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.

Re-puposing sounds better than hoarding, though there are elements of that too. Machines and devices that still work are kept, even if they are obsolete. Things that don't work and there is no point in repairing them have power supplies, memory chips, sometimes power transistors, relays, or connectors, removed and the remainder goes in the recycling pile. Dead hard disks are taken apart and the motors, bearings, and platters are used for some other project. Even if this just stays a bunch of related parts in a box for a couple years...

I don't usually throw out things that work, or are sufficiently valuablet that I one day will get around to fixing them.

Of course, eventually all the old machines running various server jobs around the house and yard fail and have to be replaced, so there is a gradual attrition of the oldest machines, typically 486s or early Pentiums capable of running at least some Linux 2.2 or 2.4 variant. Old Slackware or Red Hat systems typically, are nice and light-weight. Of course, in these days of Picotux, Gumstix, and Raspberry Pi, these dinosaurs have only the fact that they aren't broke and thus need no fixing going for them.

And new old machinery always arrive when family members discard machines that still have some good life left in them, or there is something nice available at the junk-auctions of the radio-amateurs club.

Ashtead

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.