You must remember the period where various electronic devices, from phones to radios, were available in transparent cases. You may have found them utterly cool. Yet the simple fact that you can't find these things on the shelves anymore (except for do-it-yourself PC cases) means the crowd doesn't find them nearly that cool. While you may not see the link yet, this is exactly why the Linux desktop will never be popular.
...
This is one of the things that makes it appealing to technology enthusiasts because their brains recognize the concept of "technical elegance," analogous to "mathematical elegance," a concept beyond the reach of non-mathematicians. In other words, they see beauty in the insides of hardware and/or software. But the crowd has a different opinion; being technophobists, transparency in design and implementation is inelegant, even repelling. Indeed, when you try to explain your old folks why Linux is technologically superior, you scare them away.

errr since i'm writing this on a PC which I built and has a transparent case i think the writer may have a point

Why Desktop Linux Will Not Take off, and Why You Don't Want It to - OSNews.com

Unix has always lurked provocatively in the background of the operating system wars, like the Russian Army. Most people know it only by reputation, and its reputation, as the Dilbert cartoon suggests, is mixed. But everyone seems to agree that if it could only get its act together and stop surrendering vast tracts of rich agricultural land and hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war to the onrushing invaders, it could stomp them (and all other opposition) flat.

Neal Stephenson is very cool and this just made me laugh

Unix as a drill Neal Stephenson

Over the last year, as Iran, Iraq and Lebanon have dominated headlines, hopes of gaining firmer control of a largely forgotten corner of the war on terrorism — the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region — have quietly evaporated.

On Tuesday, the Pakistani government signed a "truce" with militants which lets militants remain in the area as long as they promised to halt attacks.

Is this the "separate peace" that Rumsfeld was talking about? He must be furious about this, right?

The Taliban leadership is believed to have established a base of operations in and around the Pakistani city of Quetta. The Pakistani government sees the group as a tool to counter growing Indian influence in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, roadside bomb attacks have doubled this year, and suicide bombings have tripled.

This year, the United States cut its aid to Afghanistan by 30 percent.

Al Qaeda and the Taliban are no doubt betting that time is on their side.

Al Qaeda Finds Its Center of Gravity

U.S. policymakers may be looking back in a few years, asking themselves why they lost Afghanistan despite the promise the country showed after the fall of the Taliban regime.

The Taliban, Regrouped And Rearmed

noteworthy wrote:

This list is drawn from the second edition of "The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made" (St. Martin's Griffin, $24.95), edited by Peter M. Nichols and published in 2004. For additional information about the list, read Peter M. Nichols's preface, or A. O. Scott's introduction.

How many have you seen?

quite a few and reminded me of a few i wanted to see or see again
but one or two little disagreements no Toystory 2, Moulin Rouge(2001), no House of Flying Daggers and no Save the Tiger (which is one of my all time favourite movies [Jack Lemmon is cool]) or Alfie (1966) (quintessentially British Michael Caine movie)

ahhh lists, lists, lists

edit
no Blade Runner which is my favourite film
*headdesk*

RE: The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made

As night falls in Beijing, yuppies descend upon the sassy Sanlitun Bar Street in Chaoyang District. Like a parade of dark angels, each one of them is dressed to kill. A mug of beer here costs about $4.

Chen Dan, 6, lives 30 minutes away, but has never heard of Sanlitun. That mug of beer would buy her a month's lunches, a week's bus fares and several days at the "school for children of migrant workers."

The story of Chen Dan is told by the Chinese author Huang Chuanhui in his book, "Where's My School Desk?" Like millions of other children scattered around Beijing and other Chinese cities, Chen Dan is a "floating child."

She lives with her grandparents, who migrated from Hebei province to work as janitors for the public toilets that litter Beijing. Their home is actually one of those toilets - a makeshift shed of broken bricks and discarded blankets piled at the back of the facility. They make about $40 a month.

There are an estimated 140 million such "rural migrants" working in China's cities as janitors, laborers, street vendors and at other jobs shunned by city dwellers. The children of this "floating population" are China's "floating children."

Chen Dan walks an hour each day to school. Except it is not so much a school as a makeshift childcare facility for migrant children, unregulated and unrecognized by the city government. During her breaks, she gathers old bottles for recycling to help pay for her schooling.

Still, she is lucky, because many migrant children in China get no schooling at all. Public schools in Beijing serve only local residents, so migrant workers who cannot enroll their children pay a hefty "education leasing fee" - often the equivalent of a year's earnings.

As a result, most "floating children" do not attend school, wasting their days playing in the dust with scant hope of someday climbing the social ladder.

At one point, some people, mostly retired rural teachers, took the initiative to organize informal classes for these children. These "schools for children of migrant workers" mushroomed throughout the cities. But because they have no legal status, they are often closed down by the city government.

So who should provide for the floating children? The problem is both fiscal and administrative.

On the fiscal side, China is unusual in its extensive decentralization of the provision of public services. In 2004, local governments were responsible for 72 percent of total public spending. Basic services like education and health care are almost entirely the financial responsibility of local governments.

The result is that local governments will only provide services to those who pay taxes directly to local coffers - legal, local residents.

Migrants have to pay additional fees to enroll their children in public schools because they are "leasing" a public service from a "... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

The 'floating children', adrift in China's cities - International Herald Tribune

Nasa's robotic Mars rover Opportunity is closing in on what could be the richest scientific "treasure trove" of its mission so far.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Rover nears crater science trove

Claim: Student mistakes examples of unsolvable math problems for homework assignment and solves them.

Status: True.

Urban Legends Reference Pages: The Unsolvable Math Problem

World War II veterans are preparing to show the public how they cracked the Nazi Enigma codes for the first time since VE Day in 1945.

Enthusiasts have spent 10 years building a working replica of the code-breaking machines that were used to decipher thousands of Nazi messages.

BBC NEWS | UK | WWII Nazi code-break re-enacted

The courtroom provided a telling introduction. I had recently arrived as British ambassador in Uzbekistan's old Silk Road capital of Tashkent, where I was watching the trial of a 22-year-old dissident named Iskander Khuderbegainov. The gaunt young man was accused with five other Muslims of several crimes, including membership in a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda. The six sat huddled in a cage guarded by 14 Kalashnikov-wielding soldiers. The judge made a show of not listening to the defense, haranguing the men with anti-Islamic jokes. It looked like a replay of footage I'd seen of Nazi show trials.

The next day, an envelope landed on my desk; inside were photos of the corpse of a man who had been imprisoned in Uzbekistan's gulags. I learned that his name was Muzafar Avazov. His face was bruised, his torso and limbs livid purple. We sent the photos to the University of Glasgow. Two weeks later, a pathology report arrived. It said that the man's fingernails had been pulled out, that he had been beaten and that the line around his torso showed he had been immersed in hot liquid. He had been boiled alive.

That was my welcome to Uzbekistan, a U.S. and British ally in the war on terror. Trying to tell the truth about the country cost me my job. Continuing to tell the truth about it dragged me into the Kafkaesque world of official censorship and gave me a taste of the kind of character assassination of which I once thought only a government like Uzbekistan's was capable.

Her Majesty's Man in Tashkent