I've been hearing about ZigBee and Z-Wave for years. But if you look at what's out there available to you, it's crap. Poor selection, limited capability, and a high price.

Meanwhile, Smarthome and their INSTEON protocol have a broad selection of very powerful and flexible components, available today at a good price. For a DIY home-automation job, there's no contest.

Personally, I think INSTEON will become the de-facto standard that takes over from X-10. The others are just not competitive in the ways that matter.

I sound like a shill, I know. Sorry. I just like Smarthome stuff. But I wish they wouldn't embarrass me by hawking pseudo-science crap like electromagnetic water softeners.

Well, I can. The CO2 in those cylinders is produced, along with nitrogen, oxygen, and a few other things, by fractional distillation of liquified air.

So, emptying a cylinder of CO2 is not putting any more CO2 into the air than was taken out to fill it.

I am, of course, glossing over the small detail of the energy required to do all of this...

research it hopes to fund "will consist primarily of the analysis and study of the human odor samples collected to determine if a deception indicator can be found."

I think it's pretty certain that such indicators will be found, at least initially. They probably don't exist, or if they do, they probably will be about as reliable as today's polygraphs (ie, not at all). But they will be found nevertheless, for the simple reason that no indicators means no more money.

I'd say that's right. I don't imagine any judge would be fooled by this. Whether you clicked yourself, or caused it to be clicked, makes little difference, nor should it. I could as well argue that I didn't click "Agree", a pencil clicked it. I just happened to be holding the pencil at the time.

Whether or not one approves of click-through agreements in general, I don't think this little hack makes much of a point in the debate.

I think you guys missed the last bit: "This would only go into affect after enough states totaling 270 electoral votes (enough to elect a president) adopted similar resolutions."

So, until enough other states have similar resolutions, Iowa votes will be counted exactly the same way as they are today. When (if) Iowa is joined by enough other states that together their electoral votes will dominate those of the remaining states, then you'll have a president elected by popular vote. Even in the holdout states, votes will still count: they're part of the popular vote that Iowa and friends will be evaluating.

#$#$-ing Notepad is beating emacs by 1% right now.

What is wrong you people?

I just did a quicky informal comparison. Searched Britannica for a few terms that I know Wikipedia has good articles about (because I read them recently). And I don't mean the pop-culture kinds of terms that Wikipedia is really great for (just try to find an article about, say, Bubba Ho-tep, in Britannica.)

ADO(ActiveX Data Objects): nothing at all. Much ado about Shakespeare, though.

OLE DB: nothing at all.

But it did suggest an article about "decibel" (the unit of measurement.) Ok, let's see what it's got: One brief paragraph. Textually describes the math (rather than giving an equation). Doesn't really explain at all _why_ people like decibel measurements. Mentions the confusing 10*log vs 20*log thing for powers and amplitudes, but doesn't deign to explain why it is that way.

Wikipedia: Lengthy, informative, and as far as I can see, completely accurate.

That is why people link to Wikipedia. And that is why it has a high Google rank.

Perhaps with more user contributions Britannica can catch up somewhat, but it'll be one hell of an uphill climb at this point.

If I lived in Britain, and started getting speeding tickets I knew weren't mine, I'd go and rob a bank. Then lie low for a few weeks, and wait until the wankers get what's coming to them.

If I felt guilty, I'd return the money to the bank (anonymously, of course) later.