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Alternatively, CIX have their own site!. Who would have thought it possible?

Do you think that there might be other things that exist outside of Wikipedia?

Paris was famous for its system of pneumatic tubes used for mail delivery. The system was automated, with colour coded bands used for routing, some systems used electromagnet propulsion. If this garbage system works half so well,it will be great. I don't see anything about recycling or composting though. That's bad. There is a great article on it here: http://www.cix.co.uk/~mhayhurst/jdhayhurst/pneumatic/book1.html

I hate to use appeals to authority, but how about the word of a clinical psychologist with 25 years of practice..

The naive should know something about antisocial personality disorder before someone screws them over just for the thrill of it.

Sorry that you got modded offtopic; should have put that part after the relevant comment about HD-DVD.

I in fact know a great deal about what libertarianism is, and what it is not. I have been around the apologists and the critics and found reason and logic to be only in the minds of the latter. Libertarianism is NOT the only (or best, or even a feasible) solution to the problems of overspending, wasteful spending, and warmongering. Many people inside the Democratic party feel very strongly about these issues too, as well as several things you lumped into the concept of "mommy government". For instance, I advocate drastically reducing the size of the active military by at least 50% (based on dollars not personnel) this would free up a huge amount of money for social (no, I'm not afraid of that word, or socialism. It's not a pejorative no matter how hard the right tries to make it sound like one) welfare programs AND make it impossible for us to even start wars of aggression in the first place. Don't think for a second that the LP has a monopoly on peace.

But that's besides the point. Libertarianism is a self-serving, self-interested, selfish ideology for individuals with the political minds of teenagers who have absolutely no concept of responsibility or empathy. In short, they want to smash and grab as much as they can and then take it all home. But you can't do that in modern society without rewriting all the rules and obliterating the social contract that CREATED the country. In the same breath libertarianism legitimizes the very thing it attempts to denounce. It is closer to Fascism, or Corporatism, than it is to any ideology that uses the term "liberty" to define itself.

I would point you to this website for further reading on the subject, specifically the section titled "Exercises and contact".

You also might be interested in reading a piece that is linked to from that site titled, I'm Still Not a Libertarian.

Games written in Basic.

Go forth, and write games in BASIC.

Why not just commission a few screenplays from Stephen Baxter? Great hard SF writer. Sure, he's a brit, but nobody's perfect. :P

Nothing significant.

The OS X Finder isn't as good or polished as the old MacOS 9 one, but if you've never used that, you won't know. And the column view is very good to have.

I'd like a navigable tree view, like Explorer.

In general, I'd like more keyboard controls. I use the keyboard extensively on Windows and Linux+GNOME. In my Mac offline CIX reader, Vienna, which is derived from a Windows app and is so largely keyboard-driven, my screensaver regularly kicks in 'cos I haven't touched my mouse in 15min. I'd like that to be a more widespread problem, ISWYIM.

I'd like the ability to customise the Dock more, but you can get around that with DragThing and similar apps like Dock-It. Much lost OS9 functionality can be restored with "haxies" from Unsanity.

In general, I don't miss much. I miss more features from MacOS 9 than from Windows, but MacOS 9 was never stable or reliable enough to be my mainstream OS. OS X is about the most reliable OS I have. I've seen more crashes on Linux, and that's saying something.

Many words had various spellings in the 1600s when English was brought to America... we simply chose one of the accepted spellings at the time and the Brits chose the other.

Actually, I think that most of the differences between US and UK English are words which have changed in British English over the last few centuries, and US English still has the older form. (Most of the few cases where US English has changed are due to Noah Webster.)

I find it interesting that British English seems to be a fraction more precise. For example, it distinguishes:

• a measuring device ('meter') from the unit of length ('metre');
• the side of a road ('kerb') from restraint ('curb');
• a floor of a building ('storey') from a tale ('story');
• a test or restraint ('check') from an order to pay ('cheque') and a V-shaped mark ('tick');
• grow weary ('tire') from a wheel rim ('tyre');
• a rough version ('draft') from a movement of fluid ('draught');
• some verbs from nouns: license/licence, practise/practice, and prophesy/prophecy; and more recently,
• a computer storage medium ('disk') from any other round flat object ('disc'); and
• computer instructions ('program') from a broadcast or list of events ('programme').

(I know a little about this, as I've written a tool to convert text from US to British English. Cases like those are tiresome and need user intervention to distinguish.)

The most confusing cases are words which are current in both languages, but with different meanings. 'Pavement', for example, means a pedestrian path at the side of a road here in the UK (US 'sidewalk'), but the surface of the road itself in the US (UK 'road', 'tarmac', 'asphalt' &c). 'Pants' and 'suspenders' are also ripe with hilarious possibilities!

Oh, and as I discovered a few years ago, what we call 'tea', you call 'hot tea'. I was extremely non-plussed the first couple of times I asked for tea and got something cold and sugary with lemon! Anyone who prefers that strange concoction should see this H2G2 article...

Of course, it depends on what you'll use it for. Many folks have PDAs in the Palm mould, and for light use (contacts, agenda, to-do lists, synced to a desktop) they obviously work well for lots of people.

Where the Psion really scores, though, is use beyond that. It's more than just a PDA in that sense -- I prefer to call it a 'pocket computer', as it's a full machine in its own right. I use it for umpteen things -- PDA stuff, but also email, route planning, reading books and other reference material, SMS messages, software development (Java, Perl, OPL). It has a full word processor, spreadsheet &c, and I've used it to write technical articles for publication. I connect it to my GPS to get moving maps and navigation. Of course, I've also got lots of games, though the only ones I tend to play much are Infocom adventures, crosswords, and Scrabble.

I have a library of novels and other books, and I find the screen comfortable enough that I read far more books on it than on paper. I also have a serious dictionary and thesaurus -- now they're always to hand, I find I refer to them much more than I ever did the paper ones. I also have a cut of the IMDB, and when I get a larger CF I'll put the whole of Wikipedia on it!

But my most-used application is a fairly specialist one: an Off-Line Reader (OLR) for the CIX conferencing system. My messagebase currently has over 200,000 messages in over 400 topics, taking up over 100MB, and it's great to be able to read new messages when I'm stuck on trains, staying with friends, on holiday... And of course the touch-type keyboard makes it easy to write my replies. Plus I use my mobile phone to upload replies and download new messages. (Disclaimer: I'm co-author of said OLR. Written entirely in OPL. On a Psion.)

It's really in a market of its own -- the trouser-pocket size makes it more portable and available than most subnotebooks, and yet the power and keyboard make it more than a PDA.

It's more than just a tick-list of features -- it's in the way they're put together and made into a useful package. But the important ones for me are: touch-type keyboard, long battery life (tens of hours), CF storage, IrDA, trouser-pocket size. If I could add anything to it, I'd probably want: Bluetooth, USB, sharper display (colour not necessary), headphone socket, and a bump in processor speed and internal memory wouldn't hurt.

It's put quite well one of those moments too?

Phillip.

How about some actual useful links? That should suprise the heck out of everyone. ;'P

The Lazer Tactical message board: http://members5.boardhost.com/lazertag/index.html

More technically oriented Laserforums: http://www.laserforums.com/forum

1 Source Laser Tag forums: http://blackbelt.novahq.net/forums/

1 Source Laser Tag website, home of FXonixs homebrew laser tag gear, classifieds, and loads of links: http://www.1sourcelasertag.com/

Miles Tag, a homebrew laser tag system in progress: http://lightbrain.8m.com/mtdesign.htm

Frag Tag, a homebrew laser tag system using the same protocols as Miles Tag: http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/fragtag/index.htm

Dave Bodger's Lazer Tag info. One of the first homebrew systems, compatible with the old Worlds of Wonder Lazer Tag and Tiger Electronic Survivor Shot, with tons of options: http://www.cix.co.uk/~lasertag/lasertag.htm

Tagcon Midwest- Stargate in King Arthur's Court: http://www.tagcon.org/mw/

Steradian Tech- pro laser tag gear, quite expensive: http://www.steradiantech.com/

Tag Tek- homebrew WoW/ESS compatible gear: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sparta/setup.htm

Fiat Lux ESS compatible kits- They don't sell outside the UK, but good reference site for the rest of us: http://www.fiat-lux.org.uk/

Lazer Skirmish- Commercial site, use for ideas and inspiration: http://www.laserskirmish.co.za/

The Complete Tagger- Hints and modifications, PDF file: http://img-srv.everestwebworks.com/w2/Pictures/My% 20Files/1022260.1/tct2.pdf

Upgrading WoW guns and sensors by Public John aka Lazerbait- Faster rate of fire, linking gun to sensor, autofire, etc. by Public John of the Seattle Laser Tag group: http://members.aol.com/publicjohn/index.html

Vishay Semiconductors- IR Receiver modules page. 36 to 56KHz: http://www.vishay.com/ir-receiver-modules/

Ward's Natural Science Lens page- Glass lenses, 38mm, various focal lengths. $1.50 each: http://wardsci.com/product.asp?pn=160433

WoW/ESS signal format from Steradian- Helpful info on the signal format and frequency of WoW Lazer Tag/Survivor Shot guns and sensors. http://www.steradiantech.com/lasers/tech.html

If you are anywhere near Seattle, WA, the Seattle Laser Tag Yahoogroup and website: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/seattlelaserta g/ http://www.seattlelasertag.com/

I'm personally working on better sensor heads. 99.9% of the homebrew gear uses the Vishay remote control receiver modules, and their performance in sunlight is terrible. I am also thinking of building a system that is compatible with Survivor Shot while still supporting other options like shooter ID.

And as far as using real lasers- bad idea! Laser pointers are -not- eye safe. In fact the current crop of Class IIIa pointers are rated as a potential hazard from a -single- exposure. Even the older Class II/IIa are considered

I don't have much faith in Iain Laskey's Article after he made the following comment:

"...Otherwise any grease or dirt on your fingers can start to damage them - especially the underside where the recording surface is..."

As everyone know, you can really scratch the heck out of the underside and they will usually play fine, but put a slight scratch on the top and it's toast!

Interesting. Do you know if/how the version you wrote is related to the (apparently much changed) version of CoSy that CIX still uses?

oh man, the woking war machine is awesome ...

i totally want to steal it. how cool would that be! its just -gone- one day, and nobody knows where it is ... except me, and the parties i would throw in its honor, every friday night, in my underground bunker ...

damn, i want one.

• Ebook hardware is crap. The screen is to small, &c &c.
• EBook files are far too restricted -- I don't want to lose all my books when I upgrade to a new machine or reader.
• EBooks are far too expensive.
• You can't fold down the page corners on an ebook.

• No-one would ever read an entire book on screen. Paper is much easier on the eye.
• There's nothing like being able to pick up a book and hold it.
• You can't give ebooks as presents.

In short, almost all the objections people are making are valid but limited -- to certain types of people, and/or current technology. I doubt ebooks will replace dead-tree books in the foreseeable future, but there's no reason why they may not provide a popular alternative.

Personally, I've read far more on the screen of my Psion than I have on paper for the last few years; my library is over 80MB of compressed text. I always have something to read, wherever I am, and I can edit things as I wish (e.g. converting to British English spelling). The only place where paper is still better for me is on the loo; elsewhere, ebooks are more useful -- especially for reading in bed, where the backlight lets me read in the dark!

1. Sufficient time has passed for any race to colonize the galaxy. So they should be here or in the neighbourhood. Obviously they are not. Either they don't exist, or they don't like to leave home.
2. Sufficient time has passed for a race to be sending out signals, even when they don't like to travel. We don't hear them. Maybe we don't listen to the right frequencies or right spot in the sky, or aliens just don't like to talk. And if you wanted to communicate with someone, wouldn't you use easily detectable signals? You wouldn't send a neutrino beam.
3. Sufficient time has passed for engineering projects we can imagine, but are quite far off for us of course. For example building a gigantic shell around a star to harvest all its energy. It might appear to be magic for us, but you wouldn't foul our detectors. They would certainly indicate something. We would be able to see such star engineering projects in the sky, but we don't. This indicates that there is no intelligent life, or that no one has really advanced very far.

It makes for interesting science fiction though. Solutions:

1. Aliens are just around the corner (Contact, Rendezvous with Rama). We just have to wait a bit longer.
2. Intelligent life is destroyed everytime before it can advance very far (Manifold: Space). That's why we don't see or hear them.
3. Our universe is engineered to be alone (Manifold: Origin).
4. We're truly alone in this galaxy (Manifold: Time).

I can recommend the Manifold series by Stephen Baxter as an enjoyable introduction to Fermi's Paradox where three different solutions are explored.

We walk our dog in the sandpit where the first cylinder landed in the book; Horsel Common is just up the road from where we live and there's a nice statue of a war-machine in the town centre too.

TWW

Why not practical? For most of the last several years I've done all my email on my 5mx; connecting with a landline modem at home and via my mobile phone when out. And over the same period it's done all of my CIX messaging, connecting the same way. (It currently has a messagebase of over 80MB with over 170,000 messages.) Web browsing is a little painful over a mobile, but I've done it occasionally; it's only FTP and news that are pretty impractical.

BTW, as a matter of style I tend to reserve the term 'PDA' for something Palm-style, and call my Psion a 'pocket computer'. I know that Palms and their ilk can do great things, but they're still really an adjunct to a desktop machine; people who've used one know that Psions are far more independent, and capable of so much more.

Yes, I'm sure that for you, in your current circumstances and with current equipment, they're a no-go. But must you assume that it applies equally to everyone, in all circumstances, and for the foreseeable future too?

I'm a case in point: over the last couple of years, I've read far more onscreen than off. (And that's not due to having nothing else to read.) Why? I find it more convenient, for a number of reasons:

• It's there. I carry my pocket computer (a Psion 5mx) around with me anyway; I don't have to remember to pick up my latest reading material, and make extra space for it.
• Backlight. I can read in bed, or elsewhere at night, without needing a light.
• Bookmarks and other conveniences. I always lose physical bookmarks; when I don't use them, it sometimes takes a while to remember where I got up to. My reader app keeps track for me.
• Formatting and anglicisation. With physical books, I'm stuck with the spellings and mistakes that they're printed with; but I can edit ebooks and convert them to British English spelling, etc.
• Cut'n'paste. I don't have to retype quotes &c if I want to refer to them.
• Font size. Depending on the conditions, I can adjust the font size &c to match. For dead-tree books, the only `zoom mode' you have is to move your head closer to the object...
• Library size. I currently carry nearly a thousand books and stories with me, so I'm never stuck for anything. I really wouldn't want to try that with dead-tree editions.
• Cheapness. I read some stuff that's out of copyright and available for free (e.g. via Gutenberg). I also have many files purchased from Fictionwise, which is substantially cheaper than buying in dead-tree form. (I'm not admitting to having files of more dubious origin, too...)
• Searching. If I have vague memories of having read something, or want to check back, I can do a straight text search.

(BTW, I've never read anything on my Psion in the bath, but you might be interested to know that Douglas Adams actually wrote in the bath! Incidentally, on an older Psion model.)

Now, I'm specifically not saying that these advantages apply to everyone. I'm sure they don't. But that's exactly the point: neither do your disadvantages. Isn't it enough that some people like ebooks?

If you like Infocom adventures you should Download Frotz! 2.4.1. This interpreter installs into /usr/local/bin and runs in the Terminal. It would be nice to have a Cocoa front-end for this. Perhaps some cool Mac Geek will find the time....

Frotz! 2.4.3 is also available in source code form if you're into building from source. You just have to make sure you have the ncurses library installed (Fink helps). I had to rename the "init_process" function (in src/common/process.c and src/main.c) to "my_init_process" before it would build. Some kind of symbol conflict with libSystem....

You can play Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the web but I don't think it allows you to save the game.

Fortunately you can download the HHGG data file (option-click) right off the web and play it in Frotz!

As for other Infocom and Z-engine games, here are some links to resources straight out of the Mac Frotz readme file:

• Interactive Fiction Archive
• Baf's Guide
• XYZZYnews
• Infocom (unofficial)
• Infocom (unofficial)
• Infocom Documentation Project
• Infocom Gallery
• InterData Development
• Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe
• IF Database
• Doe's IF Page
• "Infocom Games"

Personally, I'm very pleased with my mobile phone (as we call 'em over here); I don't spend hours with it glued to my ear, and I've never revealed the number to anyone at work so all the (rare) calls I get are welcome. I use the vibrating alert in conjunction with a quiet and unobtrusive ringtone, and I don't shout into it, so I don't disturb people. But many times it's been extremely useful for things like travel problems (delays or getting lost), co-ordinating shopping, or simply contacting people when I'm away from a landline. I've even used it to surreptitiously signal someone (giving 3 rings) when to make a 'surprise' call to wish someone happy birthday! And of course I don't just use it for voice calls - in conjunction with my palmtop, it's invaluable for keeping up with email and CIX messages when I'm away from home. (Got to maintain my geek cred somehow...)

Indeed. In fact, in at least one online community, '<AOL>!' is the standard synonym for 'Me too!'.

BrightMail, too. My ISP uses it - it traps about 70% of my spam. The great thing is that it has no false positives, so it just shunts every spam it identifies off to a separate mailbox which you need never bother with - you don't spend time or bandwith downloading it. (A few times a year I take a look at the stuff it's recently trapped just to check, but there's never been a single valid mail.)

Of course, the benefits of open formats aren't limited to being able to use them on any platform. For example, I can convert American spelling to British, fix errors, improve the typography with smart quotes, add automatic bookmarks, &c. And I can easily quote sections in correspondence.

And to all the folks who are saying "I don't like reading ebooks, therefore they're crap," just remember that different folks have different preferences. Personally, for a long time I've read more on the screen of my Psion than I do on paper. I find that once you get into a story, you become less aware of the medium (just as you don't have to stop and think about turning the pages of a dead-tree book). The backlight means I don't have to have good lighting, and can even read in the dark! And provided you pick a suitable font, I find it easy enough on the eyes. Another advantage is that I always have my library with me. (About 50MB of books.) I don't need to carry my current book with me, or plan ahead.

I'm not saying that they're for everyone, just don't assume that they're dying simply because you don't like them.

These limitations (and I know that not all Palm-style machines have them all, but it's a common impression) don't apply to all palmtops. Mine has a keyboard you can touch-type on; I've used it to write articles for publication, large applications, etc. It has a 640x240 screen that's plenty wide enough to read books, web pages, spreadsheets, etc. Its OS (EPOC, the forerunner of Symbian OS currently powering many mobile phones) is exceptionally stable -- apart from hardware failure, I don't think it's crashed once. Although I have a powerful desktop machine, I only connect to it for backups; everything I use my Psion for stays there, and I've never felt the need to sync with anything else. I have lots of powerful applications at my fingertips: office apps that can exchange files with Word and Excel, route planning/GPS, capable web browsers, a Doom engine and many other games, you name it.

People are often amazed by the things I've got to hand: the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Brewer's, Webster's, the Jargon File, and loads of similar reference works; three different Bible translations; MBs of fiction and other books; the core data from the IMDB, etc. Most of the time it's my only email client, and also my only Off-Line Reader for the CIX BBS, holding well over 100,000 messages -- both connecting via my mobile phone as well as land lines. It has Java, Perl, Python, and also a powerful built-in language called OPL (recently open-sourced); and it's possible to do full-scale development on it (I know coz I'm co-author of the OLR mentioned before). It uses standard TrueType &c fonts, displays PDFs, connects with FTP and telnet, plays back MP3s, and loads more. In short, it's a fully-fledged, powerful computer in its own right.

I mention all this not to show off (well, maybe just a bit :) but to show that there's much more to pocket computers than most people think. (Lots of folks, especially in the USA, have never heard of Psions, which is a shame. Although they're no longer made, second-hand ones are highly sought-after.) And yet most people still think of a palmtop as something just for looking at a few agenda entries, checking a few addresses, and playing a few games.

If that's all you think a PDA is good for, then no wonder people think you can squeeze it all onto a phone! But for those of us who really use our palmtops, this seems a waste, a travesty of what mobile computing could be.

OTOH, maybe things aren't so depressing. It's possible that once all those simple PDA functions have been transferred to phones, that there will be room for some market differentiation, and that more powerful palmtops might become more popular. When Psion pulled out of the consumer market, their message was effectively "everyone wants Palms; too few people want something more powerful". Maybe if all of those light users move onto something even smaller (in every respect), there will be enough of us left for it to be worth making powerful pocket computers again.

Well, I can hope...

It ain't necessarily so. Not all instruments are tuned the same, or have exactly the same intervals. Look here to an introduction to what it's all about. Alternative tunings and all that, and their history.

And yes, I do make rather good use of it. As well as the usual agenda/address book/notepad/games, I can do all my email on it (via mobile phone when not at home), route planning and GPS mapping, along with coding in Perl, Java, and its own built-in language; and play games like Infocom adventures, crosswords, and even a Doom engine; plus it has several hundred MBs of books, TomeRaider files and other reference works like the IMDB. I can view PDFs and pictures, handle zip files, and use FTP and Opera. But my most-used app is an off-line reader (OLR) for the CIX BBS, which I use to download and read messages and compose and upload replies - in my case, several hundred messages per day, maintaining a messagebase of around 60MB. (Disclaimer: I'm a co-author.) And all this with a touch-typeable keyboard and battery life of 20 hours or so.

(* It's a shame more people didn't realise their full potential, or they'd still be making them... :( )

I could do much of that on my desktop machine, but the convenience and time-saving of having it all with me on the train, on holiday, or just out and about, is something I couldn't be without.

So, just a status symbol for me? Don't think so :)

http://www.cix.co.uk/~cyberville/medizine/adrenali .htm

Or to summarize, for those who don't feel like reading the link:

Adrenaline stimulates heart activity, constricts blood vessels, and dilates airways. The first property makes it useful in counteracting cardiac arrest. The last two are both helpful in treating allergic reactions, which are characterized by both swelling and difficulty breathing.

I was just re-reading Terry Pratchett's Maskerade (my copy is signed by the cast of this production). "The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its least intelligent member divided by the number of people in the mob".

I'd agree, mostly.

You'll find most 35mm (and medium format) "prosumer" filmscanners have a max. resolution of 4000dpi, as this is the current accepted limit of film. It is possible to get more detail out of a film though by matching to its stock's characteristics. See more details on this excellent filmscanner technical reference site.

For a practical display of the resolution of film (in this case a 5x4 Kodak extachrome transparency) take a look at the detail of a drum scan. I think you'll agree that the digital CCDs in modern video and stills cameras still have a fairly long way to go before they reach the quality of good old film!

Just to be a picky photographer, while Delta 100 and Royal Gold Select 100 are both pretty good for negative film, they're by no means the best. Reversal (slide) stock tends to be better, for instance Kodak Extachrome is damn impressive (see above), as is Fuji Provia 100F - very accurate colour reproduction and a very, very fine grain. But I'm just being picky, at the end of the day it's the image you capture on the film that's most important!

I'd agree, mostly.

You'll find most 35mm (and medium format) "prosumer" filmscanners have a max. resolution of 4000dpi, as this is the current accepted limit of film. It is possible to get more detail out of a film though by matching to its stock's characteristics. See more details on this excellent filmscanner technical reference site.

For a practical display of the resolution of film (in this case a 5x4 Kodak extachrome transparency) take a look at the detail of a drum scan. I think you'll agree that the digital CCDs in modern video and stills cameras still have a fairly long way to go before they reach the quality of good old film!

Just to be a picky photographer, while Delta 100 and Royal Gold Select 100 are both pretty good for negative film, they're by no means the best. Reversal (slide) stock tends to be better, for instance Kodak Extachrome is damn impressive (see above), as is Fuji Provia 100F - very accurate colour reproduction and a very, very fine grain. But I'm just being picky, at the end of the day it's the image you capture on the film that's most important!

At present I use a Psion 5mx. Yes, it's a couple of years old; yes, it doesn't have colour; and yes, it's not being made any more. But there's nothing else that comes even close to letting me do all I want to do. So my list is in two parts – firstly, things my Psion already has:

• Fits in a (trouser) pocket. Mine lives there; much of the benefit comes from having it with you all the time.
• Keyboard. The 5mx one is particularly good – you can just about touch-type on it.
• Email/internet access.
• Good battery life. The 5mx lasts for 10-20 hours on two AAs; I use it for several hours each day, and when I'm not at home and wouldn't be able to recharge it, I know I can just buy a pair of Duracells.
• Storage. The 5mx takes CompactFlash; I have 256MB of storage online.
• Large screen. 640-pixel width isn't much in desktop terms, but it lets you read 80 chars-per-line, and gives you a much bigger `window' onto the contents of the machine.
• A decent OS. EPOC is rock-solid (uptimes measured in years, not minutes), has great built-in apps (Word, Sheet, Agenda, Email, etc.) and tons of commercial and shareware stuff (Opera, news readers, FTP, PDF viewer, games, Spectrum emulator, notepads, you name it), and is designed from scratch for pen or keyboard use and to make the best use of the screen. (I'm not convinced that Linux is currently a good solution for pocket computer users, though if it becomes more popular that'll improve.)
• Java. It's not hugely fast, and takes lots of RAM, but it works and works well.
• Perl.
• The ability to develop software on the device. (I can write in Java, Perl, or the built-in OPL language.)
• IR. When I'm at work or away from home I check my email and CiX messages via my mobile phone. Invaluable.

• Reflective colour screen. Colour isn't as important as most people think in terms of actually using the machine (rather than showing it off), and it reduces battery life, but this is an ideal list!
• USB, FireWire and/or AirPort (802.11). Serial just doesn't cut it with the amount of data I have; transferring CF cards works well but these would be better.
• Bluetooth. A little more convenient than IR.
• Faster processor. EPOC's efficient and the ARM processor works surprisingly well at 36MHz, but 100MHz+ would be nice.
• Java 2. (And enough power to use it well.)
• High quality audio input and (headphone) output.
• Inbuilt support for standard file formats (Office, MP3, etc.).
• GPS would be nice, but hard to squeeze into the size.

You'll also notice that the first list is longer than the second! The 5mx isn't ideal, but it's by far the best for me (YMMV of course), and it looks like that won't change in the next couple of years at least... power users like me probably aren't numerous enough to make my ideal pocket computer commercially viable. :( So I guess I'm sticking to my Psion!

Other than the Discovery channel crap I studied no Q. Physics. That book was an easy read for anyone who's taken algebra, and I finished it in less than a month. [not bad, I read it when I took a shit... you know]

OK, another reply to same parent. This page gives a pretty good explanation of the equations and calculations for the hyperbolic escape orbit.

Anyway: This site on film scanners talks specifically about film scanners, but also about the technology associated with them. I also really liked the discussion on ink jet printers (which I knew nothing about). Good luck!

The WinME side of my laptop has slowly been declining with every patch I install, be it from Microsoft or Acer. Having fscked the sound I decided to try and roll the config back a week, which promptly deleted the boot files for WinME. So I'm now booting into Linux primarily at last, using OpenOffice build 638, which seems to read Office2K files happily, and running NT4 in VMware 3.0 beta to use Ameol until I find time to start my Cix OLR project. I will not be going anywhere near XP and I'd like to thank Microsoft for improving my computing experience immensely.

The Catholic Church was all for teenage boy bands.

They called them choirs and the singers were eunuchs or castrati (no testicles for you!) Because the boys never got the puberty boost of testosterone their larynxes never dropped and their voices stayed sweet and girl-like.

We probably should be calling N*SYNC - N*NUTS
(They would have had to have this done before they hit puberty of course.)
http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/Castra ti.html
http://www.cix.co.uk/~velluti/cast.htm
http://wa.essortment.com/castratihistory_rzna.htm

Oops. URL typo:

Click here

Actually, the Soviets faked his death and sent him to Venus. According to a Stephen Baxter short story.

As /.-ers have pointed out, man has been playing God from the beginnings of civilization, breeding animals and crops to our desired specifications. And as Jared Diamond has pointed out so eloquently in his book, The Third Chimpanzee, man has been changing the climate and ecology(accidentally, perhaps, but changing nonetheless) of our planet since he first deforested Lebanon. If the possibility exists to reverse damages we have inflicted on the world, we have the right, and even perhaps the duty, to do so.

God himself has given man license to 'play god', so to speak, from Adam onwards. He knew what He was setting us up for when He gave us intelligence, and hopes to see us do good with our tools.

As David Brin pointed out so eloquently in his essays in the book Otherness, what does God, if He is a loving father, want of us? Does He want blind obedience, as one would from a dog rather than a child? Or does He want to see us grow and mature, taking up His tools as we grow older, creating beautiful things with them? As an avowed Christian, I must believe in a loving God who expects the latter.

This is not to say that iron fertilization is a good idea. We don't yet have anywhere near the foresight and knowledge that our Father has, and humility demands we admit this. We should definitely make plans to curb the greenhouse effect, but we need to know our limitations. Unintended consequences have a way of popping up in the oddest ways...however, we must take drastic action to prevent global warming, and climate engineering is just another tool in our toolbox, though it is a dangerous one.

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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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Why are the humans the only species to periodically engage in the mass destruction of ourselves? Hmmm, must be our nature. Can't be the socialogical factors contributing to our behavior, or the subconscious influences we've recieved from anything and everything over the years.

So yes, AFAIK it is our nature to commit attrocities. We're just better at than chimps. Human nature can be incredibly ugly at times. But some degree of kindness is 'human nature' too, so there's still some hope....

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Most of the Infocom titles can still be bought too, so they aren't really abandonware yet - for example from here. And yes, they are still well worth the money if you like games that require a bit more thought.

(Incidentally, I believe Activision has been contacted about the possibilty of releasing all the games that it can for free, and the response wasn't entirely negative. HHTGTG has some unfortunate copyright problems, though)

Andrew.

Esperanto actually contains a great deal of ambiguity and obscurity. See Why Esperanto is not my favourite Artificial Language , Learn Not To Speak Esperanto! , a Wired article on the subject , Lango , and The Problem of an International Auxiliary Language and its Solution in Ido for more information.

To those concerned about people driving around with big tanks of compressed gas: people already do. A lot of vehicles (mostly small trucks and buses, but also some cars) are power by compressed natural gas -- which is, of course, pretty dangerous even when its not compressed.

(Someone once showed me a way to take out a whole city using this technology. I hope there was a flaw in his scheme.)

I have to mention Stirling's Draka Stories. Despite its appallingly revisionist social philosophy ("Slaveholders are people too!"), this is worth reading for its speculation as to how the industrial revolution might have occurred slightly earlier than in our timeline. One of the factors is the development of pneumatic power. Stirling envisions cities with compressed air mains, much like our gas and electric mains.

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You don't need a VT100 - you should just pick up an old, smallish laptop and run a terminal emulator on it. I got a Tandy 1400 that has a nice backlit blue lcd screen, a good keyboard for $20 and it makes a super terminal emulator through its serial ports. Plus, it's a 'portable' and all one piece, so it doesn't take up much space on the kitchen cabinet and folds up when not in use. Not quite an I-Opener, but good enough for emacs. check out this page for a small, stable terminal emulator that even runs well on my Tandy 1000 HX.

I know it must be hard to be a non-windows hater (that's non-"windows hater", not "non-windows" hater) and listen to the crap that's flung about around here, but you've reached an absurd level of defensiveness. You're defending software (an application AND an OS) that crashes (according to one report) when the user makes a simple mistake and placing the blame on the user. An application should not crash when given invalid input. It should notify the user. An OS should not go down when an application misbehaves. It should kill the app, perhaps generate a core file, and keep on chucking.

Now, Linux and other UNIXes are not without their own problems in this regard, but at least the people responsible don't respond with "don't do that" when told about it. Neither does Oracle, I bet, but you do. You and Microsoft.
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I've been holding off for a while...perhaps it's the 'shipping shock'. They do look a little more artsy, IMHO, but I've been waiting for that MUG! Practical, yet impossible! ;)

OK, disclaimer, I work for the place. But CIX (Compulink Information eXchange) in the UK evolved out of a BBS and still has a strong conferencing community.

CIX added an internet service too later on after some CIX users formed Demon Internet, but many people still connect direct with an offline reader rather than over IP. And others will use a different ISP for internet but still have a CIX account just for the conferencing.

Even though the company are trying to aim more at the business internet market there's still a good community feel on the conferencing system and there is even a barbecue once a year where members can meet face-to-face.

However, it is a pay-for service, so you can't really get a feel for the community without stumping up the cash. And there's no web front-end yet.

Check out the web pages at www.cix.co.uk - however I don't think there's much about conferencing on there.


Sean
sean@cix.co.uk

This is exactly what I use, an old A5 sized 286 BICOM portable with an MSDOS (actually running on DRDOS) terminal emulator. If you want to run serial at 115k2 you'll need at least 16Mhz (more if the emulator is slow), I use my own (very fast) SCO console emulator and it works perfectly. Don't forget that 'screen' is also a good companion program to use with this sort of thing.