and first post!??

Um, last time I checked they speak Galician (Gallego) in Galicia, which is no where near Madrid. Galicia is near Portugal, so from what I've heard, it's similar to Portuguese. Also, they have a Celtic sound to their local music, so there might be some influence of that, but I'm not so sure.

I got a naked dsl plan from at&t and it really sucks b/c they have to come to your home and change the wiring... it took them 2 months to finally do it... 2 months with out internet at home :@ Then it's impossible to use any of the online forms to change the service or pay bills b/c they all require a phone number, which I don't have (I have a cell, but they supposedly need the phone number associated with the dsl plan, which I don't have).

The opium wars are not a good argument for a number of reasons: 1. Opium != marijuana in an important way. One is physically addictive and the other is not. 2. Opium was marketed into China so that foreign powers could profit. I think the opium war makes sense as an argument against fossil fuels as much as it does as an argument against the good herb.

I agree... I'm one of the few home-grown grad-students here. It can be tough keeping up with some of the bright international students, but it makes more sense in the long run to keep the smart people here (hopefully, we can outbreed the people who voted for Bush). Having smart people in the country will do way more than any economic stimulus, tax rebates, or what have you. Here's an article about the perils of protectionism during the first great depression http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/id/17606.htm .

But it works by having the phone do speech recognition while being held at arms length. That way you can have multi-modal communication and it not simply speech replacing pointing, but having them work together, using each modality for what it's good for. Here's a link to an article: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/07/att-developing.html The idea of using the phones accelerometer is a great idea. In AT&T's demo you need to "click to talk", which makes sense for their design, but the accelerometer idea is pretty nifty if you just have speech responses. Using the display is good for many things though, e.g. for maps, long lists. I'm thinking it could be a pain to have to hold the phone up to your ear over and over: hold it up to your ear, speak, look at the display, (speak again if something was misrecognized), (possibly click something), hold it up to hor ear, speak, look at the display, etc. -- Why procrastinate now when you could procrastinate tomorrow.