I've written music generators that produce "pleasant" music from scratch (by following time-tested harmonic, chord, and rhythm patterns and ratio's). The music may pass the Lovelace test, but will probably never win any awards.

The machine's designers must not be able to explain how their original code led to this new program.

So if we finally figure out how the human brain works, it will fail the Lovelace test just because we know how it works? A silly rule.

I think it's a great idea to have electric cars and 60% of our electricity come from nuclear power. I don't believe this because I believe AGW is real, I believe this because I think basing an economy on foreign sourced energy is a very bad idea.

Whether AGW is real or not the world needs to stop giving gobs of money to Mideastern dictators. They just use that money to build themselves palaces so they don't have to look at the people they exploit, or they build armies to wage holy wars on their neighbors. If nuclear power becomes more common then we'd stop having these resource wars over diminishing oil resources. Uranium and thorium are common enough that no one should have to fight over it.

People will still fight wars of course. They will just have to be more creative in coming up with a reason besides oil.

Plutonium has a half life somewhere between thousands and millions of years. It's too stable for use as a dirty bomb. For something to be a radiological threat it would have to have a half-life on par with a human lifespan, or much shorter.

Typically a dirty bomb is used to scare or kill people off long enough that the area is abandoned but not so long that the attacker could not take over the area for their own use. Even if the attacker did not want to make use of the bombed area, and just wanted to deny it's use to anyone, something with a long half life is still undesirable. The longer the half life the more material the bomb would have to carry to irradiate a given area. With a half life of thousands of years there would have to be 100x more material than if a material with a half life of tens of years.

A more practical dirty bomb would use something like cobalt, tritium, cesium, strontium, or polonium.

Another problem with plutonium in a dirty bomb is that it's relatively inert chemically and very dense. Cleaning up plutonium would be almost trivial since it does not collect in the body, sinks like a stone in water, and only reacts with the most caustic of chemicals. Tritium would make drinking water and plant life radioactive for decades. Strontium likes to collect in the bones and irradiate people from the inside out.

Plutonium on the other hand likes to wash off, collect at the bottom of things, isn't taken up by plant or animal life readily, and has a half life so long that even if it collects in the body is unlikely to decay within a human life span.

You know, I scare myself sometimes that I know this stuff.

I can't think of any good reason to do it other than the coolness factor.

I think the implicit assumption is one of: we're going to completely fsck up this planet and have to leave, something else is going to threaten to fsck up this planet (and we'll have to leave), or we're going to outgrow and want to be elsewhere.

Do I think it likely we could pull it off (or even have the resources)? That I'm skeptical of.

Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Jerry Sanders (Heads of MicroSoft, Intel, and AMD, Advanced Micro Devices) were in a high-powered business meeting. During the serious, tense discussion, a beeping noise suddenly is emitted from where Jerry is sitting. Jerry says, "Oh, that's my beeper. Gentlemen, excuse me, I need to take this call." Jerry lifts his wristwatch to his ear and begins talking into the end of his tie. After completing this call, he notices the others are staring at him. Jerry explains, "Oh, this is my new personal communication system. I have an earpiece built into my watch and a microphone sewn into the end of my tie. That way I can take a call anywhere."

The others nod, and the meeting continues.

Five minutes later, the discussion is again interrupted when Andy starts beeping. He states, "Excuse me gentlemen, this must be an important call." Andy taps his earlobe and begins talking into thin air. When he completes his call, he notices the others staring at him and explains, "I also have a personal communication system. My earpiece is actually implanted in my earlobe, and the microphone is actually embedded in this fake tooth."

The others nod, and the meeting continues.

Five minutes later, the discussion is again interrupted when Bill emits a thunderous fart. He looks up at the others staring at him and says, "Somebody quickly get me a piece of paper... I'm receiving a fax!"

But I like my buns crispy on top.

uh, don't read too much into that.

I invented the "One Click" wheel.

Earth used to be a cute little sun.

But you are thinking logically, not like a PHB.

Military = Republican Welfare

Interesting data point.
Only one of my fixtures has a dimmer, the light over the dining room table. For reference, the fixture has five Philips bulbs in it, and they dim fine, no noticible flicker.
Obviously, results vary.

I realize that there is an overlap between "document layout" issues and GUI issues, but believe that perhaps we have to separate these issues in order to focus on doing each well.

My draft GUI markup suggestion(s) uses HTML as a base because it's established and does initial layout "good enough". (Although I'd like an MDI option added: true sub-windows.) It's mostly the interaction between parts and pages that is lacking, such as drag-and-drop, scrolling tables, and value or element refreshing without re-rendering the entire page (AJAX-like without AJAX).

You can see some of these suggestions at: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GuiMark...

Darwin is wrong wrong wrong about global warming! Government scientists have hit a line-drive touchdown in their level of deceit.

Up to 60 percent of power might come from nuclear sources.

I don't think that will sell. Nuclear power has a bad rap despite the fact that objective studies show deaths per watt or medical costs per watt to be equal to or better than most alternatives.

Nuclear just gives voters the jeebies; that's the way it is.