There are probably even laws that state that websites from public institutions have to be accessible. But the sad thing is that in many cases "Accessibility" is implemented by adding a button somewhere on the site to make the font larger. I saw this at my former university. At the same time their webpage was so cluttered with frames (even after frames were fashionable) that the site would be very hard to browse with a text-only browser, so converting to braille would be hard. Really, websites with public information should STILL be tested with lynx or w3m just for this reason.

I was going to post a link to a funny script some guy once made that disactivates your linux after 30 days, but instead I found this

In the last year there was 12 Trillion dollar spent on bailing out banks. By non-communist parties. Again, who actually HAS an understanding of basic economics? Neither the banks nor existing parties in power, apparently. The worst thing is, nobody still knows how this immense amount of bailout money is going to be paid back, everybody is just trying to act as if nothing happened.

Unfortunately, in several cases the Europeans did not learn the lesson from the private rail systems in the US and more recently the UK. For example the Germans are actually still trying to privatize their relatively efficient railway system (typing from a packed german commuter train now). I'm not completely up-to-date, probably the economic crisis suspended the privatization for a while.

I partly agree, but since everybody is a layman in most of the fields of science, any good article should contain both the simplified representation for laypersons and then the exact formulation for those who need that. In an old-school encyclopedia there wouldn't be the space for it, but wikipedia could have this easily.

Don't forget Bing Gordyn, the 8th man on the moon. And the first one with a mustache, so basically the first man on the moon (with mustache). On the moon. Moon! Moon! Moon!

No, universities need funding. To increase your chance on funding, you need to have a measurable output. Like number of papers for the research part, or percentage of first-semester students that will pass the final exam. At least in the Netherlands and Germany, and depending on the study, classes with required attendance exist. With the change to Bachelor/Master, comparison to other universities got easier, and many curricula have been adapted to ensure students will pass (testing if homework has been done, etc). At the same time, the high schools in the Netherlands were restructured to give the pupils more responsibility. That only worked by scrapping part of the natural sciences, which are now taught in (obligatory?) preparation classes before your semester starts.

Basically, it's a mess. Personally, I'd think that universities are for developing an academic way of thought. But since that can't be quantified, funding won't depend on it, and it won't come in the equation.

I went to russia from the EU last year. It works like this: you pay a company to arrange the visum for you. This costs about 60 euro and takes 2 weeks. In the plane before landing you get a small form in which you fill in your name and in some cases the address where you will be staying, twice. You give this form at the border, they keep half of it, you have to give the other half when you go out. That's all there is to it, and it's not like Russia has different problems with terrorism than the US.

In Germany, you have to tell your city council which religion you are, and then the state subtracts a 50 euro/month tax from your salary, depending on your religion. If you want to stop paying, you have to get a written confirmation from a church pastor that you are out of the church. Separation of church and state? Not here.

btw two automobile tyres cost $240? What where they made of, gold?

Actually all those reasons are the reason that I buy at amazon and others. I once had a logitech headset that broke because of flimsy build quality. Within the year I went back to the store, but they wouldn't accept it. The only time I will buy something at a brick & mortar store will be if I need it on exactly that day and precise specifications don't count so much, for example empty cds.

Exactly. I have no need for latest & greatest, I just want to have Linux with as little as fuss as possible. Dell is doing this very nicely, I like their netbook linux adaptation even better than the asus one. It's just not perfect for mom & pop yet. Very close, though.

Hmm, did you ever see an actual train? It generally is not as wide as the train tracks it rides on. Not many people would fit in otherwise. For example, trains carry standard size shipping containers, which are 8 feet wide. Exterior width of a typical boxcar is 10 feet 8 inches. Since there has to be some space at both sides, 12 feet is not an unreasonable width for a single-lane train tunnel.

Indeed, as of April 22 2009, the german government has accepted a law censoring child porn on the internet. Nobody can object that child porn is bad, but in practice this law will end up blocking random urls (that can be instantly renamed anyway), and creating the means to block any information, be it on purpose or 'accidentally'.

Why censor? Because control of information means more power over people. How this applies to video games is not directly clear to me either, but as the summary says there is a lot of money involved which probably does not go to state taxes.