The next milestone in the relentless pursuit of smaller, higher performance microchips has been unveiled.
...
The development means the fundamental "law" that underpins the development of all microchips, known as Moore's Law, remains intact.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Chips push through nano-barrier

American politics is ugly these days, and many people wish things were different. For example, Barack Obama recently lamented the fact that “politics has become so bitter and partisan” — which it certainly has.

But he then went on to say that partisanship is why “we can’t tackle the big problems that demand solutions. And that’s what we have to change first.” Um, no. If history is any guide, what we need are political leaders willing to tackle the big problems despite bitter partisan opposition. If all goes well, we’ll eventually have a new era of bipartisanship — but that will be the end of the story, not the beginning.

Or to put it another way: what we need now is another F.D.R., not another Dwight Eisenhower.

On Being Partisan - New York Times

Portable gizmos such as phones, handheld computers and mp3 players can easily get scuffed, dirty and sticky.

Bulky covers are one option, but Nokia in Finland has been experimenting with plastic casings coated with a diamond-like material made from coal. The material is more protective and grime resistant, as well as cheap and bio-degradable.

To make the material electric current is fed through coal graphite. This creates plasma, which is directed towards a plastic casing by high-voltage

electrodes. The coal ions penetrate the surface and bond to form an amorphous, diamond-like coating less than 100 nanometres thick. The process works at room temperature, meaning even cheap plastics can be coated this way.

The coating is very tough, but also smooth to the touch. It is also conductive and therefore antistatic, so does not attract dirt easily. Furthermore, the surface reflects and diffracts light in a similar way to shiny metal. And, when the owner has grown tired of the gismo and binned it, the thin layer of coal will eventually degrade naturally.

Invention: 'Diamond'-coated gadgets - Yahoo! News UK

The most explosive question about the Taliban resurgence here along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is this: Have Pakistani intelligence agencies been promoting the Islamic insurgency?
...
Hamid Gul, the former director general of Pakistani intelligence, remains a public and unapologetic supporter of the Taliban, visiting madrasas and speaking in support of jihad at graduation ceremonies.

Afghan intelligence officials recently produced a captured insurgent who said Mr. Gul facilitated his training and logistics through an office in the Pakistani town of Nowshera, in the North-West Frontier Province, west of the capital, Islamabad.

NATO and American officials in Afghanistan say there is also evidence of support from current midlevel Pakistani intelligence officials. Just how far up that support reaches remains in dispute.

At Border, Signs of Pakistani Role in Taliban Surge - New York Times

Decius writes:

This is infuriating.

Feingold, who today flat out called the program illegal and who last March... went on to attack Gonzales for a speech he made in November, where he said that critics of the government's warrantless wiretapping program believed in a definition of freedom that was "superficial" and a "grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people."

Feingold took issue with that and asked who in the country actually believed that terrorists should not be wiretapped.

Gonzales said he knew that it wasn't Democrats and his real targets were blogs, where you can find people who don't see that the government is trying to protect them.

Unfortunately, this is the closest thing I can find to coverage of this hearing. Transcripts do not seem to be available. If anyone has the exact quote from Gonzales, please post it. I DO have the exact quote and context for his statement in November.

Some people will argue nothing could justify the government being able to intercept conversations like the ones the Program targets. Instead of seeing the government protecting the country, they see it as on the verge of stifling freedom.

But this view is shortsighted. Its definition of freedom – one utterly divorced from civic responsibility – is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people.

As Justice Robert Jackson remarked in the case Terminiello v. City of Chicago, “The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

The central quote was decontextualized and passed around in the media. Of course, you can find crazy people on the Internets, but the people out there who "will argue nothing could justify the government being able to intercept conversations like the ones the Program tagets," and I have never, ever seen anyone make that argument, but they are clearly too far and inbetween to constitute "a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people."

Gonzales is almost Chomskesque in his careful use of language which simultaneously means many things and nothing. If you support the idea that the executive need not get court approval for domestic surveillance, what you hear... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Alberto Gonzales on Bloggers

On the evening of the fourth of April, 1967, one year to the day (almost to the hour) before his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. walked into Riverside Church in Manhattan and delivered a speech that was among his least well known, yet most controversial.

The Lost Voice of Protest - New York Times

some tips from my experience, your mileage may vary

1. Kludges that we'll fix in the next release never get fixed in the next release...

2. if you dont do it right now, you (or some poor bastard that replaces you) will have to do it right later...

3. it always costs more to do it later...

4. beware of anyone in a suit...

5. if you don't talk to your customers to see what will make them happy, then sooner or later someone else will...

6. Sales guys can be powerful allies for interoffice BS, but if you make yourself too available they will never leave you alone...

7. Management has no idea what the customer wants...

8. Engineering has even less idea what the customer wants...

9. Assume every engineer you work with is an idiot, try not to let on that you know...if you find engineers that are obviously not idiots, find a way to keep them...

10. Never outsource your core competency...

11. Lazyness and incompetence are contagious...

12. no-one cares if you read wikipedia all day every day if you get your work done on time...

13. your code is not finished until you've tested it...

14. never assume they have tested their code...

15. engineers that think lack of documentation is job security should be fired sooner rather than later (otherwise you'll make them right)...

16. Contrary to popular belief, third party libraries reduce portability of your code...

17. Engineers thinking something is "cool" is not a business case...

18. Engineerings job is to say yes, no matter how stupid management's requests are...good engineers find ways to say yes that spotlight their intelligence and managements stupidity...(e.g. if they ask you to turn lead into gold, tell them you will if they allocate a few trillian dollars and a fusion reactor)...

19. the night before its due is probably not the best time to start integrating your code in a large project...

20. you can be really good at your job, and a dick, or you can be so so and your job and a really nice guy...you cannot be a dick who is bad at his job...

21. Time estimation is really hard...it will take longer than you think it will...

22. demonstrating that your compeditors suck isn't enough to get anyone to buy your product...

23. don't ship anything you're not proud of...

24. your code will be used in ways you never thought of...plan accordingly...

25. if you can't settle on one way of doing something, do it both ways and make it a configurable option...

26. don't ever have arbitrary limitations, or if you do, hide them better (e.g. "max users 256"...hmmmm?)...

27. strive to make a really good 1.0, then move on to other, more fun projects...you'll still get all the glory for that first project, but you won't have to do the work anymore...

28. in general, meetings are the opposite of getting things done...

29. an engineering manager's job is... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

My programming rules

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Wednesday that failure to revive the European Union's constitution would be a ``historic mistake'' that would leave the bloc divided and mired in bureaucracy.

yes but the European project has been pushed by a political elite
it will only succeed in the long term with the full democratic consent of the people in the member states
the French said no and the Dutch (the most pro-European nation in the Union) also said no
the European dream is a generational process
the political elites of Europe must do more to convince the masses and fight the petty nationalists but they don't like their political wisdom being challenged by those they regard as inferior (ie the ordinary people)
the British for one are sceptical but pragmatic but currently there isn't a hope of winning a referendum on an EU constitution here

but even if the project is stalled for 10 or 20 years the essential logic together with big capitalism will eventually drive it forward

i want to see the process move forward but not at the expense of democratic consent -- i believe the exercise of achieving that consent will build a deeper union based on deeper imperatives than that of the moment and better institutions (and at the moment there is a distinct democratic deficit at the heart of the European project which would only be reinforced if the elites roll over the wishes of the people)

Merkel Seeks to Revive European Constitution - New York Times

Dramatic film of a fireman confronting one of the alleged July 21 bombers on a Tube train as other passengers fled in panic was shown to a jury yesterday.

The CCTV footage showed Ramzi Mohammed, 25, wearing a rucksack and boarding the busy Northern Line Tube at Stockwell, south London. He turned his back towards a mother with a child in a pushchair before detonating his device. The detonator exploded, although the main charge, made up of liquid hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour, failed to go off.

As other passengers tried to run, Angus Campbell, an off-duty fireman, stayed and challenged Mohammed as the train continued to Oval station, Woolwich Crown Court heard. The grainy footage showed the pair in the carriage at 12.26pm.

Telegraph | News | Fireman 'confronted bomber on Tube'

flynn23 wrote:
I'd like to see this same graphic overlaid with the murder rate for each sector. "Military" casualties excluded of course. Just capita murder rate. I would expect to see an interesting corollary.

Thats an interesting question. Below I'll post Wikipedia's GDP graph on the left and their murder graph on the right. I'm not sure there is a correlation. One suspects that poorer countries simply aren't able to collect good statistics. There seems to be a relationship between poverty and murders on these charts, but the obvious exception is the United States.

RE: The Big Picture | How big IS the US anyway?