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A long, long, long time ago (2000-2001) there was GtkEmbedMoz that let you embed the Mozilla rendering engine in GTK applications. I'm certain they've done the same for multiple platforms by now.

So I'm quite curious, no one has responded to the question of if our continued investment is worthwhile, or if our only reason for staying there is the sunk cost fallacy. This is a very basic question regarding any investment. Failing to consider it does not make for a wise investment strategy. Can anyone defend the idea that our sunk cost will equate with a desirable outcome, and place it in terms beyond the vague hypotheticals offered by the Bush Administration? My position would be that we are wasting American lives, money, and time.

Then how do they know which keys go to your car? Speaking as a (small-l) libertarian here, I don't believe anyone who isn't acting in an official capacity has the right to confiscate property which I carry on my person. I would tend to call that "robbery"

In 20/20 hindsight, I'd say because the those who have spent considerable time in Iraq want us out of there. *boggle* You're calling Slate a "blog"? Slate is an Internet-based news and culture magazine created by the (typically conservative) Washington Post (although Slate tends to be liberal-leaning) which has received considerable clout and acclaim among media watchdogs on both sides. In that regard it's comparable to (the more liberal) Salon. Slate has been online since the popular reception of the Internet (circa 1996). You can't exactly write them off as just a "blog" As far as I'm concerned, Slate is the most reputable Internet-based news magazine out there. I expect that even Pangloss can respect the journalistic integrity of Slate.

http://www.slate.com/id/2167284/pagenum/all/#page_start In effect: direct mail voter registration checks with "do not forward" on the envelopes were used as part of a massively coordinated campaign (by the Republican party) to suppress voters, primarily those in college or the military (overseas, fighting) of their right to vote. Is this what's really at the heart of the attorney scandal?

Yeah, rather than double tapping, tap with both your index and middle fingers simultaneously

Considering my car keys are on the same keyring as my house keys, and I walk or ride my bike to the pub/bar, let me say that approach f*cking sucks.

Here's a Ebonicode implementation: sup { gimme fibo bitch a be 1 bitch b be 1 bitch putou a bitch putou b bitch fibo be fibo widout 2 bitch slongas (fibo bepimpin 0) c be a an b bitch a be b bitch b be c bitch putou b bitch dissin fibo bitch nomo }

See the other thread for my Erlang implementation

Hmm, Kyoto deja vu: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/31/bush.climate.ap/ I guess this is a step in the right direction, but I wish there were more of a focus of addressing climate change in a multitude of different ways, rather than just emissions limits

Erlang: -module(factorial). -export([calc/1]). calc(0) -> 1; calc(X) -> X * calc(X - 1). Uhoh, I think I broke the rules

I saw one of those in Breckenridge. Seemed like a good place for it (the guy said he got it in Moab) Those things have crazy tread on their tires. Diametrical opposite of what I'm going for though.

I use OS X and XP with Synergy, which means I'm constantly switching back and forth. The main problem I have is the ctrl/cmd dichotomy (cmd is alt on a Windows keyboard), although once you get over that many of the commands are surprisingly similar (e.g. ctrl/cmd-cxvw) The Mighty Mouse actually has two buttons, even though it looks like it doesn't. Unfortunately, that same convenience was not carried over to the buttons under their touchpads (although you can do a two finger "right click" on the touchpad itself).

For the cyclists amongst us, what's your ride? Mine's a Schwinn Le Tour. Umm, what is there to say about it... it has a giant 63cm frame, which means with the seat post entirely down it fits me quite well. It's a speedy roadie and does a great job getting me around town. I've been bouncing around the idea of doing a single speed modification on it, as my daily commute is virtually flat, but considering that Boulder is somewhat hilly (being nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains) I've been somewhat reluctant.

Not to use this to try to make a cheap political point, but doesn't this say something about America's overdependence on cars? I'd really like to see a push to get Americans, particularly drunk Americans, to go pedestrian (or failing that, bring a sober friend or call a freaking taxi)

Erlang bundles a fully distributed, production quality database called Mnesia. This can be used in lieu of a traditional RDBMs. Mnesia seems like the ideal way of handling globally shared mutable state in Erlang, and is apparently already being used for large telcom databases. (I haven't mentioned this earlier, but Erlang was originally designed to meet the needs of the telecommunications industry) I'm sort of reluctant to talk about this because I know so little about Mnesia, such as whether it supports transactions/two-phase commit (or if this concept is even applicable to the way it's implemented) Once I know a little more about it I can get back to you on this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lud1qceKqyQ Yet another aww shucks lone non-scientist inventor accidentally discovers a way to burn salt water while trying to cure cancer. He seems to meet the general requirements of a crackpot. But I'm curious as to what's going on here. Can electrolysis be caused by electromagnetic radiation, as opposed to actually running a current through the water, and how is it producing enough hydrogen to actually create a flame? And how can it be pumping that much energy through the air but still be safe enough for you to stick your hand through it?

I preferred this explanation: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070522/sc_livescience/thesurprisingtruthbehindtheconstructionofthegreatpyramids The limestone blocks were poured into place from a cement-like substance

(Using my amazing Necromancer powers I revive this thread from its deathly slumber!) Yeah, I did this... other people have done it waaaay better

You might check out HAARP: http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/ However, in general, no his system wasn't practical, due to inconsistencies in the shape of the ionosphere which would cause the system to leak energy considerably.

Yep, but also some different programming conventions built around those ideas.

Erlang programs consist of multiple "processes" which all run concurrently. These "processes" aren't OS processes or OS threads. They exist internally within Erlang's scheduler, which runs within a single thread. However, recently Erlang gained the ability to run multiple schedulers at once. This means Erlang will start a seperate scheduler which runs inside an OS thread for each CPU core. Erlang processes can easily move between OS threads (because each one is shared-nothing), so if a single process starts monopolizing a CPU the other processes can move to a different core, just like how an OS scheduler schedules threads. Essentially, it's a M:N threading model. But it doesn't stop there! You can attach to Erlang interpreters on completely different computer systems and use those to automatically run processes. This idea is similar to an idea in Linux called Mosix where OS processes could transparently move to different computer systems. Erlang can do this with networked computer clusters, but the "processes" it's moving are substantially lighter weight than an actual OS process. Mosix's main problem was the cost of serializing an entire OS process to move it over the network, and then unserializing and restoring it on the other side. With Erlang, the penalty is substantially reduced. All-in-all, this approach means that using massively multicore computer systems, or even clusters, is all abstracted away. The approach to writing your Erlang program does not change. Erlang simply finds the best way to use the available resources. Furthermore, the problems that surround threads, like synchronization of shared resources (and the ensuing deadlocks that occur when this doesn't occur properly) are completely eliminated.

Can we please leave "snide insinuation" strawmen out of this?

That's more specific to Windows Media Player / WMV / WMA than the OS itself. The same goes for iTunes/QuickTime on OS X. In Vista, in addition to the new driver architecture which allows for a "snoop free" path for digital media (yes, contrary to what I said above) Vista is also detecting and shutting down certain pirated programs when detected. That's substantially more than XP and OS X, where the only sort of mechanisms in place for that sort of thing all hinge around validating the OS itself, rather than the legitimacy of individual installed programs. Beyond that, Vista has draconian OS activation / validation, far beyond anything XP/WGA or OS X have ever done.

Wow, hey Trurl, where's Klapaucius? Also, Singularity = intelligent machines = Internet alive! Also: http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends I thought stuff like this would make the Internet think. Now I learn the Internet is thinking about total crap. Think about better stuff, Internet!