They bought it from a company called 3DV Systems. It was then called the ZCam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZCam).

The taste of meat is very strongly influenced by environmental factors. This includes both what the animal eats as well as the conditions under which it is slaughtered, though the latter has less influence than the former. I grew up on a sheep farm on a diet consisting primarily of meat. I avoid lamb and mutton that is not from our farm because it just does not taste the same. I don't mind beef, poultry, pork and venison from other areas.

The vegetation where I grew up is quite flavourful and this provides a distinctive flavour to the meat. Most of our meat is prepared without any spices as there is no need. The vegetation has a bigger influence on the taste of the meat than breed. I prefer a different breed of sheep reared on our vegetation to one of our standard breed reared in a different part of the world. The fact that farmers from our area get quite a high premium for their meat suggests that others agree.

Some abattoirs use trained goats "to lead the lambs to the slaughter". This is to avoid stressing the sheep by herding them unnecessarily. Stress releases adrenalin that definitely affects the quality of the meat, as does lactic acid. Lactic acid is normally more noticeable with venison, but I suspect this has more to do with sheep being tame and game being wild.

Given the right climatic conditions (happens very rarely) on the farm, we get a proliferation of a particularly fragrant flower. When the sheep graze on this it too affects the smell and taste of the meat. My wife finds it quite disturbing when she opens the freezer and it smells more like an air freshener than meat.

That is right. "They" must change first. "They" can not possibly justify "their" viewpoint in terms we find acceptable. We can justify the way we feel in terms we find acceptable. "They" are just to stupid to get it. In fact, "they" are not even allowed to dislike us because we are free and "they" are not. Opinions are reserved for the free and even then you are only entitled to one if you are right.
"They" just don't seem to get it. We are waging a "War on Terrorism". If one of "their" cowardly children kills one of our brave soldiers during "their" armed conflict, that is murder. If our brave soldiers happen to kill a couple of unarmed civilians/reporters/children, that is unfortunately a consequence our war. While we don't like it, we accept it as the harsh reality of our war to liberate them from themselves.
"They" should look at our society and learn from it. The average westerner who has a family member that becomes a victim of violence does not behave like these savages. No, being educated civilized people, we go through a period of introspection. We try and find out what we could possibly have done to not entice this violence. We change our lifestyle and society so as not to provoke these perpetrators of violence. We reach out to the perpetrators and see how we can rehabilitate them, even at our personal expense. We personally go into the perpetrators' communities and we eradicate the factors that could have contributed to their lives of criminality. "They", would probably demand that such perpetrators of violence be removed from society, imprisoned or even sentenced to death. And if the perpetrator had money, they would probably sue them for some cash.
If our civilized society determines that the perpetrators of violence are supported by organizations, possibly abroad, we do not launch clandestine operations on sovereign soil to rid the world of "evil drug-lords" or coerce foreign governments to do it for us. No, we accept that everybody has a right to their way of life and we should focus on how we can adapt our society to fit in with everybody else.
When we help people in their neighborhood by supplying weapons, money and other support to selected groups, "they" seem to believe that they somehow have the right to be upset with us and take matters into "their" own hands. And "they" have the audacity to not build up a uniformed army, navy and air force. before attacking us. If, and this is a big if, the need ever arose for us to enter another country to say take down an "evil warlord/drug-lord", we would do it by the book. We would seek permission from the country we are about to enter, make sure our soldiers have up to date visas, declare our weapons at customs, etc. We would not just lob a bomb at a country like Libya or coerce the world to impose sanctions on a country like Cuba because we don't agree with the way they think.
These savages. Just because "they" can't appreciate all the good things we are doing for them "they" deserve it if a couple of bystanders get killed. It is time "they" adopted our open-minded approach and see things our way.

Being truly open minded is a very difficult (if not impossible) thing to do. Being an outsider helps. I can follow at least some of the logic of both sides, but that does not make one side right and the other side wrong.

First, everything in said small town is moderated (through gossip) and not searchable verifiable fact. This can be both good and bad. Second, because people know the limits of their privacy, they tend to behave in a much more conservative manner.

***Disclaimer*** I grew up in a small town, lived in the city for 20 years and just moved back to a small town.

Not as unlikely as you seem to then. Back in the late 90's one of my classmates tried to create autonomous agents for a multi-player networked game. Took down all network connectivity for the region, by accident. You could argue, as he did when the cops arrived, that it was not so much a case as him having written a highly efficient piece of malware, but rather a case that the telco and isp configured the network poorly.

P.S. Didn't some kid accidentally create a major virus a couple of years ago because he was trying to save his mother's shop.

Yup.. Cue the Dunning-Kruger effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect). Basically it says that ignorant people are to dumb to shut up and knowledgeable people are to clever to speak up. They phrase it a bit more gently.

Why do uneducated people have such a chip on their shoulder? I am taking a break from preparing a thesis for final submission to write this. I have contact with several of my past students and I have never had a post-graduate student contact me to say that they regretted studying. I have had plenty of graduate students contact me and saying how sorry they were that they did not study further.

As long as more than 50% of uneducated people (non cs graduates/post-graduates) are worse off than educated people (cs graduates/post-graduates) this discussion is really pointless (all anecdotal evidence of statistically insignificant anomalies aside).

Another thing that hurts Africa is that even an intelligent audience like Slashdot thinks of Africa as a third world COUNTRY, when in fact it is a continent with a billion people spread over 61 territories (53 countries), covering about one fifth of the world's landmass.

Reactions won't help you if you go up against this guy. Hopefully he gets very nervous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLnmvseCseI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hujvVmuLuoM

I love this. I had a girlfriend who was a vegetarian for "environmental reasons". As we drove through the wheat fields on the way to my dad's "meat farm" I asked her to observe nature. When we got to my dad's farm I asked her to compare the environmental impact.

Wheat fields - lush and green, but no natural vegetation anywhere in sight.
"Meat fields" - dry and arid, with undisturbed nature as far as the eye can see.

I have never understood how any environmentally conscious person can eat wheat, rice, maize or soya. Just for reference, here is meat.

For the uninformed and totally ignorant. Meat is farmed in arid areas. Areas are not arid because meat is farmed there. If you have sufficient rainfall/water and a suitable climate, you bulldoze the place and produce (produce) fruit, vegetables, grain, fiber, etc. If not, you try and preserve nature as best you can so that you can use it for grazing. No flora means no income. As for fauna, while efforts are made to manage fauna in grazed areas, pretty much all fauna is considered vermin in ploughed fields.

A meat farmer may destroy the natural habitat by using poor farming methods, but this will inevitably lead to his downfall. A vegetable, wheat, maize, soy, etc. farmer must destroy the natural environment if he wishes to produce anything. And yes, if you wish to produce vegetables in your rooftop garden or basement, you have still destroyed the natural environment first.

So, if you care about nature, eat meat, be it red meat, white meat or fish.

I got interested in AI in the early 90's and even then the statements made in the article were considered outrageous by people who actually knew what was going on. I use AI on a daily basis, from OCR to speech and gesture recognition. Even my washing machine claims to use it. Not quite thinking for us and taking over the world, but give it some time :).

Same with thin clients. Just today I put together a proposal for three 100 seat thin client (Sunray) labs. VDI allows us to use Solaris, multiple Linux flavors, Minix, Windows, pretty much any OS we wish at the click of a mouse. The biggest problem is guessing what is going to happen now that Oracle is taking over, not the technology/architecture. Yes, Windows (CE) "thin clients" suck and are not very thin, but real think clients are quite handy.

A lot of these technologies were/are hopelessly over-hyped, but that is not a fault with the technology, but a problem with the idiots doing the hyping.