Slashdot Mirror

links:

http://members.aol.com/discord23/mckenna.htm

the Mckenna book "Food of the Gods"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553371304/ ref%3Dsim%5Fbooks/103-2380334-3906266

a review

http://cerebrex.com/bkfog.htm

and the fusion anomaly

http://fusionanomaly.net/evolution.html

more on Mckenna from lycaeum

http://nepenthes.lycaeum.org/McKenna/

When a I first read this I thought it was referring to the 1960 'Caper film', The League of Gentlemen directed by Basil Dearden.

Not to be confused with the later 'The League of Gentlemen' nor to be confused with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. No doubt the latter two are making reference to the *original* starring Jack Hawkins (Ben Hur, The Cruel Sea, a favourite - The Plantation owners wife - curiously renamed, 'Outpost in Malaya'.)

You can read the detailed description here.

When a I first read this I thought it was referring to the 1960 'Caper film', The League of Gentlemen directed by Basil Dearden.

Not to be confused with the later 'The League of Gentlemen' nor to be confused with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. No doubt the latter two are making reference to the *original* starring Jack Hawkins (Ben Hur, The Cruel Sea, a favourite - The Plantation owners wife - curiously renamed, 'Outpost in Malaya'.)

You can read the detailed description here.

Opera's page describing the MSN problem doesn't display properly in Netscape 4.7 -- but it does display properly in IE5.0.

Opera's page describing the MSN problem doesn't display properly in Netscape 4.7 -- but it does display properly in IE5.0.

Telling someone not to look at something is the surest way to get them to look at it. Besides, at least goatse is funny. The funniest part is that someone took those awful goatse pictures as part of a series of photos that were evidently meant to be erotic.

In any case, I find things at AOL, MSN, and Yahoo to be just as offensive as goatse.

Basically, to all you goatse haters, get a sense of humor for fsck's sake. And for you moderators with no sense of humor, I have karma to burn. Give it to me baby.

GF

When you have a crime to investigate, and you have no suspects, where do you start? Obviously you begin by looking at the person or persons who have the most to gain by perpetrating the crime.

This is why we must consider: who had something to gain from the disasterous crimes of September 11th? Obviously not Osama Bin Laden, who would net no financial windfall from the destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Although he has loudly applauded the "terrorist" acts of September 11th and even tacitly taken credit for them, there is no reason to believe that he is anything more than a bandwagon jumper. Being blamed for the destruction of the World Trade Center has done more for his image than any amount of militant Islamic rhetoric.

But if not Bin Laden, then who?

It so happens that on December 11th, "coincidentally" 2 months after the tragedy, Credit Suisse First Boston quietly agreed to pay out US$100 million in order to settle an 18 month old investigation into its handling of certain high-profile technology IPOs (Initial Public Offerings). One of the most controversial amongst these being the IPO of VA Linux Systems, Inc. (LNUX) .

VA Linux Systems, Inc., now known as VA Software, is widely derided as a poster child of the dot-com bust, though inexplicably still in business. At the time of the IPO, VA Linux (Software) shares opened trading at nearly 10 times their $30 offer price, closing the first day of trading at $239.25. This meteoric rise made many early investors rich, strangely on account of a company which purports to sell a hobbyist operating system which can be obtained for free on the Internet. "The VA Linux initial public offering is a prime example of market manipulation in an IPO by investment banks, their customers and the issuing firm," said Steven Schulman, a partner in the law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, which specializes in filing shareholder suits.

"Because certain favored customers of the investment banks agreed to buy shares in a new issue at inflated prices in the aftermarket (in return for getting an allocation of the shares at the initial offering price) the share prices to which the IPO eventually soared were actually driven by artificial market forces," continues Schulman.

But what does the VA Software (Linux) IPO have to do with the attacks on September 11th, and what has that to do with the Credit Suisse settlement? Well, considering that VA Linux (Software) got CSFB into trouble in the first place, it stands to reason that the VA Linux (Software) Board of Directors were complicit in the stock fraud from beginning to end. As the investigation progressed against CSFB, the unscrupulous VA Software/Linux executives, their pockets bulging with filthy lucre plundered from trusting, hard-working investors, must have realized that their days in the country club were numbered if the SEC discovered their wrongdoings.

The SEC, or Securities Exchange Commission, is a federal regulatory agency, and cannot be bribed. Therefore, with a possible stint in federal prison looming large, Larry Augustin and the rest of the crooks, including outspoken gun violence advocate Eric S. Raymond, decided to undertake more active means to halt the investigation.

The Plan

It so happened that all the evidence in the CSFB/VA Linux investigation was held at the SEC Northeast Regional Office in Manhattan. More specifically, 7 World Trade Center, Suite 1300. The board decided that a simple burglary or arson attempt would not be satisfactory to destroy the evidence; anything so simple had a significant chance of being botched, and regardless of success would leave too many witnesses or living accomplices.

It was then that Eric S. Raymond suggested something he had read in a book by Tom Clancy. Crashing two planes into the World Trade Center Plaza would guarantee the destruction of the SEC offices, killing the operatives and possibly a number of SEC investigators at the same time. The plan seemed flawless, and would cost little more than the price of a few plane tickets. In a secret session, the board voted unanimously in favour of Eric's suggestion, and began to put it into action.

VA Software/Linux, at the time of planning the attacks, had no shortage of H1-B visa workers, who they employed for the purpose of writing and improving hacking, encryption, and other terrorist tools for the Linux operating system. It had been decided that a hand-picked few of these foreign H1-B workers would be used as the "patsies" in the operation. A contest was held, and the most zealotous Linux advocates were chosen for this secret assignment, direct from the board of directors. They accepted their mission after being told that, if successful, it would guarantee the adoption of Linux in the desktop market.

Alan Cox was brought into the fold to provide some planning and logistics for the mission. It was he who determined that since there was no adequate flight simulator software for Linux, the patsies would need to train at a flight school in order to pull off the plan successfully. It was also his idea to hijack a third and fourth plane for the purpose of crashing them into Washington D.C., to express his extreme rage over the DMCA, or Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The board of directors agreed with this addition to the plan in the hopes that it would help divert attention from the purpose of the WTC attack.

The H1-B workers were given false identities by using Linux hacking tools. Once they had attended the necessary flight training, they stayed at the Massachusetts home of Richard M. Stallman for a brief "faith building" retreat. During this time spent at the house of Stallman, between the nauseating stench of patchouli, Stallman's incessant, pitiful recorder playing, and Stallman's droning seminars on the grammatical and syntactical accuracy of various statements by Microsoft representatives, the H1-B workers were effectively hypnotized to the point that they were ready to lay down their lives for Free Software. It was then that they departed for Boston's Logan International Airport to board the planes.

(The preceding inside information has been obtained from a credible source close to the VA Linux/Software Board of Directors. He/she is in hiding for obvious reasons in light of this damning evidence, but has presented hard, physical evidence of VA Software/Linux's complicity in the events of 9/11 to federal investigators.)

Troll 68 of 208 from the annals of the Troll Library .

Opensource and freeware can be easily obtained from web pages.

Yeah, web pages often paid by the author. Web pages where the auther has to pay bandwidth fees. Web pages whose bandwidth may be saturated to the max. Sure, there are organizations which are willing to host software for free (like SourceForge), but for various reasons some authors may not want (or be able) to host their site at such places. Not to mention, I'm sure VA pays a lot of money for bandwith and administration of SourceForge--as do other sites.

P2P systems allow the users to help share the costs of bandwidth, and if the scumbags hadn't sued every maker of communications software called "P2P" or "file sharing", we'd probably have a P2P CVS type system too, among other things. And the reason "nobody is using Kazaa for legitimate purposes" is because the RIAA basicly said it was okay for "the fans" to "trade" music--they just demonized the people who made any sort of file sharing software. Though I doubt every user of Kazaa is using it for illegitimate purposes. I'm sure you'd say the same thing about Napster, but I know the band Betty's Trash was using it to publish their music. Unless you think it should be illegal for an independent band to publish their music.

Also, I would be concerned that a P2P app like Kazaa would "hijack" important ports.

I assume you mean it would use up all the bandwith and use ports in such a way as to not allow blocking it. Yeah, that's a problem. People shouldn't use up bandwith they're not entitled to.

>Most places, if you work less than 40 hours, it comes out of your paycheck just as if you were an hourly employee. It's only overtime that's "free".

If you work for a company that's doing this, sue their asses off! They cannot legally treat you as exempt in one instance and hourly in the other. Actually, there is a huge lawsuit going on right now against WalMart because they were doing exactly that thing to their pharmacists.

It used to be in the 1980s one could make money raising and selling llamas because everyone wanted to buy them to make money selling them to those who wanted to buy them to make money doing the same etc. While legal, since llamas are beautiful animals in and of themselves, this approach to llama economics still smells to me a bit like a pyramid scheme. See for example: http://members.aol.com/LostCrk431/straightscoop.ht ml

Consider academia. Professors make money producing PhDs wanted by people so they can produce PhDs wanted by people who want to make money doing the same etc. Considering how an average professor might produce tens of PhDs, where will this lead?

See any parallels to llama production?

The Academic PhD market which was hot in the 1950s has over the succeeding decades been collapsing from the weight of overproduced PhDs relative to academic positions. (Yes there are other uses for a PhD but the main use historically was always to teach...)

For details on "Contemporary Problems in Science Jobs" see: http://his.com/~graeme/cpsj.html

Having said that, obviously some PhDs, like some llamas, are a valuable addition in this diverse world.

IPv6 is an attempt to return to the principles that gave the internet it's growth and democracy in the beginning:

Dumb network, smart edges.

When IPv4 was designed, there was no plan for exponential user growth outside of military/R&D/education. If there had been, addresses would've been 48+ bits from 1980 onward.

The failing with pre-existing networks which IP was meant to surmount is that the interior of the network was too intelligent. That sounds like a good thing, but it means that the network as a whole is less flexible- the inner nodes (routers) cannot be easily upgraded to support new applications and features. Under IP, all interesting computers are into hosts on the edge of the network. Each can be upgraded by an end-user, without supplication to the network templars- be they Bell Atlantic frame relay technicians, or Novell NOS admins. Those smart edges are served by a dumb cloud- the rest of the network just passes data from one place to another, without translating or modifying it in anyway. In the past, network application growth was slowed because users couldn't easily tell what was going on inside the cloud. IP made the cloud's job boring, so that you were no longer interested in seeing what went on there.

That change triggered the explosive growth of computer networks until they combined into the shared entity we all know and love.

NAT betrays this heritage

NAT boxes move intelligence back into the cloud- instead of IP packets being routed to the desired host and no other, there are now entities hidden in the cloud which waylay your packets. They seize them, pull them apart, inspect their innards- then, maybe, they'll deign to alter the packet and send it along further.

The damage isn't just a theoretical one- real end-users are being held back by NAT and other violations of the IP promise. New applications which would be easier to deploy with real per-host addressing are difficult or impossible to install reliably. This is things like high-speed game servers, file/web servers, P2P clients, cheap VOIP, videoconferencing, VPN, and prehaps things that haven't been invented yet.

The internet should be about giving power to the users on its edges. IPv6 would encourage that, but NAT hinders it. There are forces who don't want to empower users- major content providers and big ISPs. (Which may be the same thing). Fearful of losing control of mass audience's entertainment patterns, they want to keep mass creativity centralized. AOL doesn't want users to download ClickNRun IRC-like servers to create TeenTalkDaytonville chatrooms, they want to sell them as a value added service. Time Warner doesn't want 100s of cheap FTP servers passing out free copies of 56 year old TV shows (which by rights are public domain), they want you to wait for the DVD or PPV options.

The desire exists. A chicken in every pot, and permanent IP address in every study! The powers that be are fearful, though. The existing entertainment/datacomm oligopoly was harmed enough by the Internet. End-users sharing data amoung themselves could ruin them- but the exhaustion of IP addresses provided an excuse to keep end-users cordoned off from the real internet. They could download, but not serve files- as long as the people remain "consumers", the corporations can keep them under control.

NAT boxes bring the internet a tiny bit back towards the shape of traditional TV and telephone networks, which is just how big business likes it.

This just in:
Final score for the revolution : goats : 1 - sheep - 0

In high rez http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.mo v
or here http://engsoc.queensu.ca/jabela/filez/videos/anima trixlgfinal_dl.mov

Animatrix Trailer (high res)

Animatrix Part 1

just right click and choose "save as" if you're using IE =)

Animatrix Trailer (high res)

Animatrix Part 1

just right click and choose "save as" if you're using IE =)

I would reccomend using a tool like wget or lftp to grab them, as my connection reset several times while downloading (due to the traffic I imagine).

Small (30MB+):
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixsmfinal_dl.mo v

Medium (90MB+):
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixmedfinal_dl.m ov

Large (140MB+):
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.mo v

I would reccomend using a tool like wget or lftp to grab them, as my connection reset several times while downloading (due to the traffic I imagine).

Small (30MB+):
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixsmfinal_dl.mo v

Medium (90MB+):
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixmedfinal_dl.m ov

Large (140MB+):
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.mo v

I would reccomend using a tool like wget or lftp to grab them, as my connection reset several times while downloading (due to the traffic I imagine).

Small (30MB+):
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixsmfinal_dl.mo v

Medium (90MB+):
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixmedfinal_dl.m ov

Large (140MB+):
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.mo v

And the other resolutions:

320x136
480x204
640x272

And the other resolutions:

320x136
480x204
640x272

And the other resolutions:

320x136
480x204
640x272

Here it is: The Second Renaissance Part 1

1) Send a robot to Mars with empty tanks, a reactor, a pump, and telemetry. Let it mine the Martian atmosphere for a year or so to extract oxygen from C02 in the thin air, and H2 from the water vapor in the thin air. Check on it to make sure there are plenty of both before sending the people, and then you don't have to carry your return fuel and oxygen all the way there. The savings are astounding! Here is one plan.

2)Put a base on the north pole of the Moon. There 's water there (as ice) so with energy from a reactor you can make a livable place much cheaper than at a space station. It lots easer to get rocks to protect your living quarters too! Melt the rocks down to make the equivalent of fiber glass, concrete, etc. It's very much cheaper to take off from the Moon, (even at its north pole) than it is from the Earth at its equator.

3)Talk to Burt Rutan about making an airbreather plane that converts to a rocket after it leaves the atmophere. Most of the weight of a rocket now is oxidant.

The Amiga ascii scene (Now often refered to as the "oldschool scene"):
From the early 90's people made "collections" - large textfiles - with logos (file_id.diz, bbs adverts, demo group names, etc), and later rants, poems and other forms of self expression. Tools of the trade: Slash, backslash, underscore, pipe, you get the idea.
Freshpla.net has a pretty good (though not updated) archive. Yes, I know, this might be look like madness to, hm, laymen :) If you really want to have a closer look, though, check out the works of e.g. Mark Ryder, Grimlock, and... no, too many to mention. All collections should be viewed with CygnusEd in Topaz 8, even though your browser could do the trick.

The blockstyle scene
These are the nice people that make most of those NFO files. Uses the blocks in the MS-DOS charset. Two of the biggest groups are Superior Art Creations (SAC) and Chemical Reaction (CRO). Get the Damn NFO Viewer (Win32).

The newschool scene
Seems to be the part of the group-based ascii scene that stays furthest away from the warez scene. Uses e.g. $$$$$$ to fill shapes, and various other characters to make their outline smooth. Only active examples I can remember at the moment are Mimic and Remorse. Ansi happens :)

The Ansi scene
Ascii is ascii and ansi is ansi, but these scenes are closely connected. Colourized art using the MS-DOS font. There can only be one: ACID. Viewers available for most platforms, just use Google.

...and then, of course, there are those other forms of ascii art, as the hilarious The Adventures of the Boy with Immovable Hair and this wonderful flash anim synced to an Offspring song (Might be from the same author as that flash link in the parent post).

d00d, if ads make up content for you, may I suggest something different?

:P

Ah, I get it. No, I do =)

However, you are stealing

Are you a subscriber?.

Well, if you read the pricing page, you'll see that you can get AOL for as little as $4.95 per month. I've switched several people over to cable, and dropped their AOL charges down to this small plan. They keep their old @aol.com email address, and get to it using the AOL client and TCP/IP over the broadband connection.

Well, if you read the pricing page, you'll see that you can get AOL for as little as $4.95 per month. I've switched several people over to cable, and dropped their AOL charges down to this small plan. They keep their old @aol.com email address, and get to it using the AOL client and TCP/IP over the broadband connection.

Interestingly, while you may be right (I was a producer/engineer and am still a member of NARAS) the reason each organization was formed was exactly opposite, with RIAA being a technical organization and NARAS a creative one.

Why was NARAS formed?

"In 1957, a visionary group of music professionals and label executives in Los Angeles recognized the need to create an organization that would represent the creative people in the recording arts and sciences.

The founding members of the Recording Academy [NARAS] wanted to recognize and celebrate the artistic achievement of not only talented musicians and singers but also important, behind-the-scenes contributors such as producers and engineers.

Conceived as a way to create a real recording industry community and address some of these concerns, the Recording Academy was born and the GRAMMY Awards process began."

Now, how about the RIAA?

"The RIAA was formed in 1952 to facilitate the technical standardization of records by bringing together engineers from member companies to develop the RIAA curve, a frequency response specification for optimizing the performance of phonographic playback systems."

So, the RIAA was formed as a standards organization which would ensure that competing standards would not be an issue. In 1958, they decided to copy RCA 's "Gold Record" sales award and gave one to Perry Como (I think) for selling something like $50,000 worth of albums.

So, the RIAA was initially a totally technical organization which slowly got into the business of also certifying sales figures with their gold/platinum albums.

Then came Hilary.

You can download said trailer here (it's 18 MB, so those with slower connections be warned).

The quote is by Martin Niemöller:

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
Ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie die Juden holten, habe ich geschwiegen,
ich war ja kein Jude.
Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr,
der protestieren konnte.

Here's a page with an English translation.

You cannot say that the club is unbiased - but you do not know that the club is biased either. This is not because it straddles some ambiguous nether-region. It is because you know nothing of the club beyond what you have heard or read. (Come visit sometime, the pizza is for non-members too!)

At the foundation of the club is a set of values that supercedes any corporate affiliation. At the core is the desire to learn about technologies that we are not exposed to in course material, yet may encounter in the business world.

Since Ohio State students are likely to graduate without meaningful technical exposure to Microsoft products, this is often the logical choice when looking for a solution to explore. Undoubtedly we can fall back on the assumption that if we choose a Microsoft solution it will be provided to us free of charge, but this does not drive our selection process as much as an outsider might imagine.

In a recent discussion on source control there were over 60 discussion posts over the course of two days - largely debating the merits of CVS vs. VSS. Ultimately we elected to set them both up and conduct an analytical study of the merits of each. If anything, as with society at large, I've noticed a subtle anti-MS bias among club members.

Later in your post you complain about a professor of yours whom you feel is being tempted by the beast.

You then comment on his apparently poor administration skills (only negligent admins were hit by the SQL worm). Maybe he's still learning?

You also use the term "allegedly" to describe your lack of knowledge regarding the financing behind the lab in question. I suspect that in your unbiased comments regarding the many Unix, Solaris and Mac labs in campus, you replace "allegedly" with "generously" when describing how financing for these labs were secured?

Perplexed at how an instructor might achieve impartiality given all of this bribery, you retreat to the rationalization that Java (with an 7 year head-start) development outpaces development in (1 year old) .NET. You sound like a boastful mother bragging that her son can read to the parent of an infant who still needs his diapers changed!

My point is that for someone who seems to continually lace his/her prose with subtle inferences to your distaste for MS, you're not a poster child for objectivity.

dsf fdgh dfghdfg dfg hdfg
sdf df ghdfghdfghdfg fd hdf

sdffgh dfg hdf ghdfg hdghdf hgdf ghdf
sfdgh df gdf gdfghd fh
gsdfgsgd dfhg dfgh dfgh df ghdgh
s dfg hdfhdf gh df ghdfghdfh
fdg
sfd

fdssd

A few years ago a friend-of-a-friend showed me a potato cannon he built. I noticed a few flaws in the design:

1. Potatos are tasty. Sure, you could try to get rotten ones to use as ammo by digging through the trash, but that's just sick. I decided I'd rather use projectiles that aren't food.

2. It was hard to aim and fire... The ignitor was on the end cap and it was just a straight length of pipe with a reducing coupling. I decided on an improved design to make it fire and handle more like a bazooka.

The result was a golf ball cannon which was capable of putting a golf ball THROUGH 3/4" plywood. It also did quite a bit of damage to my fence. I later decided I should scale the design down and build something smaller for shooting less-destructive ammo, so I built a paint ball version. Like so many projects of mine, I had planned to one day make a detailed website about the construction of all my PVC weaponry, but the novelty wore off.

break time was over...15 minutes ago, bob!
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/aol/us/aolentert ainment/tv/2003/specials/superbowl/reebok_dl.mov

oh and here is the Terry Tate Office linebacker ad. Good stuff!

Watch superbowl ads here
http://www.aol.com/superbowlads/home.html

• Quicktime version
• MPEG-1 version

320, ~8MB

640, ~25MB

320, ~8MB

640, ~25MB

Matrix Direct Download Link

Quicktime click here to download

Let's slashdot AOL! :)

Download the new trailer here.

Done.

Here's an interesting link--be sure to read the skeptic's perspective on the second page. In short, the UFO very likely was the planet Venus.

I have not been able to verify this (I don't have access to paper copies of the document) but it has been reported that even a group that would quite like to see a substantiated sighting of an alien craft (MUFON - the Mutual UFO Network) agrees that this sighting is bogus. (Citation is Abercrombie, Andy. No Title. The Lone Star (TX) MUFON Reporter. 15 May 1993)

The still pictures on this site are less than impressive. They could very easily be the result of the planet Venus, plus some artifacts due to camera motion, image enlargement, and smoothing. (Only this first image is unenlarged--and I'm not overly excited.) I can't seem to play their first video, but the second one is not from the eclipse; it is another event. To be fair, this second video is more interesting (it has a moving object), and represents either better evidence (on its face) or a hoax requiring more effort.

There is tons of video tape UFO evidence so I don't understand why you claim there is none.

There is tons of video tape evidence of an unidentified flying object, yes. Unless it is Venus. Millions of people were watching the eclipse that day--Mexico City is not exactly a small community. Where was the panic in the streets? The frantic news reports?

The clincher for me is that there were tens of thousands of astronomers present, both amateur and professional. The object is described in most reports as stationary and quite bright (visible even during daylight), and it was not far in the sky from a highly observed phenomenon (the Sun during an eclipse). Astronomers unable to indentify a very bright stationary object that suddenly appeared in the sky would not hestitate to report it. Why? Not because they're thinking aliens--but rather, because they're thinking supernovae. Discover a nearby one and you're famous for the rest of your life in astronomical circles. So where were the reports to the International Astronomical Union? Actually, since the object faded to invisibility much more rapidly than a supernova, it would be even more interesting--a hitherto undiscovered class of astronomical object, worthy of discussion and analysis. A quick review of the literature reveals nothing--not even a "Gee, that's weird" type note in an astronomical journal.

Unless all the atronomers are in on the conspiracy of silence. But there's nothing in it for them. A lot of them would be thrilled to have proof of other life in the Universe--it would help them get more funding.

One of Richard's suggestions for the main character was Q*Bert, a combination of CUBE (QUBE) and HUBERT. Don't ask me who Hubert is. Waxman recalls an intermediate step, "It went from *&!!#$$! to cubert but I was afraid it would be pronounced 'cub bert' so I had suggested that the 'cu' be changed to 'q'."

Looks like the asterisk might have come from the swearing characters.

I have to agree here. Well, I do own one... :-)
For all the gory detail, see The Lotus 7 Club Technical Forum and, the ultimate for /.ers, An on-the-fly programmable ECU.
The thing that makes a Caterham so much better than a motorbike (it made me switch over) is the handling. I've been on-road in the Seven with motorbikes and on-track in the Seven with Ferraris, and the Caterham can go round the corners *much* faster than either. Many Ferrari owners who have witnessed this have later gone on to buy Sevens...
It's the only car I know of which is possible to buy with a built-in lap-timer as an option. It is, basically, a race car which has been made road-legal. Just.

"Maybe we all need to subsidize a cheap ISP for morons."

Good idea... we already have the cheap ISP for morons. Now who's going to kick in some money to help pay for everyone's bill?

They probably do. With 32k games, it could only be...
...an Atari 2600 with a broadband adaptor! Yes! The return of Gameline!

One of my favourite SciFi series is by David Zindell titled "A Requiem for Homo Sapiens". There are 4 books starting with Neverness, The Broken God, The Wild and War in Heaven. Seekers of the Ineffable Flame can try this link.
Has some very interesting concepts that appeal to geeks, metaphysicians and people who just like a good story.

The last link is to 'A Brief Guide to Liturgical Copyright' by the Church of England. If anyone knows about copyright on the AV (KJV), the Church of England certainly should:

Authorized Version (AV), also known as the King James Version (KJV)
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building
Shaftesbury Road
Cambridge CB2 2RU
Tel: (01223) 312393
Fax: (01223) 315052.
(Applications should be addressed to The Permissions Controller.)
Application not required for liturgical use up to a maximum of 500 verses (not including a complete biblical book).

Acknowledgement:
From The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown's patentee, Cambridge University Press.

According to this page, cubits can range from 12 inch to about 39 inches. It seems like their cubit is more like 20.6 inches.

"Cubits" range from less than 12 inches in the case of Pygmies, to more than 36 inches, in the case of Giants. The cubit of the king of Bashan was estimated to be 39.37 inches. (A Meter-long Cubit! :)

The "1992 World Almanac and Book of Facts" gives a Roman Cubit of 17.5 inches, a Greek Cubit of 18.3 inches, and a so-called "Biblical Cubit" of 21.8 inches.

Collier's Encylopedia (Weights and Measures, pages 394,395) gives an Arabian(black) cubit of 21.3 inches, an Arabian(hashimi) cubit of 25.6 inches, an Assyrian cubit of 21.6 inches, an ancient Egyptian cubit of 20.6 inches, an ancient Israeli cubit of 17.6 inches, an ancient Grecian cubit of 18.3 inches, and an ancient Roman cubit of 17.5 inches; The last two agree with the 1992 World Almanac ones.

Webster's unabridged dictionary gives a Roman cubit of 17.4 inches, and an Egyptian cubit of 20.64 which is about the same as Collier's. And, (of course,) Webster's ENGLISH dictionary for english-speaking people in the U.S.A., gives a modern ENGLISH CUBIT of 18 inches.

Guess they're going for the Egyptian one. Next quarter all they have to do is increase the size of their cubit instead of improve their technology to get a higher "density".

Basically, once there has been a ruling, it lasts forever and can never be changed, except when superceded by law.

You are mostly right, but there is at least one clear time when the US Supreme Court overruled itself. The case was Hammer v. Dagenhart in 1918, which was overruled by United States v. Barby, decided in 1941. To read more about how some justices view the constrain of precident, read O'Connor's opinion in Planned Parenthood of SE Pennsylvania v. Casey, decided in 1992. Here is a link to that opinion.

There is almost zero chance that this case will be overruled though. But, Congress change change this rulling fortunatly, so this ruling isn't final for all time.