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from article : [Fact] AOL Time Warner Inc. CEO Gerald Levin recently stated that the basic cost of providing high-speed cable services was about $12 a month, so the company could tap into a potent new revenue stream by selling wholesale access to independent ISPs like EarthLink, which has agreed to pay a wholesale rate of $24 to $27 per subscriber per month.
[Fact] Independent ISP owners and operators are willing to pay fair-market rates. The problem is that access has not been available at "any" rate. Only AOL Time Warner's extortionate rates have been announced to date.

So lets snap together some DNS', routers and some basic security and let it rip sometime this year right? I mean, to quote Winston Zedmore, "We have the Tools, we have the TALENT!" do we not?

interested parties can email me.

This particular budget cut is a travesty of magnificent proprtions. The celestial clock happens to be perfectly in tune with our technological advancement, to offer us this rare glimpse of our environment, as a species. To decide that we can't afford to redirect a few paltry resources to the task strikes me as narrow and crude. It's almost as if, as a species, we are too lazy to bother craning our necks a little to see what's outside the crib.

But it doesn't have to be this way. NASA isn't the only agency capable of sendiing the probe. in fact, maybe this feat could be accomplished on a voluntary basis? We have theories/plans for magical technology at our disposal, commercial support services to pester, potential launch capabilities and a wide variety of legal launch facilities around the world.

Consider: we have, just here at slashdot, the ears of a number of very technically capable individuals that might be persuaded to help create a Pluto Probe in an open sourced, ameteur manner. Corporate sponsorship would be soon to follow. Perhaps I haven't thought it out too carefully, but it is apparent to me that the potential to deploy a probe exists, despite the government.

While an interesting technical idea, basic economics conlcudes that this is an untenable idea. The best example from economics is an environmental one: the tragedy of the commons in 18th(?) century England. Most are familiar with this example, but for those are not, check here.

Essentially, the same arguments that apply to envoronmental commons apply to shared, freely distributed content. Groups in economic systems tend to optimize thier own personal consumption. This is true despite sincere intentions and ideologies of individuals, at a societal level. No one will voluntarily pay for content as a for-profit enterprise.

Clearly, people are willing to defy economic rationalism for non-profit institutions, but this is a very different proposition. Show me a non-religious or non-profit organization that collects revenues through a volunteer model!

Mainstream news companies don't need to try very hard, now do they?

Indeed, the similarities between H2G2 and Time Warner are uncanny. Likewise the BBC to AOL. Just a few years ago it would have been H2G2 buying the BBC; my, how the tables have turned.

Personally, this is the last straw for me. I'd all but given up on the BBC in any case. I switched my viewing habits to the high-quality "Sky One" channel, and haven't looked back. Say what you will, but you can't question the integrity of Rupert Murdoch, can you?

Grab a charger at TechCenter Labs, then wander over to Edmund Scientific for a solar battery charger. Reverse the leads & connect the two together and you have a solar powered charger for your Palm V/Vx. If you have another Palm, you could just charge NiCads I suppose.

--
If your map and the terrain differ,
trust the terrain.

With colors , this corresponds to the colors mentioned below. Cells do not send multiple sets of brightness levels at the same time the brain sorts out the variations of light and dark to construct the lines and shapes and forms we perceive in the world. A cell sensing for Red sends data for that one point of red intensity, nothing else. Note that each cell can sense down to one photon of energy levels.

Really, this is simple sensory stuff here. Point sensors for light intensity.

When you have a laser light, YES there is interferance. Of course there is.

So one cell senses one level of light, and another cell senses another.

The question then becomes are the cells larger or smaller than the wave length of light. Since they can be observed in an optical microscope, they are larger. This means that the individual sensors are sending individual messages regarding the light intensity back to the brain, based on the average light intensity on that individual cone or rod. Remember this: Individual messages for light intensity by independent light sensors. Therefore you will have light sensing on a cell by cell basis of the light and dark patterns of light interferance from the laser light, and it must be on a cell by cell basis. there for you can see the speckles because of the eye's reception of the interferance patterns on a cell by cell basis. The graininess is inherent with the size of the sensors, the cones of the eyes. Remember that this are individual sensors. Additional data can be found here, as well as many medica; web pages on eye physiology: Anatomy, Physiology & Pathology of the Human Eye, and is quoted below:

photoreceptors (cones and rods)

(intro omitted) The brain actually can detect one photon of light (the smallest unit of energy) being absorbed by a photoreceptor.

There are about 6.5 to 7 million cones in each eye, and they are sensitive to bright light and to color. The highest concentration of cones is in the macula. The fovea centralis, at the center of the macula, contains only cones and no rods. There are 3 types of cone pigments, each most sensitive to a certain wavelength of light: short (430-440 nm), medium (535-540 nm) and long (560-565 nm). The wavelength of light perceived as brightest to the human eye is 555 nm, a greenish-yellow. (A ìnanometerîónmóis one billionth of a meter, which is one millionth of a millimeter.) Once a cone pigment is bleached by light, it takes about 6 minutes to regenerate.

There are about 120 to 130 million rods in each eye, and they are sensitive to dim light, to movement, and to shapes. The highest concentration of rods is in the peripheral retina, decreasing in density up to the macula. Rods do not detect color, which is the main reason it is difficult to tell the color of an object at night or in the dark. The rod pigment is most sensitive to the light wavelength of 500 nm. Once a rod pigment is bleached by light, it takes about 30 minutes to regenerate. Defective or damaged cones results in color deficiency; whereas, defective or damaged rods results in problems seeing in the dark and at night.

--

Just to get the fud going here, I suggest we forever after refer to .NET as the .NET offensive.... As in the TET offensive during vietnam. Whoops. I forgot who won that thing. Nevermind.

Everyone seems to consider this stuff to be either a joke or real. But in my opinion this site may be well a very good political statement against animal cruelty. It very sublty but convincingly demonstrates the hypocrisy of many so called animal lovers that want to censor this site but at the same think artificicially breeded perversions like hairless cats are cute. Apparently breeding cats without tails or dogs with heads so small there eyes allmost pop out is less cruel than even mentioning putting kittens in a jar.
This site clearly holds up mirror to society. Therefore it is and should be protected as free speech.

A great deal of extended phenotypics in humans is grounded in the manipulation of mirror neurons of susceptible populations. Autism, in particular, is symptomatic of genetically recessive populations that are experiencing extended genetic dominance -- autism being a pathological byproduct of the imperfect intervention in social identity mechanisms that normally produce such extended phenotypic social structures as religions, bodies politic, etc.

The inappropriate attention historically given to autism and mirror neurons by the academic establishment is an indirect result of the genetic interest among urban elites in maintaining the extended phenotypic social structures that rely on the manipulation of mirror neuronal responses. Recent defections by Italians and Jews (e.g: Vittorio Gallese, Giacomo Rizzolatti and their colleagues at the University of Parma and Hugh Fudenberg), ethnic groups that have historically been the prime beneficiaries of such urbanizing social structures in the West, are being driven by the increasing presence of Dravidians (V.S. Ramachandran and Vijendra K. Singh) whose group is not as dependent on the existing extended phenotypic structures of JudeoChristian civilization, and whose relatedness to the recessive European populations, combined with their own genetic dominance, creates a unique relationship with northern European ethnicities -- the primary victims of autism in the U.S.

Yahoo is not the Internet. Regardless of whether it is acquired, there will always be "unwalled gardens" on the Internet. Granted, an acquisition of Yahoo would be damaging to the free Internet community, but it would not cripple it. For a search engine, people would have Google, for messaging, AIM (yeah, not the best example), ICQ, etc. For e-mail, there are all sorts of providers, such as MyRealBox and a certain "secure" e-mail service that I will not name. News is available everywhere. Stock quotes can be had at the NASDAQ site. I'd go on, but Yahoo has grown to provide everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink.

My point is that there is nothing that Yahoo has that isn't also available elsewhere for free. The free Internet idea would not be destroyed if Yahoo was acquired.

In a somewhat related story, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has just made a donation of $100 million dollars (in addition to the $53 million they've already given) to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative which, in addition to supporting the development of vaccines, has the primary purpose of "ensuring any AIDS vaccine is made available to developing countries at a reasonable price." It sounds to me like capitalism (or the generous giving made possible thereby) overcoming the shortcomings of capitalism. And say what you will about Bill Gates, but at least he isn't hoarding all his wealth. The article doesn't mention it, but his foundation has already given large sums of money to Harvard and other schools to fund AIDS research. I think we can all give credit where it's due.

Well I have Quicktime here, but for some reason, it didn't want to work. So, for those who need it, here is the AI movie trailer for RealPlayer

Here are some other related nuggets.
"Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" - By Brian Aldiss (AI is based on this short story)
"Frog Crisis" - A multi-part animated series, also based on Aldiss' story, by Greg Hyland [Creator of the Lethargic Lad comic]

Thanks

Bruce

This sounds awfully similar to what Apple already did really well (then killed) with the Newton 2x00 series. I have a Newton 2000, which can recognize even my horrible writing... and while it doesn't have actual paper, why would I need that? It also has about a two week in-use battery life (gotta love that 162 MHz StrongARM!), actually fits on a palm top and does cursive as well as printed recognition. You can find out more from all sorts of places, including Planet Newton or This Old Newt. There's an entire community out there who hopes daily that someone - anyone - will build something as good again. I hope IBM has done so... that is, if the screen part works separately from anything else, and has similar PDA-like characteristics.

JVC introduced the new D-VHS tape at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) along with a high definition television (HDTV) set that protects high definition content from being copied. Video on D-VHS tapes is uncompressed, so it's enormous. A 75GB hard disk would only hold around 30 minutes of the video, according to company officials, making the trading of HD content over the Internet impossible...

D-VHS can record and play back up to four hours of video in high definition mode -- up to 1,080 lines per screen width, or more than double the resolution of DVD...'

The proposition comes in sync with the current haggle over copy-protection schemes. But, considering it's hefty price tag and DVD's head-start, it might just be relegated to the throngs of the laserdisc."

--

Homer's brain: Use reverse psychology.
Homer: Oh, that sounds too complicated.
Homer's brain: Okay, don't use reverse psychology.
Homer: Okay, I will!

Then again, relating the Simpsons to every /. article could get old...

For more of Homer and his infinite wisdom, go here. And here. And especially here.

Yes..there are actually several rebuttals. The major one that I have would be that the reason santa lives in the north pole is that he needs to precool all of the reindeer so that they can withstand the extreme temperatures. Another rebuttal is located at tiac.net and there are some more besides that as well. Another good rebuttal is located Here. Some other points that these articles look over is that many Christian households do not believe in Santa, thus he would skip them. In fact, a huge quantity of people do not believe in him, therefore the parents buy the gifts. This causes santa to have MANY less stops.

Some more info on santa claus is located Here and some radar and video coverage of last night's trip is located noradsanta.com I think that after looking over all of this evidence, it proves that these people have absolutely no lives, and I am going to look pretty silly posting a defense for santa. :)

Hmm, looking at my moderator list (whoo-hoo!), there is no entry for Incorrect (if there was, a lot of the IANA* people would have to be careful). You are not Offtopic, Flamebait, Troll, Redundant or Overrated. And besides, even if it was not written for/during the Nazi regime, I seem to remember Hitler was atleast a fan. Read this guy's page for more info on Wagner and anti-semetism.

Damn, now I can't moderate this topic. Oh well.

Absolutely. There is a newly expired draft of an RFC for the OpenIM standard here

Maybe you've just never met any of the 64 million users AOL claims.

all in all, this idea seems to have been cooked up by people who really have no idea what's going on in the world of instant messaging...

I am reading with interest your patent suit against the ISP named "Prodigy". I have not heard anything wrong against the abovenamed ISP, and I believe that the abovesaid ISP will sink in any legal action due to insufficient funds.

I suggest another target for that patent infringement lawsuit: AOL. That way, you'd be sure of targetting a company with a substantial amount of money at hand (which will have a greater effect on the Internet) and you will be doing the world a great service.

Thank you.

Yes, you are right, though it doesn't explain lycos. I was about to slam you for not trying an Inktomi-based search and posting the results.... but I tried to do the same, and it's damn difficult to tell if someone's using Inktomi or not. I found (via google) this out-of-date list. Inktomi has a list of partners, and yahoo's on the list, but it doesn't say what services each partner actually uses. This page at Inktomi mentions that AOL, iWon, MSN, and more (aprarantly 125) are using their search (it's mentioned in the top yellow box on the right side of the page). So, with that in mind, let's give these three a try and see if they product any porn sites with a query for "black bear":

• AOL's results list Condos, T-shirts, AllAlaskanGifts (paid adverts), pages about actual black bears, the B&B, Hunting, Campgrounds (not the nude one from yahoo's present search), wildlife and conservation. Pretty good...
• iWon's results page displays nothing if Javascript is disabled. I gotta get that javascript popup filtering junkbuster patch installed. For the sake of this slashdot post, I'm turning javascript back on for a moment: hmm, they're doing funny stuff and that link may not take you directly to a results page.... easy enough to do the search, but here's what I'm seeing: page about different types of bears, lodging per state, travel info, photos and articles about american and alaskan black bears, more stuff about american black bears, american bear association, dietart habits of bears, wildlife park, black bear systems (a company, funny that none of the other searches turned this one up in their top results), campground, an inn, web design company named black bear, more stuff about bears and camping. So far one of the best search results in this "black bear" benchmark, and not a single porn site yet (neglecting yahoo's return of a clothing-option campground with black bear in the name), but still one more chance for porn at MSN.......
• and here's MSN's results (damnit, went to MSN before turning javascript back off, going to shut if off right now.. ok), so let's see how MSN did: Univ of Maine Athletics (mascott is a black bear), more pages about univ of maine, info about diff species of bears, research about animal social systems, stuff about yellowstone, miccesota wince shute wildlife sanctuary, even more pages about univ of maine, the sanctuary in minnesota again, and the texas zoo

I did read the original post, and admittedly his point was that his friend tried "black bear" on yahoo 6 months ago and got porn, but for crying out loud, how fucking difficult is it to actually visit the search engine and type in BLACK BEAR and see for yourself if it really dishes up porn links? Ok, not everyone knows HTML to include nice formatting and links in their messages, but it's pretty simple to visit a search engine and actually see if it dishes up porn, instead of posting about how a third party accomplished this feat half a year ago!

(ok, rant mode off, we all know the cronological order and moderation system reward early postings)

I think it's pretty safe to say that one doesn't risk getting linked to porn when searching for "black bear" these days, and I'm skeptical that this condition really existed 6 months ago on yahoo. Some search engines (notably yahoo and MSN) have problems with wasting valuable browser screen space with redundant links, at least in this simple "black bear" benchmark. For a while now I've believe google was the best, but I'm pleasantly suprised to see that other search engines are doing quite well.

• Searching for "Java" turned up a page full of results about coffee. Refinining it to "Java Programming" still didn't turn up the Sun website, the Java Tutorial, or any links to the API docs.
• Searching for "Palm" turned up lots of things about palm trees and foot pain(?), and refining it to "palm pilot" still didn't find palm.com or any of the main PDA sites.

There are NO porn or personal websites.

Then why did it turn up http://members.aol.com/toomuchsug/mp3.html? Obviously a personal website.

If you are going to create a family oriented search engine, don't print things like:

'Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer sex raises some pretty good questions.' -Woody Allen

when a search fails. "Mommy, who's woody and what's sex?"

wish
---

So was PalmOS.

For example, the email program I use on my MP 2100 uses the standard contact information for getting its email addresses, and is treated by the system as simply another way to get information in and out of the system.

Again, PalmOS does this too.

The NewtonOS has a full TCP/IP stack, with communications being done over Ethernet, or PPP. The email, browser, ftp, irc, telnet, ect.. clients all use the standard protocols, and you can download new packages directly off of the 'net.

Once again, I do this with my palm. TCP/IP and PPP are built into the OS. While the applications you mentioned are not bundled with PalmOS, there are a wealth of them available for free.

With my Palm, I snap on a modem, plug in a phone line, and connect PPP to earthlink. Then I can check/send email (Eudora), "surf" the web (EudoraWeb, AvantGo, others), get on IRC, use AIM, use Yahoo! Messenger, and can telnet. All these clients use their respective "standard protocol."

I'm not saying the Newton isn't a great machine. Just that you're choices aren't as limited as you think.

wishus
---

The point about useless satellites in Earth orbit is far more sensible until the author suggests that advanced civilizations might use "miniature black holes" to clean them up. If you thought running an RTG close to the Earth was bad, imagine containing a black hole in the Earth's orbit (or rather, the Earth in orbit of the black hole!).

--

The AIM 4.x license agreement states, in effect, `By installing this software, you agree to the terms. ... You may not use client software not approved by AOL Inc. on AOL's AIM servers.' This is why I use AIM 2.1 (the fastest Win32 AIM client that AOL ever made) on my Windows 98 partition, alongside Everybuddy. I know there's Jabber, but I found its AIM gateway to be a bit unreliable.

My algorithm was lossless and what strikes me the most is the speed - my algorithm was notable for the speed of decompression, and we used it in particular just because it was so much faster than GIF, which was a significant advantage when you were scanning through lots of images on CDROM. While I only implemented it for 8-bit indexed images I felt it would likely work fine for any bit depth or color space.

Medior was later purchased by AOL and renamed to AOL Productions. I think AOL Productions isn't around anymore but lots of old Medior people still work for AOL, for example former Medior President Barry Shuler is a high-level exec at AOL.

Basically, my invention worked by dividing the image up into lots of little subregions and encoding each pixel in a given subregion in the minimum number of bits required to encode the number of colors that occurred in that region.

For example, in an image that was black on top and white on the bottom, I'd have two subreqions with zero bits each and a single element color table that was either black or white.

If it was snow - black and white pixels randomly intermixed - the whole image would be one bit with a two-element color table containing black and white.

The big trick was to divide the image in a good way, in such a way that the whole image was reduced the most and the size of the data required to reconstruct the regions wasn't too big. In practice I found it worked OK to start with lots of small fixed-size squares then merge adjacent squares that had similar color schemes.

I wrote a document for Medior that described what I invented in great detail and what I predicted this could be made to do. What I actually got it to do in practice was not nearly what it was capable of, but this was because of the limited time available to implement it.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

The real benefits of asteroid mining will be to make self-replicating cities in space. These will allow a diversity of human-derived cultures to flourish.

What will be of value in the space frontier is using the energy from the sun and matter from the asteroids to build space cities or space habitats. These will provide homes for trillions of ideas. The wealth that will flow back to Earth won't be material -- it will be spiritual (new dreams), intellectual (new designs), and political (peacemaking).

Such habitats will also provide a place for misfits to go -- as the American frontier was for a time -- letting the Earth settle down.

To create a space city that can self-replicate from asteroidal ore and sunlight will take a better understanding of manufacturing and how webs of manufacturing processes fit together.

Links:
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

The real benefits of asteroid mining will be to make self-replicating cities in space. These will allow a diversity of human-derived cultures to flourish.

What will be of value in the space frontier is using the energy from the sun and matter from the asteroids to build space cities or space habitats. These will provide homes for trillions of ideas. The wealth that will flow back to Earth won't be material -- it will be spiritual (new dreams), intellectual (new designs), and political (peacemaking).

Such habitats will also provide a place for misfits to go -- as the American frontier was for a time -- letting the Earth settle down.

To create a space city that can self-replicate from asteroidal ore and sunlight will take a better understanding of manufacturing and how webs of manufacturing processes fit together.

Links:
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

Well, if it was on a bathroom reader it must be true!

Looky here for another description - the best description only mentions 'fowl' and another from 20 years later specifically mentions wild turkeys.

Bonobo is a component model for GNOME, loosely modeled after Microsoft's COM. It uses CORBA as the transport mechanism, which of course makes it far more portable than COM. For more info, check these links:
a guide to GNOME and CORBA
an intro to Bonobo

This is not the first time OSC has used an electronic medium to allow his readers to get an advance look at a novel. IIRC, the Hatrack River area on (gasp) AOL was a popular hangout for Card fans some years back... I don't know whether it still exists, as I haven't subscribed to AOL in many years. However, when I was a subscriber, OSC released the entire text of Children of the Mind before the book hit the presses. I downloaded my copy, read it voraciously, and then bought a dead tree version in hardback.

Recommended OSC books:

• Ender's Game
• Speaker for the Dead
• Ender's Shadow
• Stone Tables
• Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
• Lovelock (first in an unfinished trilogy)

Check out Hatrack River for more official details about OSC's work, and the Philotic Web for the unofficial details.

Anyway, there were two codes used by the Japanese. There was the JN25 codes, which were based on a traditional codebook system, and were deciphered by a 325 man team at the NSA. The other system was called Purple (by the Americans). From the site:

The Japanese had obtained an Enigma machine from Germany, and decided to use the same principle to encode their messages. Rather than using rotors operated by keypresses from the keyboard, they employed electro-mechanical "stepping switches". An electromagnet, acting through a pawl and ratchet mechanism, caused rotating contacts to pass over banks of electrical contacts. The overall machine, although constructed differently, was equivalent to a four-rotor Enigma with electric typewriters on each side. A message was entered on one typewriter, and printed out, encoded, on the second. Although this eliminated some errors in copying an encode from illuminated light bulbs, the weight of the stepping switches and typewriters made it far less portable than the German field Enigma. The Japanese machine was called "97-shiki o-bun in-ji-ki," or informally "J." The Americans called their diplomatic code "Purple" and the intercepts "magic."

KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.

Somebody came up with an analog video disk system in the late 40s/early 50s, but surprisingly it went nowhere.

John Logie Baird, the Scottish inventor of a 25 line mechanical television system, made 78 RPM recordings of his video signal in the 1920s. But, due to difficulties in syncronizing the signal on the disk to the mechanical TV system, he was never able to play them back. An engineer recently obtained some of these audio tracks, and was able to process the audio into video, doing a huge amount of time base correction. Astonishing to see video from 1928. I wish I could find the link, but the link I had seen is now dead.

its fun to watch the counter on the Illustrated guide to breaking your computer page go up and up by the second, at least his page is handling the /. effect pretty well.

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

A related RealPlayer stream (that works) is available on AOL's corporate site. Here are links to the broadband and narrowband versions of the stream.

The presentation, by representatives of Gateway, AOL, Transmeta, and Broadcom, talks about Gateway's vision - the 'Wired Home' - HPNA and 802.11-based home device integration. Play MP3s from your PC, stream DVDs to your TV, get AIM in your kitchen, etc... It has a general introduction to the webpad, too, but it's targeted more at the stockholders and press.

Gateway points out that their Select and Performance series PCs already have HPNA cards integrated.

Of course, being Gateway, they have stated that the whole thing won't work with anything but Gateway PCs. They will have cards and software for other PCs 'sometime in the future'. Personally, I find it hard to believe that their stuff will only work on Gateway PCs. I bet that doesn't leave much oppertunity for open-source clients and servers either.

A related RealPlayer stream (that works) is available on AOL's corporate site. Here are links to the broadband and narrowband versions of the stream.

The presentation, by representatives of Gateway, AOL, Transmeta, and Broadcom, talks about Gateway's vision - the 'Wired Home' - HPNA and 802.11-based home device integration. Play MP3s from your PC, stream DVDs to your TV, get AIM in your kitchen, etc... It has a general introduction to the webpad, too, but it's targeted more at the stockholders and press.

Gateway points out that their Select and Performance series PCs already have HPNA cards integrated.

Of course, being Gateway, they have stated that the whole thing won't work with anything but Gateway PCs. They will have cards and software for other PCs 'sometime in the future'. Personally, I find it hard to believe that their stuff will only work on Gateway PCs. I bet that doesn't leave much oppertunity for open-source clients and servers either.

A related RealPlayer stream (that works) is available on AOL's corporate site. Here are links to the broadband and narrowband versions of the stream.

The presentation, by representatives of Gateway, AOL, Transmeta, and Broadcom, talks about Gateway's vision - the 'Wired Home' - HPNA and 802.11-based home device integration. Play MP3s from your PC, stream DVDs to your TV, get AIM in your kitchen, etc... It has a general introduction to the webpad, too, but it's targeted more at the stockholders and press.

Gateway points out that their Select and Performance series PCs already have HPNA cards integrated.

Of course, being Gateway, they have stated that the whole thing won't work with anything but Gateway PCs. They will have cards and software for other PCs 'sometime in the future'. Personally, I find it hard to believe that their stuff will only work on Gateway PCs. I bet that doesn't leave much oppertunity for open-source clients and servers either.

but its the "low bandwidth" link.

http://stre am. web.aol.com/ramgen/aol/events/instantaol/launch_lo w.rm

Doesn' t much matter though since it won't even connect for me :)

You can find a narrowband broadcast somewhere on this page.

I'm sorry, but you're an idiot and you don't know what you're talking about

Just some of the sites using css.

1. Altavista - There is a big whomping style block right at the top of the source.
2. AskJeeves - There is a linked CSS document, plus a style block definition.
3. Adobe - Even has javascript to customize style sheets according to platform and browser.
4. AOL - 4 lines into the source and look! a style definition.
5. AT&T WorldNet - You have to wade through some javascript, but you'll see it.

That was just the A's. Please think before you spout such blatant misinformation as this.

Dear Governor Bush,

It's been awhile since we've talked. I believe your last words to me were, "Go find real work!" You kidder, you! That very night, it was you who found real work for yourself by executing your 117th human being in Texas. How DO you do it?!

Actually, the "real work" I do now, my job, is due in large part to your family. Few people know what you and I know... that it was your cousin Kevin who shot much of "Roger & Me." At the time, I didn't know that your mother, Barbara Bush, and his mother were sisters. Kevin must have missed the train the rest of you were on! He came to Flint to return a favor to me for helping him on a film he was making about hate groups. He is the person who taught me how to make a movie. Without his generosity, "Roger & Me" might never had been made.

I remember the day your dad was inaugurated as President. I was editing the film in a ratty old editing room in D.C. and decided to go down to watch your dad be sworn in on the Capitol steps. How weird it was to see my mentor/cinematographer sitting next to you up on the dais!

Months later, when the film was released, your dad, the President, ordered a print of "Roger & Me" to be sent to Camp David for the family to watch one weekend. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall as all of you watched the havoc and despair your father and Mr. Reagan had helped wreak upon my hometown. I've always wanted to know -- at the end of the film, as the deputy sheriff was tossing the kids' presents and Christmas tree out on the curb because they were $150 behind in their rent -- were there any tears in the room? Did anyone feel responsible? Or did you just think, "nice camerawork!"

And now you want to be President of the United States.

I'm sorry to tell you, but that can't happen.

The American people need to know a few things about you -- and they had better consider them right now, before a tragic mistake is made.

You know what I am talking about.

Your possible victory on Tuesday is a threat to our national security.

That may seem a bit strong, but I don't make this charge lightly. It has nothing to do with your positions on the issues (all of which I disagree with) or your patriotism (I'm sure you love your country).

It has to do with you. I believe, with all due respect, that if you sit in the Oval Office, this nation of ours, its security, and in turn, the security of the world, has the potential to be in great jeopardy.

Why?

There are three reasons.

1. It appears you cannot read and write on an adult level. I'm sad to say it, but you may be a functional illiterate. How can we entrust our nuclear secrets to you if you can't read them?

As I have pointed out before, all the signs of either dyslexia or illiteracy are there -- and no one is asking you about it. First, you lied about your "favorite book" as a child ("A Very Hungry Caterpillar" you said). That book wasn't even published until a year after you graduated from college!

Then there is the question of your college transcripts and if, in fact, they have been doctored. How DID you get into Yale when the prospective students we uncovered had higher SATs and grades? During this campaign you have made up answers when asked to name the books you are currently reading (when quizzed about the books' contents, you didn't know what to say). Is it any wonder you have not had a press conference in over a month and a half? Your handlers are scared to death of what might be asked or what you may say.

One thing is clear to all -- you can't speak the English language in sentences we can comprehend. At first, the way you mangled words and sentences was cute and funny. But after a while, it became worrisome. Now, I'm just scared. If you are Commander-in-Chief, you have to be able to communicate your orders. What if your subordinates don't understand you? What kind of chaos could that cause with our national security? No wonder you want to increase the Pentagon budget. We'll need all the firepower we can get after you accidentally order the Russians to be "wiped out" (when you meant to say that the Russians are just "whipped" these days).

Your aides have said that you don't (can't?) read the briefing papers they give you and that you ask them to read them for you or to you. Your mother was passionately committed to reading programs as First Lady. I assume she knew first hand the difficulty of raising a child with a learning disability.

I say none of this to knock you personally. Forty million adult Americans cannot read above a 4th grade level and millions are dyslexic. There is no shame in this. In fact, there is help. But for you to have your finger on The Button when you may be disabled in this way is too great a risk for the country to take. You need help -- not the Oval Office.

Hey, I'm not one to talk -- just look at this letter and all its wacky syntax! But I ain't runnin' for President. At the very least, the voters deserve an answer to this question of your illiteracy by Tuesday.

2. Are you an alcoholic? Again, there is no finger being pointed here and no shame or disrespect intended. Alcoholism is a huge problem and it affects millions of American citizens, people we all know and love. Many are able to recover and live normal lives. I greatly admire anyone who can deal with this addiction. You have told us that you are not able to drink, and haven't touched a drop since you were 40. Congratulations.

But it has just been revealed tonight on CNN that, in the past, you were arrested for drunk driving (and that you tried to cover it up). You have told us that you used to "drink too much" and that you were "more in love with the liquor" than you were with your own family. That is the definition of an alcoholic. This does not disqualify you from being president, but it does require that you answer some questions.

Why won't you use the word "alcoholic?" That is, after all, the first step to recovery. What support system have you set up to make sure you don't fall off the wagon? Being president is perhaps the most stressful job in the world. What have you done to insure you can handle the pressure and the anxiety associated with being the Leader of the Free World? How do we know you will not resort to the bottle when faced with a serious panic? You have never had a job like this. For 20 years, from what I can tell, you had no job at all. When you stopped "drifting," your dad set you up in the oil business with some ventures that failed and then he helped you get a ball team which required you to sit in a box seat and watch a lot of baseball games. Now you have served as governor of Texas, a relatively ceremonial job in that state. How will you deal with a massive world crisis? Do you have a sponsor you can call? Is there a meeting you can attend? I know this is very personal, but the voters have a right to know.

3. Please, tell us the "felony" you committed and anything else of a similar nature that you have been hiding. When you were asked last year about your alleged cocaine use, you replied that you have committed "no felonies in the last 25 years." That implies that you DID commit a felony before that. What was the felony?

The reason I am asking this is not to seek retribution for what you did. I am concerned that if there is some deep, dark secret you are afraid of, it means you are, in effect, providing ammunition for whoever discovers this secret, be it a foreign enemy (that Bin-Laden guy) or a domestic enemy (ExxonMobil). If they discover your secret felony, they will have something over you -- and will be in a position to blackmail you. That makes you a national security threat.

Trust me, someone will find out what you are hiding, and when they do, all of us will be at risk. You have made yourself a national security threat and you have a duty to disclose whatever this felony was that you committed. To reveal it will nullify its potential use as a weapon against you or this country should you be elected.

There are enough scary reasons why you should never be President. You will oversee further destruction of our environment. You will push to have more people executed. You will make sure your rich buddies make a killing off the hard work and suffering of those less fortunate than you. Any of these reasons is enough to stop you on Tuesday.

But, no matter where any of us stand on the political spectrum, liberal or conservative, Democrat, Republican or Green, all of us have a right to know the answers to these three critical questions.

Yours,

Michael Moore

http://www.theawfultruth.com/
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
mmflint@aol.com

Addendum (added 11/05/2000):

My apologies to my dyslexic friends. That portion of my letter to Mr. Bush was not as clear as I intended it. Dyslexia and illiteracy are NOT the same and, yes, a dyslexic cannot only be President, he can be Albert Einstein (yes, Einstein was dyslexic). I do believe that George W. Bush cannot read and write on an adult level and that he has learned to be a functional illiterate (which means, I guess, he still hasn't read my letter). This is not to say that Bush is dumb or Reagan-like. It is meant to only point out that he is friggin' dangerous.

Also, regarding the other danger I referred to in my letter to Bush -- his "drinking problem" -- the issue is NOT that Bush is an alcoholic -- alcoholics can and have been President -- but that he refuses to acknowledge he is an alcoholic (the first step to recovery) and the way he so quickly wants to blame everyone else but himself. That's a dangerous sign. For those who say, "well, c'mon, it's his personal life, that was 24 years ago," I have this to say. I was hit by a drunk driver 27 years ago, and to this day I cannot completely extend my right arm. When you go out on a public highway drunk, that is no longer your PERSONAL life. It is MY life and the lives of my family.

To watch Bush swagger and smirk as he tried to reduce his "youthful indiscretion" off on just him and the boys having a few beers (smirk, smirk), I felt for the families of the half-million people who have been killed by drunks like George in the 24 years since his "little adventure." Thank God he chose to drive drunk for only ANOTHER 10 years after he "learned" his "lesson."

And the nerve of him using his daughters as the reason he covered up this conviction! "SNL" put it best tonight: "George Bush said he didn't reveal the drunk driving charge because of what his daughters might think of him. He had preferred that they think of him as a man with numerous failed business ventures who now executes people."