Oh dear. You do realise that you're an animal, right? And your signature suggests that you don't believe in God. I'm trying to reconcile these two beliefs that you hold, and yet can't.

I'm missing the 'like' button from facebook all of a sudden ;) Totally agree ...

It's a common perception ... and totally wrong ... that psychoactive users are junkies. Far from it. I have participated in multiple voluntary studies with the Australian National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, where they study recreational drugs ( E, LSD, etc ) ... and have asked them each time what they thought of my habits, and that of my peers. Each time they said the same thing ... that it was a pleasure to work with people who actually had their life together ... that the real 'junkies' use heroin, alcohol, cocain, etc ... and the recreational drug users, in contrast, are well in control of their activities, and leading productive lives. In fact I would go a step further and say that psychoactive drug users have their life together far more than the average person.

:) Was thinking something very similar, just as I came to your post.

The story doesn't mention the GPU in use, but it does mention it's an i7 processor. So I assume it's using an i965-class GPU. These aren't exactly known for speed or stability on linux. I believe FF4 uses Cairo, which in turn uses XRender, and my experience with integrated Intel GPUs and XRender is that pure software ( ie X on FBDev ) is faster. I would have liked to have seen a system used which could actually accelerate the drawing operations.

While I will rejoice in Fielding being dumped, I'm sceptical that Labor will backflip over this issue without being pressured. We'll see.

Wooot! Another insightful post on Slashdot. Maybe I should spend more time here? Yeah I agree completely ... the way we call organisms individuals, separate from their surroundings, is completely arbitrary. If you haven't already read them, you may be interested in 'Autopoiesis and Cognition' by HR Maturana, FJ Varela and 'Web of Life' by Fritjof Capra.

I agree with your attack on materialism, and also that Darwinists have an agenda as do Creationists. But instead of focusing on electromagnetic fields, which is itself inside the domain of the material, I think the source of life lies in a domain of organisation and thought ... one which 4-dimensional physics is enfolded in.

Wow ... an insightful post. This is slashdot, right?

We bought a Civic hybrid with 30,000kms on it. We paid exactly the same as we would have for other Civic models. We got the battery checked out - was in 'perfect' order. It uses about 5.5 l/100km in the city, which is considerably better than the other Civic models, which I expect would be getting around 7 or 8 l/100km. So for us it's making very good economic sense. I don't expect to be changing the battery any time soon - they're supposed to go 10 years in this model. Maybe you should check out 2nd-hand models in your analysis.

Other people have already commented on the hand-outs to big oil fouling up your whinging about subsidies to hybrid tech.

One is reminded of that Churchill quote about democracy being the worst form of government ...

The problem is that Churchill was a racist, biggoted prick. If he lived in our times, he could have been charged with war crimes ( though of course like current politicians who commit war crimes, there is little chance that this would actually happen ).

Precisely. Let's remember that it was Google who told the US government to take them to court before they'd hand over search query data. I'm not saying Google is perfect. But as the post above notes, Google collect data for the sole purpose of providing targeting data to their customers - advertisers. Worst-case scenario is that some advertisers have slightly more information on your browsing habits. This is far from the end of the world.

But you are spot on when you worry about the government getting their hands on this information. I can see problems for people discussing:
  - euthanasia
  - recreational drugs, including medical use, drug law reform, harm minimisation programs, etc
  - political activism
  - criticism of government
  - criticism of big business
  - workers' rights ... which are all quite valid topics, which ever side of the so-called 'great divide' you come down on.

I really can't praise Gtk2-Perl enough. Using Glade to quickly build your GUI, and Perl to quickly build your logic, it's a knock-out combination. The end result looks just like a gnome application ( using Gtk2 ), and for 95% of cases, runs as fast as well. I liked it so much, I wrote some database classes, Gtk2::Ex::DBI and Gtk2::Ex::Datasheet::DBI ... see: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis/.