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When I was a kid I told my dad about an idea I had for a motor with a square in the middle instead of a piston. My pop informed me that the wankel engine was around a long time before I was.
At college I thought I'd invented the Class-D amplifier. I only found out about a month ago that I was over 50 years behind :)

I still spend too much time reading Slashdot, though no longer posting stories to the site. I wrote up a little thing (long ago -- itself quite flawed, but I hope useful nonetheless) about how to make a story submission which is likely to be accepted on the site. No promises, but ... whaddya want, this *is* Slashdot :)

timothy

Free (and legal) online version of "The Secret Guide to Computers" by Russ Walter:
http://www.secretguide.net/
Author's site:
http://www.angelfire.com/nh/secret/
Guy has a great sense of humor, and has been publishing the book (now in its 29th Edition) for several years.
MRH

Ordering is a bit tricky, but I mostly started learning from The Secret Guide to Computers (somewhere around the 12th or 15th edition), and I think it was pretty good.

My old site (scroll to the bottom):
http://www.angelfire.com/mt/woodmtn/insight.html [warning Lycos ads]
Was in my signature nearly a year ago [April 7 2005]
"...a new item the FOIL'ID AGAIN(TM) which is a foil wallet for passports and other RFID infested documents. RFID is cool in food packages, and books, but in ID it's just a bad idea. Someone could pick your pocket without your documents ever leaving your wallet, unless of course you invest in my FOIL'ID AGAIN(TM) product ;-)."

I wrote a game for 148. We were required to do asteriods. I did in in 3-d with a first person perspective. The prof's son was still playing it years later and it was shown as a demo on the first day of class for a few years after that. You can find it at http://www.angelfire.com/games/ultimateblaster/

In any case, what was your game? Do you have a link to it? The 248 games get mentioned on /. pretty regularly. Maybe it was featured and you missed it.

It shows that some people suck at research. I took two seconds on Google searching for "Zombies game" because I remember hearing the name from SOMEWHERE. When I found this like, it dawned on me that one of my friends actually owns this sh***y board game. I understand that they said that it was a video game, but if they're mucking up what the kids claimed the game was, then it's actually a board game. Here's the link for those who whish to check out the game ^_^ http://www.angelfire.com/games/zombiereviews/revie ws/zombiesrvw.html

Low levels of ionizing radiation seems to be actually beneficial to human health.

This is called radiation hormesis. And this theory started after they found that people who lived in such a distance from hiroshima and Nagasaki that they received low radiation doses. And, years later, this population, exposed to radiation, had much lower cancer rates than non-exposed similar populations.

You can check some references:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1150419 7&query_hl=3&itool=pubmed_docsum

http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v5/n1s/full/74 00222.html

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00019A7 0-0C1C-1F41-B0B980A841890000&catID=4

http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/inthorm. html

http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2004/Hormesis-T heory-Toxins27feb04.htm

It's shrinkage

Most of the documents about Jesus were discarded early by the church when they started portraying him as the son of God and not another prophit. This doesn't mean they don't exist or that jesus didn't exist.

There is a record of Jesus getting crusified that was kept by the romans. Flavius Josephus wrote about Jesus and the christian in A.D. 93 when doing a historical documentation on the jewish faith. We take alot of what we know about the romans from his writings. If he is a lier then it is likley most all our history is incorect. Granted it was writen after jesus' time but the author would have been alive and able to talk to people who witnessed it first hand.

Another reference to Jesus' existance is in the Talmud. This reference was at the times of Jesus' existance and delt directly with his "changing of the religions" or breaking jewish laws. It is very hostile towards him and documented his trial, convition and punishment. It is even hostile towards his mother. I could go on and on but I don't wish to prove his existance. This is an argument that will go round and round. Outside strict roman governing, we realy don't have much mor eof anythign to go on about these times.

If the same standards of proof were applied, it wouldn't be possible to believe any histroy around this time.

Was that browser/editor Mosaic?
If I remember right, that browser was standard in Compuserve. But, they had a customized version with no editor. Anyone remember the details of that, please enlighten us. All that ran on Windows 3.1, and Mosaic can still be downloaded for Win 3.1 or 95-98. Does not do a good job rendering modern web pages, however, and crashes sometimes.
We are just not used to that nowadays.

Just add this and you're all set.

http://www.angelfire.com/pa/sergeman/issues/techno logy/space.html

Manned space flight has all but died, perhaps this will spark a new era - The one we geeks have been waiting for...

when I play air guitar the traditional way it sounds good.

This new way might sound somewhat like how my actual guitar playing sounds: like crap.

More seriously, now that technology is this good, and we have things like this and the new Nintendo controller, maybe it's time for Nintendo (or someone else) to bring back the Power Glove for games and other computer stuff.

NoNoNo, I have a better idea! They had to smack the probe around a few times to bring it into line. How about calling it the Tomagothi?

People here are saying they have seen similar things sold on the internet (or to be announced) for insane amounts of money. I have seen these devices sold on Ebay - every time there is an "energy crunch", you see the number of auctions skyrocket. Most of these are for plans or sometimes actual devices - some knowledge of your car and engine, and some level of mechanical aptitude is required to install them.

At the same time, all of these things sound like a scam. I have heard all of the arguments, some make sense, some don't. So, instead of arguing about it, why don't we slashdotters construct our own, test it out, then see what is real? First off, start by googling hydro-boost. One of the first few links will take you to this page, which is a complete set of "plans" on how to build this kind of device from parts picked up at Home Depot (or the building supply place of your choice/location) and AutoZone or Checker (or whatever auto parts store is near you).

These devices are simple - they make what is known as Brown's Gas - a HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE MIXTURE of hydrogen and oxygen gases (note that if you build a "hydro-boost" cell for your car, that you want to make sure all of the gas is going into your engine, and not building up in areas under the hood/bonnet - unless you want a "car that goes BOOM!" literally) - used industrially for welding (similar to an oxy-acetylene torch system) - in fact, from that google search link you will find many suppliers of industrial Brown's Gas welding systems.

I don't know if these systems are the equivalent of fuel-line magnets or if they really work. If you are willing, try it yourself. Also note that I am not sure how your local environmental testing spot will treat you if you leave that device hooked up under your hood for a smog/emmissions test. They would probably fail you outright for unlawful engine modifications. However, they probably wouldn't have a problem helping you test such a system if you are willing to pay the fees needed - to see if emmissions go down if nothing else (other measurements they may or may not be willing to help out on). Just don't go through there "on the sly" - they don't look kindly on loose hoses, never mind funky emmisions modifications they don't approve...

But no one wanted to buy a passport protector, fine foil product when I offered 2 for sale on eBay earlier this year. They obviously don't have the following that Foil Hats for pets do.

A picture of the Foil'ID Again is at the bottom of this page http://www.angelfire.com/mt/woodmtn/insight.html

Now the US government is trying to improve upon my design by integrating the foil right into the cover of the passport. And I thought government wasn't supposed to interfere in start-up businesses.

I donut know what game you were playing, but Catacombs wasn't first person at all... it had a top down bird view:

http://www.angelfire.com/games5/dosgames/cat1shot. jpg

About links: I just started up Elinks on my knoppix remaster, and although it is a little like
lynx, it is fast. The scroll wheel works in the browser, but I note that the black background
makes it hard to see the cursor. I use this page for a start page:
http://www.angelfire.com/ms/telegram/fast.html

Where was the US during the first few years.

Secretly supplying Britain with weapons and updates to their RADAR technology. That's despite the fact that the US was pissed about being dragged into the first world war. (Something which *wasn't* any of our business.)

That's because the other powers in the world had used their guts an d guns against germany.

Bull. Read these statistics for some real info. Note that the three countries who committed the most forces (US, Britain, and USSR) came out of WWII with the strongest militaries. Britain still has an exemplary military today, and was the only non-US military who could provide reasonable resistance to the Soviets during the Cold War.

Yes I can. I can [...] get a gun and shoot you in the head.

You can try. But the second amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees US Citizens the right to fight for their freedom. You may be armed. But you know what? I just might be as well.

I'll say it again. I'm proud to be an American. YOU CANNOT TAKE THAT FROM ME. You may even succeed in taking my life, but you still will not have taken my pride in America. And if necessary, I will fight to the end to see that country stays free.

See plasma tweeter at (among other places) http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/cwillis/tweete r.html /J

Why is it that everytime someone finds something they carbon date it and then accept that as how old the object is? Carbon dating is wrong when you know how old an object is, but when you don't it is accepted as accurate information. I mean live penguins have been carbon dated at 8,000 years old http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/carbondating .html.

Remember the famouse automaton Mephisto from the 19th century that claimed to be a chess playing robot.
http://www.angelfire.com/games/SBChess/automaton.h tml
I think I could hide a midget inside an SUV with enough computer looking doohickies to make a cool $2mill.

English grammar is more like a scandinavian language than German. And the vocabulary is completely different.

I'd say that but German, Scandinavian and English probably do share a common ancestor. Which is more than can be said for English and Latin.

Incidentally, all this reminds me of a great post in alt.religion.kibology

http://www.angelfire.com/la/carlosmay/Chomp.html

Perhaps a good choice for moving materiel between safe locations, but not something you'd fly over the Middle East any time soon.

Worry not about that! http://www.angelfire.com/alt2/pblimp/blimp2.html

That's for wimps. Floating nuclear power is not for pansy-asses. You wanna know what we do when there's a meltdown? We hop on our jet-ski and ride around the disaster area with our geiger counter buzzing, posting photos to the internet, just like this biker babe. Who cares if we all die? At least we'll have floating nuclear power! Face it, if you don't build floating nuclear plants now, then Ralph Nader has already won.

That theory has long since been disproven:

http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/ontogeny.htm l

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie =UTF-8&rls=HPID,HPID:2005-21,HPID:en&q=Ontogeny+re capitulated+Phylogeny

Scientists expect to deploy a Space Batman to thwart any crimes attempted by the Space Penguin. The Governor of California may come to the defense of the Penguin.

Apparantly (search for Aias) the proper spelling from greek is Aias, which is much closer to the Iax pronunciation of netherlands origination.
So we can say AJAX will be pronunced after a mispelling of a greek warrior. I think I prefer the dutch pronunciation. Ajax(Iax) the technology for cutting through all those knotty web GUI problems.

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense (Originally printed in SciAm): http://www.angelfire.com/ok5/pearly/htmls/gop-evol ution.html

Bush added: "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

I think, President Bush should immediately endorse the teaching of the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory of the universe, as well as the Turtles-all-the-way-down-theory of geology. Not to forget the Plutonium Atom Totality theory of particle physics.
I honestly cannot undestand why American students are not exposed to these refreshing and original thoughts in the classroom nor why President Bush is not using his influence to set this important matter right!

There's some details of nuclear thermal rockets in general on Wikipedia with some interesting links at the bottom. I also found an idea for a SSTO vehicle using GCNRs.

here is a copy of the pdf unencrypted.

Anybody remember this? Ads in games (or even games as ads) aren't new, nor even uncommon! Just look at the rest of them.

• Here is the detailed Index of Creationist Claims which provides short answers to a very large number of oft-claimed claims. Each has the terminology and links to allow a much fuller exploration of the answer.
• Very well-written and filled with references 29 Evidences for Macroevolution FAQ. For each of the 29+ evidences, they provide predictions and ways to falsify the claim.
• Arguments that even creationist themselves have said should be retired as arguments. Interesting how many of these arguments still get used.

For your specific points, these are very common questions / issues from creationists and others (except the bone question), so the Index is useful:

1. Chance and probability: CB010
2. Information and mutations: we do see beneficial mutations (CB101) and we do see information increasing mutations (CB102), and the 2nd law is irrelevant to evolution (CF001.1 to CF001.5) in our not-closed system. Intelligence: Here's a single mutation thats corrolated with increasing our ancestors' intelligence.
3. You want transitions? how many different types of transitional series do you want? (aka Dinosaurs-Birds, reptiles-Mammals, apes-humans, land mammals to whales.) Look closely at the 20 main hominids between apes and modern humans. Check out this picture. Where is the bright line between human and ape? They're all transitional.
4. unreliable dating methods (CD010.1 to 010.5. Dating methods have been used badly, and the bad applications are caught by science, but which dating method is itself unreliable? (And, because it is often mentioned, fossils and rocks don't circularly date each other, Ham to the cute quote contrary.)
5. aka abiogenesis. Of course, evolution as a theory (alleles change in a population over time) only applies to life. Fast answer: Evolution doesn't fail without a theory of abiogenesis. See also CB000 through CB090and the abiogenesis and probability FAQs. (Also cosmic, stellar, chemical and organic "evolution" have nothing to do with biological evolution. Same word, different meaning.)
6. Each of the falsifications in the 29 Evidences for Macroevolution FAQ provides a way to falsify Evolution, in exactly the way that creationists tend to not provide ways to falsify creationism.
7. We have very good ideas of how the eye evolved: (and see also

Here is a link that explains the basics of computer hardware; I think that it's a good companion piece to the RAID article: http://www.angelfire.com/rings/judy_patch/

http://www.angelfire.com/d20/miamiharold/0111.html

Enjoy.....

Some ionizing radiation is not bad for you in small amounts - it is actually beneficial. The idea that the damage is cumulative and has a zero threshold is an assumption that has been disproven. See http://cnts.wpi.edu/RSH/Docs/index_science.html for links to the scientific studies done on radiation hormesis.

Here's a brief overview of some studies listed in http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/inthorm. html:
"1-According to UNSCEAR report (1994), among A-bomb survivors from Hiroshimaand Nagazaki who received doses lower than 200 mSv, there was no increase in the number of total cancer death. Mortality caused by leukemia was evenlower in this population at doses below 100 mSv than age-matched controlcohorts.
2-Mifune (1992) (Mifune et al. 1992) and his co-workers indicated that in a spa area (Misasa), with an average indoor radon level of 35 Bq/m3, the lung cancer incidence was about 50% of that in a low-level radon region. Their results also showed that in the above mentioned high background radiation area, the mortality rate caused by all types of cancer was 37% lower.
3-According to Mine et al. (1981), among A-bomb survivors from Nagasaki, in some age categories, the observed annual rate of death is less than what is statistically expected.
4-Kumatori and his colleagues (Kumatori et al. 1980) reported that according to their 25 year follow up study of Japanese fishermen who were heavily contaminated by plutunium (hydrogen bomb test at Bikini), no one died from cancer. "
"1-In an Indian study, it was observed that in areas with a high-background radiation level, the incidence of cancer and also the mortality rate due to cancer was significantly less than similar areas with a low backgroundradiation level (Nambi and Soman 1987).
2-In a very large scale study in U.S.A, it was found that the mortality rate due to all malignancies was lower in states with higher annual radiation dose (Frigerio 1976).
3- In a large scale Chinese study, it was showed that the mortality rate due to cancer was lower in an area with a relatively high background radiation (74,000 people), while the control group (78,000 people) who lived in anarea with low background radiation had a higher rate of mortality (Wei L 1990).
4-In the U.S.A., it was indicated that significantly, the total cancer mortalityis inversely correlated with background radiation dose (Cohen BL. 1993). "

http://www.angelfire.com/wa/zzaran/calvin.html

No kidding. Crooks put an 'out of order' sign on the night deposit door at a bank. They provided an old style metallic milk box - used for door to door milk deliveries once upon a time - with a slot in the top and an industrial strength padlock and chain attached. Yes I know...but it worked(popup)...at least for a while. They got caught, but some people actually used the milk box. A similar con was related by Frank Abagnale, subject of the movie "Catch Me If You Can" on "The Tonight Show"{popup}. People have an endless capacity for stupidity, especially when you consider an Internet sized sample. Hell, lots of folks still use A.O.L.

billy - who has to go now...Ed McMahon is at the front door

I don't think there was a more controversial topic then the a-bomb. For Japanese atrocities committed against prisoners, at Bataan, Singapore, at sea, Nanjing, one could argue that we want to make sure we bring the horror of war to the Japanese people (civilians) to let them know that war isn't just fun and games like Tojo's government made them out to be. Although one must also think -- didn't the US already do that with battleships bombarding coastal industrial centers at will and bombers terror bombing Tokyo with incendiaries? I suppose, like Truman said, the cost of lives lost to the a-bombs may just be well under the lives that will be lost on both sides if a landing on the home islands took place.

Here we have another OS that will be preinstalled on the machines for sale in the stores.
That means that the hardware has been tested to work with the OS, and the buyer only has to turn the machine on to boot to a desktop.
That's the way it was with Windows 98.
Sure, XP does boot to X, but it boots to the "pick a user" screen, assuming that there are more than one in the house.
To get to the Administrator account, one has to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete twice once the above login screen appears.
I don't know, but do Macs boot to the desktop when the box is turned on?
Anyway, linux, as good as it is, is not installed on the computers for sale in the stores, such as Compusa, Office Depot or Walmart.
Windows XP is, and now we have the chance to see Mac OS X there too, I assume.
Dell wants to provide that also, and they are the online leader in sales of computers, and may out-sell the stores, but I doubt it.
Too easy to impulse-buy a nice HP, Compaq, Gateway or Emachines computer and walk away from the store, get it up and running that day.
Linux, with all of it's variants, will always need to get that OS on the computers, somehow, at the stores to do well.
Right now, I am running a remaster of Damn Small Linux, but not from the CD, I have booted it with loadlin, and the /knoppix folder is in /dev/hdb1.
Normally this OS runs as a LiveCD distro.
I have had a case lately where an XP machine got to an unbootable state, needing repair or reinstall, and I loaned a LiveCD for use until the machine could be fixed. The owner could check AOL email, do online banking, use Google to look for answers on the no-boot problem, visit the manufacturers websites to view the support documents, and generally surf the web looking for answers.
Files could be viewed and saved from the unbootable drive.
So LiveCD linux has a place in this world of XP boxes.
I understand that Mac OS is a lot more stable than XP, so the above crash scenario may not be a problem.
A lot of in-store purchases of boxes with that OS installed will have to occur before we see the competition with XP and Linux.
One more item:
Owners of XP boxes need broadband to download all the patches and security fixes, dialup won't really do the job, especially if they have Microsoft Office also. The nearly daily updates of the virus scanner files adds to the problem. All unnecessary with liveCD linux.

Have you ever heard of bullet time?

Dear India:
(http://www.angelfire.com/oz/tinman5)
My resume is on my web page.

ahh an angelfire website, we would of preffered geocities but as they are equally prestigious, you'll fit right in.

This is an animation of Buzbee's house right after slashdotting.

I remastered DSL 6.2, and often run it from the hard drive as a /knoppix folder, with a loadlin setup on older Windows 98 machines. Provides a nice alternative to windows.
I had to do that remaster for two reasons, DSL went to an isolinux setup that would not boot on a lot of my machines, and they did not have Firefox.
Since then, then they have a syslinux version, and also include Firefox.
I did, however, use a different Fluxbox style, that made the menu easier to see on laptop screens. DSL still has a fluxbox style that is, in my opinion, hard to see on some screens.
My fluxbox style is also used in my Knoppix 3.4 remaster, screenshots in my signature. In that remaster, I also have icewm as default, and KDE.

Only thing really unusual about my Knoppix remaster is the several mouse cursor themes available, and easily selected and used in any window manager.
I don't have that in the DSL remaster, however, but did run the size of that one up to about 75 MB with the additional programs detailed in the link above.

do people discover such wonderful things as the Bistromathic Drive?

"The Reagan arms shipments to Iran might have reached a value of $82B. Even the smaller, officially admitted figures account for TOW missiles illegally shipped through Israel, which were strategically valuable to Iran in its Iraq war. That's what "Iran/Contra" was (half) about, but I suppose you've got some kind of "legitimate" explanation that excuses that illegal guns/drugs/policy scam."

$82 billion? That's hysterical!!

According to http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/BOOK3Ch7.html

the total was $38 million. The TOW missles were surplus, Ollie North got them because he divereted them from being scrapped. The Hawk missle was being abandonded by the US and NATO.

Having been an infantry company level officer, I can tell you that 2,000 TOW missles wouldn't have made a dent in the war. They probably could have put a few dozen, max 100 Iraqi tanks out of the war. Considering Sadaam had built the seventh largest army in the world and third largest tank army, that would have no effect on the war.

Your 'reliable' secretary is 85 years old, resides in a nursing home and missidentifed which Bush she was speaking of the first time CBS News tried to confirm the memos. Were she supportive of the President, you'd call her biased.

Please... Supershadow is known to post bogus material.

Mod that down to not confuse readers with scripts Supershadow himself wrote.

His real name is Mickey Suttle, and the only parts of his page that's reasonably authentic is parts he has stolen and assembled from other fansites like TheForce.net. He claims to be a "one of the world's premier documentary filmmakers", but as one might expect, his known for making not a single one on the Internet.

They are following the rules of colonialism, otherwise known as claiming area for one's nation with the cunning use of flags. The US has a flag on the moon, so until someone else claims another piece of space with another flag, it's all theirs.

For more please refer to Eddie Izzard.