It seems to smack of gross incompetence. Where did all the money go? One has to wonder how many people ought to be sacked over this, from engineers through to accountants.

I imagine the Russians could have developed a dozen different launch vehicles for this sort of money. I believe that NASA already uses Russian Rocket engines on several launch vehicles, so totally outsourcing a development program shouldn't seem too outlandish!

Irrespective of whether they had the right to ship the book in the first place, it was wrong to delete the book from what is essentially not their property.

Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on me.

Their are other places to buy books!

H'mm, while I agree with the sentiment, I wonder about the reasoning. For instance, some of the most linear power amplifiers I have ever seen used vacuum tubes. Vacuum tubes are inherently more linear than solid state devices. Granted, these amplifiers were 200 watts to 100 kW and were RF amplifiers, but that makes no real difference.

Secondly, it has been shown via double blind testing that virtually no one can hear distortion if it is below about 1.5%. Fact is, most speakers produce more distortion than the connected amplifier, and yet, the amplifier is the target of very low distortion. (Probably because it is easy to make amplifiers reasonably linear, just by increasing the amount of negative feedback.

Curiously, a measurably low distortion on an audio amplifier doesn't necessarily mean the Amp "sounds" good. I have actually demonstrated this myself, when comparing 4 different 200 watt (transistor) amplifiers. (Same speakers, pre-amps, just different power amps) All had distortion below/around 0.001%, yet they all sounded different. (And I have "tin" ears ...)

If an invention truly had merit, and was so unique that no-one else can copy it, it is plainly obvious that it will not be patented. They will be made by the inventor, or his company!

The idea that patents should be covered by international law certainly is not new. Anybody outside of the USA who has looked at patenting an invention must have thought this was a good idea, if only due to the vast amount of countries that have their own patent systems. Even the European Economic Community has one for each member country, and to rub salt into the wound, has one for the whole EEC. The shear cost to cover appropriate target markets means that to cover all potential infringers is cost prohibitive! Then, countries like China are not signatories. (And, China is the most likely to infringe ...)

I guess this means that now we will be getting phone calls at tea time with the speaker having a US accent instead of an Indian one.

Agreed ... people who do not like GOTO have no idea what they are talking about. To begin, the underlying compiled machine code is actually full of goto's. Secondly, Kernighan (or was it Ritchie?) Only suggested it was bad, but that it did have its place. (From memory, he also said that that the original C compiler actually had two GOTO's within)

Of course, you could use paper ... but then you take the risk that people will still be able to read 17 years into the future!

While its fine to have 1000's of camera's, you need humans to view the output. Sure the camera can be recorded for later viewing, but, someone still needs to look at the recording. Digital lets you run the video relatively fast scanning for "events", however, there are limits (around 10..25X) At some point, the hard disk (I assume, not a tape) gets near to full, and the video data ends up being deleted. Assuming the camera is coded in MPEG4, there is around 1 gigabytes per hour to store (yes, I know, you can do better than 1 gig/hour. ) so you might be able to store approx 10 days on a 250 gig HDD. So, unless something has been found in less than 10 days, and copied to a less volatile medium, it is probably lost for evermore!

I personally suspect that not all camera's are even permanently connected to a recorder.

I agree ... its only the Yanks that think aluminum is a reasonable way to spell
it. Every other element they spell correctly.

Next, lets pick on the yanks for avoiding metric measurements ...

Truth is, how much simpler can electronics (and programming) get than a clock ... The basic "algorithm" once you get your reference frequency low enough (... generally 1 Hertz) is -> divide by 60 = seconds, divide by 60 = minutes, divide by 12 (or 24 if you prefer) = hours. Using a micro, you put the divides in an interrupt routine. You can chose to display at the end of the interrupt, or in the main loop.

I have seen (smart) 12 year olds build digital clocks using the relevant TTL/CMOS dividers, with the displays being either LED or Nixie tubes. (The difference between LED or Nixie is in the type of display driver chip.)

However, I wish the authors well. Don't see many people building anything electronic these days, probably because the price of consumer electronics is way lower than the price of just the parts! (IE: DVD player for under $20 is just one common item ... couldn't even make the case for that in any western country.)

The companies I have seen try outsourcing have generally done it as a way to remove significant amounts of "dead wood". (That is, the bureaucracy that has grown way beyond a reasonable size due to "successful" empire building by various employee's, or a large amount of idiots have been hired over the years, but will not leave their secure job, even though it is obviously beyond them.)

The outsourcing usually only lasts 2..3 years before the gouging by the contracted companies causes a re-evaluation, and the out-sourcing is reversed. Thus the company has a chance to hire fresh blood, and continue (for a while) as a lean - mean machine! (By gouging, I mean the project costs running way above estimates, the project timeline not even close to original estimates, etc.) And, all this was based on nearly complete projects that were handed to the contractors to finish.

As a /.er, you have to get a girlfriend before you can move to the "dump" phase.

Apple has always been a fun target ... They actually deserve to be! The fact is they are definitely more evil than M$. (citation required) Apple is designed for the simpleton ... why else would their mouse only have one button? (Hint, they don't want to confuse their customers more than they already are.)It used to be more fun when Apple used Motorola/IBM processors, as the Apple Fanboys would always bite on this subject, even though they couldn't differentiate between shit and clay.

I knew it wouldn't be too long before the carbon dioxide from sequestration was found to be more useful making new fuel to just poke back into the ground. Clean coal my arse ... All the CO2 captured will eventually be burnt as fuel!

Of course, if the bees leave it for a few days, it becomes mead. So all the bees that sample it then will be paralytic by the time they get back to their nests.