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The theory that the QWERTY keyboard was designed specifically to slow typists down is a myth...the real reason was mechanical....commonly used keys needed to be placed far away from each other to prevent the levers from jamming.

Yep. I remember reading a Number Theory book long ago that Skewe's number 10^10^10^34 was "the largest number which has ever served any definite purpose in mathematics", but apparently, things have changed since then. The largest meaningful (but useless, as you pointed out) number used is apparently Graham's Number, which has even been listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as such. Tetration is explained here, or quite a lot of notation is explained here.

The best page about large numbers, however, is clearly the one at MROB, beautifully written.

But the amusing thing about this Graham's Number is that it is an upper bound on some quantity, which experts believe is equal to 6. That's right, SIX. So it's not only the largest number ever used; it's also probably the worst upper-bound ever :)

The proper name for something like that is marx generator. Damn cool shit. Just be careful.

I have the OSX widget version of PearLyrics and find it quite useful. I think this whole thing stinks. If anyone would like a copy of the widget, I'm making it available here. They can sue me if they want. I got nothing they can take.

Moon landing hoax
http://www.moonmovie.com/moonmovie/

There is plenty of oil
http://www.gasresources.net/toc_StatMech.htm

http://home.earthlink.net/~root.man/sci.html

http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/peak_oil/inde x.htm

911 Was a psyop
http://www.prisonplanet.com/911/index.htm

http://www.reopen911.org/Core.htm

http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.ht ml

http://www.letsroll911.org/

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2005/ 121105newterror.htm

Once Google Talk offers their service via SIP and most importantly allows federation with others, they will become the glue that binds together all the currently fragmented voip offerings. Providers that don't want to open up and federate with Google will slowly dissappear. After all it won't be long and most the people that you talk to will not be on landlines, but IP only, and you therefore don't want a provider that is not connected.

If I was an incumbent telco in any part of the world, I would be scared, I would probably try dirty games such as providing restricted internet access with SIP traffic filtered out.

Simple, like this:
http://www.research.earthlink.net/ipv6/

The current plan for most ISPs is to give each individual his own /64 prefix.

That means:
Q: What does that mean, "a /64 IPv6 network prefix"?
A: An IPv6 address contains 128 bits. A "network prefix" is the first N bits of an IPv6 address. If we refer to a "/64" network, we mean a network in which the first 64 bits of the IPv6 address identify the network, while the last 64 bits define individual nodes on that network. A /64 network may contain up to 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 individual nodes. In contrast, the entire address space for IPv4 only supports a theoretical maximum of 4,294,967,296 individual nodes.

Q: That seems like overkill. Why would you give out such big network blocks?
A: Because "that's just the way it's done". A lot of the functionality of IPv6 depends on the network block being a /64 (or larger) prefix. If you have a network block smaller than a /64, certain things (like Stateless Autoconfiguration) will no longer work.

Source: http://www.research.earthlink.net/ipv6/faq.html#4

Simple, like this:
http://www.research.earthlink.net/ipv6/

The current plan for most ISPs is to give each individual his own /64 prefix.

That means:
Q: What does that mean, "a /64 IPv6 network prefix"?
A: An IPv6 address contains 128 bits. A "network prefix" is the first N bits of an IPv6 address. If we refer to a "/64" network, we mean a network in which the first 64 bits of the IPv6 address identify the network, while the last 64 bits define individual nodes on that network. A /64 network may contain up to 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 individual nodes. In contrast, the entire address space for IPv4 only supports a theoretical maximum of 4,294,967,296 individual nodes.

Q: That seems like overkill. Why would you give out such big network blocks?
A: Because "that's just the way it's done". A lot of the functionality of IPv6 depends on the network block being a /64 (or larger) prefix. If you have a network block smaller than a /64, certain things (like Stateless Autoconfiguration) will no longer work.

Source: http://www.research.earthlink.net/ipv6/faq.html#4

Doesn't matter. There are many organizations which will give you a /64 prefix, no problem.

Earthlink, for one: http://www.research.earthlink.net/ipv6/faq.html#4

Or Hurricane Electric:
http://ipv6tb.he.net/index.php?Example_Session=2f1 d74953d2143978bddd2e17b4e4c14

There are many more.

>A hybrid car requires less gas, but it also has a massive >battery which will need to be disposed of safely in a few years.

The prius battery is actually quite small- about the size of a small suitcase. It is composed of 280 D cells (actual consumer D cells were used in the initial Japanese models). In terms of energy, it holds about a HALF A CUP of gasoline. This is all that is needed to smooth out the peaks and valleys of energy demand during stop and go driving, thus allowing a smaller (hence more efficient) gasoline engine.

>What would it be like to manage the disposal of these batteries >if there was suddenly tens of millions of such cars driving >around?

Recycling. The nickel in the NiMH batteries is valuable enough that recycling pays for itself. They can be melted down and used again and again and again... The electrolite is plain old
potassium hydroxide; caustic but no more "hazardous" than bleach.

For an outstanding whitepaper on the prius drivetrain (including mathcad models), see:
http://home.earthlink.net/~graham1/MyToyotaPrius/P riusFrames.htm

Through networks like Hurricane Electric, Freenet6 and (on a more serious level) OCCAID people are experimenting with IPv6 today. I recently colocated a server and for no additional cost receive native, dual stacked IPv6 service. Do many people use it? No, but it is a start. The trick will be to get as many servers working on this dual stacked service as possible. Eventually ISPs will start supplying dual stacked service.

Earthlink even offers a custom WRT54G firmware which will automatically set up an IPv6 tunnel for you. What are you waiting for? Now is the time to support both protocols so we can begin the very lengthy transition.

Well this is true, it could just as easily be spread via email or something, but the relation to AIM is that once the virus (trojan, whatever you want to call it) gets into your system, I believe that it sends out messages to all of your contacts with the link, propagating itself.

At least this is how several other IM viruses have been spread. I noticed that just this weekend I got several IMs from people that I haven't talked to in years (but who apparently still have me on their lists) which were nothing but links to .COM or .EXE files.

One of them was being hosted at this address:
http://home.earthlink.net/~two4tea/mc-110-12-00000 80.exe (It has since been removed -- the link is dead)

And I didn't get the other URL that was going around. I downloaded the file and opened it up in a hex editor just out of curiosity (I'm on a Mac so it wasn't possible to execute anyway), but there didn't seem to be any obvious text strings or anything.

What I wonder is how the file got up on that web site to begin with; it seems rather farfetched to believe that a virus could find out that someone has a Earthlink web page and upload itself, then send out that link, which makes me think that the person spreading the virus probably planted it there after somehow gaining access to the account, and then letting the version of the virus which points to that URL out. When the linked file is removed the virus stops propagating, but by then has already spread and nabbed a few unwary users. Unless the program has the capability of 'phoning home' to get the URL of the latest location to send out to everyone, that is. The file was a few hundred KB, so I suppose it's entirely possible that it has that capability; you could fit quite a bit of code into something like that.

Not really my area of expertise, but perhaps someone who knows something more can elaborate on how these things work?

You might want to check out this link. EarthLink has come up with a firmware upgrade for the Linksys WRT54G routers. Supports both 4 and 6 simultaneously, and it's free. All I have to do is convince Road Runner (Time Warner Cable) to give me a v6 addr and....

Many routers (consumer models included) are firmware upgradeable. As such, IPv6 can be implemented on many existing routers.

A good example is the ~$60US Linksys WRT54G which runs on GPL code. Earthlink and others have IPv6 firmware available for it now.

what is the current situation with instant messaging
is what was the case with email back in 1993-1995.

namely -- compuserve had their email, and didn't talk with anyone else.
genie had their email, and didn't talk with anyone else.
aol had their email, and didn't talk with anyone else.

it was often the case that you would have to have accounts on three
different systems (as well as a host of bbs') just to get email to
someone -- depending on which incompatible system they were on.
('can't get there from here' was often the case!)

then slowly, they started offering a new service 'internet gateway',
which allowed you to send email not only to their own internal service,
but to a universal 'internet' email address -- this became a tidal wave,
and now there's nothing but internet email addresses.

open standards and protocols are necessary for a free internet.

best regards,
j

over the 2004 christmas holidays, i was over at my friend's with my 3Gen iPod (15gig),
who has a small kid (4 years old?). had the 'iskin' rubber protection off, and the kid
was curious, and dropped it onto the wood floor while it was playing ,
and it just kept on going.

now, it probably cached the song, and the hard drive could've been idle,
but still -- after almost a year, the thing is still working perfectly, the
hard drive heads didn't get progressively worse from that point or anything.

-- its just one more ipod that survived a baby --

best regards,
j.

Well since you ask... The Prius transmission has only 26 (or so) main moving parts compared to the 200+ of a conventional transmission. The motor is an Atkinson Cycle with max RPM around 4200 and the motor is just turning at fast idle around town - always. A very unusual car to drive initially. There are no gear changes, no reving engines - just a continous push on acceleration. 11 secs to 60 - not at all sluggish and best of all the electrics give lots of torque when you need it. Add the ABS, Traction Control, electric steering, regenerative braking 25kms/lt (50+MPG in US numbers) and a totally quiet ride and it makes a nice car. Maintenance is minimal, change the oil and check the brakes (since they get used so little they can get corroded). I have had a Series 2 (2001) for a couple of years now - and it is a wonderful car. Mine was 2nd hand imported from Japan with 50K kilometers on it. Never missed a beat. Cheap motering for $15.000 US. Good details here : http://home.earthlink.net/~graham1/MyToyotaPrius/U nderstanding/PowerSplitDevice.htm

The whole system is a sham. Worthless waste of time, just to have a line item on your resume.

What do you call the worst student graduating from med school?
Doctor.

I think I figured it out, Set the clock to wednesday (thats what i did) and refresh, you get http://home.earthlink.net/~derekstrough/pictures/o rigen.JPG The bottom left link goes to xbox360.com - I guess its the revealing of something on xbox360.com, which is currently blank (for me)

in biology, when someone discovers a new species, that person gets the right to name it. while most biologists will name new species after their mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, girlfiends, etc. some have been a bit more - creative.

some examples:
Eurygenius (pedilid beetle)
Ochisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Dolichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Florichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Marichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Nanichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Peggichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Polychisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Kirkaldy was criticized for frivolity by the London Zoological Society in 1912.
Pieza deresistans Evenhuis, 2002 (mythicomyiid fly)
Lalapa lusa (tiphiid wasp)
Agra vation, Agra phobia (carabid beetles)

apparently, as long as the name can be made to sound vaguely greek or latin, it's acceptable. for more names try

http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/taxonomy/taxPuns .html

or

http://home.earthlink.net/~johnepler/names.html

in biology, when someone discovers a new species, that person gets the right to name it. while most biologists will name new species after their mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, girlfiends, etc. some have been a bit more - creative.

some examples:
Eurygenius (pedilid beetle)
Ochisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Dolichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Florichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Marichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Nanichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Peggichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Polychisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Kirkaldy was criticized for frivolity by the London Zoological Society in 1912.
Pieza deresistans Evenhuis, 2002 (mythicomyiid fly)
Lalapa lusa (tiphiid wasp)
Agra vation, Agra phobia (carabid beetles)

apparently, as long as the name can be made to sound vaguely greek or latin, it's acceptable. for more names try

http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/taxonomy/taxPuns .html

or

http://home.earthlink.net/~johnepler/names.html

There is incredible diversity in the number of species on Earth and again that's been no problem for science.

Nope, no problems. But plenty of weirdness, one example: "Agathidium bushi, A. cheneyi and A. rumsfeldi Miller and Wheeler, 2005 (slime mold beetles) Named after the U.S. president, vice president, and defense secretary." I think there was even a case of two taxonomists naming species in a way to ridicule each other, although I couldn't find it mentioned on the site.

This should have completely disappeared with the ball-style typewriters. Dvorak tried. That article is good. Read it if you are interested.

"Let's see if Qwerty has a verse for us..."

While that is a true statement, it ignores the fact that internal combustion engine efficiency does vary with the load on it. A running engine with zero useful load is still burning gas so it has zero efficiency. Drawing energy from the alternator to do useful work does cause the engine to operate more efficiently. However, greater efficiency does not necessarily translate into less fuel consumption. I believe it will be more efficient to shut the engine down while idling, and it might be more efficient to use regenerative braking. Both of these tricks are used in hybrids (at least, both are used in the Toyota Prius).

Hybrids are successful mostly because they recapture braking energy and allow the engine to be shut down when it is making more power than necessary.

Let's not give the impression that regenerative braking is the only factor in hybrid fuel economy. Fortunately you did say "mostly" rather than "only", but that still significantly underplays the other factors. Aside from the aforementioned trick of shutting off the ICE when the car is stopped, how about:

1. You can use a smaller and more efficient internal combustion engine because the electric motor(s) supplement the ICE power for peak loads. In the case of Toyota, an Atkinson cycle engine is used. This is a more efficient design than the familiar Otto cycle, having a longer expansion stroke. But it produces less power for a given displacement, so in a non-hybrid engine with comparable fuel economy the acceleration would be sluggish. The Prius's ICE puts out a maximum of 76 W, but with the additional 67 W from the electric motors at peak demand, it has reasonable acceleration.

2. The engine can spend more time operating in or near its most efficient power band. When that power exceeds the demand, the excess goes to the batteries (but when the car is stopped, the car's microcontrollers will make the decision to shut off the engine instead, unless the battery still needs repleneshing). When the power in this band is insufficient to meet the demand, power can be drawn from the battery, rather than revving the engine up and burning more gas less efficiently. Related to this, the Prius uses a continuously variable transmission, in the form of a planetary gear system called a Power Split Device (possibly trademarked), to achieve a balance between the engine and the car's two motor/generators. I believe Honda also uses a CVT, but its design is more conventional than Toyota's, and I don't know if it is directly tied to fuel economy. I'm not sure if other hybrid manufacturers use a CVT.

[Flywheel] systems were mechanical variants of a hybrid; that is, capturing the energy of braking and storing to use to accelerate the vehicle.

That statement furthers the misconception that hybrids are solely about regenerative braking.

it seems to me that apple doesn't think in terms of the hardware - software
dichotomy where what goes on the screen has nothing to do with what is
going on in the hardware -- with apple, the form and function become synonymous.
the scroll wheel becomes 'part of' what you see going on with the menu structure
on the screen, and it happens so that what you see on the screen is visually continuous
from the hardwired controls.

this seamlessness of form and function works really well with a WHITE ipod
using a WHITE UI background colour -- but when you look at the BLACK nano,
it still uses a white UI -- which breaks the total 'blackness' in a way which doesn't
occur with the white ipod (which has white case AND white UI).

it seems that to be consistent, they should also be able to set the screen's
UI colours such. that way, the white ipod uses a white bkgnd with black text,
and the black nano uses a black bkgnd with white text -- then the screen
UI for both versions would remain continuous with the outer form-factor.

probably the easiest form of implementation for this would be in the setttings,
to offer a selection of UI colour -- to match the colour of UI to the colour of
the case -- e.g. you could have a red and black UI for the U2 ipod.

2cents.
j.

You know, the author's results look like they've been cribbed straight from the Meese Report. You can read some information about the Meese Commission, about how the results of research were simply thrown out when they didn't fit the commission's prejudices.

There was real science done on this; see the Presidential Commission of 1968 or thereabouts, which was swept under the rug.

If the local porn zealots seem more vigorous than usual, it's only because we recognize the same discredited bullshit we've seen before. Last year it was "erototoxins"---do you remember?

--grendel drago

You should be thankful that the reviewer didn't start blathering on about "erototoxins".

While the anecdotes sound absolutely fascinating, the conclusions sound eerily similar to those of the Meese Commission. At first (1968 or thereabouts), there was a Presidential Commission put together under Nixon to research the effects of porn on people. In its final recommendation, the Presidential Commission called for (a) comprehensive sex education for everyone, (b) continued dialogue, (c) more research, and (d) citizen participation in all of the above. Hardly a stinging condemnation.

That Commission was ignored, its report buried, and upon the election of Reagan in 1980, a new Commission was founded which would give Congress the answers it expected, by simply making shit up. To quote from the article, which quotes from the Meese Report:

While admitting that establishment of a link between aggressive behavior and sexual violence "requires assumptions not found exclusively in the experimental evidence," the Commissioners go on to say , "We see no reason, however, not to make these assumptions...that are plainly justified by our own common sense"

It's the same tired shit that's been thrown against the wall since the Reagan Revolution, in the desparate hopes that it'll stick this time.

I wonder if I could write a similar book about people who overdose on Evangelical Christianity and require ever-stronger doses of legislative activism and repression of women to get their rocks off.

Congrats on your marriage, by the way.

--grendel drago

A group of web developers at EarthLink whipped up a page last night designed to aid in finding Katrina victims. I know there are many of these popping up. This site is searchable by last name and also includes links to many of the other survivor lists. The site was done solely as a public service...katrina.earthlink.net

A group of web developers at EarthLink whipped up a page last night designed to aid in finding Katrina victims. I know there are many of these popping up. This site is searchable by last name and also includes links to many of the other survivor lists. The site was done solely as a public service...katrina.earthlink.net

IQ is only part of the picture.
some people consider 'EQ' (emotional intelligence)
to be a greater predictor of 'success in the real world'.
regards,
j.

No wonder you posted AC. You've no idea wtf you are talking about. The "large number" of atheists and deists umong our founding fathers? There were what? Like 3? Jefferson, Franklin and Wilson, off the top of my head. The rest were all Episcopalian, Quaker, Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic, etc. Christian.

I'm not posting ac and I'll say there were more than 3 Founding Fathers that were Deists. The Christian Nation Myth also lists George Washington, Ethan Allen, James Madison, and James Monroe. John Adams opposed the doctrine of the Trinity and spoke of the deity of Christ as "this awful blasphemy". Another Deist was Thomas Paine.

"The bottom line is we see three things," Kieffer tells WebMD. One is short-term change toward more aggressive behavior. Two, there are gender differences: Boys play more often and they are more likely to be at risk of behavior changes. And three, some more vulnerable kids are drawn to these games -- kids who are already more violent, and those with low self-esteem."

Committee on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media: Elizabeth Carll, PhD, and Dorothy Singer, EdD co-chairs; Craig Anderson, PhD, Brad Bushman, PhD, Karen Dill, PhD and Lilli Friedland, PhD.

I seem to have successfully commented out some checks from the source so it should be easy to play TCs, without owning the game.

1. Download the 1.32 Point Release

2. Download the Quake 3 Demo.

3. Download my executable (or compile your own) here

4. Install the Point Release and demo to separate directories.

5. Replace the quake3.exe in the Point Release directory with the one you downloaded / compiled.

6. Move pak0.pk3 from the demoq3 directory in your Demo install to the baseq3 directory in the Point Release install. (This may cause weird problems if you try to play online with the normal game.)

7. Quake 3 should now be able to play with TCs, or just the demo with custom maps, without complaining.

I can't guarantee any of this will work, but it seems to have worked for me. The reason for transferring the pak0.pk3 file is that most TCs are not true TCs, but rather use some basic files such as fonts, etc. that they load from the baseq3 directory.

If you don't have any luck with my executable, you could try producing your own. I only made a few simple changes to files.c. I commented out the following lines:

// if ( FS_ReadFile( "default.cfg", NULL )
// Com_Error( ERR_FATAL, "Couldn't load default.cfg" );

I also commented out the entire function FS_SetRestrictions and just made it return.

I have not made any changes to cd-key related code, so there may be some more work needed.

If anyone is having trouble with getting the project files to work on VC++ 6, download the following tool to convert the .NET files to the old format: http://www.codeproject.com/tools/prjconverter.asp

Not to mention the soviet FOBS-system (or here) (Fractional orbital bombardment system) which vould put a 1 to 3 megaton nuclear warhead in low orbit and have it ready to de-obit and detonate at a specified time over any country.

Yours Yazeran

Plan: to go to Mars one day with a hamer.

Check out this EV1 owner's website, unchanged from the 1990s.
It's like taking a trip in a time machine.

http://home.earthlink.net/~bdewey/bdsev.html

sorry, can't find it now, but i remember reading an interview with steve jobs
a couple years ago, and he said something to the effect of what this guy is
saying -- that certain people are able to produce not just an equivalent amount
of labour of another programmer, but really good talented individuals can
replace 20:1 or 40:1 in what they can accomplish.

then when he built the programming team at NeXT (the parent of OSX), he
leveraged this fact to get a small group of the best able minds to produce
what a much larger group of less talented people could not accomplish.

if anyone has a reference to that interview, it'd be greatly appreciated...

regards,
j

Ok, I give you that the battery may have some sort of short term "burst" to deliver 1000 amps.

Not sure what you would consider "short term". You can usually crank a car for several minutes before the battery will give out. Generally you don't have to, but sometimes it will crank a relatively long time.

I'll amend my original question to be: "What kind of vehicle are you driving that has 1000 Amps going into the coil?"

Fair enough, I don't believe there is a 1000 amps going to the coil. Actually, according to this site, the coil uses 5 amps. The output current must be relatively low, if it wasn't touching a spark plug wire would zap you.

You can spin things however you want, but Apple's case against Microsoft wasn't thrown out because the court didn't acknowledge "look and feel", but rather because a contract between Apple and Microsoft essentially granted Microsoft rights to various aspects of the interface. http://home.earthlink.net/~mjohnsen/Technology/Law suits/appvsms.html
Many people don't understand the concept of "look and feel" and focus purely on the appearance of the interface. If you read the article, you would have noticed the point that the Alto's interface was very difficult to use, whereas the Lisa team made usability the primary focus for their interface. While they might have looked similar (overlapping windows and desktop metaphor aside) they had a very different feel. By contrast, Microsoft took much of the "feel" from the Lisa and Macintosh ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil/Reports-Abstracts-Bi bliography/93-12html/93-12.ps

What's funny is that Joseph C. Phillips uses the above quote in one of his articles and justifies the invasion of Iraq using the exact same reasoning that Goering used.

I had used the same quote in an article I had written and referenced Phillips article. If you care to read the article you may find it here.

This is not a blog. This is my little hole in the web (which hasn't been updated in a while) on which I have written somewhat serious musings. I was writing things like this long before blogs became de riguer.

Indeed, I can't see any practicing engineer or scientist finding any use for this thing. It's also a bad idea for instruction, because it's a gross oversimplification of the distribution of the elements in the universe. The periodic table is useful, because it's complete and accurate, but this is not. There are already several other period tables with more instructional or historical value.

Cool solution to dealing with overlapping windows, but why deal with them at all?

I've always thought that overlapping windows caused more trouble than problems they solve. It looked advanced back in the day, and was great with small screens, and sometimes you still want to use it, but I'd find it more useful for typical use if windows diddn't overlap unless you forced them to (by continuing to drag for instance).

Or, coming from the other direction, some wish-list ideas I had while using ion are the ability to detach windows into temporary floating windows, resize neigboring frames by dragging one frame's titlebar, and somehow making it easier to use things like the Gnome panel in ion.

I recommend trying ion and similar window managers like LarsWM and Ratpoison and WMI.

Unfortunately to make window managers truly helpful, they will need to have more information about what its windows *mean* than is currently available from X11. For example, it's error prone trying to deduce whether Window X and Window Y are considered part of the same application by the user. Gnome and KDE do a pretty good job of it (e.g. grouping windows by application in the window list/task bar) but it's not perfect. And this is just the most basic information. Other useful info which could modify window behavior is how often a window is used or updated, when it was run, by what means was it launched (menu, button, terminal?), various categorizations and semantic tagging attached to the application permanently or to the window temporarily, etc.

A great advantage of an X11 system is the flexibility to experiment with the window manager, I hope to see more cool stuff in the future, especially from Gnome, KDE, and the distributions' choices.

Are software sales hurt by the fact that their greatest (most versitile and bug free) operating system still works on my Athalon Thunderbird?

Seems pretty easy to me:

Step One: Build a sonoluminescence apperatus using an ocilloscope, a sine generator, audio amplifier, piezo transducers and spherical flask. Details here: http://www.physik3.gwdg.de/~rgeisle/nld/sbsl-howto .html

Step Two: Build a neutron supply source, problalby most easily constructed is a farnsworth-type fusor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor (makes a great science project too)

Step Three: Get some deuterium and dissolve it in acetone, place in your sonoluminescence apperatus and start tuning it to produce bubbles. Availible at your local scientific supply store.

Step Four: Build your own neutron detector and confirm the bubbles are producing fusion: http://home.earthlink.net/~jimlux/nuc/ncount.htm

Step Five: Become the envy of the neighbourhood as the only guy on your block with a nuclear fusion device in your garage! (to avoid police suspicion call it a magical glowing bubble maker)

Step 6: Profit!

Just don't forget the other 11 steps:

http://home.earthlink.net/~penguinrox/

Don't diss ravens, they can make tools, sometimes more proficiently than apes ! I've seen one of these birds cut a small rectangle of spiky leaf to use as a hook to pull some juicy worms from a dead tree bark; and another cut a stick from a tree, remove the leaves then make one end into a hook for the same task, in mere seconds.

EarthLink launched a FireFox Toolbar "beta". It includes their Scamblocker anti-phishing tool. It's only Windows (says XP only but seems to work fine on my 2000 box).

SIP by its very definition defines and enables P2P based on open standards. The SIP protocol is a signaling protocol, which enables two machines to find each-other on the internet and start exchanging data in real-time without going through a 3rd-party.

SIP opens the doors to far more than just real-time communications (text, voice, video), it also opens the doors to file sharing. It's a matter of someone writing a client that does file sharing over SIP. OH WAIT, someone already did as a proof of concept, and released the source code under a BSD-style license.

Voice quality is absolutely fantastic with Gizmo, but it entirely depends on which SIP client you use, and which SIP client the party you're calling uses. The SIP protocol, is only a signaling protocol. There are a buttload of other open protocols such as SDP (Session Description Protocol) that come into play and allow for infinite layers of interoperability based on users' computing and network resources. Through handshaking, two SIP clients can easily agree to the best codec to use.

And if you add up the other domains Earthlink owns, it's even higher in the list...

http://webmail.atl.earthlink.net/wam/supported_dom ains/index.jsp

-- Terry

On the contrary, it was designed so that the keys would not lock up, thereby allowing typist to type faster; see http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html

> Disney is simply delivering what American parents want.
> Have you forgotten last November already? Some of us realize
> that it is futile and counterproductive to try to hide kids
> from reality, but we are in the minority.

c.s. lewis would agree with you... it is destructive
to be so over-protective that you never allow children
to see alarming things -- however when the alarming things
are presented, it is important that they are presented side-by-side
with that which shows a positive response to those terrors.
otherwise, when the kids finally DO encounter such a situation,
they will have no context with which to confront it themselves.

to quote:

"I think it possible that by confining your child to blameless stories of child life in which nothing alarming ever happens, you would fail to banish the terrors, and would succeed in banishing all that can ennoble them or make them endurable. For, in the fairy tales, side by side with the terrible figures, we find the immemorial comforters and protectors, the radiant ones; and the terrible figures are not merely terrible, but sublime." (C.S. Lewis)

"A children's story which is only enjoyed by children is a bad children's story... No book is really worth reading at age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty." (C.S. Lewis)

best regards,
j