That terminology originally comes from disk drive buses

It's much older than that.

Australia isn't like the US, which is criss-crossed with rivers even in the desert areas.

The rivers on the east coast, where the population is? Mostly too short/small to even appear on that map.

The north & north-west? Not desert.

Pretty much everything west of the Murray-Darling? Desert. The ones marked 51-57 on the map are seasonal, and flow only every few years.

Much of central-southern NSW, between the coast & the Murray-Darling? Already irrigated through "water [piped] in from all over the region... going over mountains and through valleys". Or, more correctly, "piped through mountains".

The Murray-Darling itself? It already mostly is "just a trickle by the time it reaches the ocean". Without the 2 dredging machines that run 24/7, the mouth of the river would close up and cut it off from the sea.

Despite having an area very similar to the 48 contiguous US states, Australia has ~50% more desert area (1,350,000km^2 vs 900,000km^2) and much much much less water.

So, no, there's not much water in Australia. It's not considered "the driest continent on earth" for no reason...

True. The power law, though, is a particularly dangerous and entrancing trap to fall in to. Almost everything in nature - from pure randomness to highly structured effects - can be fitted to a power law. You often don't even need to do any transformation of the data - simply choosing the wrong set of dependent and independent variables to examine can do it.

My favourite goto whenever this subject comes up is the essay "So You Think You Have a Power Law - Well Isn't That Special?"

That said, I haven't read the current paper. They might have been very careful to avoid the common traps. I won't know until I spend some time tomorrow reading it.

"How will this impact Google's support for Android and open source in general?"

Not at all, or possibly for the better?

If they didn't want people to fork Android (and, as noted above, it's debatable if this is really a fork or just replacing bundled apps / settings), they shouldn't have open sourced it.

If they get pissy and decide to close it off due to forks/mods like this, then we're still left with the previous versions of Android - and we're better off without a developer that wants to take their bat and ball and go home at the first little upset.

Hopefully Linux will continue to be Team Discovery Channel.

Full of mindless crap, loud noises, and giggling nerds, masquerading as intelligent science and education?

I think it's already there...

but don't bother to tell them that, they're never wrong and won't revert some stupid change for the sake of change because they think it's neat.

So, it's no different to Firefox?

Personally, I think losing Google's money might be the best thing for Firefox. With a bit of luck, it might force them to listen to their users rather than their developers...

Or the old joke about the American on holidays in Romania during the 80's - he was in a bar, chatting to a local, and asked him "what do you think about Ceausescu?"

The local frowned, pointed to all the people in the bar, put his finger to his lips, and motioned for the visitor to come outside.

Out in the street, the American asked again: "What do you think about Ceausescu?". The local shook his head, gestured to indicate all the people passing by on the street, and walked into a side alley.

The American followed him again, and half-way down the dark alley grabbed the local by the shoulder and hissed "Tell me what you think about Ceausescu?"

The local looked up and down the alley, and spied a shadowy figure in a long jacket standing on a balcony smoking. Shaking his head and pointing, he stepped back into a dark doorway, and gestured for the American to follow him.

The American stepped into the dark, and whispered "So, tell me what you really think about Ceausescu?"

The local took one last look around, stood up on tip-toe, and whispered into the American's ear "I like him!"

(Damned /. and its utter failure to handle extended Latin characters...)

Yes

Not to mention the fact that if an Apple executable is downloaded via browser or email, when you attempt to run it for the first time you get a message that says:

"Xxxx is an application that was [downloaded from the internet || attached to a mail message]. Are you sure you want to open it?"

And some details about when it was downloaded / received. Admin permissions or not don't even come into it.

At some point you've got to hand over responsibility from the OS (or anti-virus) babying the user's arse, and on to the user to think a bit and look after themselves. Is learning the difference between a document or data file and a program file too much to ask?

Anti-virus software is in fact starting to become part of the problem, because users have been trained to trust it so much that they never develop the skills to protect themselves from the bleedin' obvious.

"In Australia you have to log something like 200 hours of driving before they'll issue you a probationary license. While that means you'll be more likely to have encountered tricky situations with an experienced driver sitting next to you, it doesn't actually reduce the number of dickheads on the road."

I think it's only 100 hours (in Qld at least; may be different elsewhere), and the 'experienced driver' needs only have held an open license for 12 months or more.

Which goes a long way to explaining the number of dickheads on the road. Far from having an 'experienced driver' beside them, chances are they had just another dickhead sitting next to them for most of those 100 hours...