (though this often dose not nessessitiate being a member; there is often a discount that makes it worthwile if your going to buy a few); because eventually your going to run out of hard disk space from downloading, or want 3 hours of solid girl on girl action on DVD.
I should point out that a casual porn store will be able to facilitate a few of those; but I imagine what you get from a website is more 'amature' or 'girl next door' then what you'd get in professional porn.
As much as I like this post, and the point your trying to drive home (you learn to be violent elsewhere; you learn to fear weapons in an FPS); I have to make a point about your shocking lack of fear from a 9mm weapon!
Bullets do the most dammage in a human body when they get a chance to bounce around inside you, hence regardless of the number of milimeters on the bore (.50 cal is only 12.7mm) guns are deadly! If someone points a gun at you you give them your money, your watch, you shoes whatever; possessions are not worth dying trying to be a hero over.
Now the guy with the gun starts making comments that make you think your going to die no matter what you do- that's when it's time to take your chances when it's you, or your loved ones on the line and not just some possessions.
I had a mishap involving paypal, and I coulden't help but feel that everything seemed to be engineered to make it as difficult as possible for you to get a refund.
See, I bought an item off E-bay (USB hub) and then never recieved it, and paypal and e-bay asks you to give the seller every oportunity to allow the item to arrive (3 weeks), file complaint with e-bay, and they say; confirm with paypal (after 3 day waiting period).
File complaint with paypal- they say they'll investigate (1 week). At that point they told me that 'yes looks like you were ripped off, but there's nothing we can do'. It took 4 weeks to get to that point, however; my credit card (linuxfund card from MBNA) has a 6 month protection plan, which I used to challange the purchase and I got all my money back (I guess paypal ends up eating that loss). So I was happy, and paypal starts pushing for people to use there bank accounts rather then credit cards more.
So my sugestion to anyone worried about paypal is to stick with a GOOD credit card that has a nice window for you to challange any purchases; and if things go awire, take your time; and make sure you have all the evidence you need before challanging the purchase (MBNA did call me about it; and I read line for line paypal's report of the incident)
I used to work tech support for HP all in one products
Except for three factors about the seperate print head printers
1-The print heads also have fancy detectors, and they actually STOP WORKING after about three cartidges (~$120 for a full set of them if I remember correctly) have been run through them (even though they may still have been printing fine to that point)
2-The print heads are nutoriously easy to clog, or dammage, and incorrect replacment dammages everything, requireing there expensive replacment.
3-The whole unit uses a complex series of internal plumbing to get the ink from the ink cartidges to the print heads; if you dry out the ink in the plumbing; that's it it's over; buy a new printer, cause it can't be fixed.
I'm going to have to defend other professionals here; when I was working tech support for HP all in one printers on the mac (awful awful devices that crash constantly and we were not allowed to tell you how to fix them properly- (the proper solution almost allwase being 'use the cups drivers')) the people who had the greatest ability to understand complex instructions were the doctors and lawyers who called in.
They might have been completely clueless at the beginning of the call- but they'd be able to write down (I hate people who refuse to write things down, and then call back with the same problem a half hour later), and follow complex sets of instructions without any problem. They would also readily accept critiques like 'If you continue to use that 9 meter USB cable your going to get more comunication errors then if you had bought a 2 meter one'; and except for there asking me what that was in feet all was well (being a canadian I refused to switch to imperial unless specifically asked; and never refered to the letter z as 'zee' instead using the most sensible 'zed' (because this way you don't get it confused with 'c' as 'see')
This may have something to do with them being mac users, but we had a lot of very dumb mac uses call in too. Though not as dumb as the windows users who were convinced they were using 'macintosh windows XP'
You know, I'm sitting at a mac right now, writing this reply, so I have some experence with the mac user interface, and mac software. I ultimately found that os 10.2 was too goddamned slow to opperate for any longer on this thing, wiped it, and installed linux (gentoo PPC in this scenario); It was a monstrosity to install, random failures, software packages that were not supported in PPC format; but I got it installed- now it runs much faster; and several of my friends (who I force to use the mac when my windows machine is busy playing allowing me to play games) actually find its interface far more intuitive and useable then then OS 10.2.
Now this not a direct insult of OS 10.2; the mac, or anything- just pointing out that while YOU may find the interface of linux aps clunky, other's find them very useable;
Though I'm definatly calling you on the speed thing- a good linux install is much faster then OS 10.2 (don't have jagurar to compare it with here- comparing my iMac to my buddies brand new TiBook is not a fair comparison)
My cat used to do the same thing, I found an interesting solution that seemed to benifit everyone (me because my gear stopped getting torn up, and the cat because he diden't choke and die on an electircal cable)- I coated my stuff with wasabi- It smells pugnent (which is important for keeping cats at bay) and it will remain 'active' even after it's dried onto the cable (you can purchase wasabi in powdered form; do not eat the powder) so that if the cat decides to 'forget' the lessons of the past some time down the line the cords are still way too hot to eat!
except that if microsoft willingly, and knowingly puts it's source code onto a P2P network; then they are giving that code away (code that they have the legal right to give away), and hence is not infringing on there copyright; hence the copy you get from them is a legal copy (further copies I'm not so sure about)
the wattage of a power supply is it's MAX draw, it is hopefully not pumping out max 24X7- that said; if you want to check your average daily consumption, grab your latest hydro bill, and divide how many KWh you used by the number of days in the month (Why this is useful; if you use more then 24kwh/day the fule cell simply cannot generate enough power to fule you up even including batteries);
Me and my family, unfortunately, use more then 24 kw a day, on average; so this is unfortunately not a valid solution in the 1 kw model; but a 3 kw model would be more then generous and suit our family perfectly.
Ahh, but it's a GSM phone- it should be as simple as somehow GETTING that phone, then taking it to your local provider (if they offer GSM; AT&T dose in my neighbourhood) paying the $25 phone connection fee, and boom your online with your fancy linux phone.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure that many SS soldiers who were excecuted for there crimes would (if they were still alive) argue that it apparantlyh IS against the law to follow orders on ocassion!
Note: I am not comparing the war in Iraq to anything that hitler did, just pointing out that it is not allwase legal to follow the orders of your commanding officer, even if refusing might very well mean your life.
I think you have missed the point- you took the rather obviously incorrect assumption that old growth lumber is unnatural and caused by human intervention; But the very nature of old growth (being more then 400 years old) precludes that
Then you set up this strawman argument (Which don't get me wrong is as far as I can tell truthful and accurate) which dose not address they key issue:
Old Growth lumber is not unnatural and has nothing to do with human intervention.
There now that I've said that; I'd also like to point out the difference between softwoods and hardwoods (Which is an odd difference, because balsa wood is considered a hardwood!); Hardwoods traditionally do not require fire to spread because they bear seeds by themselves (Walnuts, oaks, mustards, chesnut, balsa) these trees seed without the aid of fire, and are in the catagory of hardwoods. Softwoods (woods traditionally having a cone; like pine, spruce, blue spruce) do extensively use fire in there spreading methods, but otehr softwoods (willow for instance) will spread just fine without the help of fire.
Perhaps I should have explained in more detail; Bulk coding in north america will become more scarce; someone will design the specifications for the engine, and ship it off to india to be fleshed out. Some jobs will remain in north america for people to work out specifications for there engines, integrate the final engine with the graphics, and perhaps do some on site debugging, but most of the coding will take place elsewhere because it's cheaper.
I think that you overstate this; Coding jobs will allwase be avalible; but 'bulk coding' will start becomming more scarce (IE the type of people who program a game engine).
However I think that what will really happen to coding is that it will largely get amalgamated into other IT positions; at several of my previous jobs, programming was part of a myrad of other duties I had to perform, and it was a minor part of my day (Perhaps 2 hours a day on a project that would at that rate take about 3 weeks)
?? That is a joke right?
.net code to be executed on linux, mac, and BSD machines.
Just in case it's not- mono is a set of programming tools that allow
To the humorously impaired; it's a joke, laugh
In fact NYPD blue released a special bondage episode today to honour gimp's 2.0 release
Taken from
http://abc.go.com/primetime/nypdblue/
Tuesday, March 23, 10/9c "Old Yeller" The search is on for a man who kidnaps, rapes and tortures women and locks them in a dungeon, and Medavoy becomes attracted to a much older woman (Ellen Geer) who may be addicted to sex.
This article is buzz word compliant.
C 4-DC31-1055-973683414B7F0000&sc=I100322
That said, it's important to remember that computers have allready entered the nanotech age quietly and without really telling anyone. The gapping that is possible with modern lithography is a mere 70nm across.
That's right; 70nm; in other words not only are most modern computer chips measured in nm, there measured in mere tens of nanometers!
And they're still getting smaller.
Source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000CE8
that's an interesting idea, but unlikely.
If MS flatly refuses to comply and 'pulls out it's european opperations'- it would have to do it FAST (because the EU could cease there (european)holdings if they thought they were trying to evade a court judgement), and even if sucessful the EU could attempt extridition of the funds from the US microsoft (weither or not the US would actually do that leaves to be seen, but the treaties for these extriditions are in place)
Even in the scenario where they mannage to pull out and the US dosen't honor extradition; the EU dosen't loose it's microsoft products, they don't 'self-destruct', they just cannot be updated to new purchased versions, piracy runs rampant (perhaps with government sanctions: Since the product is not a legal peice of software in the EU)- and over several years the slow change to another system takes place.
The EU becomes a nation that is either running several years old MS oses, or non-MS oses, and is surviving- that's a scary thought to MS, which is why they won't do it.
but the point is; there could be dozens of 'sleeper' hemophilia carriers out there, with the recessive non active gene; just because one poor shmuck happens to be a non-recessive carrier should not have his ability to reproduce be stomped on by poorly applied eugenics.
Now if you were to genetically scan everyone, and say that no one with hemophila carrier genes may breed- then I might say 'sounds reasonable if inhumane'
Instead I would say that they should continue to be allowed to breed; but should not argue when gene treatment is developed to remove hemophilia genes from children (technically pheasable in the near future)
While I'm all for the microsoft bashing, the US bashing, the EU and Chinese hyping, and all that- I have to, at least partially, disagree with you.
In the US microsoft files it's taxes for it's global revenu, it employs thousands of individuals, it makes dozens of donations to charity organizations, and it's an american grown startup company; these factors I'm sure played in to (if you want to assume that you have honest judges; at least sub-conciously) there decision to regular the US based anti-trust violations to a mere slap on the wrist.
The EU dose not have microsoft filing massive gains in their tax system, dose not have them making massive donations tolocal charities, they are not an EU based startup company- these factors may be contributing to a (once again sub-concious) more harsh assault then may be warrented (note: MAY, not is; they may still be going too soft for all I know); either way this outlook may be what's giving them there 'spine' as it were.
He mentioned that they were the ISP, and had provided the e-mail to him as a customer; he then converted it to a work e-mail; Hence the e-mail was on there servers
You know, I read the headline, and I honestly could not figure out WHO'S sql server was being delayed. So I said to myself while opening it; why diden't the author of this specify which SQL server is being affected?
On a slightly more seious tone (though I did honestly not know who's server was being delayed; I thought it was some no named server that I'd never heard of!), do not allow microsoft to pull another 'we own the word windows'; never shortern Microsoft SQL server, into SQL server- at the absolute least call it MS SQL, so that this way in 5 years they can't turn around and sue everyone who has SQL in there name!
Don't believe me; look at lindows.
ahh, but the truth is in the pudding; it can dynamically choose which program it NEEDS to emulate; it cannot 'dynamically choose which program to emulate'; those two words make it a different implimentation not subject to the limitations of the patent
As mentioned above; this is simmilar to microsofts method to avoid Eolas patent if they needed to- it woudl load a page saying 'this is a flash object, click here to run it [ok]'- it still automatically detected that it was a flash object, and it still ran it, it just now required a user intervention before doing so (interestingly: This is considered a valuable feature on Mozilla that people install a plugin to get!)
Slippery slope.
I think the trick with the web site copying is not that it's 'not as bad' so much as it is the actual stealing of that persons work.
Example; If I steal a song from the band Barrage because I apriciate there aleternative stylings- the song is still from Barrage, and anyone who asks me what that is will hear 'it's by Barrage'- hence, while I have stolen there work for monitary value, I have not 'stolen' there art.
If I were to take a song of Barrage's and remove the vocals, add my own vocals and release it as my own song, THEN I would be doing the eqivalent of stealing someone's webpage- I'm taking their art, and claiming it as my own!
PS. I like Barrage.
I'm seeing a lot of questions out there for 'who would actually buy porno', and I'm suprised that no one is stating what (to me at least) would be the obvious answers
I'm going to point out that I heavily considered positing anonomusly cause I'm a coward; but decided not to.
1-People who want to dictate things; most porn sites mention that when your a paying member you can request seeing your faviorate 'actress' in different scenarios- If you've got a fetish for a green haired version of your faviorate internet-porn actress in a pumpkin patch (most ridiculus but likely to take place example I could come up with) and your a paying customer; you can get it.
2-People who want to get involved in things, at least superficially (being a 'web cam director at a 'mere 2.95 a minute on top of your regular membership')
3-For the really creepy stuff; buying things that your faviorate porn actress has worn (lots of porn sites advertise this bizarr activity; then again, apparantly they sell worn girls panties in vending machines in japan)
4-Full Length Videos; Ignoring illegally downloading them off of P2P networks, if you like videos signing up to these places is often the way to go; even over P2P networks the video's are often portions of larger clips
5-Video Purchase (though this often dose not nessessitiate being a member; there is often a discount that makes it worthwile if your going to buy a few); because eventually your going to run out of hard disk space from downloading, or want 3 hours of solid girl on girl action on DVD.
I should point out that a casual porn store will be able to facilitate a few of those; but I imagine what you get from a website is more 'amature' or 'girl next door' then what you'd get in professional porn.
As much as I like this post, and the point your trying to drive home (you learn to be violent elsewhere; you learn to fear weapons in an FPS); I have to make a point about your shocking lack of fear from a 9mm weapon!
Bullets do the most dammage in a human body when they get a chance to bounce around inside you, hence regardless of the number of milimeters on the bore (.50 cal is only 12.7mm) guns are deadly! If someone points a gun at you you give them your money, your watch, you shoes whatever; possessions are not worth dying trying to be a hero over.
Now the guy with the gun starts making comments that make you think your going to die no matter what you do- that's when it's time to take your chances when it's you, or your loved ones on the line and not just some possessions.
I had a mishap involving paypal, and I coulden't help but feel that everything seemed to be engineered to make it as difficult as possible for you to get a refund.
See, I bought an item off E-bay (USB hub) and then never recieved it, and paypal and e-bay asks you to give the seller every oportunity to allow the item to arrive (3 weeks), file complaint with e-bay, and they say; confirm with paypal (after 3 day waiting period).
File complaint with paypal- they say they'll investigate (1 week). At that point they told me that 'yes looks like you were ripped off, but there's nothing we can do'. It took 4 weeks to get to that point, however; my credit card (linuxfund card from MBNA) has a 6 month protection plan, which I used to challange the purchase and I got all my money back (I guess paypal ends up eating that loss). So I was happy, and paypal starts pushing for people to use there bank accounts rather then credit cards more.
So my sugestion to anyone worried about paypal is to stick with a GOOD credit card that has a nice window for you to challange any purchases; and if things go awire, take your time; and make sure you have all the evidence you need before challanging the purchase (MBNA did call me about it; and I read line for line paypal's report of the incident)
I used to work tech support for HP all in one products
Except for three factors about the seperate print head printers
1-The print heads also have fancy detectors, and they actually STOP WORKING after about three cartidges (~$120 for a full set of them if I remember correctly) have been run through them (even though they may still have been printing fine to that point)
2-The print heads are nutoriously easy to clog, or dammage, and incorrect replacment dammages everything, requireing there expensive replacment.
3-The whole unit uses a complex series of internal plumbing to get the ink from the ink cartidges to the print heads; if you dry out the ink in the plumbing; that's it it's over; buy a new printer, cause it can't be fixed.
I'm going to have to defend other professionals here; when I was working tech support for HP all in one printers on the mac (awful awful devices that crash constantly and we were not allowed to tell you how to fix them properly- (the proper solution almost allwase being 'use the cups drivers')) the people who had the greatest ability to understand complex instructions were the doctors and lawyers who called in.
They might have been completely clueless at the beginning of the call- but they'd be able to write down (I hate people who refuse to write things down, and then call back with the same problem a half hour later), and follow complex sets of instructions without any problem. They would also readily accept critiques like 'If you continue to use that 9 meter USB cable your going to get more comunication errors then if you had bought a 2 meter one'; and except for there asking me what that was in feet all was well (being a canadian I refused to switch to imperial unless specifically asked; and never refered to the letter z as 'zee' instead using the most sensible 'zed' (because this way you don't get it confused with 'c' as 'see')
This may have something to do with them being mac users, but we had a lot of very dumb mac uses call in too. Though not as dumb as the windows users who were convinced they were using 'macintosh windows XP'
You know, I'm sitting at a mac right now, writing this reply, so I have some experence with the mac user interface, and mac software. I ultimately found that os 10.2 was too goddamned slow to opperate for any longer on this thing, wiped it, and installed linux (gentoo PPC in this scenario); It was a monstrosity to install, random failures, software packages that were not supported in PPC format; but I got it installed- now it runs much faster; and several of my friends (who I force to use the mac when my windows machine is busy playing allowing me to play games) actually find its interface far more intuitive and useable then then OS 10.2.
Now this not a direct insult of OS 10.2; the mac, or anything- just pointing out that while YOU may find the interface of linux aps clunky, other's find them very useable;
Though I'm definatly calling you on the speed thing- a good linux install is much faster then OS 10.2 (don't have jagurar to compare it with here- comparing my iMac to my buddies brand new TiBook is not a fair comparison)
My cat used to do the same thing, I found an interesting solution that seemed to benifit everyone (me because my gear stopped getting torn up, and the cat because he diden't choke and die on an electircal cable)- I coated my stuff with wasabi- It smells pugnent (which is important for keeping cats at bay) and it will remain 'active' even after it's dried onto the cable (you can purchase wasabi in powdered form; do not eat the powder) so that if the cat decides to 'forget' the lessons of the past some time down the line the cords are still way too hot to eat!
except that if microsoft willingly, and knowingly puts it's source code onto a P2P network; then they are giving that code away (code that they have the legal right to give away), and hence is not infringing on there copyright; hence the copy you get from them is a legal copy (further copies I'm not so sure about)
the wattage of a power supply is it's MAX draw, it is hopefully not pumping out max 24X7- that said; if you want to check your average daily consumption, grab your latest hydro bill, and divide how many KWh you used by the number of days in the month (Why this is useful; if you use more then 24kwh/day the fule cell simply cannot generate enough power to fule you up even including batteries);
Me and my family, unfortunately, use more then 24 kw a day, on average; so this is unfortunately not a valid solution in the 1 kw model; but a 3 kw model would be more then generous and suit our family perfectly.
I'm in Canada, coverage is much better here as I understand it.
Ahh, but it's a GSM phone- it should be as simple as somehow GETTING that phone, then taking it to your local provider (if they offer GSM; AT&T dose in my neighbourhood) paying the $25 phone connection fee, and boom your online with your fancy linux phone.