In 1776 the Magna Carta was 550 years old. It had nothing to do with democracy, but supported the barons against the king. That was arguably a step backward. It became (wrongly) associated with democracy only hundreds of years later, when people were searching for precedents, even flawed ones, to support democracy.

Also, in 1776, most people in England did not have a vote. Look up rotten borough. There were three major reform bills in the 19th century that basically brought democracy to the UK.

In addition to plagarized theses, there are a lot of completely fictitious degrees being flaunted.

A few years ago a senior MIT administrator had to resign.

Last year there was the CEO of a tech company.

About 30 years ago, the President of the IEEE claimed to have a doctorate from a minor German university, but no one could find any record of it. However, his friends rallied around, and he was given an honorary doctorate.

Then there are the unaccredited doctorates. E.g., when Ryerson Polytechnic Institute was transitioning to Ryerson University a few decades ago, many of their faculty did not have doctorates. RU strongly encouraged doctorates, so a bunch of faculty got them from a degree mill in central Europe.

Finally, there's the faculty member at The King's College in Manhattan who lists himself as PhD, Princeton (ABD). ABD means that he does not actually have a PhD, but many readers might not know that.

In Churchill Manitoba, school buses routinely have a rifle strapped above the windshield, in case the driver should suddenly want to start shooting.

I have a project that is not 'most work'. Matlab solves matrix problems for me that neither Mathematica nor any other package I've tried can. Matlab's competence shows in its description of mldivide, which is the key to my problem. It says that it tries A unless condition B is true, in which case it tries C, .... Mathematica says, trust us because we're so smart, with 1000s of routines, 1000000s of LOC etc. w/o going into details. All the free packages are jokes in this area. The only competition would be perhaps some C++ library. However Matlab probably hired its author to extend it for them.

Open SW is nice if you're not picky, but the commercial stuff, in many cases, does specialized things better.

The US invented NTSC first. It was a great achievement: - color being mostly upward and downward compatible with B&W. However, it was sensitive to phase errors in the transmitted signal. The Europeans invented PAL, which reverses the phase of alternate lines, to minimize that. Then the French invented SECAM (System Essentially Contrary to the American Method) just to be different. :-)

Seriously, standards have often been used to lock out competition.

In pmwiki, you can include LaTeX math with this:

http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/JsMath

I've used it for some time and highly recommend it

The ship did have a safe room according to news reports. That's why the pirates took only the captain.

150 years ago, British Foreign Secretary Palmerston observed that "Taking a wasps' nest... is more effective than catching the wasps one by one". - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7991512.stm

Also consider Julius Caesar's experience being taken by pirates. There was a politician who carried out his promise.

After some research, I think that you're right. Sorry about the error; I was working off of an inaccurate story about Microsoft's problems in Europe.

IIRC, in Europe it is against the law merely to be too large.

Indeed, that sort of anarchy in the 1920s is what forced the US to regulate airwaves. E.g., new offshore transmitters were blatantly overpowering other, established, stations that people wanted to hear.

Generally, the gummit doesn't wake up one day to say, "I'm bored, Let's regulate something new." It responds to actual problems.

The Sicilians have been partially successfully stopping lava from Etna for centuries. The bishop in Catania was ordering buildings torn down to stop an eruption in the 1680s IIRC. It's imperfect since the lava is massive, heavy, and coming downhill at you. But you can do a little. More recently in the eruption in 2002 or so, I believe that bulldozers and water were used. This was uphill a lot, not near Catania.

In the 1680s case, the townspeople then went uphill to try to break a lava tube, since they knew even then that the lava tubes enabled the lava to travel so far. However, that enraged the residents of the next town over, who thought that they might be the new recipients of the diverted lava.

The proposed solutions are nice but you can do something workable for much less money. My solution, which I've implemented, involves more work when the power fails but saves a lot of money.

All you really need to power are the furnace blower and fridge, and they need power only part of the time. You can use LED flashlights for light and a battery powered or 12V DC TV and radio.

For perhaps $100 you can get a 700W inverter that clips into your car battery and provides about 5 amps. That will run a small TV and your computer. You can get smaller inverters for less money. These inverters will not power serious motors, such as probably, your furnace blower. Indeed, they may damage a motor that uses them.

Details: These inverters produce a seriously non-sine wave with about 30% harmonics. The harmonics turn into heat in the motor. Also the inverter may not be able to supply the startup current, which might be over 3x the running current.

Another problem with inverters is that their non-sine wave is said to be bad for small AC-DC power supplies for battery chargers etc. I have not explored the meaning of "bad" since I have no spare power supplies to destroy.

To power my furnace blower, I got a 2000W Honda generator for about $900. Note that the 2000W is a shorttime load, the continuous load is a lot smaller. The Honda, unlike cheaper generators produces a true sine wave. It can also supply a large starting current.

I paid an electrician to change my furnace from hardwired to plug in. So, if there's a power failure, I unplug the furnace from the wall and plug it into my generator, which I would run outside the house.

Advantage of my solution: It costs $1200 and I have a portable generator and inverters I could take other places.

Disadvantages: It's not automatic; I have to refill the generator, etc. etc.