Yeah, it's better to stick to properly designed web pages like *cough* Slashdot?!?!?

I was a TEM operator about twenty years ago. We didn't have any special floor and the vacuum was drawn with an Edwards High Vacuum roughing pump that plugged into the wall and the final vacuum (10E-7 torr) was drawn with the internal diffusion pump. It was a Hitachi 600AB that could do about 100,000X magnification, but we only used it to about 4,000X or so for our purposes. This was a two ton, seven foot tall scope. We didn't use it for high magnification, but for x-ray diffraction crystallography and EDS identification of elemental composition. We also has a Phillips SEM. I'm sure we paid far less than $60,000 for it -- we bought it used. Even the TEM, which we bought brand new, was only about four times as expensive as the TM-1000. However, neither of these scopes could ever be used in most homes due to power requirements and their sheer size.

I think the big deal here is that this one (the TM-1000) fits on a table top, weighs 200 pounds, and doesn't require liquid nitrogen. BTW, the EDS detector available for this unit is pretty lame and is only able to detect elements from sodium up.

Gartner is the National Enquirer of the computer trade magazine industry. It's the bottom half of management that keeps them in business.

There's a small percentage of the population for whom [almost anything] will cause an adverse reaction and possibly kill them.
It isn't a matter of "more science" or "big pharma needs to try harder"
Human physiology is just so variable that there is nothing to be done about it.
Our best effort is to identify risk factors and keep those people away from [almost anything].

"In short: It is possible to diagnose a computer entirely from software."

Tell me a piece of software that'll expose a dying capacitor, please?

That's not the point... It's NOT about reviewers. It;s about all the paid trolls kiving items 5 star reviews because they were paid to, so other people thing its a good product and buy it.

Blog and Blogger do not require a definition. Simply, ANY statement of endorsement in print, media, or on the web, where ANY form of payment, discount, freebie, etc was given, with or without a request for a favorablke posting, requires disclosure.

Also, since the penalty is not necessarily on the blogger, but on the company they're blogging on behalf of (if we can find the blogger, they get punbished too), the companies themselves will be seeking a bit more documentation to ensure anyone given a freebe, and especially paid endorsements, are explicity told they have to disclaim so. Companies that have the product wonp;t want negative FTC attention because people are illegally posting reviews of their stuff...

I don't really have much to say on this, but what the hell, I'll say it anyway.

Walled gardens result from the natural desire of business operators to hold on to customers once they've spent a remarkable amount of money per head to get those customers. That the tactics they use, including purposeful obstruction of data migration, are often appalling is simply irrelevant. Ethics can be hard to define for such a relatively nebulous matter as data storage formats, and most people aren't all that ethical about money with which to begin, especially in a poor economy.

This situation will continue until there is a sustained and vigorous effort on the part of customers to insist that businesses use a standard, probably XML-carried, format for customer data, preferably with legal sanctions such as fines for businesses that refuse to play ball. I've thought on this sort of thing for a few years, but don't yet have a more specific proposal. One thought is to make customers the sole legal owners of their own information, with all that implies.

> Considering what an effect and what a huge fanbase the programmes have, I can't help wondering why no-one has ever tried to make any more.

And why don't people make some more Beatles songs while they're at it?

It's nice to see a politician who can actually pass the Turing test.

We all know most people will never use "proper" passwords, let alone "properly", quite aside from offices in which ridiculous password management policies drive people to drink^h^h^h^h^h simply writing their passwords on Post-it notes stuck to their monitors. Why not make the best of a bad situation by only insisting on reasonable passwords changed no more than once per six months, complete with freely available "wallet-sized password booklets", but which are accompanied by other methods such as once-per-session typing pattern analysis verifications or cheap magnetic stripe cards? (The obvious security problem with a magnetic stripe card in the same wallet as a password booklet, for example, can be ameliorated by insisting that the magnetic stripe cards be kept in small employee lockers, and never allowed off-premises).

The point is that a little imagination is all that is needed to make security reasonably good or at least acceptable, given that the weak link will always be the kind of muppets who insist on shoving bricks between doorjambs and ultra-high-security triple-locked doors if they are at all allowed. Sure, any security method can be defeated, but it's far easier to educate (okay, frighten) people into not removing stuff from company premises (the magnetic stripe cards) or to make them perform once-a-day monkey tricks (the typing pattern analysis verifications) than it is to make them stop writing stuff down in very insecure ways. Security will tend to be more even, and problem employees will be easier to spot.

The old saying comes to mind, "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

One wonders to what extent the dominant business model of frantic and very often highly deceptive advertising effectively locks out the theoretical competitor willing to deal fairly with customers. If over here a service offers a very nice handset for a hundred dollars or for nothing after a sneaky rebate that may or may not be paid, "unlimited access" (to the Internet) with many lawyerly caveats that make it way less than unlimited, plus some seemingly large number of talk minutes per month that somehow ends up being rather less and which quietly saddles the heavy user with many extra fees, etc., then how exactly does the theoretical ethical service over there attract (the better class of) customers in all the noise and hand-waving?

Telling potential customers that they will get less and pay more than with advertised plans from competitors, even if they actually get more and pay less, is a hard sell. When everyone else is lying, how do you prove you are not just another sleazy liar? Are there even enough potential customers of the ethical service provider in any given coverage area willing to take their eyes off the shiny new handset long enough to squint suspiciously and intelligently at the fine print?

There must be a few smaller service providers that aren't crooked, scattered throughout the country. I wonder how well they are doing financially.

Obviously, jury nullification of bad interpretations of hot-button laws doesn't work when the juries themselves react convulsively to the mere hint of child pornography, even when the "child" is not an actual child except under the most hyper-technical legal definition. Just think, juries tend in the main to be exactly these semi-illiterates who aren't bright enough to slip out of jury duty. It's all really depressing and makes me wonder what will become of the Republic.

Oh, and for the slightly clueless who need a hint, a surefire way to get out of jury duty is to clearly declare that you believe in jury nullification.

I'm worried that the Supreme Court, should it eventually take this case, might find a way to justify these hugely exorbitant awards on technically narrow and nit-picky grounds that nonetheless are broad enough in reality to make fighting the RIAA essentially a hopeless cause financially for most people. The Kelo decision shows the kind of sloppy reasoning that can lead to appalling results. It surely doesn't help that Jammie appears to be guilty of deliberate file-sharing and tampering with evidence after the fact. One could wish heartily for a much more sympathetic defendant.

The project will not be complete until they have a logo with Tux the Linux Penguin lofting a good German beer.

I did a lot of research on this last year. For what it's worth, I'll offer a few thoughts from what I remember.

First, get an antenna that can handle both UHF and VHF. Some stations will still broadcast on VHF. Ignore ridiculous marketing claims that an antenna is "digitally optimised" or "HDTV ready" or however that went. A signal is a signal. Having said that, from reports, some "UHF-only" indoor/outdoor antennas will actually do okay with VHF signals as well. I wish I'd known that last fact before buying a honking big outdoor VHF/UHF antenna. The "UHF-only" antennas take way less room. In any case, find out where the stations are located physically, and point the antenna at them. If they're dispersed, you may need a motor control to rotate the antenna, which is a pain, or multiple antennas, which is a big pain.

When I finally bothered to hook up the analog/digital conversion box for more than brief testing, and a freaking huge outdoor VHF/UHF antenna *inside* my apartment (it's mounted on a short brass rod stuck in a hole drilled into the end of a two-by-four stub mounted on a large homemade work table, so that it's up near the ceiling), I got channels 8 (CBS), 10-1 (NBC), 10-2 (NBC), 13-1 (ABC), 13-2 (ABC), 21-1 (PBS), 21-2 (PBS), 21-3 (PBS), and 31 (Fox). This is four more channels than for analog. However, channels 8 and 13-1/13-2 are basically unwatchable, with signal levels too low. The picture constantly jerks and pixellates. I hoping those stations jack up the freaking power soon. There are some okay shows on 13-2, in particular. If not, screw it. If they don't care enough, why should I? I watch a lot of DVDs, and there are more okay films on DVD than I can realistically watch in a lifetime, even with only watching each film *once*.

Second, don't get the absolute cheapest converter box. It'll likely have serious problems unless you get fairly lucky, such as sometimes severe audio lag, poor handling of marginal signals, a poor feature set, a tendency to fail early, etc. I ended up paying about $23 per box after taxes, for the ones I bought with the two $40 off coupons sent by the government. If you're interested, these were the Zenith DTT-901 model, May 2008 firmware. One feature I liked was "pass-through", but that obviously will make no difference very soon. I'm not up to speed on current models. Look on video fanatic forums. Odds are good you'll find a decent brand and model for little money. I can't remember if any $40 off coupons are still good, but if they are and you have them, use them for two copies of the same model, so you'll have one on hand while the other is in the shop, if needed. Worst comes to the worst, you can sell the extra copy or give it to a relation.

If you're having trouble with elderly relations, tell them that the little box is a bully and that it has taken over the channel switching. It may sound a bit condescending, but if it works, why not? It's a clearer visual image for them than the obscurity of technical details. Be sure the remotes for them have large buttons and are as simple as possible. Keep the "good" remotes in a drawer, for when you need them to set up stuff. I use myself a nice Sony programmable remote, and it works well, but even I have a bit of trouble sometimes with flipping from one mode to another, whilst managing for example overlapping sound level controls (mainly when playing DVDs that seem to flip a coin when it comes to loudness). Asking elderly relations to cope with this kind of remote fiddliness will be too much if they already have trouble with the DTV changeover with which to begin. It will cause active pain (to you), but discard *everything* except power and start/stop (for DVDs if applicable) and volume and channels for your kindly but dumb elders. If you're daring, explain the fast forward button. One hopes that doesn't overlook anything!

(Yeah, I know about TV Fool and such, but that's been covered in vast detail elsewhere, and I forgot most of it anyway, heh-heh!)