I believe you have it backward. Physics uses math, but it is not governed by it. Math and physics are simply our understanding of things. When we take one leaf and place it next to another leaf, then having two leaves, math is accomplished, but it's not because of math that we put two leaves together. Math doesn't GOVERN anything. At most, it can suggest, but it's physics' use of math that will push things in motion. That, then, climbs to biology/chemistry to use math to determine proper manipulation of physics. Math is simply man's grasp of universal limitations. To say that math governs everything would be similar to saying that harddrive and RAM chip manufacturers are the ones that have programmed everything ever written on a computer. Perhaps the programmer couldn't do his job without them, but it's the use of the RAM chips and harddrives that matters, and until then, they are useless voids.

Licensed drivers should be able to work out that's all that's required if a engine autonomously revs out & won't drop back, is to simply rotate the starter key one step anti-clockwise, turning the ignition off, so one can effectively apply the brakes to pull up. Even if one finds an unassisted brake pedal too much effort to depress, there is such a thing called a handbrake. If drivers can't comprehend such a resolution in a matter of seconds then they shouldn't be on the road.

It really is too easy to get & keep a license in Anglo countries. Uncontrollably reving out Toyotas would never have been a problem in Germany where learner drivers have to spend thousands of Euros learning how to react to numerous emergency situations like this & are then tested on them before they can get a license to drive.

Of course its become easier for new users. GNOME 1.0 was a passable first effort but it suffered from lack of functionality and too many rough edges. A new user couldn't even set up a network connection, or change the screen resolution because there were no tools to do those things. Many of the apps were unforgiving, crashy and lacking features. Ximian smoothed out a lot of the rough edges and standardized installation and look & feel. The biggest influence of course was the HIG which whipped the whole experience into shape making it easy for novices and power users to use the thing.

I think its very obvious why GNOME has gained mindshare while KDE has floundered. GNOME has made the occasional wrong turn but by and large it's a very usable desktop. By which I mean it's attractive, intuitive, forgiving, simple and task centric. By comparison KDE 4 may have more features but the experience is a disaster.

I made one of these but surprisingly not a big market for them.

"Leadership" might not translate fast enough to cash in the US to look as though it's worth having. The US metric up to the last year or so, which I hope is beginning to fade, is "can we make our money back on this in a short time?" and the closure of labs like Bell and Xerox PARC reflect this bottom-line thinking. Germans and Japanese alike see nothing "better" in the challenges of design than in those of manufacturing so they have good engineers doing both, and they think longer-term. It's less difficult to sell the leadership argument to their management. The French don't even appear in the contest and that's because all their bright people - who are legion - are theoreticians, they see something not quite nice, or grubby, or something in manufacturing and manufacturing engineers are seen as lower life-forms. If the French could get over that they might place.

The Chinese won't lead, ever, with stolen IP and that's how they do business. They have advanced recipes but when they break, there is no theoretical backing for it. They'll manufacture things a couple lamellae behind the cutting edge until they get over that. Once the ROW catch on you will see the Chinese doing truly wacky things because they will be stealing poisoned IP.

Nokia likes linux folks like us.

I think you mean:

Nokia likes making money off linux folks like us.

It's all marketing, friend. They simply use your platform of choice, which - surprise surprise - you approve of. If they thought it would sell more devices, they'd lock stuff down as far as they could in a new york second. But, since they get a mobile OS that's free, they can increase their margins and attract some customers who disapprove of a more locked down approach.

Or did you really think that Nokia chooses Linux because it wants to be your chum?

Radially challenged.

All planets are presently accreting. Go outside tonight and look for accretion events (AKA shooting stars).

Your comment tell me that you don't understand Apple. It doesn't care so much about having a long feature list. It cares about having the things it does work well and be easy to use.

Even if it means not having a floppy drive or RS232 port, but just USB.

It's something geeks often don't understand. I can however highly recommend to stop buying devices based on features, but use usability as measure instead. And I don't specifically mean Apple with that but any device in general.

I agree entirely. I think the success of the Family Guy and Robot Chicken pieces has been related to their rarity, and that they weren't forced.

Trying to recreate that repeatedly seems like it would be pretty likely to fail.
-Taylor

The article mentions that there have been others. This is going to be a sitcom, which is probably worse than anything before it.

Wired reported that he’ll be “steering” the sitcom...

Dread Pilot Seth Green?

Pfff. No one would surrender to the Dread Pilot Seth Green.

did it ever occur to you that the reason you have so much freedom and flexibility to make and sever contracts at will is because of government protections? that companies do not want you to sever ties with them. they do not want to offer a superior product than their competitors. the only thing they want is the money you earned through your productive labor.

and it turns out that absent regulation, it's cheaper to keep all competitors out than to innovate. They can get maximum profits by offering the shittiest product that will do the work and make sure you cannot access any other product.

I don't think she's at all well, so she'd probably fall under the original set of images, rather than the control.

I think it is good to have someone who provides a clear and unambiguous opinion on these matters; and he has been proven right over and over again. In practice and for most people, a more moderate view is more appropriate; but without Stallman most of us wouldn't even realize what the real problem is.