On the topic of Brel, a lot of his songs deal with such themes since he has always been on the verge of depression.

We francophones consider him one of the two or three major writers of the 20th century. A few of his songs have been adapted to English with varying success.

One of the saddest songs I remember growing up, was based upon one of his: Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks (and later redone again by Westlife). And Terry livened the tune up a lot from the original :) Beautiful song, but depressing.

Ive been to the exhibition and the flatly deny the bodies are from prisoners

Really? From wiki (which has a citation in the article):

Under the settlement agreement with New York City, Premier Exhibitions agreed to post disclaimers stating that they could not independently rule out the possibility that remains of Chinese prisoners were used in the production of the displays.

Shudder.

D'oh: correction: I could never get *Myth* to stream to more than one networked computer. Sage streams to three-four computers regularly over WiFi for me, without any problems.

(Wish /. had a 60-second edit function like Reddit. Oh well, my own fault.)

Actually yes. MythTV kicks the utter crap out of any other PVR ever made.

I love MythTV, used it for years. After some frustration (yet another update, yet another two nights messing around to get my IR remote working again, arrrrgh), I tried out SageTV. I have no association with the company; I think it's mostly a one-developer shop. But they make an awesome product. Less than $100 for the server and client licenses, and I had a system that streamed to multiple windows/mac/linux computers seamlessly (I could never get Sage to stream to more than one networked computer, and even that was painful). (And I picked up a couple of dedicated Sage hardware boxes, that work beautifully, loading their GUI off the server. Very slick.)

Not knocking Myth, and I bet it will overtake all others some day; but to say it's the best and kicks everyone's butt, isn't consistent with my experiences. If you like the indy-ish PVR approach, but want something easier and more polished than Myth (and more cross-platform, ironically), do check out Sage.

Yeah because all the users of the site would totally stick around if they were no longer getting all the content for free. *rolls eyes* Why must everyone make up bullshit excuses instead of just admitting that they were downloading stuff because they wanted to get it for free? No one is falling for these bullshit excuses anyway.

While I find it hard to disagree with you, I think it can be put a bit differently... The reason people are so drawn to illegal/free downloads, is that the price point for this media is unrealistically high. $70 for games, $10-$20-$30 for movies. Notice that when you put iPhone apps and singles up for 99c, you suddenly start developing a new multi-million dollar markets.

(Especially since "albums" with a dozen solid songs seem to be a thing of decades past. But that's another story, sigh. There's a rare exception, such as Tom Fun, but in general, I don't see anyone producing solid solid, cohesive, albums these days.)

I would say the motivation for piracy is largely driven by perceived differences between supply and demand pricing. There is a big segment of the market where the current prices don't meet their requirements; and there's a venue where they can get it for a price closer to their threshold ($0 is lot closer to $1, than $70 is to $1), so they figure out how to pirate it, and do so.

Ideology (information wants to be free, yadda yadda yadda!) is a nice excuse, and icing on the cake, but I don't think is a major motivation for most pirates. It's just a bit of self-righteous rationalization after the fact.

I think there will be a big equalization of prices over the next five-ten years, which will make things more sane. I don't mind paying $30/mo. or $50/mo. *total (or even more) for lots of high quality entertainment.

But $40 for cable, $40 for internet, $20+ for movies, $70 for games, etc., etc., is more than I choose to pay. Let people take a slice of my income, and they'll get $30-$50/mo. out of me for entertainment, no problem, instead of the $0 they're getting right now.

People will tend to pay their $40-ish for Internet, and effectively use *that* fee to enable their ability to grab their other entertainment.

Actually, to follow up on my own post, I wouldn't say that compilers got as good as human-written assemblers "ten years ago"; it's more like "15 - 20 years ago," IMO. (And even in the 70's, compilers were good enough that the Unix operating system could be written mostly in C, with a few thousands lines of assembler for optimization.)

Go look at the assembler that some of these compilers produce. It's frightening to see the amount of overhead they cost on even simple assignment operations. I saw one compiler (Microsoft's Visual C++) that took a simple x=10; in C++ and turned it into 15 assembly language operations that, had it been coded by hand, would have been one MOV statement.

Spoken like someone who hasn't used a modern compiler.

This statement might have been true ten years ago (or maybe still true with MSC). But in general, with a good modern compiler, it isn't.

In the Z-80 days, I did everything assembly (actually, in raw machine code, compiling in my head, effectively). I learned C in the 8088 days, but did a lot of optimization, putting my CPU intensive stuff in assembler functions. And so forth on the VAX, and into the 386 days, doing graphics work, 3D stuff, games, and such.

Then the Watcom compiler came along, and started pushing what compilers could truly achieve.

It reached a point where, looking at the generated code, I realized that in general, the compiler was doing as good, or very nearly as good a job as I could do. In some cases, with loop unrolling and other "non-local" optimizations, it was doing better. At this bore out in actual performance timing tests. And the other compilers caught up to Watcom, and they all continued to get better and better; my hand-written optimized code had already reached its limit, that the compilers approached.

Granted, there will always be some case where a bit of assembler can optimize things; but with the speed of CPU's, and the quality of modern compilers, the case where it's worth the effort is *exceedingly* rare.

I doubt you could show an example today with the latest GCC, where an assignment resulted in a dozen instructions.

Simple example:

                i = 0;
                for (j = 0; j < 10; j++)
                                  i += j;

ran through "gcc -O -S", gives:

                movl $0, %eax
                movl $0, %edx
L2:
                addl %edx, %eax
                incl %edx
                cmpl $10, %edx
                jne L2

Hard to beat that (other than figuring out the algorithm and reducing to a constant, which some of the super-advanced compilers probably do :)

And with limited register sets, compilers can be better than humans, at figuring which variables are best stashed in memory or on the stack, and which are best cached in registers.

The console makers keep a pretty tight reign on game development guidelines; you play by their rules, follow their guidelines, adhere to the licensing terms they set, and then you can have your game digitally signed and sold. If you don't have their approval and they don't sign the disc, your game won't run on the console (unless it's hacked).

Given the fact that a USB keyboard/mouse combo can be had for $10-$20, from any vendor, and a console remote can cost you a good chunk of $100, to the console maker, it's pretty easy to see why more games don't allow keyboard/mouse.

On the other hand, most games that would benefit from keyboard/mouse, are single-player FPS type games; single a single controller comes with each console, allowing keyboard/mouse isn't really that big of a threat.

I'm only familiar with the WII; three extra remotes plus nunchuks cost more than the console. And now WII Motion Plus is going to be used by more and more games, there's another $100. I still like the system, and the features/quality of the controls do seem to justify things to a degree, but I still feel *slightly* gouged. (Third party controllers are available, and really aren't that much cheaper, which kinda indicates that maybe the tech involved in the remotes is a bit pricey to start with.)

I think the average person grossly overestimates the value of this data. In short, unless you're a celebrity, or stalked by an ex, or something, *NOBODY CARES* about this data. (Other than friends, viewing it for its intended purposes, of course.)

And if you're a celebrity, or being stalked, odds are you take some extra privacy measures in your every day life (don't leave blinds up, etc.), so maybe you should take similar measures online (don't publish friends lists to the world).

Facebook does have some privacy holes, but in general you can keep your profile details pretty hush-hush, except to those you choose.

It amazes me how many people are so paranoid. I see almost everyone I know enjoying Facebook, and I've never heard of a single identity theft or other ill effect of it.

The apps is do find annoying (some third party company, not vetted at all, getting all your details when you accept a cheesy gift, etc..); and that's part of the Canadian govt's investigation. Again, I simply don't accept apps.

(Personally, I'm kinda bored with Facebook, only check in occasionally, and find it rather "meh"; but I'm the type with a fairly small and close group of friends to start with, so maybe that's why.)

There's quite a mess with the RS name in Canada. RS Canada was operated by InterTAN, who sold it to Circuit City. Then Radio Shack sued InterTAN for breach of contract, and the Radio Shack name could no longer be used, so they rebranded it "The Source by Circuit City." And now, Radio Shack is apparently going to come into Canada opening stores under that name. Bizarre and annoying.

Sadly, before this silliness, Radio Shack (Canada, at least) had already declined from a cool store with a wide variety of electronics and parts, into a TV/Remote Control Vehicle shop, with a few gadgets and toys, and just a shadow of its former self.

Maybe the new Radio Shack can restore some of its former appeal. I'm not holding my breath.

We're hurting for electronics retailers in Canada, at least of the geeky kind. There's no major chain where you can pop in and buy a motherboard, for example (and I've had iffy success with small-time local dealers). Sigh.

I've visited a Fry's in the US before, and despite it having the same lack of appeal of most big box retailers, it did have things like motherboards and components; good selection, good price, so you hold your nose and buy :)

Sorry, but after this "Google Voice is simply duplicate functionality", Apple has lost pretty much all legitimacy in anything they say. Everything they say lately, one has to think "why are they really doing this," and there is always an obvious alternative answer.

Sigh, I really want to like them, I really do.

But my hopes are fading.

Great, the laser pulses will probably be DRM encoded so that only authorized chips are used and vendors that insert the appropriate smart card can perform service on them...

The advent of CPU-enhanced cars is a great one, but this is one place where the govt really needs to step in an open things up. For standard engine codes, things aren't too bad; but Lord help you if you want to read an ABS or airbag code from a GM vehicle (for example). They're locked down. I have some decent PC-based code reader hardware and software, but in order to read the ABS error that my two vehicles are both showing (GM, learn to design ABS, will ya!), I need to spend hundreds or thousands on their own software/hardware to simply find out which of my four ABS sensors is faulty.

The more they get into specialized things like this, including laser ignition, the more I worry that I won't be able to be a backyard mechanic any more.

I have bought copies of both books in my (distant) past.

Recently, I "found" electronic copies of them, and re-read them, enjoying them very much, more so than when I first purchased them. I read them on a free reader on two different handheld devices (one Windows CE; ugh, but it's my phone, too, so meh), and one Linux based (cooler, but blah, it's not my phone).

Nobody revoked anything on me. Nobody took away my right to read. Nobody took away my license to read these books that I purchased awhile back. Nobody could, because it was through "unauthorized" channels. But I bought the damn book. And here in Canada, even borrowing the book/record/game gives you permission to copy it for yourself for personal use.

Most consumers wouldn't know how to do what I did, and that's sad.

I'll never buy into DRM.

Also, I've gotten HDTV through less than legit means, while simultaneously paying for full subscription. (If I used that subscription purely, I'd be forced to do the D-to-A-to-D route, blah). But I get my HDTV, for personal use, recordable, copyable, save-able, pure. Through unauthorized means. I'm supposedly legally allowed to, but not permitted to actually do so, as a non-informed consumer.

In general, the producers need to know that their content isn't *that* valuable or *that* essential to people's lives. It's not freakin' oxygen. But if the masses want to toss you a few bucks each for unrestricted access to it (which I would), you should accept it, and you'll be rich. Richer than astronauts (as Homer would say).

But you keep trying to deny me something I bought, and you wont't survive. I can guarantee that...

The biggest problem I see with Facebook is the stupid, silly apps that get *full* access to your data. I create a dancing Christmas tree that everybody sends to their friends, or similar banality, and I can scam tons of personal data, that I really don't need to show that dancing Christmas tree.

The Canadian report recommends that these third party apps only request the data they need to perform their function, that the app let's the user know what data is using, and gets the user's approval. If that Dancing Christmas tree is asking for my phone number, I don't think that's appropriate, and I should be able to reject it, and the app wouldn't be popular.

I believe Facebook used to have a better granularity in asking what perms an app could have (although most apps asked for everything anyway). If app creators would only ask for what is relevant to their app, and users were aware of it (and refused to give away details unnecessarily), things would be much cleaner.

I do fault facebook for removing (or hiding?) this granularity, and simply making a "grant permission" button instead of showing all that a given vendor was getting access to.

Creating a mindless but popular app really the easiest way to get a ton of demographic data for nothing. It's shameful that Facebook allowed this, perhaps even encouraged it; now they're being called on it.

Proud to be Canadian. :)