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While I agree with you that CNN/FNC/MSNBC will always put the highest priority on their corporate interests, and will never encourage you to seek free sources of content, that doesn't mean that you have to listen to them. More people are getting informed about the world around them through the web, whether directly through news sites, from blogs, or just by reference in emails and forums.

While coders are only a small portion of the people, the open source "movement" has already affected culture. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Creative Commons license certainly must have been influenced by the existence of the GPL. Now look at how many photos and blogs are licensed as CC. I even recently came across a full-length movie that is licensed as CC, as well as source interviews used in other documentaries. archive.org is a great source for open "open source movies".

Absent potentially harmful legislation or anti-competitive behavior (like issues related to Net Neutrality), people will continue using the web for more and more of their information and entertainment, and will become publishers themselves of various sorts. When you're trying to throw together a movie with various clips from other sources, it becomes clear to you just how important it is for that content to be open. Even blogging news, it quickly becomes an issue. The more people that become publishers, the more open the content will be.

While I agree with you that CNN/FNC/MSNBC will always put the highest priority on their corporate interests, and will never encourage you to seek free sources of content, that doesn't mean that you have to listen to them. More people are getting informed about the world around them through the web, whether directly through news sites, from blogs, or just by reference in emails and forums.

While coders are only a small portion of the people, the open source "movement" has already affected culture. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Creative Commons license certainly must have been influenced by the existence of the GPL. Now look at how many photos and blogs are licensed as CC. I even recently came across a full-length movie that is licensed as CC, as well as source interviews used in other documentaries. archive.org is a great source for open "open source movies".

Absent potentially harmful legislation or anti-competitive behavior (like issues related to Net Neutrality), people will continue using the web for more and more of their information and entertainment, and will become publishers themselves of various sorts. When you're trying to throw together a movie with various clips from other sources, it becomes clear to you just how important it is for that content to be open. Even blogging news, it quickly becomes an issue. The more people that become publishers, the more open the content will be.

ii. One lawyer pokes another in the eye

Cell phones don't have to be as small as they are; the hand-set size of ancient rotary-dial phones was that size for a reason.
Well, if that size was used as a grip behind the body of the unit (with various hardware inside it, of course), then the face of the unit could be a fairly decent-sized touch-screen.
It can even be a decently low-power screen, once companies like this one and this one and this one finish their R&D in things like full-color and size-scaling.

I'd also like to mention that There was a buzz-phrase a number of years ago, "wafer scale integration", and I posted my own thoughts about it
here, in Nov 2003.
While they might not be using silicon as the substrate for this modern version of WSI, I have little doubt that something like what I described is what they are doing. Perhaps I should seek a royalty... :)

http://web.archive.org/web/20050323094149/http://w ww.hevanet.com/peace/microsoft.htm

and now for the obligatory Slashdot M$-bashing link:

http://www.windows-sucks.com/

While in a theoretical world, this makes sense, in reality this isn't what's happened. When you look at the distribution of wealth (or knowledge, or access, or whatever), you find that since the internet these gaps have grown bigger, and while the big players may be new, the truth is out of the billions of sites online, the top thousand sites get 99.99% of the traffic. How's the democracy? How's that "power to the people"? While new technologies may come out that gives the "little guy" a voice for a while, this period goes away quickly as either entrenched companies jump into the fray (i.e. Microsoft/Apple/Dell) or new companies spring up (i.e. Google/Ebay/Amazon).

Yeah but there is a fair playing ground. If people want to see it then they can. You don't think myspace was put up and it just got popular. People found it interesting people wanted to go to that site. They wanted to put up their page on the internet.(Sorry for using mysapce but its a good exmaple) People are controlling themselves, no one is being told you can only go to x sites.

Anyone can make a site, anyone can put what they want on that site (I think we can all agree there are limits to everything) Any site can get popular. When anyone can succeed, and everyone has their own power that is democracy.

Where do you think google, yahoo, craigslist, microsoft, slashdot, digg, apple and dell started from. If I'm not mistaken a couple of those started in a garage. Remember that the american paradigm of opportunity is not guarunteed success, but the chance to be succesful with hard work.

While in a theoretical world, this makes sense, in reality this isn't what's happened. When you look at the distribution of wealth (or knowledge, or access, or whatever), you find that since the internet these gaps have grown bigger, and while the big players may be new, the truth is out of the billions of sites online, the top thousand sites get 99.99% of the traffic. How's the democracy? How's that "power to the people"? While new technologies may come out that gives the "little guy" a voice for a while, this period goes away quickly as either entrenched companies jump into the fray (i.e. Microsoft/Apple/Dell) or new companies spring up (i.e. Google/Ebay/Amazon).

Yeah but there is a fair playing ground. If people want to see it then they can. You don't think myspace was put up and it just got popular. People found it interesting people wanted to go to that site. They wanted to put up their page on the internet.(Sorry for using mysapce but its a good exmaple) People are controlling themselves, no one is being told you can only go to x sites.

Anyone can make a site, anyone can put what they want on that site (I think we can all agree there are limits to everything) Any site can get popular. When anyone can succeed, and everyone has their own power that is democracy.

Where do you think google, yahoo, craigslist, microsoft, slashdot, digg, apple and dell started from. If I'm not mistaken a couple of those started in a garage. Remember that the american paradigm of opportunity is not guarunteed success, but the chance to be succesful with hard work.

While in a theoretical world, this makes sense, in reality this isn't what's happened. When you look at the distribution of wealth (or knowledge, or access, or whatever), you find that since the internet these gaps have grown bigger, and while the big players may be new, the truth is out of the billions of sites online, the top thousand sites get 99.99% of the traffic. How's the democracy? How's that "power to the people"? While new technologies may come out that gives the "little guy" a voice for a while, this period goes away quickly as either entrenched companies jump into the fray (i.e. Microsoft/Apple/Dell) or new companies spring up (i.e. Google/Ebay/Amazon).

Yeah but there is a fair playing ground. If people want to see it then they can. You don't think myspace was put up and it just got popular. People found it interesting people wanted to go to that site. They wanted to put up their page on the internet.(Sorry for using mysapce but its a good exmaple) People are controlling themselves, no one is being told you can only go to x sites.

Anyone can make a site, anyone can put what they want on that site (I think we can all agree there are limits to everything) Any site can get popular. When anyone can succeed, and everyone has their own power that is democracy.

Where do you think google, yahoo, craigslist, microsoft, slashdot, digg, apple and dell started from. If I'm not mistaken a couple of those started in a garage. Remember that the american paradigm of opportunity is not guarunteed success, but the chance to be succesful with hard work.

Hardly, mine was made by a German professor named Bandelow who was a big name in early cube studies. Actually, I find the 5x5x5 easier than the 4x4x4. The fact that you always have the centers there to orient you makes a huge difference. Also, there's a kind of parity error that requires you to scramble already placed pieces that only occurs in the 4x4x4 (and any other even size). It's annoying, because you can only know you have it when you've already placed most of the cube which you then have to re-solve. The system called the "Ultimate Solution" gave a really good description of how to solve any size cube, but has unfortunately recently disappeared from the Internet aside from its ghost in the Wayback Machine.

Heh, quite ominous just right after having watched this BBC documentary.

Adobe used to say that SGV was here to stay, so why did they let it wither on the vine and die? (My theory is because they bought Flash, so now they don't care about SVG any more.) Why should we trust what they say about Flash, if they lied about supporting SVG?

The Adobe SVG Page they say that "Adobe has taken a leadership role in the development of the SVG specification and continues to ensure that its authoring tools are SVG compatible." Is that still true? Will FLEX ever support more than importing a trivial static subset of SVG at compile time, and will it ever run on the SVG player? Why doesn't Adobe continue developing the SVG player, if it's not yet capable of supporting the requirements of FLEX? If Adobe is dumping SVG, then why don't they put the source code for their excellent SVG implementation out there as Free Open Source Software? Are they afraid it will compete with Flash?

On the same page, Adobe also says "Open standards promote choice, provide lower-cost solutions, and facilitate interoperability." That I agree with! So now that Adobe's given up on SVG and moved on to Flash, will Adobe ever submit the Flash specification to an open standards organization so it can be openly standardized like SVG? Will Adobe ever publish the complete source code of the entire FLEX system and Flash as Free Open Source Software? Will Adobe at least make a statement that they won't sick their legal team on people who implement free open source Flash-compatible runtimes?

The archive from 2001 says: "Adobe's intention is that future releases of the Adobe SVG Viewer will strive to achieve support for the full W3C SVG specification." What ever happened to that plan? Does Adobe's current SVG player fully support the W3C SVG specification, 5 years later? We've heard the lip service, now where's the beef?

The archive from 2004 says: "Discover the open-source future of graphics with Scalable Vector Graphics." So what's the open-source future of graphics, now? I think that describes OpenLaszlo pretty well, because it's future-proof by not locking you into any one platform like Flash! Will Adobe be open-sourcing FLEX and Flash? How about at least making the SVG player open source, instead of quietly killing it and dumping its body like a forgotten bastard stepchild?

-Don

Adobe used to say that SGV was here to stay, so why did they let it wither on the vine and die? (My theory is because they bought Flash, so now they don't care about SVG any more.) Why should we trust what they say about Flash, if they lied about supporting SVG?

The Adobe SVG Page they say that "Adobe has taken a leadership role in the development of the SVG specification and continues to ensure that its authoring tools are SVG compatible." Is that still true? Will FLEX ever support more than importing a trivial static subset of SVG at compile time, and will it ever run on the SVG player? Why doesn't Adobe continue developing the SVG player, if it's not yet capable of supporting the requirements of FLEX? If Adobe is dumping SVG, then why don't they put the source code for their excellent SVG implementation out there as Free Open Source Software? Are they afraid it will compete with Flash?

On the same page, Adobe also says "Open standards promote choice, provide lower-cost solutions, and facilitate interoperability." That I agree with! So now that Adobe's given up on SVG and moved on to Flash, will Adobe ever submit the Flash specification to an open standards organization so it can be openly standardized like SVG? Will Adobe ever publish the complete source code of the entire FLEX system and Flash as Free Open Source Software? Will Adobe at least make a statement that they won't sick their legal team on people who implement free open source Flash-compatible runtimes?

The archive from 2001 says: "Adobe's intention is that future releases of the Adobe SVG Viewer will strive to achieve support for the full W3C SVG specification." What ever happened to that plan? Does Adobe's current SVG player fully support the W3C SVG specification, 5 years later? We've heard the lip service, now where's the beef?

The archive from 2004 says: "Discover the open-source future of graphics with Scalable Vector Graphics." So what's the open-source future of graphics, now? I think that describes OpenLaszlo pretty well, because it's future-proof by not locking you into any one platform like Flash! Will Adobe be open-sourcing FLEX and Flash? How about at least making the SVG player open source, instead of quietly killing it and dumping its body like a forgotten bastard stepchild?

-Don

Legal music baby.. And other cool stuff.

http://archive.org/

http://bt.etree.org/

RIAA sux. Have fun.

Wow! 30 comments and no mention of the Conet Project. There's lots of great sound files there to make your officemates wonder what the hell you're up to...

Jensen Harris BayCHI Ribbon UI Podcast

As a summary, any user of Word, Excel, etc. knows that since Office 95 there has been a massive explosion of features that makes it nearly impossible to find anything (massive menus plus an explosion of toolbars plus lots of context-sensitive pallette-like sidebar things). As Harris states, 4 of the most highly requested features in Word are already in the product, but people can't find them. After loads of research, they decided to do this Ribbon UI thing.

Maybe he never heard of the "wayback machine".

Once something is published on the web, anyone can store a copy of it. You can never be sure that someone, somewhere hasn't still got it. There is no way to "take it back".

I could have sworn they released an actual subscriber number on the same PlayOnline news story that announced the launch of FFXI in Europe and the release of the Chains of Promathia expansion pack - something like 600,000 subscribers. Unfortunately they don't bother archiving old news stories, so I have no idea if that's true. I tried checking the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, but it timed out for me. Oh well.

In any case, Square-Enix isn't really known for communicating with their fans, so it's not really surprising they haven't bothered to release actual numbers.

I was watching an old (1946) information film about democracy and despotism , and it is scary that some of the indicators that they mention about a contry heading to despotism are coming true.
scary

This is a ridiculous way of measuring it anyway, and is NOT what the pros do. So, 79% chance of failure, when? Today? In the next year? The September 23rd? You're all arguing about pointless numbers.

You know that MTBF number that drive manufacturers provide? It's there for a reason.

Wayback archive of IBM's MTBF documentation

All traces are disappearing from the net, but there is a system called Maxivision 48 that allowed 48 fps using only 20% (or something) more film than a regular 24 fps film.

(late addition)
Perhaps you can see the info you want on the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://maxivisioncine ma.com
And mostly the PDF at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050312073714/www.maxi visioncinema.com/maxivisioninfo1002.pdf
(/late addition)

It used standard 35mm film stock, but removed the analog audio tracks along the side (rarely used anymore anyway) and reduced the pulldown (the amount the film advances with each frame). Basically, it was Super 35 withj a 3-perf pulldown, running at 48 (or optionally 24) fps.

There is an excellent article on Super 35 on wikipedia, perhaps you can get the idea from there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35

Anyway, I'd like to see higher frame rates too. It'd take some work to make sure that various TV transfers (including DVDs, both high def and regular) can still be made from the high frame rate movies without looking funny.

All traces are disappearing from the net, but there is a system called Maxivision 48 that allowed 48 fps using only 20% (or something) more film than a regular 24 fps film.

(late addition)
Perhaps you can see the info you want on the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://maxivisioncine ma.com
And mostly the PDF at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050312073714/www.maxi visioncinema.com/maxivisioninfo1002.pdf
(/late addition)

It used standard 35mm film stock, but removed the analog audio tracks along the side (rarely used anymore anyway) and reduced the pulldown (the amount the film advances with each frame). Basically, it was Super 35 withj a 3-perf pulldown, running at 48 (or optionally 24) fps.

There is an excellent article on Super 35 on wikipedia, perhaps you can get the idea from there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35

Anyway, I'd like to see higher frame rates too. It'd take some work to make sure that various TV transfers (including DVDs, both high def and regular) can still be made from the high frame rate movies without looking funny.

No, it just works better than anything else that's easily available. It does not take too much probing to find annoying flaws in IPod and ITunes that are solved in programs like Amarok.

People don't care about Ogg Vorbis. People don't care about DRM if they don't notice it (and if you use an iPod along with iTunes and regular CDs, you realistically don't unless you're trying to give songs to your friends).

Hmmm, what could be more natural than plugging your IPod into someone else's computer? Remember tape swapping? IPod brings a nasty surprise by erasing all of it's contents when you try to SHARE. Getting your music back is a painful operation, not simply a button press. This punishment of sharing, evil on it's own, will also punish people who lose their music due to other failures.

There are many other annoyances which users of ITunes do notice. The most significant is not being able to sort by Artist and Album. Others are less important but almost as annoying as a whole.

For some reason, all other players fail on one count or another.

The main reason other players fail is Microsoft. WMP is a well documented dissaster of DRM and poor quality software. Even when other players include their own interface, they all want in on the Works for Sure, Napster/Purge M$ DRM service d'jour. Absent M$ and DRM crap, these players work well enough, especially if the user only bothers with CDs as you suggested.

Someone just starting out would do well to use free software for their entertainment.

• Rip with Konqueror's audiocd: function. With too lame, ogg is a concern only for those who care about freedom and saving 10-20% of storage space. Correct lables, flac, ogg and mp3 encoding has never been easier. ABCDE provides more robust ripping from the command line if you want that.
• Record analog with Krec, Krecord, Audacity or Gramofile. Use Rockbox for your iPod or iRiver portable device.
• Get your new music off the web. The Internet Archive has more than 30,000 concerts by artists that want you to share. Most players have built in stream sources.
• Play and organize your music with Amarok. It's all the goodness of iTunes with none of the annoyances.

The main obstacle to free software adoption for music is FUD and a false sense of dependence on M$ formats for "work". The free software user is less likely to have pirated crap because no one needs that crap anymore.

You won't like this.

Fuck you and your RIAA buddies. If you give me the choice between P2P retrieval of legitimate content and my RIAA music collection, I'll wipe my non free music in a heartbeat. It's crap like this that tightens my resolve to avoid non free music. I can get all I want from archive.org, magnatune.com, others like them, artist CDs bought at the club and etunes. You pigopolists and your old commercial shit are on the bottom of my list.

We can debate the morality of surrendering to government sponsored ownership of culture, but the practical path is to not help by sharing non free material. Government mandated broadcast monopolies and many other bogus laws lead directly to the creation of the big three music publishers. As the owners of the previous convenient means of sharing music, radio, the publishers have co-opted a large part of our culture. No one really won that one, least of all artists and those actually making the music. The best way to fight it is not to purchase or share RIAA shit.

Lack of hassle is another reason to delete it all. The accused should be presumed innocent, despite having their doors kicked in. As I pointed out, there's plenty of free content out there by people who want you to share. Much of it is easiest to get by bit torrent and other P2P services. If possesion of RIAA shit is the incriminating evidence, you might be better off without it. That way, I won't have some dickhead like you tut tuting in my face about how I'm getting what I deserved.

That's kind of what they want - RIAA only or nothing RIAA for you. They are forcing you to chose. If everyone gave them what they wanted, the world would be a better place.

do you realize how many websites on thenet that have disappeared forever taking with them extremely useful information? I wish someone would have blatently ripped them off and perpetuated that information so that it was available today.

Learning German is probably an effort on par with trying to replicate their years of work and experience. ;-)

There was even a database detailing which application caused how much trouble without administrator privileges.

However, in all of this the question comes to mind whether the best way to obtain as much as possible of Mac-like security and ease of use on PCs wouldn't simply be installing Linux in the first place.

As for pricing, $15/month for as much new stuff as I want to listen to? I've already got 20 new albums in rotation, stuff I likely wouldn't have bought before but found via the recommendation system, and really enjoy ... Ast $15/month, the amount I would have paid buying that music would have covered the fee for years.

Wow, for fifteen bucks a month plus the cost of all the newest M$ toys and software, I can stream my music to my TV where my $40/month cable subscription already pipes 30 channels of endless hours of music I already don't listen to? Fantastic! Besides that music source I don't listen to, there's plenty of online music streams these days. You know, like the internet archive and their 34,000 live concerts? Don't forget the creative commons people, who also want to promote worth while music. Why would I want to rent a source of music from the usual RIAA pigs again?

What was it that WiMP has that Amarok was lacking? Wait a minute, WiMP does not do lyrics, cover art or even wikipedia lookups?

Sarcasm off. The RIAA and Microsoft are both based on a scarcity that does not exist. The music publishers are damaged and people have routed around them. Microsoft too has been routed around. There are plenty of alternatives to both. Restricting your users while other do not is fatal. Your supposed world of plenty looks awfully limited.

It's just crazy people.

Look at Ron Wells' (the guy listed on morgellons.org) site: http://www.rewells.com/ - more lunacy with links to other crazy people going back to 2002: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.rewells.co m/ .

Of course, the claim that it's a VM campaign for Scanner may be part of the VM campaign for Scanner, but sometimes paranoia is only the little voices in your head plotting to embarass you. =)

After the crazy uptimes comment it goes on ... "Our confidence in Windows Server 2003," says Stucky, "is higher than in any previous operating system."

Um, if you're downloading someone's own homemade content, there are far better ways available to download it.

Face it. Practically nobody uses P2P to download legal stuff.

WombatControl -- I didn't mean to imply that Al-Qaeda did not exist, and I'm fully aware of the "The Database" explaination. However, by positioning Al-Qaeda as something much larger than what it actually was, the US Government's propaganda effort essentially created "Al-Qaeda London", "Al-Qaeda Spain", and "Al-Qaeda Iraq" out of random disorganized groups, thus mainfesting a "worldwide" enemy were there simply was not one before.

The BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares", expounds on this theory. You may have seen it already, but I might as well recommend it for other slashdotters:
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmare s

Watch BBC Documentary The Power of Nightmares and it will all start to make sense.

Screenshot of the original iTunes browser.

I don't see how iTunes on an iBook is less of a portable digital music player than the iPod Music app on its PortalPlayer/ARM platform. I rememeber how heavy the Compaq Portable was...

It's pretty obvious that John Dunn does not care about people who create their own media or use P2P to share content that others want you to share. He tries to push it off onto Sophos by quoting them about Charles Bronson movies, where the hero is a murderer. He even leaves in, "...it's perfectly possible for the Trojan to aim poorly and wipe out innocent files too," but Dunn the only thing he worries about, while droning on about "benefits", is "security" being turned off and the next versions that might wipe out something else. If you are using P2P, Dunn does not like you and does not mind if someone wipes out your music, movies and photoalbum. It seems beyond Dunn that people outside the big three music publishers might make and share music, photo albums and movies that other find interesting. By his authoritative opinion, we are all consumers or pirates of pornography. Anything that gets in the way of big dumb companies making money, like alternate entertainment distribution systems, competition or viruses deleting M$ Word.docs, is EVIL and the people who use them must be grubby little masturbators.

Porn? Dunn does not use the word. Sophos consider the name "goporn.exe" which is left in the users directory "tempting." The masturbator and warez insults are entirely the trojan author's. Neither Sophos nor Dunn point out how insulting it would be to find porn or warez in what used to be a directory of baby pictures, movies and music. Such an omission is tacit approval. He can't even imagine such a thing.

Get this Dunn: there are no benefits to malware. If someone is on your computer eating your bandwith and doing things you did not ask for, they are fucking you. What I share has nothing to do with .DOC, porn or cracked software. I do use P2P, http and sftp and I don't want you or anyone else wiping that out.

I'm seeing more of that... like the recent WSJ rejection of all Linux because the distro tried would not work iTunes (and a few "complex" M$Office docs). It's too bad people don't see the magic combination of:

• Amarok, the awesome free music player.
• The Internet Archive's 34,000 concert Music Archive
• A music publisher that does not suck
• Cheap USB music players from walmart, orcheap good ones or software that makes expensive ones rock like they are worth the money.

The whole DRM fiasco is so avoidable and life without it is so much better. If work forces you to use Windoze, it sucks to be you but you don't have to let that take over your entertainment and home life.

By the way, the GUI that Xine makes does all the cool stuff from keyboard shortcuts you want from a video player. If you want a real video editor, go for kino or cinerella. M$ will never give you any of that any more than M$ Word can be used for publishing.

yup yup yup. I currently use keywords for google, google images, traceroute, whois, ebay, wiki, xe.net, php.net, mysql.com (though their website is mostly useless (in comparision with the brilliantly useful php.net)), amazon, archive.org, a file extension search page, and ip2country. yay for bookmarks! your suggestions welcome.

FYI:
http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=%25s
http://filext.com/detaillist.php?extdetail=%25s&Su bmit3=Go!
http://whois.webhosting.info/%25s
http://web.archive.org/archive_request_ng?collecti on=web&url=%25s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search =%25s
http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi?Amount=%25s&From =USD&To=GBP
http://www.ezwhois.net/index.php
http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/search.dll?satitle =%25s&ht=1&sokeywordredirect=&from=R8&fkr=1&soloct og=9
http://www.php.net/search.php
http://www.mysql.com/search/?q=%25s&charset=
http://puremango.co.uk/ip2country.php?ip=%25s
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search-handle- form/026-9212734-6757257

Reminds me of a site that used to run a few years back. When it got shut down the

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/October/04_crm_72 6.htm

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/mantovani Indict.htm

Upon shutting down the operation, the USS put up a defacement of sorts, viewable here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041128051935/http://w ww.shadowcrew.com/

http://web.archive.org/web/19991003183557/www.geoc ities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/9488/nazis.html

Russ seems mighty intent on making the Nazis left-leaning (to the point of propaganda) because of their initial public policy demands prior to being in power, but seems largely ignorant of the actual history of party including the Reichsmordwoche, and all of the pesky policies that were actually implemented while in power.

Yup. search.yahoo.com has been around since December 12, 1998.

Google, on the other hand, made it's first appearance on December 2, 1998.

Hm.

Yup. search.yahoo.com has been around since December 12, 1998.

Google, on the other hand, made it's first appearance on December 2, 1998.

Hm.

Thomas Jefferson believed it was a farmer's responsibility to grow hemp, aka "pot" or marijuana. Hemp is one of the most industrially significant plants there are. When he bailed out of his plane over the Pacific, former president George Bush's life may very well have been saved because of hemp. Many parachute cords were made from hemp. It was only in 1937 with the Marijuana Tax Act that hemp was made illegal, and that because it threatened many wealthy people. But during the Second World War, the federal government pushed to have farmers grow hemp, making and releasing the movie Hemp For Victory. Oil from hemp could be used for fuel and to make plastic. When he designed his diesel engine Diesel designed it to run on most any vegetable oil, of which hemp is a good source. Henry Ford, on his Iron Mountain estate designed and built a car with and powered by hemp. This threatened Rochefeller's and Rothschild's oil wealth and DuPont's plastics manufacturing. Because an efficient method of processing hemp fibers into paper, more paper could be made from an acre of hemp than from an acre of forest, this threatened William Randolf Hearst's business of cutting down forests to make paper.

You clearly haven't seen the authoritative 1936 anti-drug movie 'Reefer Madness', also released under the following aliases;

You link to the IMDB summary? Dear God man - that classic educational film was made in 1938, has fallen into the public domain and can be legally downloaded from archive.org.

There's a revolution in content going on. Between Amarok and the Internet Archive, free canned music has never been easier or richer. There's already good collaboration with other free efforts like Wikipedia, I'm looking forward to more to take mass culture back from RIAA flunkies. The non free players, hobbled with DRM, will never match the performance of the free players. This alone is sufficient incentive for people to migrate to free platforms. The whole package is greater than the sum of it's parts.

At The Internet Archive we have about 120,000 audio and live music shows, occupying about 53TB of disk space. We're always trying to think of new and better ways to present it to our users.

I'm going to look at all the solutions people have suggested here and try to glean some usability tips which might be implementable on top of our existing interface. Please keep up the good suggestions!

-- TTK

At The Internet Archive we have about 120,000 audio and live music shows, occupying about 53TB of disk space. We're always trying to think of new and better ways to present it to our users.

I'm going to look at all the solutions people have suggested here and try to glean some usability tips which might be implementable on top of our existing interface. Please keep up the good suggestions!

-- TTK

I hope this whole project does not kill SFLan:

http://www.archive.org/web/sflan.php/

the already existing free wifi network in San Francisco.

I can see the popularity of google actually hurting the development of this grassroots project significantly; even though SFLan is adfree.

I worked @ domino (later renamed to d-net) for many years. My store was in Santa Rosa about a block north of Best Buy. It wasn't just a single computer, people were welcome to build whatever system they wanted. Originally (early 90's) it was a more managed process, but at my shop I was happy to show someone how to build for themselves using whatever they wanted.

I loved working there, but a local company hired me away for twice the money per hour and I've been here ever since (7yrs). I was the head tech at my shop and trained several people to take my place, but when I left I took many of the customers with me (who I still work for) and they folded soon after.

I miss working down and dirty with off-the-street computer problems, in fact, when I saw this article I thought "hmm, it'd be nice to work there just to have some real challenges to fix." My users at my real job can break things, but there was nothing like the challenge of an entire city's users doing god knows what to their computers.

I tried to hunt up some pics/shop info for you using wayback but didn't net too much.
Thanks for the memories,
-eric

- Gordon @ IA

- Gordon @ IA