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apple was the first manufacturer to include a 3.5" floppy drive
on its machines -- in 1984. a 5.25" drive never existed as
an option on the macintosh -- they started their 1.0 machine
with 3.5" floppies (and was also y2k ready in 1984).

apple was also the first manufacturer to NOT include
a 3.5 drive on their machine -- the iMac in 1998.

because they've included being able to boot off a CD* on all
macs since the advent of the powerPC processor migration,
one of the main uses of the floppy on the PC side of things
(i.e. being able to boot a 3.5" floppy to restoring a PC system) --
on the mac, this use for the floppy was eliminated, and
burning CDs has now become the norm.

* you can create a bootable backup system CD on the mac,
just by dragging a system folder onto it before you burn it.

j

Anyway, my other current fave was this neat little flash movie which looks into the Pentagon Crash, suggesting that it was a drone aircraft and not a passenger jet which hit the government complex.

-FL

... there's this idea, which I've always been rather partial to.

Put the stuff back where it came from. What could be more environmentally conscious?

Ok, now put some balloons on there. Or is the power-to-weight ratio good enough for vertical takeoff?

Yes, Moore is less - or smaller you could say.

Can't we all wish Moore was less?

If you want quick and painless ANSI terminal emulation, looking for a modern app that supports it is the wrong way to go about it. I've tried all the modern terms and they all do a worse job than this method.

• Download an ANSI font from here
• Place sabvga.pcf in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
• cd to that dir and run "sudo mkfontdir"
• Fire up X11 in your Utilities folder
• Open an Xterm and run "xtern -fn sabvga"

... some idiot's desire to purchase "Colon Blow 5000" is irrelevant to the issue (which is that ColonBlow5000.com is in breach of contract)

Which contract is that?

The one like THIS ONE, which says in part:

2. VIOLATIONS OF EARTHLINK'S ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY ...

g.Unsolicited commercial email/Unsolicited bulk email. Using the Services to transmit any unsolicited commercial email or unsolicited bulk email. Activities that have the effect of facilitating unsolicited commercial email or unsolicited bulk email whether or not that email is commercial in nature, are prohibited.

No doubt "facilitating" covers hosting a website advertised with spam.

I whole heartedly agree with your all of your observations. To date most GPS processing software is either closed source or comes with an NDA--even software from universities.

I believe that there are a number of projects that would complement the GPSTk. GnuRadio is the first. Sharc, which performs receiver communication and control, is another. Finally, OpenSourceGPS might also benefit from the GPSTk.

Really? What about these projects then:

GPS and GnuRadio

and

OpenSourceGPS

The latter claims:

"The receiver requires at a minimum a 100 MHz 486 IBM PC with 640k RAM."

So it seems to be possible. Someone posted the GPSTk link to the GnuRadio mailing list with the hope of eventually getting GnuRadio the ability to do advanced processing of GPS signals.

I'm not a GPS expert... am I missing something here?

Snopes
Link
Wikipedia

• A ***Celeron*** 2.0
• 256 megs of ram (PC2100! Ack!)
• a LEXMARK printer (mucho ink cartrige price)
• 12 months of service at a ridiculous rate for dialup
• A mini tower (forget upgrades) and a mere 250W PSU

when douglas englebart invented the mouse (and windows, and networking, and hypertext, etc.), he made the first machines to use a mouse and a one-handed keyboard so that both hands would be utilized.

then xerox parc had the alto, but their mouse didn't have a mouse ball -- it was apple that invented the mouse ball, and shipped the first commercial computer that came with a mouse as standard.

one of the devices that came out in the late 1980's was a device called 'the bat' -- a one-handed keyboard -- you can still by this device here.

regards,
j

ODE is very commonly used for robotics simulation. Which is, coincidentally, what I'm using it for.

Screenshot

I also decided to write a Mahjong Solitaire game using ODE to box-stack it. So when you "give up" it's like a simulation of sweeping the tiles off the table. It's absurd.

Screenshot

ODE is very commonly used for robotics simulation. Which is, coincidentally, what I'm using it for.

Screenshot

I also decided to write a Mahjong Solitaire game using ODE to box-stack it. So when you "give up" it's like a simulation of sweeping the tiles off the table. It's absurd.

Screenshot

Looks like all teams will require an alleged Site Visit in order to participate in this next Grand Challenge. Last time, their PreChosen Few did not need to have a site visit. As a result, you can see what happened! The newer rules will still allow them to game it any way they really want to. Actually, after reading the newer rules, it looks like it will be easier for them to refuse teams for non technical reasons. Before, they had to explain exactly why the teams technical papers did not pass their muster. Now, all they have to do is not like any teams Video Presentation in order to disqualify them! They will not even have to give a a reason why they were not chosen like they had to before! The implied answer is that they did not like your video for some reason. What once was a technical challenge has now turned into which teams are able to produce the slickest and flashiest video of their alleged race vehicle. Something tells me that technical challenge was never the case. Rest assured, they are not going to like our teams video for some, as yet, unknown or dreamed up reason even though we already fulfill and surpass the current GC requirements. We shall all see.

Pete Seeger of "The Weavers" (friend to Woodie Guthrie and fellow folk musician) talks about the Folk Process here.

There's another discussion here:

Pete Seeger, at the time, was referring to Woody Guthrie's habit of using the tunes of spirituals as the framework for his own writing, as well as the "folk process" of borrowing and modifying melodies or words as songs got passed from one person to another. (There are certain traditional songs which exist in literally dozens of distinct variations. Pete Seeger himself is notorious for making slight changes to the words of other songwriters; you can often tell when someone has learned a song from a Pete Seeger recording instead of the original songwriter....)

More here.

I also read an interview a few days ago with Pete Seeger in some weekly magazine, and in the article there was an interesting description of how "This Land Is Your Land" was written. Apparently it was written over a few years, and the line "this land was made for you and me" was changed from something else, although I can't remember what the original line was (something less universal). Anyone involved in this lawsuit might want to consult Seeger.

W

This is a side-bit, but I recommend y'all check out this 1955 transcript of an interview/interrogation between Pete Seeger and the House Unamerican Activities Committee.

With enough people doing this - there would always be a source of electricity available, and the price would be set - exactly - by supply and demand.

If this were to be done on a large enough scale, with some solar, wind, and ($RenewableOption3), you could avoid large scale electricity generation completely - including the power lines required, and you make use of the vehicles which spend most of their time idle. Heck, with a fuel cell car and a Hydrogen line the cars could be plugged in to both (while at work say), produce electricity for the building, while ending up completely fueled at the end of the day.

(Or - build cities that you can walk in and abandon the car. http://www.arcosanti.org/)

like this...

conventional wisdom looks at the heart, and sees a pump.
yet, realising it is contrary to everything has ever told me,
i can think of another possibility: like the build-up of sand
by the action of waves, we could explain the heart such as --
THE MOVEMENT EXISTS, AND THE ORGAN FORMS AROUND IT.

best regards,
j

Two things:

First, this article blindly repeats the lie that for artists to get paid, they (or their publishers) need control over distribution. This isn't true; they just need to get paid. Control is one way to do so but there are others. For example, compulsory licenses pay the artists without giving them control over distribution.

(Cory Doctorow does this better than me, here. ObAttribution: This link was stolen from other Slashdot posts.)

Secondly, the article way overstates the importance of big publishers.

I'm convinced that the future lies with the small publishers, the ones that can't afford to pay a decent advance but will do a good job editing and make sure that their books are good. Those publishers will embrace DRM-less ebooks because they have nothing to lose. And someday, one of those DRM-less ebooks will be a huge best-seller, and that'll open the door for reasonable ebooks.

Until then, I'll just use Plucker to read free html ebooks like My Tokyo Death Cult on my Visor.

Build a CD of Windows 2000 without IE (or Outlook, etc. etc)

Build a CD of Windows 2k, XP, or 2k3 without IE (or Outlook, etc. etc)

Download an IE removal program for Win2k

Build a CD of Windows 2000 without IE (or Outlook, etc. etc)

Build a CD of Windows 2k, XP, or 2k3 without IE (or Outlook, etc. etc)

Download an IE removal program for Win2k

choice 2, for XP and 2k3:
http://nuhi.msfn.org/

Windows 95 4.00.950
Windows 98 4.10.1998

Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222
Windows ME 4.11.3000

Windows NT 3.1 3.10.497
Windows NT 4.0 4.00.1381
Windows 2000 5.00.2195
Windows XP 5.1.2600
Windows 2003 5.2.3763

Your virus free? worm free? how bout adware and spyware I'd bet money you have some! http://www.earthlink.net/spyaudit Let us know how things are.
Planning a full switch to linux after being emailed about mono this morning! :)

Tom Petty, along with other artists like King Crimson and Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, have been responsible for many hours of zoned out internet surfing to some of my favorite sites. You've been there - putting on some tunes, firing up your browser, zoning out and surfing away...
Two minutes later, an hour has passed, the album has ended, and you've been around the world and back and hopefully learned something new.

That's just how I started off the other night. I popped Tom Petty's Wildflowers cd into the drive, cranked up the volume, and fired up the browser. I was immediately sucked in by the sweet acoutic guitar sounds of the title track. Click... Click... Click... You Don't Know How It Feels comes up, I hear the sentimental lyrics, and I drift back to my younger days... Click... Click... Click... Another 30 seconds rolls by and half the album's over... Cabin Down Below just nails me with the big fat Telecasters running through tube amps turned up to 11 sound... Click... Click... Click... I finally make it to Wake Up Time ... "Time to open your eyes... And rise and shine..." and...

I'm accosted by the stench of burning pl

I hadn't heard of FuelLog before, but I've been using AutoBase for a few years now. It is great because it has reminders for oil changes, tire rotations, and other service intervals as well as the basic fuel mileage calculations. Check it out:

http://home.earthlink.net/~herbo/palmos_sw.html

Why does it have to be linux based? Why not use AutoBase on Palm OS?

http://home.earthlink.net/~herbo/palmos_sw.html

That's insane! If you're going to be putting this stuff into your Palm, go download a little free program called AutoBase. It is made for tracking info about your cars. Fuel mileage, service intervals, when to rotate your tires, etc. And you can set up profiles for multiple cars, too. Sure, AutoBase hasn't seen an update in a few years, but it works just fine.

http://home.earthlink.net/~herbo/palmos_sw.html

Jeff Jarvis, a well-respected and popular blogger, has put together the best review of Fahrenheit 9/11 I have seen so far.

Back a few months ago, I had written a couple of personal thoughts about Michael Moore and his rhetoric.

The executive summary of all my nonsensical ranting is that I've always believed the Iraq situation is far from being the black and white portrait Moore attempts to paint with his rhetoric. While blaming everything on Bush would make things a whole lot easier, and has been serving Moore's book and movie sales very well, I believe this approach oversimplifies a set of very convoluted problems and sets us up for future failures in our foreign policies.

While it is important to acknowledge and reflect on Bush's failures, it is equally as important to look beyond the conspiracy theories, acknowledge the fact that regardless of what party you're looking at, regardless of which country, under-the-table deals and corporate interests always have and always will be a part of the picture, attempt to find what the right course of action is, pursue it and limit casualties on all sides.

The fact that the official democratic candidate, John Kerry, was one of the few to vote for the military intervention, should at least get people to think that maybe, just maybe, there were good reasons for it, even if the ones invoked by this administration (immediate threat, WMD) appear to have been wrong.

Jeff Jarvis, a well-respected and popular blogger, has put together the best review of Fahrenheit 9/11 I have seen so far.

Back a few months ago, I had written a couple of personal thoughts about Michael Moore and his rhetoric.

The executive summary of all my nonsensical ranting is that I've always believed the Iraq situation is far from being the black and white portrait Moore attempts to paint with his rhetoric. While blaming everything on Bush would make things a whole lot easier, and has been serving Moore's book and movie sales very well, I believe this approach oversimplifies a set of very convoluted problems and sets us up for future failures in our foreign policies.

While it is important to acknowledge and reflect on Bush's failures, it is equally as important to look beyond the conspiracy theories, acknowledge the fact that regardless of what party you're looking at, regardless of which country, under-the-table deals and corporate interests always have and always will be a part of the picture, attempt to find what the right course of action is, pursue it and limit casualties on all sides.

The fact that the official democratic candidate, John Kerry, was one of the few to vote for the military intervention, should at least get people to think that maybe, just maybe, there were good reasons for it, even if the ones invoked by this administration (immediate threat, WMD) appear to have been wrong.

we have something of the same here in toronto.
there are places which are known for their grafitti,
and i've seen the artists work right on the 'designated'
(if i can say that) buildings, frame and square it up nice
and leave the buildings beside them alone (like apartments).

there's a place that runs up behind queen street
which we call 'grafitti alley' -- it always gets the best work,
and there's a grafitti convention every summer, where the
best artists come and do their stuff. when the pope came
to visit, one of the people commisioned some of the
youngsters to do their garage door -- and they did
a nice job of guys playing basketball; another fellow
did an incredible memorial to martin luther king and
gandhi -- i see people going down there with cameras
taking pictures, some of them are so good, and they're
always changing. quite a number of the local restaurants
have commissioned local grafitti artists to do the signs
for their stores - hand painting, allows them to practice
their craft -- a lot of the grafitti artists are quite good,
if you give them a chance and a place to paint, why not
help them be their best? when they're supported by the
local community, these artists can also make a positive
contribution to the urban landscape.

best regards,
j

My solution grew over years switching from Window Maker (1998) to 9wm (1999) to larswm (2000) to ratpoison (2001) and since then is what a famous freshmeat editorial calls an "anti-desktop".

Here is the Tao:

• Run all windows fullscreen and without decorations with a WM like ratpoison (or Ion or larswm)

  Nothing then distracts you from the program you work in, as opposed to a typical GUI desktop where diverse window/tool/status bar consume up 50% of screen estate.

• Run CLI/console programs wherever possible.

  Since CLI programs all use the same font in only one size, few colors (which typically can be customized and thus streamlined to a useful minimum), they offer a visual tranquility that is hard if not impossible to achieve through theming in GUIs

  I essentially do all my work in a GNU screen session inside an rxvt, with a couple of open zsh shells plus vim, mutt, elinks, slrn and aumix.

• Choose a good, readable, big console font,

  I was dissatisfied with all available choices and designed my own one called pxl 2000. I use the large 20 pixel size variant which gives me 92 characters per line on a 1024x768 pixel display

• Use white text on black background

  Black backgrounds are the most tranquil backgrounds possible (dark blue might be an alternative for some people). Since monitors do not reflect light like paper, but are light sources themselves, using brighter backgrounds is almost the equivalent of looking into a neon lamp your entire day. If you use CRTs, black backgrounds also reduce flicker and radiation.

• Use textmode web browsers wherever possible

  A major source of visual stress is browsing the web with its flashy and page layouts that change (and thus constantly force your eyes to readjust) with every hop from site to site. Textmode browsers like lynx, w3m, links and elinks streamline the web to one, always consistent page layout (elinks offers the neat feature of switching table rendering off on the fly) in your preferred, fixed-size console font, and allow to concentrate on the real textual information of the web.

• Use a dark grey, non-flashy color scheme for the legacy GUI applications you still need

  Configuring GUI applications to black backgrounds and white text typically creates compatibility problems (i.e. unreadable widgets) because some application programmers didn't think about such a setup. So the best compromise is to configure all GUI widgets to a dark grey background with white menu text. The get color scheme consistenty across Qt and GTK applications plus Mozilla, create a color scheme in the KDE Control Center and click the option "Apply to non-KDE applications".

-F

if they're 'thinking for themselves', then why'd JPL have to programme them?

'ignore that man behind the curtain!' (the wizard of oz)

j

seriously -- why waste money on gadgets that fail -- a goat will keep your lawn trim, eats weeds first and grass last. just like bikes are faster and more reliable than a segway.

regards,
j

Pic Started mine about 11 years ago. The mechanical platform was a roboticized Toro 4hp mulcher using a permanent magnet motor driven backwards to generate power for two beefy wheel drive servos and the electronics. Fully autonomous. Narrow beam ultrasound sweeping the forward path for semi-coherent vision. No external environment markers used except where there aren't any objects to range off of for 20 odd feet. You walk it through the lawn once and it makes an internal map of the environment and the path you chose it to follow. Then, just plop it down and hit the start button next time. Works infinitely more efficiently than the commercial attempts at *cough* autonomous algorithms the crux of which is which way to turn after boffing into the perimeter wire or an obstacle. Rev. 2 is going to go battery-powered for safety and you'll have to "show' it where the charging station is. Wish I'd had money to take it commercial.

Sorry to keep replying to myself. But I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Earthlink intentionally tried to mislead the press & the public when they trumpeted their results by creating their own definitition of spyware. Only 0.35 real spyware programs er computer, by the way. Here's Earthlink's original press release, and the actual report. I still blame the press for dropping the ball, anyone who bothered to read the actual report would know that the press release & headline is a bunch of hot air.

Earthlink offers a spyware blocking program to its customers and also a free web-based version. I assume they can glean some survey information from the users of these tools.

Anyone else remember MSAV for DOS?

Sigh.

Remove Internet Explorer from Windows 2000. (Free)

Remove Internet Explorer from Windows XP.(Free)

FDV

Read this older post. I think it speaks for itself. One wonders how many teams they will let in this time around? Or, is this going to be the same-old same-old?

Create an IE-free installation CD

Did you hear 'Barney and the Penguin' tale ?

"but for developer tools it should be even longer."

Uh oh, you said the magic word.

IANAGeoscientist so I can't rightly scoff these theories down, though the writing on the various sites ranges from reasonably scientific to wide eyed, and their arguments seem occasionally spurious or even dopey (like forgetting that there's more than one way to get a sedimentary rock). I just keep remembering how the people who preceeded Wegener with ideas of plate techtonics were total kooks, and Wegener was ridiculed by many until decades after his death and the mid-oceanic ridges were totally obvious.

The accretion of mass from space debris would need some definitive answers about how much is actually falling. One mainstream source suggested 40million kilos anually, which isn't much (though would add up over 200million years, to 8,000,000,000,000,000 kilos).

I'm not convinced, but it is interesting.

I think that a good metaphor is not what is needed, but a good design is. For example, phones range from insanely complex to insanely simple (point to point), but still require some training to use. This is a bad design, but it suffices. Car HVAC systems are "intuitive", at least to someone trained to use them (You may have to trust me on this, since I spent a week trying to figure out the HVAC systems on an old Mercedes and on an old Porsche)

My point is, some training is nearly always required. It is just a question of who you get it from, how much you need, and how useful the tool is. A properly designed, properly maintained simple system has no need whatsoever for "user security" since it is secure by default. Of course, such systems are not good at anything but their one designed app. I haven't seen people who use dishwashers complain that the dishwasher can't be used as an oven, even though those tools might be related.
All I'm saying is that being able to have simple instructions like "press here to listen to this song" are plenty for almost everyone. Instructions like "Connect to 127.0.0.1/mymusic/albumname, log in, select the song you want, press play, then make sure you have the right codec/musicplayer/etc." are a bit much.

-WS

Of the free web accounts I've used, I have noted a couple of things. One, they don't purge the userid or whatever data they collect; but two, they do purge the data in your home directory. Crosswinds did this to me a while back on a bogus allegation of spam.

As far as ISPs, while the personal data is held, the user data is either backed up to tape and purged after a fashion (Speakeasy), summarily deleted if present (Earthlink - or more correctly, Mindspring did this for me for some reason when I moved to Speakeasy in 2000), or the user is given the opportunity to go in one last time and download (another one that slips my mind, I think it was a local one called Web World).

I've blogged a couple of entries about Michael Moore. Needless to say, I despise the guy. And I am a democrat who has financially contributed to John Kerry's campaign since day 1 and will continue to do so until I reach my $2000 limit.

My problem with Michael Moore is that he epitomizes the campaign that was being run by Howard Dean: ride the wave of American frustration and self-loathing to blame absolutely all of the world's woes on one person: George Bush. Because it is far more appealing to address complex issues with very simple rants. In my eyes, such rhetoric belongs in stand-up comedy acts, Dennis Miller Live, and Bill Maher. NOT IN A DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL PLATFORM.

Details about what I mean at my blog URL ... that is if someone actually gives a shit what i think.

My grandfather invented the low-frequency sine function generator about 40~50 years ago, and sold it to HP. It worked in part because he was able to isolate a frequency standard from its output using an amplifier, which is now a fairly ubiquitous design. Tricks involving subdividing a signal to make it a higher frequency, or lowering the frequency by abandoning some portion of the signals are not only obvious and well known to anyone who has taken a physics instrumentation lab, but where well understood at that time too. This is not only unoriginal, it is so common that you could find prior art in a lower division college textbook.

There are two fantastic well-researched books that anyone who wishes to truely understand Echelon needs to read:

Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" by James Bamford is a fantastic history of the NSA from the end of WWII to the present. If you read this book you will see that the idea that the NSA is spying on UN delegations is really a given...in fact one of the primary reasons the US wanted the UN to locate in NYC is to allow easy interception of diplomatic communications. This author uncovered many amazing Cold War programs and anticdotes and presents them in fascinating form.

The second book is "Blind Mans Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage"
by Sherry Sontag, another fantastic book of solid research and good story telling, a large amount of it revolving around underwater communication wiretap activities. The special mission nuclear submarine SSN-21 USS Jimmy Carter is out there specially equipped for undersea cable tapping operations and receiving commendations in the tradition of the Cold War era USS Halibut.

Whatever you think of the ethics of these issues, the technology and history is amazing, and the capabilities do exist and are fairly well documented. If you read these two books, and have the technological understanding to extrapolate a bit, you can get a pretty good picture of current capabilities and the culture of how these collection assets are being used. One thing you will find that they are not being used without limits and elements of responsibility, although there are cases (like the Boeing/Airbus bidding incident) where they have been abused.

-braddock gaskill