I have to keep clipping my eyebrows though...

Why doesn't Microsoft make their own "MicroTube" video website, with a download button, no advertising, in the free VP8 format,(maybe also stop threatening with patent lawsuits about that coded) and serve it for free (including oodles of cache space bought from Akamai)?

Customers would flock to this, I'm sure. Google now has the network effect on its side with YouTube, but if MicroTube gives better value to its customers than that might slowly change.

Maybe the name "MicroTube" sucks (heh) and they can call it "ReallyPlaysForSureForeverBecauseYouCanDownloadItWithoutDRM" or something.

Europeans are lazy gits; we can't be arsed to clamber around in our apple trees all spring(*), wielding a small brush.

Even though it would be the perfect cure for our high unemployment rates!


(* well, *I* can't be arsed; besides, it's a small tree and I'm afraid it would break if I climbed in it).

Areas with strong democratic traditions tend to have fewer constituents per politician. And Iceland has a very very long tradition of democracy.

You can say that again.. I like the way they called it the "Aling" meaning all-thing ("thing" here has the old connotation of law meeting; it doesn't mean object).
Althing. Est. Anno Domini 930.
That's the essential core of democracy: everybody (well, only men in olden times) can go to the meeting and have their disputes settled and their plans discussed. On a grassy field. Preferably with some partying and quaffing going on afterwards.

Oops! My thorn has fallen off.. Slashdot, how to fix this? = U+00DE or (&#0xfe;) or þ or what..

Businesses need documents. They then need to communicate with those document files to all and sundry other businesses, government institutions, consumers etc.

So they need an open document format. Luckily, one exists: ODF.

In the EU, the right-wing ex-commissioner for Competition, now commissioner for Digital Agenda,Neelie Kroes, understands this, as she said:

"In other words, as I said on that occasion: choosing open standards is a very smart business decision."

(http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-10-300_en.htm) in 2010.

You could actually say that being physically violent toward one another is the single biggest motivating factor in scientific development, next to medicine.

You could also actually reason that being physically violent toward one another will be the single biggest factor in the sudden destruction of our civilization: See the following fictional doomsday scenario: Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

To quote Albert Einstein (who apparently heard it from someone else):

See also: Mutual Assured Destruction

But, that's all just for laughs.

THIS is the reality of our situation (if you dare to read it): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov.

I believe it actually means that the building's structure and appearance should not be based on precedent, which could constrain how it could be built and used, but, rather, the building's service and performance should inform the building's structure and appearance.

Agree, it is in essence "modernist", or as it is called nowadays "butt-ugly concrete block architecture".

Here are some related links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_follows_function
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrit_Rietveld
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Gropius

Clearly, this intelligence thing is over-rated.

Heh.
Did you ever read "Galápagos" by Kurt Vonnegut?

Hm, maybe the submission was insufficiently informative, so here's the link to the PGDP FAQ:
http://www.pgdp.net/c/faq/ProoferFAQ.php
Basically for beginning users the project boils down to correcting scanning errors. The purpose is to reproduce the original text faithfully (even if it has typos and errors etc.).
The end goal is an e-book you can download from Project Gutenberg.

In my (biased) opinion, it is a miracle of what volunteers can achieve using the internet. "Crowdsourcing" at its best.

Can anyone tell if you can train tesseract to be a bit better at recognizing a specific font?

I'm using the Debian version but if you have a 300 dpi scan the OCR is often gobbledygook.

(Yes, "use the source Luke" is also a valid answer in this case...)

That's what the Internet Archive uses, isn't it?

How disappointing that they didn't use a Tarantella dance as soundtrack.. Missed opportunity..

Exactly why this is another troll piece. There is no evidence of "stigma" ... Linux has never had stigma attached, except maybe in the minds of Microsoft management.

That's not true.. the minds of Microsoft management control the purse-strings of Microsoft-hired PR firms like Waggener Edstrom, and they are presumably experts in the fabrication of stigmata.

Then there was the "Get the Facts" campaign (remember what happened to the London Stock Exchange?)

And the director of a large multinational software company compared Linux to "Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works. ". People like CEO's of large and famous companies exert some influence when they say things like that in public.

Good question.
Because, if the shopping street shops only sell locked-down MS Windows computers anymore, when the antitrust complaints reach the judge, and the judge has never seen linux or doesn't know anyone in her surrounds who has ever seen or used linux, that judge isn't going to take the consumer complaint seriously that "i bought this MS Windows computer but now I can't put this Linux distro on it and I want my money back". Computers run MS Windows. MS Windows is what is on a computer. Who (except for a technical minority) has any need for anything different? Only a minority of people who speak in difficult technical terms.
But if the judge or other authority knows elderly people using a ridiculously cheap ancient computer with a lightweight Linux distro for the computer illiterate, or children using Skolelinux, or just regular families having (K)Ubuntu on their desktop computer, then this would draw attention.
With UEFI secure boot set to "microsoft only", nobody can just try out a linux distro to learn what it's like. Now think what the effects of that would be in 10 years time.