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And, if you plan on using a firearm, you'll definitely want to be wearing one of these (I gave my wife a set along with her other birthday present), 'cause you don't want to spoil those ears for all that good iPod listenin' just 'cause you deliverd the old double tap to some fool.

Exactly. Spend all of your nights building your own taser and you'll never need to go out again.

Google cache

In case you are not aware, Claude Shannon adressed the issue of 3-D crossword puzzles in "The Mathematical Theory of Communication". I quote:

The redundancy of a language is related to the existence of crossword puzzles. If the redundancy is zero any sequence of letters is a reasonable text in the language and any two-dimensional array of letters forms a crossword puzzle. If the redundancy is too high the language imposes too many constraints for large crossword puzzles to be possible. A more detailed analysis shows that if we assume the constraints imposed by the language are of a rather chaotic and random nature, large crossword puzzles are just possible when the redundancy is 50%. If the redundancy is 33%, three-dimensional crossword puzzles should be possible, etc.

Since he also claims that the redundancy of English is 50% (in other places, he claims it is even higher), it appears that the father of information theory has decided that you will not be able to pull off a 3-D crossword puzzle. To me, that sounds like a great reason to try and do it. Not many people sucessfully prove Claude Shannon wrong, even indirectly.

Of course, if you do create a 3-D crossword puzzle, you should call it a 11-D puzzle, and claim that all the other dimensions are curled up very small. If some of the smartest people in the world can get away with that, you should be able to also.

A brute force attempt to break DRM has been tried and failed

I'm only learning html, sorry

And how about a link...

karma whoring clickable link

Google Cache :)

Also, anyone notice the e-mail mangling?

{moc.etile-ecrof} {ta} {pihc}

ND

It's an ad for Jurassic Park IV Sorry for the lousy link. Had to beat the mind readers to the punch. Hope I made it.

Nobody can create a search engine based on current technology that takes plain speech user input and magically transforms it into accurate search results.

How about the other way around? (179k pdf, Google's html cache)

Enco are also doing speech-recognition closed captioning (103k pdf, cache) with the same engine. Admittedly this depends on being fed a copy of the script to be 100% accurate, but they claim between 50%-85% accuracy on unscripted speech, and it improves the more it "learns" about a particular voice. They could probably come up with a voice-activated search engine using the same technology.

Nobody can create a search engine based on current technology that takes plain speech user input and magically transforms it into accurate search results.

How about the other way around? (179k pdf, Google's html cache)

Enco are also doing speech-recognition closed captioning (103k pdf, cache) with the same engine. Admittedly this depends on being fed a copy of the script to be 100% accurate, but they claim between 50%-85% accuracy on unscripted speech, and it improves the more it "learns" about a particular voice. They could probably come up with a voice-activated search engine using the same technology.

Actually, what killed it was Firefly. Just sayin'. ;-)

(Taken from a cached copy of the Dark Angel Newsletter)

DARK ANGEL CANCELLED!!!!!
People couldn't believe the rumor that came out Wednesday, but it was confirmed on Thursday morning when FOX announced their fall schedule. FOX had canceled Dark Angel in an 11th hour deal to keep Firefly on the air. This was a huge shock to all those involved especially since Dark Angel had its contract signed for the third season and was on the fall schedule up until Tuesday night.

Pdf version Link to google's html version

The Gamecube was sold for a loss initially, as Nintendo (via Peter Main) themselves admitted. Don't have the time/energy to find an exact transcript, but a couple of places you can see references to it are here, and here. The highly regarded (and massively overrated) "Acts of Gord" website also references it, as do many other places. For some reason the GC got an early reputation for not selling at a loss, even though Nintendo said otherwise. This myth is slowly dying out, at least.

Most PS2s were of course rush-shipped by (massively expensive) air transport to make the US launch, so there is no way they were sold at a profit initially.

You very well could be right about the PSX, though I still suspect a slight loss in the beginning. I am perfectly willing to concede that, however.

Never argued the N64 was sold at a loss, so I won't defend that statement now, either. :P

I certainly wouldn't argue that selling at an initial loss is the "typical console business model", but it has been used by every major manufacturer (short of perhaps Atari). Especially if you expanded the idea to include selling for a loss at any point in the console's life, which seems fair to me. It is perfectly true to say that most recent consoles are sold using the razorblade model at one time or another, even if via a 'forced' early price-drop.

Glad to see you admit the Saturn was sold at a loss now, though. :D

1) They're not grad students. They're both assistant professors at UC Berkeley. (Odd though that they don't refer to them as Doctors.) Do you really think grad students have $200K to throw around on their own experiments?

2) They chose to publicly credit a grad student (Leor Weinberger) with contributing to this particular piece of work. But leave it to Wired's "professional" journalist to write ambiguously on the facts of a story.

3) It is *not* a cure to HIV/AIDS. Its merely a engineered component which would be a necessary step towards a potential cure for HIV using "synthetic" biology. (Apparently, "gene therapy" is an unpopular term nowadays.) Their theory is that a bioengineered HIV virus would be able displace the deadly strains of HIV and thus reduce AIDS deaths. Adam does a lot of computer modelling in his research to help demonstrate his theories (which to me is also a notable aspect of this story...)

So, to conclude this part, you did not RTFA, heavyweights with hundreds of millions of dollars are able to do this, grad students have not yet demonstrated an ability to do this (although much like an a-bomb or bio-weapons, its probably in their reach), all the conclusions you reached from your presumptions are probably incorrect, and most important, there isn't a cure for AIDS just over the horizon.

I really wish they had published papers available online specific to this research. ( Google let me down... :( ) I suspect the Wired writer was incorrect as describing the engineered HIV virus as "latching" onto the real ones. More likely, its engineering the "vaccinating" HIV virus to be non-deadly and outcompete deadly HIV strains to infect a host (but IANAB). Don't suppose any graduate biology/chemistry students could help dig up some links?

What I did find from Google was a useful blurb about Adam and his work

"It those small sites (Geocities) hosted on some guys cable modem describing how he modded his mom's vibrator into a CD player that won't make it."

Guess it can make it to the google cache

One of the biggest pluses for any caching or I should say a greater variety in caching is the use of it to deter censorship.
The more places something gets cached the greater the chances of it getting mirrored once the censorship starts.

Google's Cache

link

Depends on how fast your link is. If your connection is 128kb/s or less, I'd say RDC/rdesktop (they use SSL). If it's faster than that, tunnel VNC thru SSH (see this Google-cached page for details.

brother, if you wanna karma whore you gotta work at it, copy/paste will not get you mod points. Here ya go, no pics, but you can read the specs and background info etc....

click me!

The Sultan is a descendent of a 600 year old royal family, they didn't preside over much but the steaming jungles of Borneo until Shell struck oil in the 1970's. The article refers to them as the Muslim version of the Beverly Hillbillies with a propensity for marrying first cousins which translates in to inbreeding, and a probably a penchant for all the ill effects that go with 600 years of inbreeding.

The Sultan, the Emir of Kuwait, the Saudi Royal family, all of these corrupt Muslim monarchies that struck it rich on oil are at the heart of why the Muslim world is exploding today and are the #1 customer for silly super cars.

In no uncertain fashion he told Lucas, "I am not saying this shit", and just winged some of these lines.

Ford is actually good at winging lines and improv. In Indiana Jones he came up with the great ending to what would have been another boring swordfight scene..

One scene in particular has become a small legend for film geeks: The Swordfight Scene. In the scene, Indy is facing off against a clearly talented swordsman in an Indian market place. After the swordsman tosses of some incredible moves, challenging Indy to a fight, Jones pulls out his gun and shoots the man. What's "legendary" about this scene is not the witty way in which it ends, but for the fact that it was not the original ending. In the script, Dr. Jones does take on the swordsman, having an extended, bravura fight scene that ends with Indy as the winner. However, on the day the scene was shot, Ford had severe diahrhea- a result of eating some locale cuisine while on location- and he begged not to have to film the elaborate fight scene. He suggested to Spielberg that Indy simply take out his gun and "shoot the bastard", and the rest is film history (to use a ridiculous cliche).

slashdotted before the first post. google cache

Google cache

Google Cache doesn't seem to have it either

Except it does...

just to give the source for that - The Dead Ale Wives, a group of Improv Comedians from Milwaukee came up with this horrible depiction of real life events (hell, it happens every time we game)Here is the google cache, the site seems to be down

2000 was also the Year Of The Penguin, but that turned out to be a bad thing...

2000 was also the Year Of The Penguin, but that turned out to be a bad thing...

Clickable google cache link

Try to keep a sense of perspective when reading about "friendly fire".

How many troops in the field in the "coalition" forces? How many of those are American? How many British?

According to this link the U.S. has some 110,000 troops in Iraq, followed by Britain with 8,700. Overall there are only 22,000 soldiers of nationalities other than American total.

Now why were you surprised that most of the news of accidents and goof-ups seem to involve Americans?


It's actually kind of surprising that there are so many accidents involving soldiers of other nationalities than the U.S. in the news. And yes, quite a few of them involve the British.

Many of them without U.S. involvement, need I add.


Doo doo occurs. Accidents happen to the best of us and whining about "trigger-happy Americans" is insulting and shows a willful disregard of perspective in the matter, if not a lack of simple percentages. Regardless of your feelings of U.S. foreign policy remember that the soldiers whose performance you're so cavalierly insulting are not the ones making the decisions. They're just trying to serve their country and do a difficult job under some very nasty conditions.

Yes - it's that Michael Milken - the securities fraud guy.

With good crop rotation, and other standard farming practices soil depletion and erosion is not an issue. Hasn't been for years. Ethanol can be made from many different crops, corn is just one of them. Even assuming normal farming, as opposed to the most conservative ones soil overall stays the same, but fertilizer is added to keep it there (or often improve it first and then keep it there). Fertilizer manufacture is becoming much more efficient. While farmers are using less.

I am of course ignoring solar in claiming ethanol is energy position. IIRC plants are something like 2% efficient in converting solar energy to other forms, while solar cells can reach 40%. (laboratory, but 10% is reasonable in the real world, and these are old figures)

A quick google search reveals that typical studies show ethanol had 1:1.34 energy ratio in the mid 90s, and that number was going up, that is studies from the early 90s did have a negative balance. Interestingly, Gasoline production is quoted at 1:0.85, that is more energy is needed to produce gasoline than you get from it! (mostly because of cracking and other refinery costs)

Links: Estimating the Net Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update ETHANOL'S ENERGY BALANCE - Illinois Plenty more at Google, I just copied in the more interesting ones. I tried adding "Richard Heinberg" onto the search terms, but all I got was a bunch of FUD links with no hard data. (And a link to Amazon.com where I could buy his book, which might or might not be real science, I don't have the money to buy it)

Google Cache

Strangly enough, the google cache of google still has the old front page in it (as of 9:35am EST Monday). It's sort of cool to compare the two side by side.

In case of Slashdotting, here is the Google cache.

He is the CEO because he is a company founder. Recent article about company: Google Cache of Houston Chronicle Story

Yes, it was sold in 1991 to Novell: source

Sorry to reply to myself, but... people like to rail on MS claiming that they don't document their interfaces - poke around MSDN a bit. There is a HUGE amount of information there documenting all sorts of APIs. A good example is the MSGINA replacement doc, and some random APIs. All the information is easily accessible in one place.

Google Link

Here's the Google cache.

I believe that they do have to take antirejection drugs- regardless of their age. this site says (on the 7th page) "Again, as with the tiny premature babies and the dialysis patients, that up-front cost gives us an expanded capability to keep people with failed hearts alive a lot longer so they can receive even more care. Transplant patients can live for a very long time. The post-transplant follow-up care?including ongoing antirejection drugs . . ." So there you go. In addition, this site also claims that "Babies who now receive an incompatible blood-type heart still must take immunosuppressant drugs to ensure their bodies don't reject the donor heart. All transplant recipients, regardless of their age, blood type or the organ they receive, must do so."

Here is VERY good description.

Link

Google Cache :)

Morse code saved my life. Consider what the effort of learning martial arts or carrying a concealed weapon entails and the compair to the code and communications by sound, light, or radio.

"The strongest conspiracy is the conspiracy of the stupid"

The car is mine, and while on my private property I should be able to do whatever I like with it.

That's why there's Segway and an increasing variety of Slo-Go mobility devices.

Cars are for responsible drivers the government can designate and trust. Consider, a car irresponsibly driven can be a flying missile, is often used by terrorists as weapons (ever hear of a car bomb?), can potentially outrun officers of the law, are used by pedophiles and other criminals to abduct persons, and in general is much more responsibility than most citizens are equipped to handle. Timothy McVey drove a car to flee the scene, and drove a truck to destroy innocent citizens. We don't let people own grenades or missiles, and owning a car or truck has become nearly as dangerous.

Unlike developing EU measures to restrict car ownership to by fiat (forcing the masses to take public transportation), early US national and municipal studies recognized that US citizens were unlikely to abandon transportation forms that restricted their liberty. Hence the Federal subsidies and purchasing support for Segway and similar low-speed, low-risk mobility devices (aka "Slo-Go").

With a Segway (or comperable Slo-Go mobility device), drunk driving consequences are reduced to a few bruises or possibly a broken bone. Death to innocent parties in a collision? Absolutely not. Road rage at 10 mph? Equally limited consequences.

Fleeing law enforcement (in autos) in a Segway would only be a few minutes of absolute amusement for the officer involved, before the fleeing party was apprehended. Road wear and a variety of other issues with big vehicles would all be eliminated.

Congressional studies suggested an initial step in the next five years to dramatically hike auto registration/ownership taxes beyond the reach of many, creating a market preference shift for slow-go devices. Blanket auto ownership restrictions would probably meet extreme initial resistance, so punitive taxes gradually increased would be the most effective way of shifting ownership and encouraging the growth of the slow-go market.

The car experiment has been a collosal 100-year failure. Transition to Slo-Go is the only proper way for letting the masses drive. If you agree, be sure to check out the leading Slo-Go website EVWorld.com

Schwartz: We took a license from AT&T initially for $100 million as we didn't own the IP. The license we took also made clear that we had rights equivalent to ownership. When we did the deal with SCO earlier this year we bought a bunch of drivers and when we give money to a company oftentimes we get warrants, which is part of the negotiations. I have warrants in 100 different companies, we have a huge venture portfolio. I can't do anything about the perception that's out there and to be blunt, I don't care as those people aren't going to drive our future - customers are.

Google Cache

I don't mean to deprecate the work of Hertzfield, but MacPaint 1.0 was written by Bill Atkinson, according to both its own "splash screen" (actually just a brief text message in the window titlebar) and this apple.com page (the original page having disappeared). QuickDraw was written by Hertzfield and Atkinson together, according to its Wikipedia entry.