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Comment Re:What is the atmosphere inside China? (Score 1) 249

I think the secular society thing is as much a result of things like that as anything else. Religion used to be in control (supposed divine right to rule etc), so when the Europe ousted it's monarchies (fully in most cases, but the same is true of the remaining neutered ones like the UK and the Netherlands) we wanted rid of both religion and heredity controlling power.

Comment Re:Why not laser print? (Score 3, Interesting) 306

This is probably very close to the truth. The people in question are probably professors, and the way internal politics works in most Universities (I have worked for 3) the professors have most of the power. Since they all want a personal printer, they all get one, but they are the ones in charge of the budget and there is no way they are going to buy a laser printer when they could buy a cheaper inkjet (since "it is almost free"). Since the ink often comes out of a budget that is not theirs (at least not directly), they don't care about on-going costs (nor were they really going to think about them in the first place).

And the professors in question are often older (this affects both eyesight, and comfort with technology), and they are often getting email that needs to be marked up (notes on scientific papers, reviews of their post-doc's work, etc...), and you find that they get in the habit of printing out everything. There are some who are moving to a mostly-digital workflow, but the tools for this are still specialized or not well known in the community (they are just learning about how to use editing notes in Word).

In most Universities the local IT has no power to change any of these, and has to walk a lot of very fine lines politically (while being underpaid for even the normal job). Central IT often can put out edicts, since people there have the ear of the dean, but localized IT has both the responsibility to enforce these edicts, and none of the power to do so.

Comment Hah! That's awesome. (Score 1) 249

"That's the day when I realized that a lot of people on slashdot use mod points to punish people they disagree with. It's so much more handy than discussing things."

I just got modded down as "off-topic" when my post was relevant. Somebody was just too stupid to realize that there's no "-1 disagree" for a reason.

Comment Home Theater PC (Score 1) 304

I built a Home Theater PC. Silverstone makes some great looking HTPC cases, I got a black one that matches everything else. Optical drive is CD/DVD/DVD-RW/HD-DVD/BluRay combo, fanless power supply from ThermalTake, 1TB SATA hard disk, 4GB RAM, 1GB nVidia HDMI video card, and wireless LAN (onboard) and I was off to the races. It also doubles as a jukebox (using iTunes). I don't pass TV video through it, so I use the cable company's DVR for that, but I can stream NetFlix, or watch YouTube, or DVDs or BR or HD-DVD (short-lived, I know, but there are still some floating about, and the drive didn't cost any more than a BR-only at the time). Keyboard and mouse duties are handled by a RocketFish RF keyboard and optical mouse. CyberDVD is the DVD/BR playback software (came with the drive - works GREAT).

Comment Re:Maporama (Score 1) 603

Agreed... great maps! They have large sizes available, custom colour palettes, etc.
Coverage is always good almost anywhere I've searched in the world: one way streets, house numbers, etc.

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