It's possible that the difference in culture is due to America having been settled by religious outcasts. Outcasts who believed that work was the way to God. This is likely why we Americans tend to think of the poor and homeless as having done something wrong: after all, if one were a proper, hard-working, God-fearing person, then one would be rewarded in this life and the life to come. Ergo, they are to be shunned. This may also explain why we Americans seem to value corporations above humans: corporations keep humans working as is proper for God-fearing people, lest they slack off and sin. I'm not condoning it, I'm just saying there's a history here. America, Inc. is not just a random culture that sprung up after World War II.

...it's the people supporting the bits. At my company, storage is also insanely expensive compared to the personal consumer space, but that's because unlike the personal consumer space, our data centers have high reliability, and lots of personnel (along with their 401k plans, insurance, office space, and other expenses) who have to be paid to support the systems.

Well, I certainly agree that technology wouldn't necessarily make education work better. But that's also no reason to go back to one-room wooden schoolhouses presided over by a schoolmarm. Tech is the context, and by not introducing tech into the classroom, you will be educating students who are not prepared to live in the context.

I hope the (soon to become) MeeGo line will be relevant.

Readers should not confuse this with, in order of increasing danger, the LG Migo, which "is perfect for your kid's first phone," the Bhutanese Migo, which is "known by the Nepalese and Tibetans as the Yeti, and to the Chinese and Soviets as the Alma," or the Lovecraft Mi-Go, which "are large, pinkish, fungoid, crustacean-like entities the size of a man with a 'convoluted ellipsoid' composed of pyramided, fleshy rings and covered in antennae where a head would normally be."

At 10-12 inches. As Jobs said in the speech.

Because Egyptian hieroglyphics actually meant something to the Egyptian people.

I know, right? Just the other day I was telling my Egyptologist friend: "Eagle snake foot pharoah-on-a-throne-holding-out-his-hand, wheat!", and he laughed and said, "Eye cat eagle ibis... eye-of-Ra!" It was a riot!

I'm not a linguist, as I'm probably about to demonstrate, but the development of written language went (very) roughly like: pictograms -> consonants -> vowels -> punctuation

ATLEASTWERENOTGOINGBACKTOTHAT
PHASEOFWRITINGWHENEVERYTHINGWAS
INMAJUSCULEANDTHEREWASNOSPACING
BETWEENWORDS

ANDWHENREADINGACTUALLYMEANT
OUTLOUDEVENIFYOUWEREALONE

Seriously, is Limewire even relevant anymore?

Next on Slashdot... BatBoy sighted on ChatRoulette, and Cmdr Taco has love child by alien visitor.

It is steep because people have a hard time trudging up a steep hill, and said hill curves upwards. So if you absolutely had to equate that sense of "curve" with the mathematical sense of "curve", then if difficulty = steepness = dy/dx, and difficulty means higher effort put in for lower reward, then y = effort and x = reward. If, that is, you were enough of a pedant to insist that a learning curve was a mathematical entity and not a metaphor :)

Sure, why not? Written by my fingers.

So that not even the little buggers themselves can remember their own name.