The reason why this has blown up into a huge deal is because the powers from on high are getting set to work out some sort of deal that will place on enormously burdensome tax on the major CO2 producing countries with lots of money (read - the USA). This tax (or whatever you want to call it) is based on this climate data and the interpretations of today's climatologists. And this tax would be imposed during a very difficult and widespread economic recession.

Any time you take away someone's hard-earned money, it becomes a big deal.

Clive Cussler gave some reasons NOT to do this in his book "White Death."

Yes, it's fiction, but still....

Destroys the marine ecosystem through a fish monopoly, etc.

Enjoyable book, though.

Here's a take on this that most will disagree with (but I believe):

If it's bad for your kids, it's bad for you, too. If you are covering your kid's eyes/ears on a movie, game, whatever - that your own should probably be covered as well.

I'm not saying all entertainment except Dora and Barney should be eliminated and I'm also not calling for massive censorship of games/movies/etc.

But I am saying that hearing cuss words on TV is just as harmful for an adult as it is for children.

Well.....

I worked for the Arizona DOT a few years back. At some point (I think it was in the mid 90's), they decided to do all their plans in metric. I think it only lasted a year or so. Then they went back to the old units.

So now there exists a portion of their plans archives that are in metric. Every now and then, I'd run across a new project where I had to use a metric set of plans. Talk about holding up production! Whew. That was a real pain to do all the conversions, etc needed to make the info useful.

If you think this credit/economic/banking crisis put the brakes on the world's economy, I can only imagine what would happen if all the designers, manufacturers, etc of all the different industries suddenly had to change the units on the products they produced. Things would come to an unholy and grinding halt.

I don't think this is a simple matter of perception or converting inches to centimeters and such. Multi-thousand dollar machines built to certain specs.... Infrastructure already in place built to the "old" units... Getting old and new to match correctly... What a mess. No, I think and hope units of measure will stay in place for the moment (at least until after I die).

In the real world, some things can not be changed automatically by writing a bash script.

Jack Bauer's done it with a PDA.

No, they don't. Chickens are frickin' idiots and they don't do jack except eat chicken feed and lay eggs.

I've seen Chicken Run so I know how these things work.

I didn't want to go public with this, but I've already got a device like this. I call it a "MONITOR." Hooks right up to my computer. Pretty neat stuff.

I think more portable versions exist out there, too.

Seriously, though. I'm not quite sure this can be considered innovation. And innovation is what the newspapers need to stay alive. The idea sounds like they re-folded the same piece of paper in hopes of something brand new.

Dude, they've already dismantled the CPI device. It's bioweapons now.

Get with it.

Sorry for the spoiler.

The winning video was great. I can see why it was chosen. I think it showed simplicity and beauty for Linux. However -

Check out the one with the penguins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDOL7_7DB7k&feature=related

I nearly fell out of my chair that was so well done.

Sorry if I'm not jaded enough for this audience, but I loved that one. I'd love either one to go out in front of the public.

That's freakin' awesome.

I'd love to hear more stories like this one.

(All together now)

YES!!!

Damn Small Linux (DSL)
Puppy Linux
Tinyme (spinoff of PCLinuxOS)
Feather Linux
NimbleX (haven't tried that one)
xpud

Just a slice from my experiences. DSL is probably the best of these, in my opinion, if you know what the heck you're doing (which I don't).

If you were being facetious, sorry. I just had to jump at the chance to display a little of my knowledge.