it's a great time to get some levelling done (have you hit 80 yet?)

Because of the snow I am still waiting for my new Christmas computer to arrive, you insensitive clod!

Just thought I would mention that in Seattle 8" of snow is considered an extreme blizzard and most services shut down completely. Apparently some environmental wackos lobbied the state not to use salt to clear the roads, but instead to put sand on the snow and then compress it into a compacted layer (it sounds like a joke, but it really is one of the stupidest plans ever). Meanwhile Christmas was a total fail for all those who love gadgets, since UPS has not even unloaded their trailers for two weeks, so even those who drive in the snow to pick up their package manually cannot do it.

I sometimes wonder why humans evolved to be so irrational, and since societies' proliferation of individual preferences is one example of this I hope that this research continues to be funded.

1. Use WakeOnLAN for home server.
2. How to read Linux file systems with MS Windows.
3. Write NTFS with NTFS-3G (usually already installed)
4. Synergy.
5. Use a liveCD to recover data.
6. Blogging tools...

Blogging tools? Say no more.

After RTFA I don't see this robot being released as a free technology, which is too bad since the last thing we need is for a revolutionary new tech industry to be once again built on marketing and closed technologies.

The redhat business model can go into overdrive in the upcoming robot-helper industry. Deployment is assisted by open hardware and software standards, and the need for professionally paid support and custom programming will create a large new market.

The bottom line is that the Scene provides better long-term support then most game companies ever have, and I only like to buy the games that I can and will indefinitely far into the future, which usually requires some variety of cracks and emulators, which is why even the games I have bought in the past are not installed in favor of the infringed+enhanced versions.

This is the original justification for using high level languages e.g. FORTRAN, COBOL, etc, instead of working with machine instructions.

Just like the debate over mainframes vs thin-clients/cloud-computing, this is an old notion that waxes and wanes in cycles. Besides FORTRAN the biggest single step in trading execution speed for higher level programming was the adoption of Java, unless you include the minority of programmers who get to use a fourth generation programming language at work.

In western philosophy the pleasures of the body have been considered less fine then the pleasures of the mind. Paraphrasing Aristotle,

A life of growth and reproduction is fit for a plant, and satisfying bodily desires would be a fine life for an animal, and so the life that is fit for a man must satisfy that part which makes him you unique viz. his mind.

Why are geeks so trusting of medical doctors?

I have met many medical doctors who chose their profession because it comes with prestige and high pay, which makes them no different then the majority of the population, except for having more resources to start with. They are merely at the pinnacle of the sheeple/consumer-breeder class that slashdotters loathe!

In contrast we have mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and open source programmers who chose these professions because they want to do great work, while disregarding the low pay and low social status. These people are true thinkers, true geeks, while so many medical doctors are egomaniacs who like to chase women, drink beer, watch sports and excessively pat each other on the back (hence the kind of groupthink that makes their ability to evaluate any kind of new medical advances poor).

Instead we should invest that $1B into researching fundamentally new battery technologies.

Hopefully Obama realizes how many theoretical research salaries can be paid with $1B and chooses to spend the money on this kind of long-term project.

There are many pragmatic reasons for a non-geek to switch to linux.

1. Package managers and the ease of installing free software e.g. easy to search for without entering commercial sites laden with ads and sometimes trojans, no EULA type nag screens.

2. Better jukebox software. Amarok can easily rip music off of ipods, which is widely appreciated by non-geeks (some people have their entire music collection trapped on a single ipod, and when linux can make that ipod send its songs to the outside world they become believers).

3. Better video playback software. Even though mplayer and vlc are ported to Mac OS and MS Windows, they work best on linux e.g. smoother playback and response to controls, better OS integration, current feature set closer to developer feature set, etc.

4. Best videogame console emulators. Since many emulators are open source (with notable exceptions) they are primarily developed as linux apps with windows ports that lag behind in features. Also, WINE really does run many recently popular games.

5. Superior performance in all things hard drive related, linux is better at reading, writing, and not going into retarded fits of swapping data to the drive like MS Windows is so fond of doing.

6. Better network security, and better multi-user PC security.

7. More aesthetically and functionally customizable.

What are the current aspects which prevent linux from achieving its critical_point of adoption on the desktop this year?

a. Lack of familiarity with the OS and applications.

b. (really a corollary of 1) Some favorite applications are not availible.

The solution to both (a) and (b) is marketing, which linux does not get very much of and hence the perpetual delay of its year.

I don't think the analog/digital distinction is what makes this feel like a complex toy rather than a computer, but rather it is the lack of Turing completeness, the fact that it is only capable of a specific limited instruction set.

The IOC must learn that there is no long term positive effect of allowing a totalitarian government to host the olympics in exchange for agreements that are slowly implemented and quickly removed, just as the western countries have learned that when the IOC makes such a mistake it is wrong to respond by boycotting the games.

In the 1890s the king of Hawaii sent a telegram to Thomas Edison asking about the feasibility of transporting geothermal power on the big island, which is relatively less populated, to the capital in Oahu by means of an undersea cable.

Looking for geothermal wells is guesswork, just like looking for oil. Still, there are ~20 prospective geothermal wells that have not been explored on the big island, and it is estimated that the combined output of the resources in these wells could supply up to 4 times the current power consumption of the entire state, for up to 500 years.