Going West (from Europe to the US for example) I wake up really early the next morning, then one hour later each subsequent morning. Takes about a week for a 7-hour time difference.

Going east is different. First morning after I am up around 7 or 8, second day I can sleep until 1 PM if allowed to. Then it alternates the following days like that, for about a week for 7 hours as well.

Seems there is some kind of 25-hour cycle active on stretching the day, and a 48-hour cycle in action on compressing the day.

Shorter differences, 1 hour or 3 hour are similar, but the transition time is correspondingly shorter.

What advantage does this offer over traditional Julian Day numbering. where each day is sequentially numbered and their number is divisible by 7 on Mondays? As long as it is necessary to refer to civil or traditional time that can be easily converted.

From what I remember, NT 4 didn't support USB very well, if at all. Windows 2000 however, did work reasonably well with USB. So unless they had upgraded to Windows 2000 or XP, they would still be stuck with the PS/2 -connected devices.

Interestingly enough, the summary indicates that Hurd still doesn't support USB ... that does limit the selection of useful hardware.

Nevermind the sound of gunfire -- what about the sound of electrical failure (ever heard the loud SNAP of a squirrel got in the way of 11 kV?) and the quite likely subsequent electrical fire? That's going to be the difficult one to run away from...

Norway's large sales of electric cars is mostly driven by positive incentives: electric cars may use the lanes reserved for busses and taxis, they go free of charge on the toll roads, they are not taxed with VAT when sold, and the yearly vehicle tax is only on the order of 400 kr as opposed to the approximately 3000 kr for cars with gasoline or diesel engines.

But that includes the expectation that the change from AM to PM is somewhere between 11.59 and 12.00 -- not between 12.00 and 12.01. Seeing how messy the rest of this system is, with 12.59 giving way to 01.00, while still remaining AM or PM, I would not want to make any a priori assumptions about which of these are right, and hence whether 12 AM is supposed to mean 12 noon or 12 midnight.

It's either use the 24-hour system or at least use expressions "12 noon" and "12 midnight".

Epileptic seizures, and going 60 MPH (or 100 km/h as this is in Europe) or more. Twice. And still stayed on the road? Makes one wonder if there isn't any other modifications like lane-keeping there as well. Depending on the degree of epilepsy, but at that speed, say 30 m/s, one cannot be out cold for much more than a second before leaving the road.

It's been tried. IEC-60906-1 is currently used in Brazil only. In Europe there are still several different plugs and sockets in each country, although some of these can be interconnected.

Then there's all the various micro-usb variations for low-power ...

Having once learned the so-called Imperial, US, system, here are some answers and translations:

The Ampere and Second are the same in SI and in the US systems of measurements, so the Coulomb would be as well. Sometimes the electron charge was more useful.

The force unit is pounds, abbreviated lb. The gravitational acceleration is 32 feet/second^2, and the mass unit is called the slug. Just like there is occasionally talk about the kgf (kilogram-force) in the metric system, there is also talk about the "pound-mass" in the US system, at the risk of confusion.

The electronic and electrical units were all SI- so the units were F/m and H/m (as well as Ohm*m for resistivity) -- no inches there. However, when specifying the sizes and shapes of microstriplines, inches were sometimes seen for lengths, widths, and thicknesses, in addition to millimeters calculated from the wavelengths of the RF signals. Wavelengths were calculated in millimeters using c=3*10^8 m/s, then converted to feet or inches as needed for antenna construction.

The US unit of work is foot-pound-force per second. (lb*ft/s) One of these would correspond to 1.3558 W. Horsepowers and BTU/s are other units that could be encountered.

Our Norwegian equivalent of the 2x4 is still called "to-tom-fire", which refers to wood with cross-section 48 mm by 96 mm after adjustment. I'd think it is similar elsewhere in Europe; that size of lumber is specified in millimeters.

Even though we've been using metric for more than a century, a few inch-measurements mostly in building materials remain, names for lumber sizes and pipe threads.

gallon, quart, pint, cup, ounce, tablespoon... all different names for what is really just volume -- why not stick with one of them and use multipliers for the larger and smaller sizes? There's also the advantage of the metric system that the cubic centimeter corresponds to 1 mL, so there is no real need for a separate volume unit (the Liter, originally the equivalent volume of a kilogram of water, being a cubic decimeter, is a secondary unit).

I'll agree however, that the inch can be somewhat convenient in metric and powers of 2: 1 inch is very close to 2^8 / 100 mm, which makes 5/8 inch very close to 16 mm. Provided the need for precision isn't too strict. Which also applies to binary representation of the decimal fractions, where the inaccuracy should be small enough so it doesn't matter for the job at hand. Most measured or calculated values won't have a nice exact representation in any numbering system anyways.

According to the link from cryptome than an AC has provided further down here, the hardware is indeed mostly made in China. What makes this US made to the satisfaction of the government is that the software that makes this thing what it is, is made in the US, replacing all the original code.

This document goes on at length about how that can be. As an EE, not a lawyer, I found the information that the "brain" is a SheevaPlug to be more interesting.

Some interesting info there. This thing is based on the SheevaPlug hardware co-located with a power strip, with customized re-programming. An expensive wolf in sheep's clothing.

Actually, the main difference between fog and clouds is a matter of location: If you're looking at it from the outside it is a cloud; if you are inside it is fog.

As a buzzword this seems very similar to the nebulous definition that .NET had about 10 years ago -- it was supposed to do everything but no-one could explain exactly what it was or how it was supposed to do it.