Yes, it would be nice if we could get entire stack - documentation, working code, test examples, free support accounts, testing hardware, source repository access, Intel engineers payed to work on our favorite project, board of directors meeting memos and our own Santa but that is not going to happen. Documentation and some support is probably all the community would get, but that should be enough. The community usually had to work with a lot less and it was still capable of making useful code.

That was really explanatory, indeed. One idea that came to my mind: how about medical records? Medical records are used by doctors not by you*, they are kept at hospitals and they are still protected by 4th Amendment. Do you think that this brings sufficient analogy to telephone metadata? Or is it maybe that medical records are protected by some law and not by the constitution?

* In some cases they may be used by the patient, but that can be said for phone listings and related metadata as well.

Very good point! During my military training, official instruction was to rotate the map as you were moving/rotating - i.e. to orientate map just as the terrain is oriented and not to keep the North on the top just because the map was drawn that way.

It is very confusing to have to rotate the map in your head even when you are walking, not to mention the effort for doing it real-time while you are driving a vehicle.

IIRC, Alan Cox explained how before starting his working day he would walk around the block, and after the work he would walk around the block in different direction.

During the winter, day is shorter than night, and your house is always heated to ~70F (both day and night). Hence, your roof will radiate energy for longer period (night) than it would absorb the energy (day). And black bodies radiate energy better than white ones. Conclusion is that it is better to have white roof during the winter.

But if we redefine radian, lim sin(x)/x = 2

My understanding is that main point of Wayland is not to be a X server.

Apart from necessary technical knowledge, there is one more reason: most radical social movements has often started on technical universities.

Reason for this is simple. Technically oriented people tend to underestimate how society works, and believe that it is possible to change it easily. This attitude was also seen in XIX century, when mathematicians tried to apply mathematics rules to social problems. It should mention that this never worked. Not because mathematics is wrong, but society is simply too complex to be modeled that way. (Or, it could be modeled mathematically, but results would not be spectacular.)

Or to say it in other words: you have an intelligent but socially incompetent person, who believes that everything is easy to fix (hey, there was no WinXP that he could not attach a SATAII disk to!). He is highly dedicated, he believes that his position in society won't be appreciated as it should, and he believes that one bomb could actually solve something. Doesn't this sound like a good candidate for a terrorist?

This is a term from telecommunication theory. For each type of modulation (AM, FM...) you have carrier and signal which is embedded into the carrier. IIRC (it was 1997 when I attended telecommunication course), efficiency is defined as a power of the signal compared to the power of the carrier. In AM it is like 0.5% (!) which is why they have so powerful transmitters (up to 1MW, IIRC). FM is much better in that regard.

I would dare to say that PHP competes just fine, just for example.

Scrum has one good point - show your code to your customer often and apply his comments. But that works only for GUI or web. I cannot imagine that in, say, medical software. For instance, one of my colleagues had to optimize crucial piece of code (some heavy math for CAT scanner). It took him several months. Only thing he could say to the customer was like "it is now two times faster" or "it is now 3.45 times faster". Not something you can really get some useful feedback on.

In another company, we were supposed to do a project for GE, and there was some serious GUI there, but their office was some several thousands miles from us and I really didn't know how we would make regular meetings with them as Scrum required. Also, they had some very elaborate specs and they did not see too much point of Scrum methodology. In some other situation, that project would be a perfect one for Scrum.

PS One thing I don't like with Agile evangelists is that Agile (Scrum in this case) is always right. It's either "what are you doing is not Scrum" or "you did not adapt Scrum to your needs", but its never the problem in Scrum.

In Korea, only old people use conventional weapons.

I have a cousin in USA, and last time we talked, she told me that she and her husband pay 120USD per month (total) and they get nice mobile phones and awesome Internet. She compared that to Serbia where she considered mobile rates to be extremely high, since we pay everything by usage. In the worst case, we pay about 0.05 per SMS (only sent one, receiving is free); we pay about 0.20USD per minute of call (receiving call is free); Internet can go up to 0.60USD per MB. But with some extra "packet add-ons" you can lower your SMS price to 0.01USD, calls to 0.01USD for certain numbers and you can get Internet for 0.02USD per MB. And everything is still without any contract, just via buying some coupons on the kiosk (or on ATM, or in bank, post office, via Intenet...).

In my point of view, this is actually a better deal than 60USDx24 months to get a telephone which I can buy for 300USD (and you can always buy it on credit card if you don't have enough cash). Even with worst case scenario here, it would take me quite a calls and SMSs to make bill worth of 24x60-300 = 1140 USD.

Is there a way to get pre-paid number in USA and how much they charge per minute and SMS? Can you buy decent DCMA telephone without contract?

Ashton refers to the other co-founder Lashlee, but marketing decided that Ashton sounds better. That's what I've read somewhere years ago, but Wikipedia does not confirm that Ashton is actually derived from Lashlee.

I've read TFA and I still don't get the point. Author says that Americans believe that technological advancement will solve problems instead of social advancement. I think that he does not understand that all major social movements were driven by technological progress, or at least they were made possible by it.

For instance, state as we know it is only possible in a society where high-speed communication is possible. It is not a coincidence that old feudal regimes where overthrown at the same time when technological revolution was in progress. And this is nothing new, and it was elaborated by Carl Marx in great details (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism) more than a century ago. (Yeah, Marx is considered to be wrong, but not in that part.)

In a part where author describes how we have traded one problem for another, only I could say is "rubbish". If he does not think that car is better than horse carriage, I would say that other 6bln ppl believe in the opposite.