Like I've explained in a previous post in much greater detail, the GPS of a Nokia phone (even with its free off-line Ovi vector maps) is almost completely useless without a data connection.

Then you have been misleading people.

I use my Nokia N85 when I go walking and it works very well. It doesn't even need a SIM card to be useful, let alone a data connection.

Combined with Trek Buddy and maps downloaded with Mobile Atlas Creator it is a competent alternative to a dedicated GPS unit.

However, no phone is as robust or waterproof as a purpose built device. Battery capacity is also a concern, though this can be alleviated by carrying chargers such as the Nexus Poerboost which can be recharged via USB or use standard AA batteries.

It should also be remembered that a GPS is a navigation aid, and does not negate the need for a map and compass, and the ability to use them.

We have a Deckel-Maho 5 axis machine at work and it uses Heidenhain control software, whch we also have on our Bridgeport 3 axis millers and Bridgeport 5 axis grinders.

Just in case your interested.

The reason for not including these features from the start is simple - It gets people to buy the latest model.

They could easily have had all this functionality from the start, there's nothing innovative or revolutionary added, it's all basic stuff that other phones have had for years.

Google is leading the charge to put free GPS units in everyone's cars...

I believe it is Nokia who is leading in free GPS. No data connection required, maps are stored on the phone.

From a quick look at a beer list, 35-40 beers of the UK

Well, that is a rather limited selection as there are over 7000 beers brewed in the UK.

Unfortunately I wont live long enough to try them all.

Bodington's is my favorite from the UK

Seriously, if Bodingtons is your favourite beer from the UK your taste in beer sucks. Or you haven't tasted any others.

And while I'm here, we have Bison in the UK too.

Also, your just plain wrong, of course, bacon is better in the UK, bread is better in the UK, pizza - well I don't care about pizza so you can have that if you like, but the rest is better in the UK.

But what happens if you call scp from a number of scripts in parallel? You will get banned?

The problem is that you want to act only on the failed login attempts.

That's a side effect of web programming. I worked for about five years on a pure java application. The only other language I used in all that time was a little bit of xml to set up the ant build. The end users loved it and it was easy to maintain.

My current project is a web application, and I have to know three or four different languages to get anything to work (depending on what you consider a language). There's no hope for any kind of end-to-end debugging or performance analysis. There are a lot more places for things to go wrong than the pure java environment and the final product isn't as smooth.

It all seems like a big step backward to me. But what the hell. They pay me by the hour.

But in evolution, there is no way for any individual to know when a semi-random collection of DNA is going to be important. The entire validity of the engineering method rests on *ALL* random possibilities being tried.

Solution. Design an Documentation oriented language. Just write the documentation, and the software will be written automatically.

Or an artificial intelligence system that parses the code and, from a big database of programming design and bibliography, write nice and concise documentation.

Maybe it could be achieved with a bunch of reverse engineering documentation monkeys, ;-)

There was a hard drive in an open box for a ridiculously low price. I bought it without checking the contents, and got home to find an ancient hard drive in the box. The store refused a refund and I sued.
I suspect employee theft plus collusion with the store, or else how was the drive on display for so cheap?
Fuck you Best Buy.

Bone alignment? Do you really think your bones can get out of alignment without leaving their sockets? If you are having problems with your bones go to your doctor, not a chiropractor.

that's why you pay a good sysadmin (for a lot of money) if you need good security, and don't if you don't.

if your server is important economically or even supports some life saving tools/etc and it doesn't have a good sysadmin, that's your error.

If you get an unimportant server hacked, well, no big deal. Rather that than being disabled or die etc by like.. far.

on the other hand, you probably want 100% of the surgeries to be successful.

You have to learn how to lie well. Job ads often read like, "Ten years of pure experience using ONLY A, B, C and D." If you take them literally, then nobody will fit them due to the shear combination impossibility.

First, I am a Libertarian. It is was you neo-cons that applied it yourselves. Basically, the reagan and W type of politicians that we can no longer afford. And you neo-cons/teabaggers are the ones that killed the fiscal conservatives.

This is delusional. First off, the Libertarian party is run by truthers and John Birch-style cranks. It has no coherent platform beyond "cut my taxes and your services". It will never, ever be a serious party in the US without a wholesale change in both charter and leadership. The Tea Party people are the ones who are the actual fiscal conservatives these days, and the fact that you label them "teabaggers" and lump them in with neocons displays a shocking ignorance. You call yourself a Libertarian but your political outlook is bog-standard dorm room Marxist.

Because the more that you launch the lower the fixed costs. That was the idea of the shuttle that Nixon pushed. Sadly reagan killed that.

Because it's not true in practice. Launching the Shuttle a bunch of times only makes each flight marginally cheaper because it was designed for performance instead of operations - there's simply too much that has to be done between flights. So great, instead of paying a billion a flight you have the cost down to $500m (and here I'm being generous), but to do it you need to quadruple the NASA budget so you can fly every couple days. Not that you could do that anyway with only four shuttles.

Doesn't make sense. We will never, ever have practical access to space with the shuttle, no matter how aggressive the launch schedule is. And what are you going to do with all those flights to LEO now that you have no money for anything but launching?

Later the neo-con congress of 2000 forced NASA to not develop VASIMR or transhab. Thankfully, a patriot pushed transhab into BA, while an astronaut/engineer/physicist with the help of NASA created a new rocket engine.

There was never a neocon congress. Is that your definition - "a neocon is someone who does something I don't like"? No wonder your world is full of them.

VASIMR isn't the holy grail of rocketry, it's just a new twist on ion engines. It will never be powerful enough to be used as a primary stage booster. In other words, it does nothing to get us out of the blind alley we went down forty years ago. I have a lot of respect for Chang-Diaz for not giving up, but even if everything works out the way he wants it won't have much effect on the overall picture.