More so than how this will benefit Lenovo, Dell, and Acer, I'm interested in what kind of opportunity this creates for Asus and Samsung.

When the OO website links to LibreOffice, and tells people to download the latest version there, we'll now that Oracle is sincere.

The article states, "'A big question this research raises is why would we, or mice, have a gene that makes us less smart – a Homer Simpson gene?'Hepler says. 'I believe that we are not really seeing the full picture. RGS14 may be a key control gene in a part of the brain that, when missing or disabled, knocks brain signals important for learning and memory out of balance.'"

Oh, come on. If these scientists were current on their sci-fi, they'd know that the disabling that gene will affect the human growth rate, ala Ender's Shadow.

I don't think anyone begrudges Ubuntu taking advantage of a perfectly acceptable revenue model. That's not the problem here.

The problem is that Ubuntu is shipping a modified version of Firefox instead of the default Firefox shipped by Mozilla. Sure, both Ubuntu and Debian ship patched versions of just about every package they include in the repository. But the overwhelming majority of those patches don't noticeably effect the user experience.

Firefox, on the other hand, is pretty much the #1 most important part of the user experience in Ubuntu. It's the application most people are going to use more than anything else. In fact, after Ubuntu is installed, the user will probably spend more time interacting with Firefox than with all the rest of Ubuntu combined. It's not inaccurate to say it's a Firefox machine, as opposed to an Ubuntu or Linux machine.

Since Firefox is the most important part of the user experience, the users don't want Firefox changed in any way. They want the default Firefox as shipped by Mozilla. They don't want the named changed to Shiretoko or IceWeasel. They don't want the icons changed. They don't want weird extensions that change behaviour. They also don't want updates to come from Ubuntu repositories, as they do for every other package. They want the newest version of Firefox from Mozilla at the exact moment that Mozilla ships it.

I understand the reasoning behind Ubuntu and Debians policies, but I think it is obvious that Firefox trumps Ubuntu. They should make a special exception for it. Just ship the raw Firefox as released by Mozilla. Don't modify it in any way whatsoever. The world is just getting more browser centric. The operating system is just the code that talks between the browser and the hardware. You can do anything you want to the OS, but don't touch the browser or you'll lose all the users you worked so hard to gain.

Think about Sudoku for a second. Let's say you never played it before. Someone gives you a board and the rules. The first step you have is to figure out how to solve it. Eventually you develop an algorithm that can solve any sudoku. Once you have developed this algorithm, sudoku is no longer an intellectual exercise. It is no longer a matter of solving a problem, but merely executing an algorithm. It becomes manual labor. Likewise, if someone gives you the algorithm, you can bypass the first part entirely.

An MMO is very similar. In the beginning you don't know what to do. You have to learn the game and solve problems. Many of the rules of the game are hidden or secret. Thus, it can take awhile. However, eventually, you learn it. You know exactly what to press in order to do the maximum damage per unit time in any given situation with any given character. You don't even need to learn this, either. Someone can just tell you.

At some point you switch from developing an algorithm to executing an algorithm. You switch from developing a solution to executing a known solution. You switch from skill to knowledge.

This is why there is such an attraction tïo eurogames like Puerto Rico, Agricola, Caylus, Power Grid, Tigris and Euphrates, etc. These games tend to have little to no randomness, so they aren't games of chance. They are complex enough that it is very difficult to solve them, though perhaps not as complex as Go. They also have a significant theme and other elements that make them more "fun" than a game like Go or Chess.

Even so, many eurogames are solvable. We have a shelf full of games, but we only actually play about half of them. For the other half, everyone already knows the algorithm for optimal play. When we play with each other, it becomes a perfect Nash equilibrium. When we play with anyone else who hasn't solved the game, they are completely crushed.

The answer is to never play a game you have solved, and never play games that are easily solvable.

Many open source projects fail to succeed because everyone working on them is a developer. They design the software to meet their own personal needs. Thus we get projects like the Gimp which does not meet the needs of any artist I have ever known.

However, when it comes to making development tools, who better to know the needs of the end user than other developers? When it comes to software that is used by developers, open source will always be king. Look where the real successes in open source are right now. Most of it is in libraries and frameworks like django, rails, and jquery. These are things made by developers to make developing easier.

Open source will always own that market.

It is not "unworkable." But it is "unrealistic" to expect that after using regular size keyboards for a lifetime that everyone would instantly find the much smaller keyboard as usable without some practice.

If you read the EeePC User Forums, you'll find that most people get used to the tiny keyboard. Some people even find that they can type faster on it than on a regular keyboard. I have very large hands (I wear XXL gloves), and after a few months of some somewhat regular use as a mobile platform (not as a primary machine), the keyboard is becoming as easy for me to use as my other full sized laptop and my desktop. Because I have large hands, I doubt that I will ever type as fast as on a full-sized keyboard, but it has already become more than "workable."

They should not be faced with a "Hobson's choice" of "Confess, and pay this meerly ruinous fine - or defend yourself and hope your parents don't mind selling their house & one of your little sister's kidneys if you loose."

Agreed, but that's more an issue with our legal system than an issue with the RIAA itself, right?

Any large corporation can threaten to sue, and given that simply taking a case to trial is prohibitively expensive for most people, the corporations have all the power. I don't like the RIAA any more than the next guy, but if you're doing something illegal like blatantly violating copyright, it's certainly within their rights to sue you. They're going to get it wrong sometimes -- nothing's perfect -- but if the system is set up so that they feel little pain for getting it wrong and the falsely accused feel huge pain, then the system needs to be fixed, not whoever's doing the suing.

on my 10D

JPG ~2mb
RAW ~8mb
TIFF 16mb for 8bit 32mb for 16bit (RAW is 10b i belive) LZW won't help much

she should shoot in raw, it does WONDERS for any photo almost as you can correvt ev and WB on the raw sensor data, but it is another step