That rear wheel steering is something else as far as turning circle goes, but I can see myself doing a three point turn and wiping out several innocent pedestrians by accident :-)

forming a dense mat of thatch

Nobody want to see that.

A return generalisation : If I'd chosen to use my above averagely intelligent brain and limited lifespan to sit in a cubicle writing code that efficiently moved some data from one place to another, perhaps in the service of moving other people's money about, then I'd also be bitter about this *trash* running around constantly re-inventing the greatest communications network the world has ever seen.

Web trash ( C++ / Java / OpenGL / AS / HTML / Etc. )

/ Up and over we go

The previous administration screwed up royally with regards to overspending; however, that doesn't mean you don't try your best to correct the problem going forward. Maintaining the status quo when it comes to things like excessive spending don't usually work out well, just ask someone who foreclosed on their house this past year.

What happens to the Gorillas when winter comes?

They turn into brass monkeys.

Obviously, the USB-IF is going to take a dim view of spoofing vendor IDs. They were considered important enough to have in the spec, for whatever reason, so faking them isn't going to go over well. I don't really know what outcome Palm was expecting.

However, that said, I can't see tying attempts between products(above and beyond the natural tying effects that the complexity of software interaction naturally produces) as being even a remotely good thing for users, competition, or technological development generally.

Imagine if, back in the day, the "Well, they should just write their own iTunes-like application" had been applied to Compaq and the IBM-compatible clone kiddies. "Well, they can just write their own OS and set of applications..." Even back then, with the fairly minimal legacy effects, that would have retarded the development of cheap, standard, supports-the-software-you-want-to-run computers. It is basically demanding that anybody who wants to make anything must have a complete vertically integrated product range, to which they must induce customers to switch.

Very rarely in the history of technology has that ever worked particularly well. Most of the time, development consists of a few standards, formal or de-facto, and the surrounding ecosystems of add-ons, compatible widgets, clones, extensions, and software, authorized and unauthorized. And, frankly, that has worked pretty well. Modern technology is competitive, fast, ubiquitous, and impressively cheap.

If, in the future, we move away from the annoying-but-largely-useless forms of tying involving monkeying with pinouts every generation, and obfuscating stuff, and move to effective forms of tying based on crypto challenge-response, signing, vendor IDs, and the like(along with a fair bit of force of law, thanks to Mr. DMCA) I fear we will see a much less rich period of technological development.

Few companies are large enough, or smart enough, to maintain a fully integrated product line. Fewer customers actually want to use every one of a company's products, and none of their competitor's products. They want things to work together. Obviously, some degree of imperfection in interface is to be expected, interconnection of complex systems is Hard and writing wholly unambiguous specs is Very Hard. Deliberate breakage, though, is insult to injury.

A lot of Europeans are criticizing Obama for saying, "We're canceling the missile defense system," but I think he has the right idea. If the European Union wants a missile defense shield to protect themselves from Russia, Iran, et cetera than let the EU build it themselves. They need to stop sucking on the U.S. taxpayer teet and build their OWN defensive army and shield.

>>>I'm not American, I've just had enough of all the US bashing, especially from the people who intersperse it with cries for help.

Thank you British cousin.
Thank you for being honest.
Oh and the reason the American death age is 1 year lower than EU rates has *nothing* to do with the government. Correlation =/= causation. The real cause is that we eating fatty foods that clog arteries & shorten lifespans. Like this ice cream I'm eating for breakfast. ;-)

It is highly dispiriting that after reading most comments on this thread, only one poster mentioned LTO tapes (or any tapes or long term archival means for this matter).

By copying your data to another machine (the underlying file system is irrelevant) you are only creating a set of data that is highly available, but not one that is properly backed up.

Back ups refer to archival and retention of data for long periods of time (months or years). Putting your data in another machine simply does not fulfil this requirement.

Disks were not designed as long term archival means, you will find this the hard way.

All the well intentioned comments on this thread are describing how to make your data more available, but the handling of backups implies much more than quick access to a recent set of data.

Although ZFS could be part of the chain of your backup strategy, if the data does not go ultimately to archival tape which is registered and stored safely, then you are deluding yourself if you think you have got the backup problem cracked.

The article states that it "burns extremely hot". It seems that one could mow it, dry it and pelletize it for use as a fuel in pellet stoves at the very least. Better than cutting down trees for fuel. I wonder what the BTU density is?

Apple is abusing the ID in an attempt to stifle competition. Palm is working around that despicable behavior.

Or maybe Palm is faking the ID so that its owners can use the iTunes software that Apple spends significant money developing, rather than develop its own software. Apple is preventing that despicable behavior.

Definitely, this is the kind of setup I start imagining when I read stories about 3D headsets or new Wii=like control systems. I think the ideal thing would be a sort of bungee harness for your body and some kind of 360 degree treadmill (no idea how such a device would function - perhaps have hundreds of little medium resistance trackballs on it?) below you that can measure the speed and angle of your steps, whether you've just jumped, flipped around etc. :)

"I run Windows you insensitive clod!"

This is southern Ireland (Eire) the IRA became the Irish National Army in 1922, and don't have anything to do with the IRA in Northern Ireland

While that is true, the implication I take from your words is that the current (real/provo) IRA is not linked to Eire.

It most certainly is, for example Liam and Michael Campbell. The first successfully sued by the relatives of the Omagh victims for the 1998 bomb attack and the latter accused in court this week of having paid 10,000 (£8,600) to arm the Real IRA with guns and explosives from Lithuania http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/18/arms-real-ira-lithuania-sting

(or I did before one enterprising tow truck driver or another helped their self to my CD wallet - this has happened to me at least 6-7 times in my life, so I've lost upwards of 500+ CDs just to tow truck drivers).

Really?

You must have owned lots of really crappy cars and been really unlucky with the tow truck drivers that attended!

the major labels' employees are seemingly are the ONLY people in the music industry against file sharing

Honest question: who are the people in the music industry for file sharing then? Surely there aren't that many who aren't in the employ of the major labels?