The biggest issue I had with I, Robot was that Asimov intentionally wrote robot stories that did "not" involve scary robots running amok and killing people, but that's exactly the movie they made.

On its own as an action/adventure sci-fi, and not branded as an Asimov story I thing the movie would have been much better received, at least by fans of his stories.

FTS: The Debian technical committee has been asked to vote on which init system to use, which could swing in favor of using Upstart due to the Canonical bias present on the committee."

So what are the chances of getting the Canonical-associated board members to recuse themselves from the vote, given the obvious conflict of interest there?

From work I get about 30ms
From my home internet a few miles away I get about 69ms.
Why?
Because Time Warner sucks ass!

Because from my connection in Arlington, TX [near Dallas], Time Warner kindly routes all of my traffic down to Houston, then back up to Dallas before it even leaves TWC's network. Then of course it still has to go the rest of the way to wherever it is going. Of course thanks to their near-monopoly, my alternatives for 30Mbit connectivity are slim.

Best I saw myself was 6.5 years on a Solaris 8 system. I took a screenshot before I shut it down:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/doubletwist/3662948158/

And yes, I know it was insecure. It wasn't a system I managed outside of being tasked with decommissioning it.

If you'd like to improve some of your typing skills, you could always try TypeRacer

FTFY

Why yes, we are a Sun/Oracle customer. How did you know?

I don't know about the UltraSparc 10, but the V210 will run Solaris 10 just fine.

Actually, it would probably run Solaris 11 just fine if S11 didn't detect the hardware and refuse to install.

I'm certain it would be just as painful to look at how much one has spent in power and cooling to run that monstrosity since 2005.

It's amazing how drool-worthy systems like this were once upon a time, yet now I realize they are bulky, heavy, loud, hot, power-hungry and painfully slow. I'm just glad we've gotten rid of all our legacy 'purple' Sun hardware.

I suppose it would make a nice end table next to your sofa however.

I'm a big fan of Bistromathics as a method of travel.

I can only speak to 111 8th Ave. The affects in that building appear to be company specific. There's no power in the building, but our datacenter [NTT/Verio] there has successfully been running on generator since 8am Monday.
I guess we got lucky on tank/pump placement? Either that or our frequent generator testing has been a huge success. :)
We've already had one fuel delivery and are expecting another today.

Our other datacenters in the area [NY, NJ, CT] have also managed without outages. Many of them already have commercial power back on again.

NOTICE: The above information is unofficial and may be wildly inaccurate as I am located in another region.

Yggdrasil [couldn't get it working]
Slackware
Mandrake 5.1 beta - best, most functional desktop I ever had
Redhat
Slackware
Sorcerer
SourceMage
Slackware
Debian
Ubuntu
Debian [today]

Of course there were many test installs of other distros but that's the list of what desktops [and servers] I've run as my main environment

I don't think you proved your point. As per your quotes of the constitution, the president is required to occasionally give a speech telling Congress how things are going. He can *recommend* to Congress things he thinks are needed or a good idea. But it's still Congress who has to make the law. He can call either or both houses of congress together to make them discuss things, and [and I'm not 100% sure I'm reading this part right] the president can tell them to go away for awhile. He can meet with Ambassadors and other public folks. His job is to ensure that the law [as passed by congress and, only after that, signed by him] is executed.

So with respect to determining the direction the country takes as far as what laws are created and passed, the president can only make suggestions to congress, and make them get together to discuss it. He can't make them agree to it or make an actual law out of his ideas.

And exactly what does Chrome have to do with replacing iGoogle? Chrome is a browser. iGoogle is a customized homepage. I use Chrome [love it]. I use iGoogle.I have my iGoogle home page set up exactly how I like it. I have my most frequently visited bookmarks set up, I have the site feeds I want, the weather I want, the various other widgets I want, and they're all in the same place they've been for the last half-decade so I know exactly where to click for what I want.

I will not be happy if they retire iGoogle.

Thirded. I switched away from my.yahoo.com when iGoogle first came out and I've been using it ever since. I've got it set up just perfectly as I like it. I'm going to be extremely disappointed if/when they retire iGoogle. :(

Okay perhaps I phrased some of my points poorly.

a) Yes, the research and curriculum needs to be focused on what the student needs. I just happen to believe that if used correctly, the technology can be used as a really great tool for providing what the student needs in an engaging way. Then again, we as a society can't even agree on what students actually need. What should a student know when they are done with their mandatory years of education? Do we really need to be attempting to push every student in the country to a college degree? Should they at least know how to balance a budget at home? Because as it stands now, students exiting high school can't even do that.

b) If the teachers can't even be bothered to spend some time learning tools which have the potential to help the students learn, then how can they be surprised when the students can't be bothered to learn what the teachers are trying to teach? If the teacher has no interest in improving their ability to teach then they have no business being a teacher.

c) No, I wasn't trying to say that money was "the answer". But money is needed. It needs to exist to be spent on education. It needs to be **properly managed** [something that is certainly not happening now]. And as you say, we spend a lot of time and money trying to educate kids who don't want to be. I think we would be much better off if at some point in their educational career, kids were given a choice [with some guidance] to choose different tracks. If a kid wants to aim for college, then they can take the college prep track. If they want to work on cars, then put them in an automotive repair/engineering track and so on. They'll still need to have basic knowledge/skills [history/govt, english/grammar, some level of math, some level of basic science. *comprehensive* sex education] but there's no reason to force them to take a bunch of [these are just examples] advanced algebra classes or biology [beyond very basic biology] if they have no interest in it. So yes, there are sociological issues that also need to be dealt with. That doesn't mean it's totally worthless to spend money on some level of education for all the children in our society.

Re the conclusion: I never said technology was a panacea. I never said we didn't still need good teachers [you know, the ones that are willing to learn to use tools]. Good teachers will always be the key. But as I said, a LOT of education can be done by technology in a way which multiplies the force of the good teacher. If we try to go 100% technology then I agree, that's the wrong way to go. But wouldn't it be great if the technology could be used to teach the things technology is good at teaching, and the teachers could be used to teach the things that people are good at teaching?

As an example, in the late 90's I used to work for a company that sold an educational software/hardware package to schools. It was a really great system. Based on the results of a private school that did educational research, it was a set a 3 computers that would be installed in a Kindergarten classroom [eventually they had 1st and 2nd grade versions]. Throughout the day the kindergarten kids would spend 15 minutes on the computer, and it would *help* teach them to read. It included an audio CD [with the various songs which were sung in the program], VHS tapes with some of the songs/videos, and a set of story books that went along with different parts of the program. The CDs, tapes and books went home with each student. So at school, they got a 15 minute lesson from software which had the ability to show the kids a lesson in a fun, engaging way, then check to see if the child had learned it [and throughout the program would double check previous lessons to make sure the kid remembered long-term]. If the child had trouble with a concept, the system would re-visit the concept occasionally until the kid learned it properly. The tapes and books were critical as well, sent with instructions for the parents to actually let the kids listen/watch, and to read the books with their kids.
If nothing else it was a prod to the parents to become involved in their kids education. To be honest, just the parents reading without the computer time would help the kids. Or just the computer time without the home reading/watching would help the kids read. But put them together and their reading improved dramatically faster, especially in low-income districts where the parents were less likely to spend time helping their kids read.

The point is, yes, there needs to be a balance. More technology, if used correctly can help educate our children. No, that technology is not a panacea. But saying "Hey, the technology can't do everything" is no reason to avoid using the technology for the things it CAN do.