There is the setuid patent, however, that was applied for by AT&T in 1972. But it is described as a mechanism, since that was before software patents were invented.

Some weeks ago, the comic Questionable Content had a plotline involving a new and very humanoid "chassis" for one of the characters.

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1998

And now this news --- well to paraphrase Mark Twain: Reality does not replicate fiction, but it rhymes.

Over here, we say "0.4" for the drink of that size (many places sell beer in 0.4 L glasses) or the traditional 0.5L, the "half-liter" literally. Then there's the "0.6" for the thirstier people... none of this gets to be any more complicated than the "pint" or "cup". The latter is for coffee only, and comes in various sizes, so it isn't really quantified.

A10, M10 one millimeter apart? I'd rather use existing colloquialisms like "two by four" (even if the material in question actually measures 48 mm by 98 mm). Like for pipe threads, the size has become more of a label identifying the standard size rather than the measurement of the size itself, what with 1/2 inch pipes being closer to an actual 3/4 inch or 20 mm... Besides, M10 is already used as a designation for 10 mm threads of various pitches: M10 x 1.5 is the regular coarse thread, M10 x 1.25 is finer, and M10 x 1 is another, even finer pitch commonly used with light sockets, faucets, and brake line connectors.

Which reminds me, the purported metrication of iron pipe and standard pipe threads is bad enough. We still talk about 1/2 inch, 3/8 inch and so on, sizes of pipe threads, even if the external diameters are larger than that (1/2 inch pipe thread is nearly 20 mm in diameter) but lately the catalogs are advertising these in the style of R20, R25, R32 -- the number after the R being some approximate value of millimeters from the original inches, R20 being 3/4 inch pipe threads for example, which are about 24 mm outside diameter. At least, copper pipes has been metric for years, with sizes from 8mm and up, and the size label is the same as the actual size.

I have seen a renovation job done in a 100 year old house, where some rotten joists had to be replaced. These were original "2 by 4" as in actually measuring 51 mm by 102 mm. The replacements were made from the next larger standard size material, and no need to depend on the stores having the old sizes.

Kleinhenz, who are making the picotux, have had a server crash apparantly, according to http://www.kleinhenz.com/

Not sure if one could get Qt going on the Picotux however, besides, the startup time there is about 90 seconds from poweron to the time the busybox banner and prompt appears on the serial console.

The equipment shown in the featured blog is identified as a Renesas MS7724 development board. It has quite a lot more peripherals.

This is one of my early efforts in Turbo Pascal, a program to convert temperature values between the Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin scales.

There might still be some 5.25 inch floppy disk lying around here somewhere, with some BASIC code from the lab PCs dating from 1984; and I do have some printouts of FORTRAN IV code that I wrote back in 1981 or so, but this is the oldest file that I still could find.

Last to go would be the car insurance

Second last to go would be the high-speed internet connection which also includes a landline-style phone.

Third last would be the Mobile phone and data: I don't use the mobile phone for data connections, so can easily do without paying for that.

As for the rest:

Health insurance: provided by the government around here, it is paid in as a part of taxes.

Gym membership: I am not a member of any gym. I have a pre-paid card that allows me a dozen trips to the municipal swimming pool, during the summer there are plenty of lakes and beaches that are available. Once the twelve visits are completed and the card is empty, it may be re-charged as and when necessary. No charges unless it is actualy used.

Current account with non-pharma drug provider: Not applicable either, unless we're talking about the Eurodiet stuff, but as of now, if push really comes to shove, some specific items from the grocery store can be easily substituted. And this doesn't cost anything unless I put in orders for more food anyways, in the same way as with the swimming pool.

Birth control pill prescription: That would be for the other 50% of the audience...

NPR membership: Not applicable here; there is the TV license thing, that they charge twice a year, if anything that would be the first to go. It is supposed to be non-political, but the place is full of socialists anyways -- I'd like to talk with the tax people, to have this deducted as an expense for supporting a political entity. There is such a deduction for union membership fees that ought to be able to be used for arguing this as well. But come crunch time, buh-bye TV and associated license

Money is apparently not standardized by SI.

The financial people also seem to like to use the single quote for "thousand" and B or b for "billion" I've noticed. I've also seen lower-case variants m or mm for "million" making it look more like 1/1000, millimeters or meters.

Makes for hard reading when being used to SI prefixes, where case differences of the letter M can mean a 10^9 difference of the value.

One wonders how much it would take to put some kind of roofing over the most vulnerable exterior equipment. Something like corrugated tin on a steel frame or whatever.

Or maybe a roof over the cafeteria and the rubbish bins, so that birds can't just come and steal baguettes.

I've never heard of such deleterious effects of a bird dropping anything on outdoor power station switchgear ... what kind of vulnerable kit is this anyways?

I've become used to seeing the messages link on the front page, but that is gone. And it took a while to figure out where the link was; finally I found it somewhere in the Journal area I think. It keeps moving around, but now I've got the link http://slashdot.org/my/inbox stored as a bookmark, so it is possible to go straight in and not having to hunt for where the message-list has gone to.

I'd like to have that information back tho; it can't have been that expensive to keep in the front page? Oh well, maybe the message-list will be re-instated sometime.

And on previewing, it looks like slashdot made a link of the inbox URL above. That's kinda useful.

Thanks for the pointers as to where to go looking for the various decoders and suchlike. I did get the DVD playing working to some degree -- but this was definitely non-trivial action.

Aftenposten is a privately owned newspaper, so any lobbying to the government probably doesn't do much about that. Most of the other papers and media use Flash, which does work reasonably well.

The problem would be to make the inductors able to dissipate the DC power; it is the same kind of overloading that is expected to melt the transformers. However, putting in series capacitors that can withstand a high enough voltage, might be more feasible.

As well as managing to shut down the grid in time. I'm wondering, would there not be a possible intermediate step on the way back to have cities run pumps and such at reduced power from local sources, until the inter-ties are back in action?

I wonder if maybe DRM hasn't been a big part of the problem. The shiny discs that we used to know as "CDs" back in the day, actually had a standard format on them, and they would carry the "Compact Disc" logo as trademarked by Philips. Now, a few years ago, EMI and others started with their "Digital Restriction Management" which meant that the discs no longer were allowed to carry the good old "Compact Disc" logo. Instead the logo was just quietly removed, sometimes replaced with a different, publisher-defined one, signifying the hardware-enforcement of the standard admonition against unauthorised copying or broadcasting.

Even though this has been reversed in the last few years; the few CDs I have from 2007 and 2008 actually have the "Compact Disc" logo again.

The point is, the DRM train seems to have left and gone for good. It isn't just a matter of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, it is more like closing the barn door after the barn has burned down. Pull the weeds, start over...

An even easier and more obvious explanation is that there is hardly any new music worth listening to in the quantities provided by a disc. What might be OK for three minutes is not the same as will work for an hour, and the push is ever faster and ever onwards. There's just not the attention span there anymore it seems.

What might work would be to bring back the concept albums, but you need artists that can sing and play -- not just sound like some soft-porn star faking an orgams -- for more than three minutes in a row for that.