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Here, it was registered with US Copyright Office in 1983: http://ia601207.us.archive.org/28/items/gov.uscourts.nvd.86951/gov.uscourts.nvd.86951.1.1.pdf

Excellent points. But did you know that Greenpeace is opposed to fusion research? In their own words:

Fusion energy - if it would ever operate - would create a serious waste problem, would emit large amounts of radioactive material and could be used to produce materials for nuclear weapons. A whole new set of nuclear risks would thus be created.

Contrast this with Fusion.org's FAQ (or consult your physics book):

The major conclusions reached by the SEAFP team in 1995 were that fusion has very good inherent safety qualities; there are no chain reactions and no production of 'actinides'. The worst possible accident originating in a fusion power station could not breach the confinement; any releases could not approach levels at which evacuation would be considered.

The radiotoxicity of a fusion power station's waste materials decays rapidly, and they present no accumulating or long-term burden on future generations. They would not need guaranteed isolation from the environment for very long timespans. In addition to these favourable results, fusion produces no climate-changing or atmosphere-polluting emissions.

I'm linking to archived version of the FAQ, since the current version seems to be dumbed down.

Yes, he wrote down the entire performance.

http://ia601207.us.archive.org/28/items/gov.uscourts.nvd.86951/gov.uscourts.nvd.86951.1.1.pdf

Interesting read

Not really a first, Teller doesn't speak on stage, but he does speak. There's a few candid videos floating around. And yes, from TFA, he registered copyright on the trick in 1983

http://web.archive.org/web/20021202101745/http://mail.yahoo.com/

December 2002 archive of Yahoo's own site states:

Free 4MB storage - up to twice as much as other free email providers!

Around '04 they moved that up to 100 megs to compete with Gmail, then went unlimited some time after that. Are you sure you didn't have a paid 'Yahoo! Mail Plus' account? Those apparently had 25 megs starting in 1999.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080315073507/http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Extinct_Marsupial [hide] 1 The Extinct Marsupial on Livejournal: The King of the Sock-Puppets 2 The Longest-Running Troll on teh Internets? 3 The Extinct Marsupial and ED 4 Some of the Extinct Marsupial's identities on Livejournal 5 Some of the Extinct Marsupial's identities on the Internets 6 See Also [edit] The Extinct Marsupial on Livejournal: The King of the Sock-Puppets As antisense on Livejournal, the Extinct Marsupial is known for having harassed acidexia endlessly, claiming that she "stole" some B vitamins from him. His harassment tactics include the use of numerous sock puppet accounts, anonymous postings, claims of drug abuse, pedophilia, Satanism, etc., directed against his victims. He is, however, incredibly thin-skinned and sensitive himself. He has been banned from the thelemites community alone in at least a dozen different guises. In fact, he has his own "Memories" section there, titled "History of a Troll". The Extinct Marsupial is also known for regularly posting to various Livejournal groups which allow anonymous comments—particularly unmoderated groups which don't track IP addresses, such as psychonaut—to offer "free CDs" of "rare and esoteric eBooks" which he scans and OCRs himself, running up (usually illegal) html versions of them. An example of one such offer, in the community chaosmajik is here. Many of the "free books" he offers this way are still under copyright. In particular, he's ripped off Robert Anton Wilson, a little old guy in a wheelchair who could use the money. Even if he weren't blatantly and knowingly ripping people off, one person in possession of one of these files reports that the Extinct Marsupial's html skillz are not nearly good enough to be described as "deficient." The Extinct Marsupial once spent several months scanning, editing and producing a very poor PDF version of a rare book, Andrew Chumbley's Azoëtia, in the mistaken belief that this act would reduce the value of Stone Mirror's actual copy. (He has recently acquired a $150 picatrix from eBay, thus ensuring that "free" e-copies of that will be offered "anonymously" on the web in the very near future as well.) It's clear that the Marsupial, for all his pretensions to being a 1337 h4XX0r, couldn't code his way out of a pay toilet, simply from the edits he's attempted to make to this article (when he hasn't been attempting to delete it completely). He clearly doesn't understand how wikis work; as anyone who ever received one of his "free e-Books" can readily attest, he's far less likely to be obtaining his scant supply of cash by html or any other type of coding work than from the kind that involves the wearing of a paper hat and regular use of the phrase "Thank you, drive through"... [edit] The Longest-Running Troll on teh Internets? The Extinct Marsupial may have the longest continuous trolling career in the History of the Internets. On USENET in the mid- to late 90s, where he was known as dm_telvis (many of his user IDs were based on this name) or just "Elvis", the Extinct Marsupial was a roundly despised semiregular presence for a time on alt.magick, where he vacillated between being a rabid and slavish follower of Aleister Crowley (both pro- and anti-OTO at different times) and being a rabid and slavish follower of Ayn Rand. Which of the two is more tiresome is left as an exercise for the reader. A representative thread from this period is titled Who's the guy with the short fuse and the busted caps locks?. This is a reference to his habit of POSTING IN CAPITAL LETTERS ALL THE TIME AS THOUGH THIS WOULD MAKE HIM SEEM SANER OR MORE SENSIBLE. The Extinct Marsupial is in "Ayn Randroid"/"CSICOP Skeptic" mode in the thread mentioned above. Less than a year earlier, he can be seen in "Fundamentalist anti-OTO 'Crowley's spinning in his grave!' Thelemite" mode. He's the one posting as "fiaof93". It's unknown w

Here, or here. They qualify it a bit more accurately now, for obvious reasons, but people really did claim immunity.

Here, or here. They qualify it a bit more accurately now, for obvious reasons, but people really did claim immunity.

Creating rumors, spreading rumors, and listening to rumors are treason, Citizen. Please report such rumors to Your Friend the Computer immediately! Thank you for your cooperation.

Stay Alert! Trust no one! Keep your laser handy!

Klerck wants his movie plot back!

Hybrids are an alternative for drivers who want to be green, think of diesel as the soot spewing lorries and buses of yesteryear, can't live with the short range and abysmal interior space of of pure electrics, and can afford the price premium.

Well, I'm sure there are some people who feel that way but I'd bet not a lot of hybrid owners do. I own one. A 2007 Prius. I bought it because at the time it was the best decision to conserve gas. I researched the daylights out of my purchase before I bought one. I think you'll find a lot of hybrid owners do the same. It's not really a "joe sixpack" kind of a car in the first place.

And now we have cars like these on the way. 60mpg, decent acceleration, and about half the price.

This will be the next big green transport. Turbo diesel. Because biodiesel is ridiculously simple to make. And carbon neutral - that'll be important soon here too, once the world gets their collective heads out of their asses and decides to do something about global warming. Diesel will be the next Big Green Thing.

Here, read this. It's a fantastic study on how feasible it would be to switch the USA entirely to algae biodiesel. Unfortunately it is no longer hosted at UNH but the wayback still has a copy. It's a brilliant read and a future I'd like to be a part of.

And I really think things will go that way too someday. Drilling for oil is problematic (Gulf BP disaster for example), not carbon neutral and contributes to global warming, and there is always the specter of "peak oil" lurking about. Someday maybe we'll simply run out of oil. What then? The two best answers are Biodiesel and Hydrogen. Hydrogen is sexy, but problematic. Difficult to store. No existing infrastructure to distribute it. No efficient way to make it. That leaves Biodiesel.

And everyone who buys a diesel helps usher in that future. So yeah, my next car will be a turbodiesel of some sort.

Thanks for the reply. One can wonder sometimes if there are other factors like ideology or a current relative distribution of power that some people think more important than either happiness or material productivity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-4Hv9pDicA
http://web.archive.org/web/20110425153540/http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm

But, it may overall just be more easily explained by ignorance. Or possibly because what plutocratic management is so often about is not encouraging high absolute levels of productivity or creativity in a society but in getting productivity and creativity focused on narrowly defined business objectives -- objectives that benefit those who already socially have control of a lot of resources and claim rents from them? So, even if absolute productivity is lower with "carrot and stick", it is productivity those who claim rents can benefit from... Of course, that explanation would not sit well with the high priests of unfettered capitalism or their most devout followers:
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/6397/
http://conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47/

...technology is making things more efficient. The problem is that the demand for things keeps increasing as more and more countries join the high-tech revolution.

So, aparently, technology can make "things" more efficient, but can't do the same for life in general.

I think a big part of our problem is that we have come to worship consumer technology as a religion and congregate around its impressive cathedrals (fossil fuel tech), and in doing so we resist science and new/responsible technologies as heresy. Even the specific label for the heretics has remained unchanged: People who today promote the use of sustainable technologies (incl. renewables and birth control) are called "Luddites" about as often as they are called environmentalists. They oppose some technologies, so they are given a label used to denote someone who opposes all new technology. Of course, there's more to it than that: The environmentalist solutions not only tend to promote decentralization of power generation and other means of production, but they also want to dispense with the culture of constantly creating and reinforcing consumption patterns in people. So environmentalism is a threat to the status quo.

Enter the Singularity cult: It's not only religious but is also intensely pro-consumerism. All our gadgetry from the high consumption is supposed to "wake up" and someday become the messiah.

There is some logic about reasoning about low-probability events here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110712221603/http://thedeadobserver.hostwebs.com/

They US authorities on '60s started trying gravity on various types of reactors for many years (passive cooling) and it failed miserably all times. Download the excellent BBC's 1992 documentary on the subject A is for Atom, or watch it on YouTube.

It was after they had confirmed the problem that they started installing diesel generators to operate the cooling pumps. The problem was discovered also in USSR. Chernobyl erupted during an experiment to test the cooling apparatus while disconnecting the plant from grid.

The root cause of all this was that they designed the commercial Nuclear Plants by scaling the 60cm diameter Submarine Reactors into 3 meter or even more. That way, the multiplied the fuel mass x1000, and disregarded that fact they were no longer 100 meters deep below the ocean surface, something that would guarantee passive cooling simply by hydrostatic pressure.

How about countries where age of consent is 12 and 13? (There are a number of them and America was one as recently as the past decade or so -- when Delaware and New Mexico had consent ages of 12 years old - yeah, you read that gross shit right. 12.)

I'm calling your bluff, at least with respect to full-on sex in the United States of America.

It's not perfect, but go to archive.org and look up ageofconsent.com from a decade ago, then cross-check what you find against the state statutes in effect at the time to weed out inaccuracies.

For the lazy, here's a link to a copy from August 2000:

http://web.archive.org/web/20000815094556/http://www.ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm

Hawaii, Iowa, and South Carolina show that the age of consent between males and females MAY have been as low as 14 in at least some circumstances. Commentary indicates that the age of consent is probably 16 in Iowa and South Carolina. ALL other states show 16 as a minimum. It really was 14 in Hawaii but that state raised its age of consent in 2002.

For same-gender sex, New Mexico MAY have been 13 in some circumstances such as fondling but it was 16 for oral and penetrative sexual activities.

You have to go back to the early- or mid-1990s to find a state in America where an adult of any age could legally have sex with a 12 year old other than his or her spouse.

Wikipedia has a more current age of consent map that clearly shows no state with an age of consent less than 16.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ages_of_consent_in_North_America&oldid=483945004

We are talking about _computers_ here, one of the greatest tool to man. We barely had a glimpse of what they could do in education. However for that you need computers the child itself can program. Kids are smart, give them a decent environment and they will learn. Xerox did some research on that in the 1970s.
http://archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987_2

However tablets in their current form are just simple playback devices. They are dumbed down in dumb ways, by removing essential features like programmability.

Then you must think bullshit is awesome, because that's most of what Gibson spews forth.

Back in the day, he was quite notorious for this; see grcsucks.com for a collection of explanations of why exactly he and his company suck.

This is not to say spinrite doesn't work, as well as e.g. mhdd, just that it's sold to ignorant consumers with a massive pile of impossible and nonsensical claims about what it does.

Why, sure you can: http://web.archive.org/web/20080211140314/http://cs-people.bu.edu/charlton/probpt.pdf :P

Funny thing happened on my way to the forum. A few years back I had to get some information out of a OS/2 help file, and had no install. I ended up downloading a copy of the OS from the internet to quickly get access - I did end up uninstalling as I had no other use for the install. Still I wonder if it is worth having a box laying around to tinker with. http://archive.org/details/OS2Warp

Actually it looks legit. see the ruling file at http://ia600803.us.archive.org/25/items/gov.uscourts.ilnd.265453/gov.uscourts.ilnd.265453.23.0.pdf It's dated Friday...

Ohh and btw the PlayStation online store is the worst implementation of an online marketplace since v1 of craigslist and at least that one was aesthetically pleasing and lightweight! I seriously expected them to ask me to mail in my 20 euros the first time I charged up the account.

Simple: This -> http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22HOW+TO+SECURE+Windows+2000%2FXP%22&go=&qs=ns&form=QBLH

(Just by using the principles of "layered-security"/"defense-in-depth" AND educating users... they are the "weakest link"!)

To "immunize" a Windows system, I effectively use the principles in "layered security" possibles!

http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22HOW+TO+SECURE+Windows+2000%2FXP%22&go=&form=QBRE

I.E./E.G.-> I have done so since 1997-1998 with the most viewed, highly rated guide online for Windows security there really is which came from the fact I also created the 1st guide for securing Windows, highly rated @ NEOWIN (as far back as 1998-2001) here:

http://www.neowin.net/news/apk-a-to-z-internet-speedup--security-text

& from as far back as 1997 -> http://web.archive.org/web/20020205091023/www.ntcompatible.com/article1.shtml which Neowin above picked up on & rated very highly.

That has evolved more currently, into the MOST viewed & highly rated one there is for years now since 2008 online in the 1st URL link above...

Which has well over 500,000++ views online (actually MORE, but 1 site with 75,000 views of it went offline/out-of-business) & it's been made either:

---

1.) An Essential Guide
2.) 5-5 star rated
3.) A "sticky-pinned" thread
4.) Most viewed in the category it's in (usually security)
5.) Got me PAID by winning a contest @ PCPitStop (quite unexpectedly - I was only posting it for the good of all, & yes, "the Lord works in mysterious ways", it even got me PAID -> http://techtalk.pcpitstop.com/2007/09/04/pc-pitstop-winners/ (see January 2008))

---

Across 15-20 or so sites I posted it on back in 2008... & here is the IMPORTANT part, in some sample testimonials to the "layered security" methodology efficacy:

---

SOME QUOTED TESTIMONIALS TO THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SAID LAYERED SECURITY GUIDE I AUTHORED:

http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=672ebdf47af75a0c5b0d9e7278be305f&t=28430&page=2

"I recently, months ago when you finally got this guide done, had authorization to try this on simple work station for kids. My client, who paid me an ungodly amount of money to do this, has been PROBLEM FREE FOR MONTHS! I haven't even had a follow up call which is unusual." - THRONKA, user of my guide @ XTremePcCentral

AND

"APK, thanks for such a great guide. This would, and should, be an inspiration to such security measures. Also, the pc that has "tweaks": IS STILL GOING! NO PROBLEMS!" - THRONKA, user of my guide @ XTremePcCentral

AND

http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=672ebdf47af75a0c5b0d9e7278be305f&t=28430&page=3

"Its 2009 - still trouble free! I was told last week by a co worker who does active directory administration, and he said I was doing overkill. I told him yes, but I just eliminated the half life in windows that you usually get. He said good point. So from 2008 till 2009. No speed decreases, its been to a lan party, moved around in a move, and it still NEVER has had the OS reinstalled besides the fact I imaged the drive over in 2008. Great stuff! My clien

http://web.archive.org/web/20100615055048/http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/WHAT_REALLY_KILLED_THE_DINOSAURS.html "CHAPTER FIVE: The K-T Event 65 Million Years Ago In Chapter Four, we left the earth spinning so rapidly that the rocky continental lithosphere had formed a thick belt or ring around the equator of the solid core of the earth. As the earth spun faster and faster the net gravitational force along the equator, which is the downward non-spinning gravity force minus the upward centrifugal spinning force, soon approaches zero. Then about 65 million years ago, a large portion of that thick belt of land around the equator had less than zero gravity. Then the only thing holding it to the earth was the mechanical adhesion of the thick fluid lava layer called the asthenosphere. Then it simply overcame that sticky adhesion, something like unzipping a huge strip of Velcro around the equator, and it floated off into space. That three fourths of the thick rocky ring around the earth carried with it a large amount of the rapidly spinning earth's energy in the form of angular momentum. It spiraled outward and was so large that it formed into a sphere by its own gravity and became what is today called the moon. A LITTLE MATH GOES A LONG WAY: Happy Birthday Moon To prove that, let's do a little math. If the earth spins at 24 hours per day, as it does today, then the force of gravity at the equator is about the same as the force of gravity at the north and south poles. If the earth spins faster, in about a 12 hour revolution day, then the force of gravity at the equator is around half of what it would be at the poles. And if the earth spins around in about 7 hours, then the force of gravity becomes rather close to zero at the equator, while the force at the poles remains the same. There are several planets and moons in the solar system which rotate about that fast. It merely indicates how long the body in space has been cooling and shrinking. Rapid spinning is a normal part of planet and moon evolution, and is caused by the body shrinking with age and the principle of Conservation of Angular Momentum (CAM). With another quick calculation we can find the volume of the missing three quarters of the rocky continents of earth. Simply take three fourths of the surface area of the earth and multiply that by 37 miles, or the average depth to the hot molten fluid asthenosphere where the separation took place. That volume of the three fourths of the surface material missing from the earth's rocky layer is exactly equal to the volume of the moon. And that calculation also shows the two volumes are exactly the same with an accuracy of about one percent. Amazing. "

The meaning of the word "unreasonable" has become vague, at least in common use. From the oldest dictionary I could find (Oxford English Dictionary, first edition http://archive.org/stream/oedxaarch#page/n889/mode/2up), it is:
1: Not endowed with reason; irrational 2: Not acting in accordance with reason or good sense

IOW, Unreasonable means "without a reason." The government can not conduct a search without having a reason to do the search. This makes perfect sense: If an TV was stolen nearby and soon after an eyewitness says they saw you carrying a TV into your house, then the police have a reason to search your house: To see if the stolen TV is inside. On the other hand, if the TSA picks a person at random, then they don't have any reason to search him for bombs.

"The great unsolved problem is: people need to work for their keep (in some fashion) to feel spiritually fulfilled. In a post-basic-need-scarcity world, how does that happen? Because we've seen, over and over again, that society basically disintegrates if people don't feel like they've worked for the things they have."

Humans naturally come up with their own things to do. It is actually social institutions like compulsory schooling that beats that out of them. See John Taylor Gatto's writings, for example: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"When you start with such pyramid-shaped givens and then ask yourself what kind of schooling they would require to maintain themselves, any mystery dissipates ..."

Just trying to be a good parent to young children can pretty much take as much time as people can put into it.

Look at how people used to live for some other ideas:
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm

If what you said was true, then why do not all the rich people in the world disintegrate (given most have inherited a good share of their wealth and power)? Why would they give money to their children? Why does Bill Gates still do things when he has so much material wealth? Why did Richard Stallman keep doing stuff after he got a MacArthur Genius award and could have just sat on his backside?

What does it mean to work for something? Is it really a big problem that people generally get their air for free?

I'm not saying there is not truth to your point, because it is true that people need meaning in their lives. I'm just suggesting the issue of gaining meaning solely by overcoming material scarcity does not generalize as broadly as you suggest. See also, for some middle ground:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110425153540/http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."

Those are reasons why we may choose not to automate stuff even when we can...

In 1995, Robert W. Bussard submitted this legislation to all relevant Congressional committees, copying all US plasma physics laboratories.

Needless to say, the legislation wasn't passed.

Do you think the time is right?

:-) We should think deeply about how to move past have artificial scarcity (including fiat currencies) at the heart of a 21st century abundance-oriented economy. We can do that in part by improving our gift economy (Linux, Wikipedia, Thingiverse, blogging), by improving our subsistence economy (home robotics, 3D printers, solar panels, maybe LENR), by improving our planning (like by using emails and twitters to organize the economy by creating and monitoring demand and feedback), and, if we do have a currency, by having a basic income to go with it, as well as LETS-like local currency systems. It would also help to rethink the nature of most "work" so it is more inherently fun and inherently meaningful:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20110425153540/http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html

As a rule of thumb, if there are laws relating to something about "counterfeiting" or "unauthorized sharing", you are dealing with a system based around "artificial scarcity". We should be able to do better in the 21st century.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=star+trek+money

That may have been the case at one point, but based on my own work that's no longer true. Your acquiring bank assigns your business an MCC (merchant category code) when you first get your account, and that's sent back to Visa/Mastercard when authorizing a transaction. Moreover, that's not even something you send; it's just part of how your account is configured when your acquiring bank sends the transaction over the network.

http://www.irs.gov/irb/2004-31_IRB/ar17.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20070710202209/http://usa.visa.com/download/corporate/resources/mcc_booklet.pdf

Depending on your merchant processor and acquiring bank that may be customizable (though I have never seen it done, and I've worked with quite a few processors), but for the vast majority of merchants, it's simply a very generic four-digit code that's associated with the full dollar amount of the authorization. All I need to authorize a card payment is the amount, account number, and expiration date - CVN, billing address, and even consumer name are optional, although your pricing will be downgraded (i.e., more expensive) if you omit those fields due to the higher risk.

It would probably be something similar to that:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110103184052/http://www.spunk.org/library/cartoons/wildcat/sp000583.gif

There aren't too many organizations public or private left in the world, that can replicate Google's indexing capabilities.

It's not necessary to have a company the size of Google to do Google's web search. CPU power and disk space have been increasing faster than the amount of content on the web. Indexing the web isn't all that big a job any more. Cuil, despite their problems, did it with about $20 million, 50 people and about 1000 servers. Their relevance algorithm was terrible and their crawler hit the same pages too often, and by the time they had those fixed, it was too late for them. But they did index all the pages they could reach.

Common Crawl, which is a modestly sized nonprofit, maintains a crawl of the whole web. So does Archive.org Neither maintains a search engine, though.

The next frontier in web search is to crack the provenance problem - figure out which pages are derived from other pages, and list the original source first. Google is not good at this. There are constant complaints on Google support forums about scraper sites outranking the original source. Google doesn't get this right for video, either. A video search system which found the best copy of something and discarded all the copies with ads, logos and recompression would be far better than what Google provides.

Google can't do that. They make money off AdSense ads on third-party content. Scraper sites are a gold mine for Google. 30% of Google ad revenue is from AdSense. Much of that is from copied content.

A better URL would have been

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Encyclopedias+and+dictionaries%22

Search Results
Results: 1 through 50 of 2,409 (0.006 secs)
You searched for: subject:"Encyclopedias and dictionaries"

I have not researched it in detail, but it seems that Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition is available in full.

I have to say I got a chuckle when I got to the part about "inheriting" their IT problems. Obama "inherited" all his problems after all!

On day 1, every problem is indeed inherited. This is a fact. A big difference for me is that Obama is actually fixing issues.... especially in the executive branch

Bush's Whitehouse.gov
Obama's Whitehouse.gov

The Obama version is very nice IMHO.

I have to say I got a chuckle when I got to the part about "inheriting" their IT problems. Obama "inherited" all his problems after all!

On day 1, every problem is indeed inherited. This is a fact. A big difference for me is that Obama is actually fixing issues.... especially in the executive branch

Bush's Whitehouse.gov
Obama's Whitehouse.gov

The Obama version is very nice IMHO.

...flicking through copies of encyclopedias that are more than 20 years old, seeing a snapshot of our knowledge at the time

This should help your nostalgia in the future.

The Jurgen / Silver Stallion / Figures of Earth trilogy is excellent, but.. you have to understand that is was written back in the 1920s by an an educated in the traditional classics. So if you don't know your Greek and Roman myths and history along with literary works like Shakespeare and the Bible... you'll have a real hard time getting the full meaning of it all. Still a good story, if a little old-fashioned writing style.

Have a link, but it too is pretty heavy going :)

"Canticle" is a brilliant book indeed. Miller takes the idea of a post-apocalyptic world and explores very thoroughly the re-establishment of civilization, questions of the value of scientific progress, the value of human life, and whether man can really avoid destroying himself.

There was also a nicely-made radio dramatization done in 15 half-hour segments that's available from the Internet Archive here. While no dramatization can capture all the depths of a good novel, this one is well-acted, I especially liked the narrator, and captures the spirit of the book well.

People are claiming that bodog.com was a Canadian site, but I'm confused. Here's a cache of the page from April 2011.

Less than a year ago the website said "Bodog Gaming is operated in the United States under License by Morris Mohawk Gaming Group." Could this be why the domain name was seized? It would see to fall inside US jurisdiction in that case.

See also E.F. Schumacher on Buddhist Economics for support for your point.
http://web.archive.org/web/20110425153540/http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html

Also, look at stuff on a "basic income":
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html

And stuff by Martin Ford and Marshall Brain.

Off-topic I know, but it's funny to go back and view Apple's website from 2001 when they first released the iPod. They talk about how "ultra-slim" this thing is at over a quarter-inch thick. What is it now...like 7 mm?

Well I don't know how that guy's tools worked, I was assuming T's setup would automatically change to another set of authentication data as soon as U was trying to connect. That's based on nothing but the description of coaxthief "if you have the time let the program run over night to sniff out as many macs as it can but this is not required" - but why bother gathering a large number of MACs if you don't want to use that in order to avoid collisions? Otherwise, each time U would try to connect T would have to manually switch to new authentication data.

I did a quick check for an old version of the site. At $99 you would expect to get something that works reasonably smooth, even if you are just stealing internet access.

Patent trolling? Come on. It was a settlement in a straight plagiarism case from Apples POV.

Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, Apple's statement on the stolen code.

"The pirated code was incorporated into a software product called Display Code Interface. DCI was codeveloped by Microsoft and Intel, and is bundled with Video for Windows 1.1D. Because of the circumstances of the code transfer from Canyon, we think Intel and Microsoft knew, or should have known, that they were getting pirated code. But we tried to use a cooperative, non-disruptive approach by filing our initial suit only against Canyon, and talking to Intel and Microsoft privately to get them to stop distributing our code.

They refused. Repeatedly.

So we were left with two options: let the two most powerful companies in the industry get away with software piracy, or go to court. We chose to defend our rights, and to attempt to bring this matter to a close as quickly as possible. It's very disappointing that we ended up in this situation, especially since Intel and Microsoft have in other situations taken a strong stand against software piracy."

Imagine waiting a half second for each character of the (text) file you requested to appear on your screen. Those were the days of the 2400 baud modems, which were in fact that slow.

Actually...

(1) A 2400 baud modem would transmit approximately 274 7-bit (ASCII) characters per second (assuming 8N1) on a clean line. However...

(2) In 1983, 300 or (for the big spenders) 1200 baud was a lot more common. As late as 1988, 2400 bps connections commanded a premium (e.g., the GEnie service charged double the per-hour connection fee for dialing into their 2400 baud modem bank -- separate phone numbers -- versus their "up to 1200 baud" pool. 2400 was the fastest supported.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEnie

The Hayes Smartmodem 300 was introduced in 1981; before that, it was all acoustic couplers for normal folks, even 3l33t ones with high-end IMSAI systems who were intelligent, but under-achievers, alienated from their parents, with few friends (and of course, at the time, such people would have been classic cases for recruitment by the Soviets).

But even at 300 baud, you'd get ~30 characters per second, more if any sort of compression was being used.

IIRC, 1200 baud was about where text trickled in at about the same speed at which I could read it comfortably, and (for me) ushered in the era of the BBS, the original multiplayer shared universes (there was a text-based space trade / exploration / combat game on GEnie I was kind of addicted to, at age 12 -- I think it was Stellar Emperor aka MegaWars III: http://web.archive.org/web/20020607113100/http://www3.sympatico.ca/maury/games/space/megawars_iii.html)...

I wrote the following article during my tenure as the chief architect for the mass-market videotex experiment conducted by AT&T and Knight-Ridder News called "Viewtron" -- a service of the joint-venture company, Viewdata Corporation of America.

As can be sensed in the article, I had encountered some fairly frustrating situations and was about to be told by the corporate authorities that my telecomputing architecture, which would have provided a dynamically downloaded Forth graphics protocol in 1983 evolving into a distributed Smalltalk-like environment beginning around 1985, would be abandoned due to a corporate commitment to stick with Tandem Computers as the mainframe vendor -- a choice which I had asserted would not be adequate for my architecture. (At least Postscript survived.) I was subsequently offered the head telecomputing software position at Prodigy by IBM and turned it down when they indicated they would not support my architecture either, due to a committment to limit merchant access to their network to only those who had a special status with the service provider (IBM/CBS/Sears). The distributed Smalltalk system was specifically designed to allow the sort of grassroots commerce now emerging in the world wide web -- particularly as people recognize JavaScript is similar to the Self programming language and the Common Lisp Object System. This wasn't in keeping with IBM's philosophy at that time since they had yet to be humbled by Bill Gates.

My independent attempt at developing this sort of service was squashed by the U.S. government when it provided UUCP/Usenet service to a competitor in San Diego and would not offer me the same subsidy via MILnet -- a network that was not for public access, by law, and which was exclusively for military use. My complaints to DoD investigators resulted in continual "We're looking into it." replies.

Videotex Networking and The American Pioneer

by Jim Bowery (circa 1982)

With the precipitous drop in the price of information technology, computer-based communication has come within the technical and economic reach of the mass-market. The term generally used for this mass-market is "videotex" because it reduces the cost of entry into the home by using the most ubiquitous video display device, the television screen, to deliver its service.

The central importance of this new market is that it brings the capital cost of establishing a publication with nation-wide distribution to within the reach of the mass-market as well. This means that anyone who is a "consumer" of information on this new technology can also be a "producer" of information. The distinction between editorial staff and readership need no longer be a function of who has how much money, but rather, who has the greatest consumer appeal. The last time an event of this magnitude took place was the invention of the offset printer which brought the cost of publication to within the reach of small businesses. That democratization of cultural evolution was protected in our constitution under freedom of the press. Freedom of speech was intended for the masses. In this new technology, the distinction between press and speech is beginning to blur. Some individuals and institutions see this as removing the new media from either of the constitutional protections rather than giving it both. They see a great danger in allowing the uncensored ideas of individuals to spread across the entire nation within seconds at a cost of only a few cents. A direct quote from a person with authority in the management of this new technology: "We view videotex as 'we the institutions' providing 'you the people' with information." I wonder what our founding fathers would have thought of a statement like that.

Mass-media influences cultural evolution in profound ways. Rather that assuming a paternalistic posture, we should be objecti

Internet Archive's last published generation Petabox (now more than a year old, so they were using smaller drives), would take two racks ... which is still reasonable, but you could probably fit it in a single rack with today's drives. A Backblaze Pod is 42 disks in 4U, so you could do it yourself and assuming you can get enough large disks after that whole flooding thing, be able to get a TB in a single rack easily. The Sun Thumper took 48 disks in 4U ... I don't know if the X4540 ever supported larger than 1TB disks, though.

My department just got a Nexsan E60 in yesterday ... 60 3TB disks in 4U, so you can squeeze 1.8PB raw in a 42U rack. (usable space ... still more than a PB, even with spares.)

So, space isn't the issue ... power and cooling way be, though.

the officer who gave the order can then be charged with

Except that the article suggests they are not charged with anything. We have case-after-case of cops harassing and/or arresting people for filming them, many of which are resolved in the photographer's favor, and yet the taxpayers, not the cops, are the ones who pay for it.

Consider, for instance, the case of Sean and Erik Ibarra who we had to pay $1.7 million for the cops' assault and destruction of evidence and the Ibarra's subsequent arrest for "evading arrest".

Charges for the cops? None. And do you know what happened when the Ibarras asked why? The DA deleted his emails. Then we got to pay for his contempt defense. Of course, it's just contempt of court, not an actual destruction of evidence charge, so he was given a dinky little fine, which of course he appealed at our expense.

Or take the cops that harassed people who were photographing a drunk cop who slammed into a schoolbus. The cops were seen covering up beer bottles and the hospital found the cop to be over .200 (out of .08) yet internal affairs stood by the cops who "investigated" the wreck and insisted that the cop wasn't drunk for weeks.

I love archie bunkers chair. and I treat it with the greatest respect. but in and of itself, it has no value in 500 years.

That's not for you, or anyone else, to decide in 2012. There's no way to tell exactly what information, and artifacts, will be of value in the future, and what will not. Professional archivists and preservation people know this, and that's why they do what they do.

you can share the present, or you can protect the past, or you can do neither. both just isn't worth it.

Nonsense. Large-scale digitization efforts like HathiTrust and Internet Archive do it every day. You are completely talking out of your ass.

I wonder if I could put that into something useful :P

Like this? http://web.archive.org/web/20050412233112/http://lineman.net/node/270

or ... more general stuff.. http://fr.thehackademy.net/madchat/esprit/textes/The_Art_of_Deception.pdf

Furthermore, the dreams of the past have proven dead. The hopes of the atomic age and space age have turned out to be far more difficult to achieve in reality. Instead, it now looks like the world of the future is going to be far weirder and harder to understand than than we dreamed of.

Sounds like a good subject for an SF story:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100526022103/http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1988/1/1988_1_34.shtml