You have a two party system because it's modeled on Westminster.
We do not have a two party system, it is just that currently (and usually) only two of the parties are able to garner enough votes to even be considered.
The current system has virtually no input from the population and is becoming more and more like the royal courts of Europe used to be. A quick example is the number of career politicans and the number of Father/Son teams. Republican = Democrat there is so little difference as to be insulting.
The system has virtually no input because virtually nobody votes. It is rare to even get a 20% turnout. There are major differences between the parties, it is just that they are rarely talked about on political TV ads. Instead, the ads state:
Our candidate supports education.
Our candidate supports police.
Our candidate supports the military.
Our candidate will bring jobs to the area.
The only time the other candidate won't be raising your taxes is when he is too busy kicking old women and little children.
You can stick your head in the sand and trot out the party line about democracy, freedom, liberty etc but please do not try and use examples to back you up that you obiuosly have not researched.
As an example of such un-researched examples:
Research how closely related by blood American politicans are to European. Then go on to research where your current politicans were educated? Then see if you can guess why the population of America has virtually no say in their goverment or laws?
How many people reading this are American citizens of age 18 or over who are not voting? I think that I can guess why they have virtually no say in their government and its laws.
The two part system gives the illusion of a democracy when in reality all we do is change dictators.
The are four main political views in America today. They are Libertarianism, Conservativism, Liberalism, and Socialism. The Libertarians and Conservatives have generally resided in the Republican party, although some conservatives are in the Democratic Party. Liberals and Socialists (the mainstream ones at least) are generally Democrats. The Libertarians and the Socialists have recently been splitting off as there own parties, the Libertarian and the Green parties.
Neither of them will ever amount to much on any presidental election (lets hope) since they are to exteme for most people, and too extreme for comprimise.
The problem with the Libertarians is that they fail to realise that we actually do need a government, even a federal government, and we always will. They mainly only side with Conservatives because they aren't Democrats, who generally think that the solution to anything is a large government program.
The problem with the Greens/Socialists is that they want to replace the system of primarily corporate development and activity, which, while it has problem, actually works, with a system that has been demonstrated to not work on several occasions, all for the benefit of spotted tree frogs and the like. They will never get anywhere, because the American public likes their SUV's, McDonald's, non-fair-trade coffee, and cheap sweatshop clothing, and don't want to be told to change, and definitely not that they are evil.
I also like http://www.alltheweb.com. It honors quotes. So "slashdot whiners" (with the quotes) will only find pages where the two words are adjacent and in that order. Can be very handy.
The ads on Slashdot are good? What the hell are you talking about? They are some of the most idiotic pieces of crap on the web. The Source Forge ads are a perfect example. This one is a poorly-drawn direct rip-off of the Spiderman movie, as is this one. Or how about this one, with a light sabre and "May the forge be with you"? It is one of a whole series of Star Wars rip-offs, such as this, this, , this, and this . Here's one that mentions hobbits. Coding in a matrix, or just ripping one off? If I were George Lucas (or any of the other copyright/trademark holders), they would have been sued quite some time ago. I am sure they aren't paying to use the characters. I imagine the only reason why this hasn't happened yet is that nobody has bothered to tell Lucas about them.
Woah, and look what it did to the car's owner! He looks really messed up. Worse than the car.
Actually, that guy isn't the car's owner, but rather "meteorite expert" Ray Meyer. Since he is listed as "meteorite expert Ray Meyer" instead of "Ray Meyer, Ph.D., astro-geologist" I suspect that he is just some moron who likes space rocks.
This is the wrong answer to the question, even though it gives the right answer. Why? Well for one thing, it is "clever", which as any real programmer knows is the sign of something bad. What about 1..11 with one number missing? Oh no, it's broken! Actually, then you just subtract from 66 (for those of you who didn't get inflicted with series in math enough to just recognise this, 55 = 1 + 2 +... + 9 + 10, and 66 = 55+11 ), but if you have two numbers missing it actually is broken. A general solution is almost always a better solution. If I were asked this during an interview, my response would be "I'm not sure, but I most definitely would not just subtract the sum from 55," knowing that is probably the answer they are looking for, and then explain why. Then I would state that I don't believe that trivial little mathematical puzzles are a very good way to try to select a computer scientist, or even a mathematician for that matter.
The zooming in Mozilla is text-only, at least it is in version 1.0. On Opera it zooms everything including images. It would be a nice feature to see added to Mozilla.
It would be good if the linux makers could just come up with a spec for a Linux machine design. This is the time to do it because they could just describe current machines.
Why don't you just drop Wintel next time around? You can get a Sun Blade 100 for around $1,000 right now. If you are using Linux now, migrating to Solaris wouldn't be too much of a challenge, assuming you let Sun install it for you. And, if you are really that attached to your Linux, I am pretty sure it will run there too, as well as on about a half-dozen other architectures.
Madison County, IL, where the suit was brought is a class-action mecca now for its jurors willingness to award anyone money for anything.
Yay! We made the news! Actually, it isn't really all that suprising when you think about it. The vast majority of the people in this county are white trash living in trailer parks, and there isn't anything they hate more than Big Bid'ness.
Is it that the MySQL supporters on slashdot are only familar with application programming interfaces to relational databases - and so don't understand the differences between a modern relational database and MySQL? Or are they simply pushing the product that they are most familiar with?
I think the main reason MySQL gets more hype than Postgres is because of the interfaces available. When I was dealing with that sort of crap (about 2 years ago) the Python interface to Postgres was very bare-bones, and almost unusable if you didn't know much SQL beyond a basic SELECT statement. The MySQL module for Python, on the other had, had all sorts of "Python-esque" ways to mess with the data without even knowing what an SQL statement is, and as I understand it, the MySQL interface in Perl was even friendlier to the SQL-unaware. The obvious drawback to the Perl interface though, is that then you have to program in Perl.
Actually, it might provide them with a totally new medium. Since the ads are merely multiple pictures on the tunnel wall, if they could get down into the subway tunnel, they could "enhance" the whole ad with nothing but good old-fashioned krylon. Imagine how amusing it would be to see full-motion graffiti!
But to answer your point, the pressure to keep a movie under 2 hours comes not from moviegoers, but from cinemas.
Nope, you're wrong, it comes from the movie-goers. The last movie I saw was Minority Report. It was over two hours long because Speilburg can get away with it, but for the last twenty minutes or so, all I could think about was how much I needed to go to the bathroom.
Damn the Constitution: Europe must take back the Web
By Bill Thompson
Posted: 09/08/2002 at 14:01 GMT
Guest Opinion I've had enough of US hegemony. It's time for change -and a closed European network.
Today's Internet is a poor respecter of national boundaries, as many repressive governments have found to their cost. Unfortunately this freedom has been so extensively abused by the United States and its politicians, lawyers and programmers that it has become a serious threat to the continued survival of the network as a global communications medium. If the price of being online is to swallow US values, then many may think twice about using the Net at all, and if the only game online follows US rules, then many may decide not to play.
Go ahead and think twice about using the internet, even think about it three times, if you like. I don't think I would even mind all that much if you don't "decide to play."
We have already seen US law, in the form of Digital Millennium Copyright Act, used to persuade hosts in other countries to pull material or limit its availability. US-promoted 'anti-censor' software is routinely provided to enable citizens of other countries to break local laws; and US companies like Yahoo! disregard the judgements of foreign courts at will.
Instead of complaining about the DCMA, why don't you complain about the EUCD, the European Union Copyright Directive, the equivalent EU legislation to the DMCA? Do you believe that it won't be used to persuade hosts in other countries to pull material or limit its availability? And as for the anti-censor software, heaven forbid if a few Chinese are actually able to read the BBC News, in violation of their local laws. You are right, that is a terrible thing.
Congressman Howard Berman's ridiculous proposal to give copyright holders immunity from prosecution if they hack into P2P networks is the latest attempt by the US Congress to pass laws that will directly affect every Internet user, because no US court would allow prosecution of a company in another jurisdiction when immunity is granted by US law.
This isn't law yet, and probably will never get passed, but even if it did, I am sure this power would only be used on machines within the U.S., since those activities would be illegal in those countries.
Unless we can take back the Net from the libertarians, constitutional lawyers and rapacious corporations currently recreating the worst excesses of US political and commercial culture online, we will end up with an Internet which serves the imperial ambitions of only one country instead of the legitimate aspirations of the whole world.
Rapacious corporations? Don't you think that is a slight over-statement of the situation? How would a whole corporation actually rape you anyway, some sort of giant cluster-fuck?
While this would greatly please the US, it would not be in the interests of the majority of Internet users, who want a network that allows them to express their own values, respects their own laws and supports their own cultures and interests.
US domination has been going on for so long that many see it as either inevitable or desirable. 'They may have their problems but at least they believe in democracy, free speech and the market economy', the argument goes. Yet today's United States is a country which respects freedom so much that if I, a European citizen, set foot there I can be interned without any notice or due process, tried by a military tribunal and executed in secret.
Yes, that is our standard operating procedure for handling all European tourists. First, you get to see the Statue of Liberty. Second, you get to go to Disney World. Third, you are interned without any notice or due process, tried by a military tribunal and executed in secret. It is a very popular bundle deal, available from any good travel agent.
It has a government which respects free speech yet tries to persuade postal workers to spy on people as they delivered their mail. Its Chief Executive illegally sold shares when in possession of privileged information about an impending price crash. ICANN, the body it established to manage DNS, had to be ordered by a court to let one of its own directors examine the company accounts for fear he may discover something untoward. And elected representatives -like the aforementioned Howard Berman -are paid vast amounts by firms lobbying for laws which serve their corporate interests.
Heads are rolling from all of the stock market mess, and I am sure many more will. What you accuse Bush of doing, if it is true, will most certianly bring him down. As for ICANN, they were ordered to release the records. If they weren't, then there would be a problem.
These are clearly not the people who should be setting the rules for the Net's evolution. Unfortunately today's Internet, with its permissive architecture and lack of effective boundaries or user authentication, makes it almost impossible to resist this technological imperialism.
Who trusts you, baby?
Fortunately the technology itself - in the form of trusted computer architectures, secure networks and digital rights management - can be used to rescue the Net from US control.
These developments, reviled and criticised by those inside and outside the continental United States who hold on to an outdated and unrealistic view of what the Net was or could become, are the key to its future growth and usefulness. Whatever the libertarians say, they must be defended, promoted - and properly controlled.
You were just complaining about the DMCA, but now you are in support of digital rights management? That is rather contradictory. Something you seem to fail to realize about libertarians is that, above all, the seek personal liberty, hence their name. A popular quote for libertarians that sums up nearly all of their beliefs is "better to die a free man than to live a slave." They will never be "properly controlled".
I believe that the time has come to speak out in favour of a regulated network; an Internet where each country can set its own rules for how its citizens, companies, courts and government work with and manage those parts of the network that fall within its jurisdiction; an Internet that reflects the diversity of the world's legal, moral and cultural choices instead of simply propagating US hegemony; an Internet that is subject to political control instead of being an uncontrolled experiment in radical capitalism. It is time to reclaim the net from the Americans.
For you to reclaim something, you need to have had a claim on it to begin with. The American claim to the Internet (it was developed by the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Administration, originally for the U.S. Department of Defense) is tenous at best, but the European claim is non-existant.
This will not be easy. In order to do this we have to reject two beliefs that underpin our current understanding of the Net, and these beliefs, although wrong, are dear to many.
The first is the idea that the Internet is somehow outside or above the real world and its national boundaries. If I phone someone in Nigeria and suggest a money-laundering fraud then it is obvious to all that I am breaking the law in two countries, not in 'phonespace'. Nobody has ever suggested that the content of the telephone network -all those voice calls -should be somehow privileged and treated as outside the normal world.
Why, then, do we act as if our interactions with screen, mouse and keyboard are different? If I send an email suggesting that I am in possession of $50m and will hand it over in return for your bank details, why can't it just be that I also am breaking the law in two countries, not in some mythical 'cyberspace' with its own legal system?
If you were to do this, even via e-mail, you would be breaking the law in two countries, and if that e-mail message were found, you would be convicted, regardless of the message being e-mail. Where did you get the idea that you wouldn't?
Losing the idea of 'cyberspace' simplifies things greatly.
Quite correct, losing ideas, in general, simplifies things greatly.
The other thing we need to lose is the ridiculous belief that when we are online we are somehow in 'another place' outside the real world. We need to reject the philosophical bullshit which argues that there is an equivalence between being simultaneously a 'citizen' of Maine and of the United States and our co-existence in the real world and the online world *, and accept instead the mundane reality that nobody has any real form of existence online - either now or in the foreseeable future.
How is this idea any different from the first? Idea 1: the Internet is somehow outside or above the real world and its national boundaries. Idea 2: that when we are online we are somehow in 'another place' outside the real world. They sound like the same idea to me.
This makes our discussion a lot simpler because we no longer have to grapple with the idea of having two forms of existence - the one that involves breathing, pissing and fucking and the one that involves typing. We don't have to stretch our legal or constitutional thinking to cope with the apparent contradiction of being in 'two places' with different standards of behaviour at the same time.
We can also deal with the problems of jurisdiction for online activity in the same way as we deal with it elsewhere: in the UK we're perfectly happy to prosecute someone for war crimes committed fifty years ago in another country, so why are there problems if the crime involved the Internet? Under English law a sex tourist can be prosecuted here even if he has sex with a child in Thailand: surely prosecuting someone for promoting racial hatred on a US-hosted website can't be that different?
You were complaining about the possibility of being tried and convicted in the U.S., for committing a capital offense (one great enough to warrant the death penalty), yet you think Americans should be tried and convicted in England for presenting a dissenting viewpoint in a public venue?
This is not to claim that these issues are all simple, resolvable and determinate, just to point out that we already have legal systems - admittedly imperfect - in place that can deal with them mostly adequately, most of the time. In general the few exceptions are not allowed to be used as arguments for making bad law. We must not allow the Net to be the biggest exception, creating the worst law of all.
Brave Old World
This is hard for many old-time Net users to accept, because we like the idea that being online takes us into a new space, a new world. But it is simply not the case: we are not creating a brave new online world out of our electrons and pixels. It is all one world - the only difference is that we currently lack the ability to map our online activity onto our real-world lives with any degree of certainty. The result is that cyberspace appears somehow to be divorced from the physical world - but this is just an artifact of our current technologies and not a fundamental principle.
Actually, the program Xtraceroute can show where a computer is physically (in 3D), and show the route your data is taking to get there, rather easily.
Once we clear our minds of these erroneous beliefs we can see that the US has no right to determine how the whole Internet is run. Each country should decide for itself. All we need to do is to mark out the network, using trusted computers and secure networks to locate servers, hosts, networks and people within geographically-defined areas - or nation states as they are usually known - and let the countries get on with it. We can establish the rule of law, national sovereignty and local values in those parts of the network that fall within the jurisdiction of a particular country, and let normal diplomatic, cultural and commercial channels deal with the interaction between countries.
This would not stop the US treating its Constitution as the only true source of wisdom or framing their discussions in terms that draw only from the US political and economic tradition. But if they decide to run their part of the Net according to the principles laid down two hundred and fifty years ago by a bunch of renegade merchants and rebellious slave owners they would not be able to force the rest of us to follow suit.
My ancestor at the time was both a renegade merchant and a rebellious slave owner, not just one or the other. I guess he was something of an over-achiever.
If they want a First Amendment online, or to let some gun-toting nut argue that writing viruses is the online equivalent of carrying a concealed weapon and so counts as a constitutionally protected right then they can go ahead - the rest of us can do things differently. ('Viruses don't trash hard drives - people trash hard drives.')
Why don't you just use an operating system that doesn't get viruses? I personally recommend FreeBSD. Oh, and that reminds me, I need to clean my rifle.
A cyberspace in which each machine is 'within' a jurisdiction and where actions can be mapped onto physical space will be very different from today's Internet.
In the mapped network we will not have the absolute freedom of speech which cyberlibertarians claim they want, but neither will we get absolute oppression, absolute free market capitalism or even absolute communism. We will instead get compromise, and regional or national variation, just as in the real world.
Heaven forbid an internet with absolute free speech. It is a good thing you came up with a solution to that problem.
Many will see this as a loss of freedom, but the freedom they value so much is also the freedom to act irresponsibly, to undermine civil authorities and to escape liability. It is the freedom to release viruses, abuse personal data, send unlimited spam and undermine the copyright bargain. It is not a freedom we need.
It is easy to see why this approach will be resisted by US activists, of whatever political persuasion, who see the 'one world, one cyberspace' approach as a convenient way to establish an online constitutional hegemony. It will also be resisted by many of those who see any attempt to create trusted software running on secure processors as the network equivalent of the arrival of the black helicopters from the UN World Government Army.
However their position is untenable, because the vast majority of Internet users need and want a secure network where they can use email, look at Websites, shop, watch movies and chat to friends, and they are happy to accept that this is a regulated space just as most areas of life are.
To quote one of those renegade merchants and rebellious slave owners, Ben Franklin, "He who gives up a little liberty in order to gain security, deserves neither liberty nor security." Do you actually think that your ability to shop online is more important than my freedom of speech?
Even if we don't act we will still get a regulated network, because the commercial interests which dominate the US know that it is a prerequisite for a digital economy. However the shape of that network will be entirely determined by US interests, just like today. It is therefore vital that a different approach to the development of the Internet is proposed -and I believe that Europe is the place for it to start.
Bring it back
Europe is the birthplace of the Web, with a wealthy, technically literate population, a network infrastructure that rivals that of the US and a rich cultural and political tradition which can counter US constitutional imperialism.
The U.S. is not under constitutional imperialism, that would require an emperor supported by a constitution, similar to England's constitutional monarchy. However, we dislike monarchs greatly.
An important factor in Europe's favour is that we retain a belief that governments are a good thing, that political control is both necessary and desirable, and that laws serve the people. These beliefs are now lacking in the United States, rendering it incapable of acting to create any sort of civic space online or allowing its government to intervene effectively to regulate the Net.
Does this mean that the broad control of the Internet by the U.S. government that you were talking about earlier will never happen, since we would hang our Senators before even half of it was put in force?
The recently-agreed.eu ccTLD could be a rallying point for a serious attempt to extend the EU online, adopting new standards for trusted computing, regulating their use within EU countries and establishing a European dataspace which would grow over time to become a major node in the emerging trusted network that will replace today's Internet.
It will take political will and technological skill to do this, and it will not be achievable overnight. But if we are to escape a world where corporations build systems which are only capable of supporting US-style online government, or where trusted software is a trojan horse carrying the US constitution into our online life when we neither want nor need it, then we need to act now.
That's right folks, all software written in America secretly contains the entire text of The U.S. Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. For example, in Microsoft Word you can access this dangerous material by pressing Control-Alt-U, Control-Alt-S, Control-Alt-A.
A trusted network will not stop the Americans - or anyone else - opting out and remaining with their existing unregulated Internet. Just like the survivalists heading out to Oregon with their assault weapons and dried food, those who don't want to be part of the great online civilisation could establish their own enclaves, where they would be free to run the code of their choice.
Do you mean like an isolated enclave from the "great internet civilization" for all of Europe with methods in place to avoid pesky freedoms like freedom of speech?
But inside Europe our values, our principles and our legal system can determine how our part of the Net is run. Personal data would be protected by law, and those who abused the information provided to them by individuals would be prosecuted. Data flows into and out of Europe would be properly regulated and controlled to ensure that neither spam nor viruses came in, and that no personal data went out without explicit consent.
This would, of course, work wonderfully, because there are no spammers or virus-writers in Europe.
In Europe our copyright laws allow lending of material, and so media players licensed for use within the dataspace would not restrict personal copying or lending, although they would respect other rights.
So that you can "lend" American media content to your friends?
In Europe community standards for freedom of speech differ substantially from those of the United States, where any sensible discussion is crippled by the constitution and the continued attempts to decide how many Founding Fathers can stand on the head of a pin.
Yes, standards for freedom of speech do differ substantially in Europe. They apparently seem to be rather lacking. As for Founding Fathers standing on the head of a pin, 27 will fit, exactly.
Over here, human rights legislation, interpreted by judges who are able to use their intelligence instead of just relying on textual analysis of the Bill of Rights, gives us a much better chance of tying online action to the real world and integrating cyberspace with real space in way that benefits both.
In the end, William Gibson was wrong: cyberspace is not another place, it's just part of this space. There is no 'there, there' : in fact, it isn't really there at all. The illusion is, in the end, only an illusion, however consensual it may be. Not only does 'meatspace rule', but 'meatspace rules rule' - the laws and regulations that govern the Net, whether they are legal, social, architectural or code-based, will all come from the real world, where judges, lawyers, programmers, politicians and - in some way -citizens get to decide how our online activities and our real world lives mesh and are linked.
The United States is incapable, for the reasons I've described, of understanding this or of escaping its constitutionally-determined destiny to attempt to establish hegemony over cyberspace.
It cannot be allowed to succeed, and so those of us within Europe need to begin to work now to extend our culture onto the Net in all its complex glory. We need to build our borders online and offer our citizens protection within those borders, and escape from America.
If the U.S. is incapable of achieving it, then why does Europe need to go out of it's way to make sure the U.S. doesn't succeed? Is anyone making Europeans go to American wevsites, or do they just provide better content?
* Much as I like Lessig's work, he just goes too far here. I blame law school. Being a Cambridge philosopher manqué I tend to have a more brutal constructivist approach to this sort of thing.
I am sure Cambridge is real glad that you are serving as an example of what they will let graduate.
The mechanical watch industry used to compete on accuracy, but once cheap watches became good, that was over. High-end watches today are strictly status symbols.
What is so bad about that? All modern watches are very accurate, even the ones you get for $5.00 at Wal-Mart, so that is not a challenge anymore. After all, a watch is one of the few pieces of jewelry a man can wear, so they should look nice. My watch is a Bulova, but not the Accutron, the 97F17, which is (in my opinion) a very nice watch, and was a Christmas present from my Grandmother. Personally, I don't think I would buy a watch that "hummed", I would get annoyed at it rather quickly, although this Accutron with 99 diamonds looks quite nice. Unfortunately, that is out of my price range.
actually you should be worried about 2038 before you start worrying about 3000
If you aren't running your Unix on a 64-bit architecture (or better) by 2038, then you deserve whatever comes your way. Either ia64 or AMD's 64-bit architecture (possibly both) should be widely in use within 3 to 5 years, and nearly all of the 32-bit machines retired well before 2038. Although, with a 64-bit Unix you have to worry about the year 292,271,025,015, but that is most definitely past my retirement, and therefore not my problem.
What you've seen of India on TV is mostly bullshit, I suspect.
What I have seen on TV of India is many people starving, a Hindu population that is as violently anti-Muslim as some Muslims in the region are violently anti-non-Muslim, and a military that is willing to push a Muslim country of former Indians to the point of nuclear war, because they know they will win even if the Pakistani do nuke them. You are right, it is bullshit, but unfortunately it actually is true.
India and China have similar large populations and similar profiles - a lot of poor, backward people (especially in rural areas) and a lot of affluent people (especially in the big cities). There's a lot of money to be made in India.
More than a third of the population is unable to afford an adequate diet. Only half of the population is literate. China isn't a very nice place to live for most people either, but there is money to be made there, naturally, because there is money to be made everywhere. Most of both of the two countries are existing in third-world conditions, even if a lucky few aren't. The only reason why there are a lot of people who aren't poor in India is because even a small percentage of 1,000,000,000+ people is a lot of people.
You probably have a more favourable impression of China because the government of India hasn't been as friendly to tycoons like Murdoch.
Most people in the U.S. who are old enough to remember the Tiananmen Square incident have that as their inpression of China, which isn't a very favorable impression, a less favourable opinion then of India even, and it has little if anything to do with Australian media moguls.
Re:Big boost for space tech if it is on course...
on
A Rock Moves In Space
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"You have 19 years to do something about a 2km rock headed for Washington. Go!"
You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. You could try, but you'd fail.
My, aren't we hostile!
Yes, the Prime Meridian (0 0' 0")...
What, one zero wasn't enough for you?
... situated at the Royal Observatory and Planetarium (that's its correct name)...
Sorry, your magical Google powers failed you this time. The Prime Meridian runs right through the Old Royal Naval Observatory. The buildings have been inactive since 1998 and under the control of the National Maritime Museum.
... but its adoption as the international standard has nothing to do with the invention of the "naval chronometer" by John Harrison in 1735.
It had everything to do with Harrison's naval chronometer. King Charles II founded the Royal Observatory in 1675 to solve the problem of finding longitude at sea. [cite] Harrison's chronometer was the first instrument which managed this, and for quite a while, the British had exclusive use of it. This allowed them to produce vastly more accurate nautical charts than everyone else. Since they were British charts, they used the British Prime Meridian. Since they were vastly more accurate than all other charts at the time, any sea navigator who could get his hands on them would have used them instead of their domestic naval charts, and very quickly nearly all naval charts in use put the prime meridian through the British Royal Naval Observatory.
I'll let the Observatory's own pages tell the story:... [large block quote]...
By the time of the conference, the British Prime Meridian already was The Prime Meridian in all but name, and had been for over a century.
So, it was an internationally agreed meridian, not an imperically imposed one.
Incorrect, it was an empirically determined meridian that eventually the rest of the political world accepted.
... The Prime Meridian for the world was adopted in 1884... One of the main reasons why Greewich was chosen over its rivals (including the French alternative of a meridian running through the centre of the Eiffel Tower)...
Impossible. Construction of the Eiffel Tower did not even start until 1887, so how could it be used as a landmark for a prime meridian in 1884?
Perhaps, next time, you'll check the historical facts before you start giving history lessons.
Perhaps next time, you will realize the ability to type in Prime Meridian into a search engine does not make up for a complete and total lack of understanding about the subject.
I'm sure that when a Red Hat rep walks into a company his materials leave out the $ in Micro$oft.
Sometimes it will slip in even when you aren't the one mangling names like a six-year-old. At my last job, I installed Webalizer on the web server because I wanted an excuse to make the site not quite so hostile to non-IE browsers, and I had heard that it could report browser statistics (which it can). Unfortunately, the author of Webalizer apparently thought it was "cute" to report occurances of Microsoft Internet Explorer as Micro$oft Internet Exploder. Take a look at the sample report for the software (from the Webalizer website) for an example of what I mean. There is no mention of this misfeature anywhere. Luckily I noticed it and figured out how to change the entry name before I showed it to my boss, because he would not have found it funny, and most definitely not professional. Unfortunately, there wasn't a large enough percentage of non-IE users of the site to even pretend to be concerned about cross-browser issues.
Slashdot Mirror
How about sending a second "Pirs" module?
What I don't understand is why they don't just send up another Soyuz module as a second lifeboat© Then they could evacuate a crew of 6, only 1 less than their originally intended crew of 7 astonauts© Is there not enough docking ports on the ISS to do that?
The moderators.
You have a two party system because it's modeled on Westminster.
We do not have a two party system, it is just that currently (and usually) only two of the parties are able to garner enough votes to even be considered.
The current system has virtually no input from the population and is becoming more and more like the royal courts of Europe used to be. A quick example is the number of career politicans and the number of Father/Son teams. Republican = Democrat there is so little difference as to be insulting.
The system has virtually no input because virtually nobody votes. It is rare to even get a 20% turnout. There are major differences between the parties, it is just that they are rarely talked about on political TV ads. Instead, the ads state:
You can stick your head in the sand and trot out the party line about democracy, freedom, liberty etc but please do not try and use examples to back you up that you obiuosly have not researched.
As an example of such un-researched examples:
Research how closely related by blood American politicans are to European. Then go on to research where your current politicans were educated? Then see if you can guess why the population of America has virtually no say in their goverment or laws?
How many people reading this are American citizens of age 18 or over who are not voting? I think that I can guess why they have virtually no say in their government and its laws.
The two part system gives the illusion of a democracy when in reality all we do is change dictators.
The are four main political views in America today. They are Libertarianism, Conservativism, Liberalism, and Socialism. The Libertarians and Conservatives have generally resided in the Republican party, although some conservatives are in the Democratic Party. Liberals and Socialists (the mainstream ones at least) are generally Democrats. The Libertarians and the Socialists have recently been splitting off as there own parties, the Libertarian and the Green parties. Neither of them will ever amount to much on any presidental election (lets hope) since they are to exteme for most people, and too extreme for comprimise.
The problem with the Libertarians is that they fail to realise that we actually do need a government, even a federal government, and we always will. They mainly only side with Conservatives because they aren't Democrats, who generally think that the solution to anything is a large government program.
The problem with the Greens/Socialists is that they want to replace the system of primarily corporate development and activity, which, while it has problem, actually works, with a system that has been demonstrated to not work on several occasions, all for the benefit of spotted tree frogs and the like. They will never get anywhere, because the American public likes their SUV's, McDonald's, non-fair-trade coffee, and cheap sweatshop clothing, and don't want to be told to change, and definitely not that they are evil.
Wow, just like Google!
The ads on Slashdot are good? What the hell are you talking about? They are some of the most idiotic pieces of crap on the web. The Source Forge ads are a perfect example. This one is a poorly-drawn direct rip-off of the Spiderman movie, as is this one. Or how about this one, with a light sabre and "May the forge be with you"? It is one of a whole series of Star Wars rip-offs, such as this, this, , this, and this . Here's one that mentions hobbits. Coding in a matrix, or just ripping one off? If I were George Lucas (or any of the other copyright/trademark holders), they would have been sued quite some time ago. I am sure they aren't paying to use the characters. I imagine the only reason why this hasn't happened yet is that nobody has bothered to tell Lucas about them.
Wouldn't this normally rate a Flamebait on a regular commment? ;-)
It's not flamebait to speak the truth :)
The Three-Mile Island incident here in the U.S. was a rather big one for you to miss.
Not Trustworthy :)
Actually, that guy isn't the car's owner, but rather "meteorite expert" Ray Meyer. Since he is listed as "meteorite expert Ray Meyer" instead of "Ray Meyer, Ph.D., astro-geologist" I suspect that he is just some moron who likes space rocks.
This is the wrong answer to the question, even though it gives the right answer. Why? Well for one thing, it is "clever", which as any real programmer knows is the sign of something bad. What about 1..11 with one number missing? Oh no, it's broken! Actually, then you just subtract from 66 (for those of you who didn't get inflicted with series in math enough to just recognise this, 55 = 1 + 2 + ... + 9 + 10, and 66 = 55+11 ), but if you have two numbers missing it actually is broken. A general solution is almost always a better solution. If I were asked this during an interview, my response would be "I'm not sure, but I most definitely would not just subtract the sum from 55," knowing that is probably the answer they are looking for, and then explain why. Then I would state that I don't believe that trivial little mathematical puzzles are a very good way to try to select a computer scientist, or even a mathematician for that matter.
The zooming in Mozilla is text-only, at least it is in version 1.0. On Opera it zooms everything including images. It would be a nice feature to see added to Mozilla.
Why don't you just drop Wintel next time around? You can get a Sun Blade 100 for around $1,000 right now. If you are using Linux now, migrating to Solaris wouldn't be too much of a challenge, assuming you let Sun install it for you. And, if you are really that attached to your Linux, I am pretty sure it will run there too, as well as on about a half-dozen other architectures.
Yay! We made the news! Actually, it isn't really all that suprising when you think about it. The vast majority of the people in this county are white trash living in trailer parks, and there isn't anything they hate more than Big Bid'ness.
I think the main reason MySQL gets more hype than Postgres is because of the interfaces available. When I was dealing with that sort of crap (about 2 years ago) the Python interface to Postgres was very bare-bones, and almost unusable if you didn't know much SQL beyond a basic SELECT statement. The MySQL module for Python, on the other had, had all sorts of "Python-esque" ways to mess with the data without even knowing what an SQL statement is, and as I understand it, the MySQL interface in Perl was even friendlier to the SQL-unaware. The obvious drawback to the Perl interface though, is that then you have to program in Perl.
Actually, it might provide them with a totally new medium. Since the ads are merely multiple pictures on the tunnel wall, if they could get down into the subway tunnel, they could "enhance" the whole ad with nothing but good old-fashioned krylon. Imagine how amusing it would be to see full-motion graffiti!
Nope, you're wrong, it comes from the movie-goers. The last movie I saw was Minority Report. It was over two hours long because Speilburg can get away with it, but for the last twenty minutes or so, all I could think about was how much I needed to go to the bathroom.
By Bill Thompson
Posted: 09/08/2002 at 14:01 GMT
Guest Opinion I've had enough of US hegemony. It's time for change -and a closed European network.
Today's Internet is a poor respecter of national boundaries, as many repressive governments have found to their cost. Unfortunately this freedom has been so extensively abused by the United States and its politicians, lawyers and programmers that it has become a serious threat to the continued survival of the network as a global communications medium. If the price of being online is to swallow US values, then many may think twice about using the Net at all, and if the only game online follows US rules, then many may decide not to play.
Go ahead and think twice about using the internet, even think about it three times, if you like. I don't think I would even mind all that much if you don't "decide to play."
We have already seen US law, in the form of Digital Millennium Copyright Act, used to persuade hosts in other countries to pull material or limit its availability. US-promoted 'anti-censor' software is routinely provided to enable citizens of other countries to break local laws; and US companies like Yahoo! disregard the judgements of foreign courts at will.
Instead of complaining about the DCMA, why don't you complain about the EUCD, the European Union Copyright Directive, the equivalent EU legislation to the DMCA? Do you believe that it won't be used to persuade hosts in other countries to pull material or limit its availability? And as for the anti-censor software, heaven forbid if a few Chinese are actually able to read the BBC News, in violation of their local laws. You are right, that is a terrible thing.
Congressman Howard Berman's ridiculous proposal to give copyright holders immunity from prosecution if they hack into P2P networks is the latest attempt by the US Congress to pass laws that will directly affect every Internet user, because no US court would allow prosecution of a company in another jurisdiction when immunity is granted by US law.
This isn't law yet, and probably will never get passed, but even if it did, I am sure this power would only be used on machines within the U.S., since those activities would be illegal in those countries.
Unless we can take back the Net from the libertarians, constitutional lawyers and rapacious corporations currently recreating the worst excesses of US political and commercial culture online, we will end up with an Internet which serves the imperial ambitions of only one country instead of the legitimate aspirations of the whole world.
Rapacious corporations? Don't you think that is a slight over-statement of the situation? How would a whole corporation actually rape you anyway, some sort of giant cluster-fuck?
While this would greatly please the US, it would not be in the interests of the majority of Internet users, who want a network that allows them to express their own values, respects their own laws and supports their own cultures and interests.
US domination has been going on for so long that many see it as either inevitable or desirable. 'They may have their problems but at least they believe in democracy, free speech and the market economy', the argument goes. Yet today's United States is a country which respects freedom so much that if I, a European citizen, set foot there I can be interned without any notice or due process, tried by a military tribunal and executed in secret.
Yes, that is our standard operating procedure for handling all European tourists. First, you get to see the Statue of Liberty. Second, you get to go to Disney World. Third, you are interned without any notice or due process, tried by a military tribunal and executed in secret. It is a very popular bundle deal, available from any good travel agent.
It has a government which respects free speech yet tries to persuade postal workers to spy on people as they delivered their mail. Its Chief Executive illegally sold shares when in possession of privileged information about an impending price crash. ICANN, the body it established to manage DNS, had to be ordered by a court to let one of its own directors examine the company accounts for fear he may discover something untoward. And elected representatives -like the aforementioned Howard Berman -are paid vast amounts by firms lobbying for laws which serve their corporate interests.
Heads are rolling from all of the stock market mess, and I am sure many more will. What you accuse Bush of doing, if it is true, will most certianly bring him down. As for ICANN, they were ordered to release the records. If they weren't, then there would be a problem.
These are clearly not the people who should be setting the rules for the Net's evolution. Unfortunately today's Internet, with its permissive architecture and lack of effective boundaries or user authentication, makes it almost impossible to resist this technological imperialism.
Who trusts you, baby?
Fortunately the technology itself - in the form of trusted computer architectures, secure networks and digital rights management - can be used to rescue the Net from US control.
These developments, reviled and criticised by those inside and outside the continental United States who hold on to an outdated and unrealistic view of what the Net was or could become, are the key to its future growth and usefulness. Whatever the libertarians say, they must be defended, promoted - and properly controlled.
You were just complaining about the DMCA, but now you are in support of digital rights management? That is rather contradictory. Something you seem to fail to realize about libertarians is that, above all, the seek personal liberty, hence their name. A popular quote for libertarians that sums up nearly all of their beliefs is "better to die a free man than to live a slave." They will never be "properly controlled".
I believe that the time has come to speak out in favour of a regulated network; an Internet where each country can set its own rules for how its citizens, companies, courts and government work with and manage those parts of the network that fall within its jurisdiction; an Internet that reflects the diversity of the world's legal, moral and cultural choices instead of simply propagating US hegemony; an Internet that is subject to political control instead of being an uncontrolled experiment in radical capitalism. It is time to reclaim the net from the Americans.
For you to reclaim something, you need to have had a claim on it to begin with. The American claim to the Internet (it was developed by the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Administration, originally for the U.S. Department of Defense) is tenous at best, but the European claim is non-existant.
This will not be easy. In order to do this we have to reject two beliefs that underpin our current understanding of the Net, and these beliefs, although wrong, are dear to many.
The first is the idea that the Internet is somehow outside or above the real world and its national boundaries. If I phone someone in Nigeria and suggest a money-laundering fraud then it is obvious to all that I am breaking the law in two countries, not in 'phonespace'. Nobody has ever suggested that the content of the telephone network -all those voice calls -should be somehow privileged and treated as outside the normal world.
Why, then, do we act as if our interactions with screen, mouse and keyboard are different? If I send an email suggesting that I am in possession of $50m and will hand it over in return for your bank details, why can't it just be that I also am breaking the law in two countries, not in some mythical 'cyberspace' with its own legal system?
If you were to do this, even via e-mail, you would be breaking the law in two countries, and if that e-mail message were found, you would be convicted, regardless of the message being e-mail. Where did you get the idea that you wouldn't?
Losing the idea of 'cyberspace' simplifies things greatly.
Quite correct, losing ideas, in general, simplifies things greatly.
The other thing we need to lose is the ridiculous belief that when we are online we are somehow in 'another place' outside the real world. We need to reject the philosophical bullshit which argues that there is an equivalence between being simultaneously a 'citizen' of Maine and of the United States and our co-existence in the real world and the online world *, and accept instead the mundane reality that nobody has any real form of existence online - either now or in the foreseeable future.
How is this idea any different from the first? Idea 1: the Internet is somehow outside or above the real world and its national boundaries. Idea 2: that when we are online we are somehow in 'another place' outside the real world. They sound like the same idea to me.
This makes our discussion a lot simpler because we no longer have to grapple with the idea of having two forms of existence - the one that involves breathing, pissing and fucking and the one that involves typing. We don't have to stretch our legal or constitutional thinking to cope with the apparent contradiction of being in 'two places' with different standards of behaviour at the same time.
We can also deal with the problems of jurisdiction for online activity in the same way as we deal with it elsewhere: in the UK we're perfectly happy to prosecute someone for war crimes committed fifty years ago in another country, so why are there problems if the crime involved the Internet? Under English law a sex tourist can be prosecuted here even if he has sex with a child in Thailand: surely prosecuting someone for promoting racial hatred on a US-hosted website can't be that different?
You were complaining about the possibility of being tried and convicted in the U.S., for committing a capital offense (one great enough to warrant the death penalty), yet you think Americans should be tried and convicted in England for presenting a dissenting viewpoint in a public venue?
This is not to claim that these issues are all simple, resolvable and determinate, just to point out that we already have legal systems - admittedly imperfect - in place that can deal with them mostly adequately, most of the time. In general the few exceptions are not allowed to be used as arguments for making bad law. We must not allow the Net to be the biggest exception, creating the worst law of all.
Brave Old World
This is hard for many old-time Net users to accept, because we like the idea that being online takes us into a new space, a new world. But it is simply not the case: we are not creating a brave new online world out of our electrons and pixels. It is all one world - the only difference is that we currently lack the ability to map our online activity onto our real-world lives with any degree of certainty. The result is that cyberspace appears somehow to be divorced from the physical world - but this is just an artifact of our current technologies and not a fundamental principle.
Actually, the program Xtraceroute can show where a computer is physically (in 3D), and show the route your data is taking to get there, rather easily.
Once we clear our minds of these erroneous beliefs we can see that the US has no right to determine how the whole Internet is run. Each country should decide for itself. All we need to do is to mark out the network, using trusted computers and secure networks to locate servers, hosts, networks and people within geographically-defined areas - or nation states as they are usually known - and let the countries get on with it. We can establish the rule of law, national sovereignty and local values in those parts of the network that fall within the jurisdiction of a particular country, and let normal diplomatic, cultural and commercial channels deal with the interaction between countries.
This would not stop the US treating its Constitution as the only true source of wisdom or framing their discussions in terms that draw only from the US political and economic tradition. But if they decide to run their part of the Net according to the principles laid down two hundred and fifty years ago by a bunch of renegade merchants and rebellious slave owners they would not be able to force the rest of us to follow suit.
My ancestor at the time was both a renegade merchant and a rebellious slave owner, not just one or the other. I guess he was something of an over-achiever.
If they want a First Amendment online, or to let some gun-toting nut argue that writing viruses is the online equivalent of carrying a concealed weapon and so counts as a constitutionally protected right then they can go ahead - the rest of us can do things differently. ('Viruses don't trash hard drives - people trash hard drives.')
Why don't you just use an operating system that doesn't get viruses? I personally recommend FreeBSD. Oh, and that reminds me, I need to clean my rifle.
A cyberspace in which each machine is 'within' a jurisdiction and where actions can be mapped onto physical space will be very different from today's Internet.
In the mapped network we will not have the absolute freedom of speech which cyberlibertarians claim they want, but neither will we get absolute oppression, absolute free market capitalism or even absolute communism. We will instead get compromise, and regional or national variation, just as in the real world.
Heaven forbid an internet with absolute free speech. It is a good thing you came up with a solution to that problem.
Many will see this as a loss of freedom, but the freedom they value so much is also the freedom to act irresponsibly, to undermine civil authorities and to escape liability. It is the freedom to release viruses, abuse personal data, send unlimited spam and undermine the copyright bargain. It is not a freedom we need.
It is easy to see why this approach will be resisted by US activists, of whatever political persuasion, who see the 'one world, one cyberspace' approach as a convenient way to establish an online constitutional hegemony. It will also be resisted by many of those who see any attempt to create trusted software running on secure processors as the network equivalent of the arrival of the black helicopters from the UN World Government Army.
However their position is untenable, because the vast majority of Internet users need and want a secure network where they can use email, look at Websites, shop, watch movies and chat to friends, and they are happy to accept that this is a regulated space just as most areas of life are.
To quote one of those renegade merchants and rebellious slave owners, Ben Franklin, "He who gives up a little liberty in order to gain security, deserves neither liberty nor security." Do you actually think that your ability to shop online is more important than my freedom of speech?
Even if we don't act we will still get a regulated network, because the commercial interests which dominate the US know that it is a prerequisite for a digital economy. However the shape of that network will be entirely determined by US interests, just like today. It is therefore vital that a different approach to the development of the Internet is proposed -and I believe that Europe is the place for it to start.
Bring it back
Europe is the birthplace of the Web, with a wealthy, technically literate population, a network infrastructure that rivals that of the US and a rich cultural and political tradition which can counter US constitutional imperialism.
The U.S. is not under constitutional imperialism, that would require an emperor supported by a constitution, similar to England's constitutional monarchy. However, we dislike monarchs greatly.
An important factor in Europe's favour is that we retain a belief that governments are a good thing, that political control is both necessary and desirable, and that laws serve the people. These beliefs are now lacking in the United States, rendering it incapable of acting to create any sort of civic space online or allowing its government to intervene effectively to regulate the Net.
Does this mean that the broad control of the Internet by the U.S. government that you were talking about earlier will never happen, since we would hang our Senators before even half of it was put in force?
The recently-agreed .eu ccTLD could be a rallying point for a serious attempt to extend the EU online, adopting new standards for trusted computing, regulating their use within EU countries and establishing a European dataspace which would grow over time to become a major node in the emerging trusted network that will replace today's Internet.
It will take political will and technological skill to do this, and it will not be achievable overnight. But if we are to escape a world where corporations build systems which are only capable of supporting US-style online government, or where trusted software is a trojan horse carrying the US constitution into our online life when we neither want nor need it, then we need to act now.
That's right folks, all software written in America secretly contains the entire text of The U.S. Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. For example, in Microsoft Word you can access this dangerous material by pressing Control-Alt-U, Control-Alt-S, Control-Alt-A.
A trusted network will not stop the Americans - or anyone else - opting out and remaining with their existing unregulated Internet. Just like the survivalists heading out to Oregon with their assault weapons and dried food, those who don't want to be part of the great online civilisation could establish their own enclaves, where they would be free to run the code of their choice.
Do you mean like an isolated enclave from the "great internet civilization" for all of Europe with methods in place to avoid pesky freedoms like freedom of speech?
But inside Europe our values, our principles and our legal system can determine how our part of the Net is run. Personal data would be protected by law, and those who abused the information provided to them by individuals would be prosecuted. Data flows into and out of Europe would be properly regulated and controlled to ensure that neither spam nor viruses came in, and that no personal data went out without explicit consent.
This would, of course, work wonderfully, because there are no spammers or virus-writers in Europe.
In Europe our copyright laws allow lending of material, and so media players licensed for use within the dataspace would not restrict personal copying or lending, although they would respect other rights.
So that you can "lend" American media content to your friends?
In Europe community standards for freedom of speech differ substantially from those of the United States, where any sensible discussion is crippled by the constitution and the continued attempts to decide how many Founding Fathers can stand on the head of a pin.
Yes, standards for freedom of speech do differ substantially in Europe. They apparently seem to be rather lacking. As for Founding Fathers standing on the head of a pin, 27 will fit, exactly.
Over here, human rights legislation, interpreted by judges who are able to use their intelligence instead of just relying on textual analysis of the Bill of Rights, gives us a much better chance of tying online action to the real world and integrating cyberspace with real space in way that benefits both.
In the end, William Gibson was wrong: cyberspace is not another place, it's just part of this space. There is no 'there, there' : in fact, it isn't really there at all. The illusion is, in the end, only an illusion, however consensual it may be. Not only does 'meatspace rule', but 'meatspace rules rule' - the laws and regulations that govern the Net, whether they are legal, social, architectural or code-based, will all come from the real world, where judges, lawyers, programmers, politicians and - in some way -citizens get to decide how our online activities and our real world lives mesh and are linked.
The United States is incapable, for the reasons I've described, of understanding this or of escaping its constitutionally-determined destiny to attempt to establish hegemony over cyberspace.
It cannot be allowed to succeed, and so those of us within Europe need to begin to work now to extend our culture onto the Net in all its complex glory. We need to build our borders online and offer our citizens protection within those borders, and escape from America.
If the U.S. is incapable of achieving it, then why does Europe need to go out of it's way to make sure the U.S. doesn't succeed? Is anyone making Europeans go to American wevsites, or do they just provide better content?
* Much as I like Lessig's work, he just goes too far here. I blame law school. Being a Cambridge philosopher manqué I tend to have a more brutal constructivist approach to this sort of thing.
I am sure Cambridge is real glad that you are serving as an example of what they will let graduate.
© Bill Thompson.
Should that copyright be viable outside of Europe? Can I "lend" your work to others in the U.S.?
Actually, I rather like nail guns myself, they are much faster than a hammer, and you don't end up hitting your thumb.
What is so bad about that? All modern watches are very accurate, even the ones you get for $5.00 at Wal-Mart, so that is not a challenge anymore. After all, a watch is one of the few pieces of jewelry a man can wear, so they should look nice. My watch is a Bulova, but not the Accutron, the 97F17, which is (in my opinion) a very nice watch, and was a Christmas present from my Grandmother. Personally, I don't think I would buy a watch that "hummed", I would get annoyed at it rather quickly, although this Accutron with 99 diamonds looks quite nice. Unfortunately, that is out of my price range.
If you aren't running your Unix on a 64-bit architecture (or better) by 2038, then you deserve whatever comes your way. Either ia64 or AMD's 64-bit architecture (possibly both) should be widely in use within 3 to 5 years, and nearly all of the 32-bit machines retired well before 2038. Although, with a 64-bit Unix you have to worry about the year 292,271,025,015, but that is most definitely past my retirement, and therefore not my problem.
What you've seen of India on TV is mostly bullshit, I suspect.
What I have seen on TV of India is many people starving, a Hindu population that is as violently anti-Muslim as some Muslims in the region are violently anti-non-Muslim, and a military that is willing to push a Muslim country of former Indians to the point of nuclear war, because they know they will win even if the Pakistani do nuke them. You are right, it is bullshit, but unfortunately it actually is true.
India and China have similar large populations and similar profiles - a lot of poor, backward people (especially in rural areas) and a lot of affluent people (especially in the big cities). There's a lot of money to be made in India.
More than a third of the population is unable to afford an adequate diet. Only half of the population is literate. China isn't a very nice place to live for most people either, but there is money to be made there, naturally, because there is money to be made everywhere. Most of both of the two countries are existing in third-world conditions, even if a lucky few aren't. The only reason why there are a lot of people who aren't poor in India is because even a small percentage of 1,000,000,000+ people is a lot of people.
You probably have a more favourable impression of China because the government of India hasn't been as friendly to tycoons like Murdoch.
Most people in the U.S. who are old enough to remember the Tiananmen Square incident have that as their inpression of China, which isn't a very favorable impression, a less favourable opinion then of India even, and it has little if anything to do with Australian media moguls.
16 years and 7 months.
Anyone who really needs the power of a 32 bit desktop was already happily using a VAX workstation 15 years ago.
You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. You could try, but you'd fail.
My, aren't we hostile!
Yes, the Prime Meridian (0 0' 0") ...
What, one zero wasn't enough for you?
Sorry, your magical Google powers failed you this time. The Prime Meridian runs right through the Old Royal Naval Observatory. The buildings have been inactive since 1998 and under the control of the National Maritime Museum.
It had everything to do with Harrison's naval chronometer. King Charles II founded the Royal Observatory in 1675 to solve the problem of finding longitude at sea. [cite] Harrison's chronometer was the first instrument which managed this, and for quite a while, the British had exclusive use of it. This allowed them to produce vastly more accurate nautical charts than everyone else. Since they were British charts, they used the British Prime Meridian. Since they were vastly more accurate than all other charts at the time, any sea navigator who could get his hands on them would have used them instead of their domestic naval charts, and very quickly nearly all naval charts in use put the prime meridian through the British Royal Naval Observatory.
I'll let the Observatory's own pages tell the story: ... [large block quote] ...
By the time of the conference, the British Prime Meridian already was The Prime Meridian in all but name, and had been for over a century.
So, it was an internationally agreed meridian, not an imperically imposed one.
Incorrect, it was an empirically determined meridian that eventually the rest of the political world accepted.
Impossible. Construction of the Eiffel Tower did not even start until 1887, so how could it be used as a landmark for a prime meridian in 1884?
Perhaps, next time, you'll check the historical facts before you start giving history lessons.
Perhaps next time, you will realize the ability to type in Prime Meridian into a search engine does not make up for a complete and total lack of understanding about the subject.
Sometimes it will slip in even when you aren't the one mangling names like a six-year-old. At my last job, I installed Webalizer on the web server because I wanted an excuse to make the site not quite so hostile to non-IE browsers, and I had heard that it could report browser statistics (which it can). Unfortunately, the author of Webalizer apparently thought it was "cute" to report occurances of Microsoft Internet Explorer as Micro$oft Internet Exploder. Take a look at the sample report for the software (from the Webalizer website) for an example of what I mean. There is no mention of this misfeature anywhere. Luckily I noticed it and figured out how to change the entry name before I showed it to my boss, because he would not have found it funny, and most definitely not professional. Unfortunately, there wasn't a large enough percentage of non-IE users of the site to even pretend to be concerned about cross-browser issues.