Why would you assume that it will go any differently in 2015 than it did in 2005, 2006 and 2011? The Republicans came out against this bill with accusations that it would help ISIS and risk another 9/11, and when the time for renewal is up in May (not January as I said), they will be in control of both houses and looking towards the primaries and the election after that - they're not going to let it expire

I don't see any chance that it won't be renewed. I'm sure there will be lots of drama, name-calling and stirring speeches, but in the end, little or no substantive changes to the act itself, and it will be 2020 before all this comes up again.

It extended 3 out of 100 provisions of the PATRIOT Act until 2017. And actually, the vote was to put it up for discussion and amendment, so it could have been possible to get rid of that.

Now the entire act will be renewed in January, all 100 provisions. Not a win.

And to be fair to the movie the fucked up 3d UI was actually a graphics demo made by SGI for IRIX. So it wasn't the usual Hollywood idea of how computers worked, but rather an engineers view of how computers could work. (Inspired by Hollywood not doubt). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn)

Wasn't that rather old hat by the time the F1 circus got to it?

Yes, since Vestas only makes wind turbines, they're the largest in the world by market share delivering wind turbines. (Your own reference puts them at no 1 in 2013...)

Now, that other smaller companies have started developing gearbox less turbines is interesting, whether they'll be successful we'll see. They're more expensive up front, and of course their promise of lower life cycle cost haven't been demonstrated yet (as there aren't any). Scaling since they depend on rare earth metals is also in question.

So, in summary. There aren't any yet, but we'll see what happens.

Ah, whole paragraph fell out: Should have been: You'd be surprised about the result. In the research that has been done, lethality when comparing handguns and knifes rely only on the proximity to the attacker. You see hand guns are very difficult to shoot accurately at range when under stress (which is demonstrated by the abysmal performance of US police officers, and that's taking into account that the average engagement range is only seven yards). So running away from an attacker works about equally well when running from either a knife or a gun. If you get only a few yards away, you're about equally at risk from either a knife or a (hand gun). You see, even though Hollywood does its best to make you think that guns are really dangerous and knifes aren't, in reality at the ranges where both are effective a knife and a gun is about equally deadly.

You'd be surprised about the result. In the research that has been done, lethality when comparing handguns and knifes rely only on the proximity to the a

So, in the average case, running helps about equally well against either attacker. Funny how that works out.

Now, however, it wouldn't matter, because you wouldn't use the knife/axe etc. as your primary weapon anyway. China has some very strict gun laws and they still have mass killings. It's just that the attacker takes a galon (or so) of gasoline on a bus and sets fire to the whole thing (including himself). That has killed more than thirty people at a time on at least three separate occasions in the last years.

So, the knife/axe/club is only there to prevent you from being successfully rushed (much like the claymore in the army). It's there to make sure you have the opportunity to bring your main weapon to bear (flammable liquid would probably work very well for this).

So, until you bring your society in order, these things will continue to happen, gun control or no gun control (something which is much too late anyway, as there are simply too many guns to easily do away with, with a reasonable effort).

Remember, the statistics clearly show that: "Guns don't kill people. Americans with guns kill people."

Which ones are those? The biggest and most modern to date certainly has a gearbox: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/...

As a gearbox is something you'd really like to get rid of, and since Vestas is the largest manufacturer in the world, you'd think they'd know what they were doing.

That one is actually less clear, and I'd very much like to see that one in the courts (though granted, I'm not Assange, so I don't have quite as much riding on the result).

We have our share of feminist activist everything in Sweden, including prosecutors, so that could very well be the whole truth. While it is clear to me that there was American meddling in the Pirate Bay case, it's not nearly as clear here. (And if there was, the CIA must have had a bad day, as a covert OP this could have been handled a lot better). So again, not nearly as clear cut IMHO.

And even though we have "jails" in Sweden, Peter Sunde still wasn't in our version anyway, as he was incarcerated having been sentenced. The Pirate Bay trial and all that...

He was arrested in May to serve his prison sentence. Police claims he's been hiding himself abroad, he claims he's been quite open about his whereabouts and weren't even told there was an international warrant out for his arrest.

Given how the trial was handled, and given that Peter Sunde is the one of the Pirate Bay founders that have always kept his nose clean otherwise, I'm more inclined to believe his account than the official one.

Now, regarding food, that's not the only instance where the Swedish prison authority haven't followed their own rules. And as Peter Sunde didn't just roll over and take it, but lodged several formal complaints, he's been treated rather badly. Not only put in a high security prison when he was sentenced to 8 months imprisonment, has no history of violence, is a first time offender, and was most definitely not sentenced for a violent crime. It even got to the point where the prison authority threatened that he would have to carry his father's coffin wearing handcuffs! This for a prisoner that has no formal complaints lodged against him and that were given leave at least twice to visit his father in hospital under much less strict security.

No, it pains me to say it, but there's something rotten in the state of Sweden. This whole thing from beginning to end, smells badly.

I hear ya! However, our field is also one in flux. While the guys that studied mechanical engineering in my school in the eighties would still recognise the teaching today, many of the techniques for programming in the large, management etc. weren't even (I hesitate to say, because it's not really true, but bear with me) invented then.

So I think things will probably move in that direction, slowly but surely. However, even those engineers needed to know about Euler's four cases of buckling, or what strain is, etc. Likewise a programmer worth his/her salt need to know about and understand algorithmic complexity etc. (Something I know these "learn X in three months" schools don't necessarily teach to a sufficient degree), so it's not a simple question of throwing all the "old" stuff out, either.

However, we do surely need to leave/make room for (unfortunately very time consuming) projects large and small during college. Damned if you do...

And at Chalmers in Sweden (one of the top two engineering schools, "polytechnics") I had all those courses available in the late eighties, early nineties.

However, one problem is that in order to grasp those subjects you first have to grasp the basics. And those takes time to aquire. As I tell my students today; "Remember, it takes ten years, or ten thousand hours to become an expert. This is the first half of that" (our engineering degrees are five year programmes).

Now of course, you'll come across management issues as you mature (it's inevitable it seems), BUT if you didn't have the basics, you wouldn't get the junior position that would eventually lead to your current problems. So it's really a chicken-and-egg problem. We can't teach you everything at school, there comes a time when we just have to chuck you out and let you sink or swim, and learn on your own.

Or not doing too well, esp. the Ukraine.

They even got US and Russian promises that "nothing bad will happen, we promise. Cross our hearts and hope to die" and all that...

You mean they don't have to have types at all? That's even worse...

Or is it just one of those tedious semantic confusions that are so common when discussing programming languages and types. Do you mean something else by "dynamic language", if so what exactly?