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Mmmmm...AJAX ice cream. The real question is: with or without bleach?

Here is a review of AJAX:http://www.epinions.com/Ajax_Cleanser_with_Bl each_Easy_Rinse_Formula

(Links at the bottom)

I've been using a cheap pair of Sony behind-the-ear's at work for a while. Easy to put on, decent sound (little muddy), cheap, and doesn't look like my other phones. At home it's Sennheiser HD497's, incredible sound (good alternative to Grado SR-60's I hear). The 497's are about 60-70, and they're open design so you can basic hear everything around you not muffled at all. Same with the sony behind-the-ears, you can still hear around you and you can simply pause the music to hear people.

I tried the Sennheiser PXC-250's, same physical design as the 100's but with active noise cancelling. Even with the noise canceling *off*, the phone physically blocked out a lot of noise (surprisingly). Good for music, bad for coworkers.

Personally, I'd got with behind the ear Koss porta pro's (KSC55's probably). They're slightly less intrusive than over-the-head phones, that series of koss's are supposed to be the best bargain phones (ie. under $30), and they're really easy to pull down to your neck when a coworker wants to talk. That's important, as at my 1 year review one of my feedback from coworkers was "he's always wearing his headphones". Programming for 8-10 hours straight in the only office in the building without a window of any kind? Heck yes. I'm still going to wear phones, but I have to be careful not to appear "unapproachable" to the higher-ups. Aww, screw it. I'm doing important work, they don't need to disturb me.

(I think it's outside the scope of the OP's requirements, but I can't say enough about the HD497's. Music sounds incredibly different listened with those compared to cheap phones, cars, computer speakers, etc. There's just a whole lot more there that you never realized. Love it, I want to listen to music all over again just in these phones.)

Sony MDR-G52LP's, $20, ok but not as good as the Koss (so I've heard). Little muddy.

Koss KSC55, ~$20, behind the ear, titanium diaphram, cheap and good

Grado SR-60's, ~$70, bigger over the head, "best under $100"-kine (open design, can hear everything)

Sennheiser HD497's, ~$70, more bigger over the head, "the other best under $100"-kine (open design, can hear everything)

*Don't pay attention to frequency response numbers, 20-20000hz. Means nothing. Go try some phones, goto the Apple store and plug your personal ipod into the bose triports and listen to something you know well. If you're not rushed, you might notice a big difference.

Offered with an intent to help, not criticize...

You say you had him on a "leash" but you don't seem to really mean it. 3yrs old ... large, open public place ... use a real leash like other parents have learned to.

http://ks.essortment.com/childrenleashes_rvjf.htm

http://www.epinions.com/content_106201976452

http://www.babycenter.com/dilemma/toddler/toddlerb ehavior/1149656.html

and on, and on, and on...

Been there (on the leash side ... as a kid, not an adult), can't remember squat from that young, so didn't mind.

College is the quickest way to acquire the skills necessary to learn any other job...Things that a liberal education provides.

If you are a shareholder, and this bothers you, please remember you bought stock in a company WHOSE NAME MEANS FUCKING IDIOT.

while we're at it we'd best not leave out the dirt devil, eureka, electrolux, Shop vac, bissel, panasonic, kenmore, black & decker, kenmore, oreck, sanyo, or any of the hundreds of brands listed here http://www.epinions.com/Vacuums--~all-9688_brand

Much like Steel Battalion, the ">40-button-controller XBox game that, when you die (i.e. doesn't flip up the cover and mash Eject in time), deletes that character's saved game. An amazing game.

A computer doesn't really count as a "Set-top box". It's far more complicated and expensive then a set-top box is designed to be. (Note: I'm probably going to build a living room PC this year, with one of those cards, so I can receive OTA DTV broadcasts).

There aren't many HDTV Tuners around. I remember going to the store and shopping for an analog set-top box in the late eighties-- the boxes cost around $50. Now it's $150 for a refurbished set-top box. I feel like I'm getting ripped off.

I've asked the guys at Good Guys, Circuit City, and Best Buy-- 90% of the salespeople told me I couldn't receive DTV over the air. That's the sort of ignorance some of us are running into.

You joking?

Seriously?

Not only do a lot of HDTVs come with an HDTV tuner (mine did and I bought it two years ago), you can buy a frickin' card for linux or if you have an HDTV without a tuner, you an buy one of these or another of the many like it.

Sheesh!

Sorry, Patent Denied, Fisher Price claims prior art:

Fisher Price Baby Smartronics Computer Learning System
Another

Interestingly enough, their resellerrating score was 5.5 yesterday. Which is still pretty bad, but it shows that a single story (when linked at the right places) can have a pretty big impact on your online ratings.

Considering this change was established by votes from people who never actually delt with this company themselves, it shows how easily online ratings can be abused, for better (fake positive ratings to make yourself seem good - which it looks like they did at epinions) or worse (fake negative ratings for a competitor?).

Worse than that, when this story was posted on digg yesterday, a lynchmob formed that barraged the vendor with prank calls, emails, black faxes and ddos attacks.

All without anyone verifying whether there's any truth to the original story of course...

Whatever happened to artists of integrity, artists like Tom Petty who want their record prices kept low so their fans can afford them?

Oh, okay. And what makes you think I got it from the web? I really can't believe I'm continuing to dignify this. Your principle really does mean that if ANYONE ELSE has ever quoted the same passage, you have to also quote them. You and I both know that's wrong, so you can spare me the lecture. I bolded the passage, not because someone else happened to do it a few years ago in an obscure little internet article, but because that is the part I wanted to emphasize! And guess what? I sorta kinda mentioned that I added the bold.

You know what my favorite intro to a book is? It's the one in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. It goes "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." (p. 1, bold added) as quoted in

http://www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/cities.html

http://www.bartleby.com/59/6/itwasthebest.html

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/29595.html

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/charles dic101118.html

http://www.epinions.com/content_3173621892

http://www.courierpostonline.com/columnists/cxan06 1104a.htm

http://www.answers.com/topic/it-was-the-best-of-ti mes-it-was-the-worst-of-times

http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=75 62_0_10_0_C

http://en.thinkexist.com/quotation/it_was_the_best _of_times-it_was_the_worst_of/147366.html

According to you and only you, I have to quote all those webpages whenever I want to quote the first like of that book. Otherwise, it's plagiarism. Oh, and I better cross my fingers and hope no one has bolded any part of that sentence.

Well, good work. You got me to dignify another person who really doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

Acknowledging that undergraduate advising and mentoring programs at the university fall "below the standards" set in other undergraduate education reforms, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education John Bravman announced several new initiatives that should significantly alter the experience for students and their advisers.

Bravman and Director of Undergraduate Advising Steven Zipperstein outlined a detailed plan to address some of the problems that plague the undergraduate advising system, with even more emphasis placed on freshman advising, at last week's Faculty Senate meeting. ...
-Faculty participation in advising has dropped from as much as 48 percent in the late 1970s to 12 to 15 percent today, partly due to ever-increasing demands on their time.

-Some advisers complained that they were matched with groups of students with nothing in common with each other or their adviser and felt uncomfortable participating in the standard socialization events. He said some faculty also complained about having too much information to digest when they became advisers.

-Many students do not take full advantage of advising opportunities or resources. He said his own experience since 1992 has shown that 23 percent of students who had scheduled appointments with him didn't show up.

-Students are increasingly arriving at the university with complex personal issues, including many who take psychotropic medications, which add another challenge to a sound advising program.

-Too many over-corrective efforts for advising have resulted in too many specialized groups and a general sense of confusion for many students . Bravman said programs have been offered through residential education, the advising center and the office of the Dean of Freshmen and Transfer Students, as an example.

"We have added layer upon layer upon layer and one of the results of that is that there's a total information overload and a total block about where to go to get even the most basic questions answered," Bravman said.

A number of steps already have been taken to help address some of the concerns of undergraduate advising. Zipperstein, the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History, was tapped to lead the Undergraduate Advising Center last fall -- the first faculty member ever to lead undergraduate advising. The center is currently conducting a national search for a senior staff leader who will serve as its head of staff. ...

"Partly due to ever-increasing demands on their time"? You mean like sitting on the board of directors for a company that blows $100 million over seven years?

Likewise the editorial board of the Stanford Daily of May 14, 2004, wrote

Vice Provost John Bravman and Director of Undergraduate Advising Steven Zipperstein have presented a plan to the Faculty Senate for sweeping changes in pre-major advising at Stanford. These changes are long overdue and will help the University raise its advising standards to equal those of peer institutions such as Wellesley College and the University of Pennsylvania.

Bravman was absolutely correct when he told the Senate that "our advising programs fall well

Stanford has spent more than seven years transferring its financial systems onto applications from Oracle called Oracle Financials....Stanford has spent a lot of money on software and still has work to do. According to the university's annual budget plans, the board of trustees since 1999 has been asked to approve $93.4 million in capital expenditures for applications and infrastructure . The trustees had approved $60 million in 1994 to overhaul Stanford's entire administrative information systems, a project they expected would take five years...What makes Stanford's troubles all the more ironic is the institution's proximity to Oracle and PeopleSoft. Stanford, with its gracious red-tiled roofs, and Oracle, with its gleaming metal-and-glass towers, sit just 10 miles apart along Route 101, the main thoroughfare through Silicon Valley. Three Stanford professors serve on Oracle's board of directors ...

Now faced with budget cuts and layoffs, Stanford's information technology department has successfully sent coding and maintenance work to outsourcing firms in India, which are helping with Oracle report writing and an upgrade to PeopleSoft v. 8.

There's nothing like a little bit of conflict of interest to snag lucrative contracts. Sitting on a board of directors will get you at least $30,000 per year, if not more. Everybody wins -- the professors sitting on the board of directors win because they get the money for sitting, Oracle wins because they snag the contract, programmers in India win because they get money to do the work.

Everybody wins, except for undergraduate students who subsidize this activity with their tuition. See http://www.epinions.com/content_73675148932. Many issues raised in that article are verified by in the May 19, 2004, issue of the weekly Stanford Report, writt

Yeah, Big Bird is his favourite.

Active Ingredient: Triclosan
Other Ingredients: Water, Magnesium and/or Sodium Dodecylbenzenesulfaonate, ammoniym laureth sulfate, Sodium xylenessulfonate, SD alcohol 3-A, Laurel polyglucose, Laurylamidoproptlamine oxide, Magnesium sulfate, Sodium bisulfate, fragrance, Prntasodium pentetate, DNDN Hydantoine, D&C Orange No 4.

See, see, Triclosan is what powers AJAX!

The story is really about Two Brothers

I know you are making a joke, but I used to work at a mine that had serious issues with "incompetent rock." And the term means what it says; the rock kept breaking off and falling on people. It had to be held up with metal netting and roof bolts.

Ah, there's our measuring stick.

So when somebody says Windows is "rock solid", that really means "Solid! unless it's incompetent, in which case it keeps breaking off and falling on people, and has to be held up with metal netting and roof bolts".

-bp

Pretty neat little device actually, back in the day - 900mhz and the ability to voice dial by having the base hooked up to the PC!

http://www.epinions.com/elec-review-3BBA-151E2E89- 39D01DE2-prod3

for a quick pic!

I personally like epinions. http://www.epinions.com There are quite a few reviews there on some

Reviews For Web Hosting

I use the site a lot when I am looking for new appliances, furniture, just about anything I am planning on purchasing. Although it does not make the decision for me, I am able to see unbiased reviews.

I personally like epinions. http://www.epinions.com There are quite a few reviews there on some

Reviews For Web Hosting

I use the site a lot when I am looking for new appliances, furniture, just about anything I am planning on purchasing. Although it does not make the decision for me, I am able to see unbiased reviews.

• Egghead and Onsale merged in 1999
• Egghead went out of business and purchased by Amazon in 2001
• The Newegg Wikipedia article refutes it
• ...and so do a few epinions comments.

ChiefValue is very close/the same company as Newegg, although it's denied; see here and here.

-Faculty participation in advising has dropped from as much as 48 percent in the late 1970s to 12 to 15 percent today, partly due to ever-increasing demands on their time.

-Some advisers complained that they were matched with groups of students with nothing in common with each other or their adviser and felt uncomfortable participating in the standard socialization events. He said some faculty also complained about having too much information to digest when they became advisers.

-Many students do not take full advantage of advising opportunities or resources. He said his own experience since 1992 has shown that 23 percent of students who had scheduled appointments with him didn't show up.

-Students are increasingly arriving at the university with complex personal issues, including many who take psychotropic medications, which add another challenge to a sound advising program.

-Too many over-corrective efforts for advising have resulted in too many specialized groups and a general sense of confusion for many students. Bravman said programs have been offered through residential education, the advising center and the office of the Dean of Freshmen and Transfer Students, as an example.

"We have added layer upon layer upon layer and one of the results of that is that there's a total information overload and a total block about where to go to get even the most basic questions answered," Bravman said.

Are faculty spending too much time consulting (advising) outside companies and serving on boards (compensation for which is, at a minimum, from $20,000 to $30,000 annually) rather than advising students? Do low student participation rates reflect student dissatisfaction with poor matches or bad advice? Is the "psychotropic medication" complaint just camouflage -- and how do other colleges deal with the problem? Is the phrase "sound advising program" merely diplomatic doublespeak that contrasts sharply with the 12% participation rate? Or was the word "deaf" intended?

It's hard to imagine that a film created by the Pentagon will improve the situation. The Stanford Daily complained (May 14, 2004)

Vice Provost John Bravman and Director of Undergraduate Advising Steven Zipperstein have presented a plan to the Faculty Senate for sweeping changes in pre-major advising at Stanford. These changes are long overdue and will help the University raise its advising standards to equal those of peer institutions such as Wellesley College and the University of Pennsylvania.

Bravman was absolutely correct when he told the Senate that "our advising programs fall well below the standards we have set and achieved throughout most of our other undergraduate reforms." Indeed, advising has developed a notoriously bad reputation among many freshmen and undeclared

Mario and Luigi: Luigi's a *guy*, 'nuff said.

Uhm, yeah. That's the point. He's male, and he's neither pretty nor strong.

X-Men Male cast: All a bunch of good-looking guys.

not really.

high school teachers get to call themselves professor it isn't much of a stretch

"To the best of my knowledge, I was doing so with the title of acting assistant professor," Cringely said.

I have a Sharp Wizard OZ-730 (http://www.epinions.com/Sharp_OZ_730PC_Electronic _Organizer__PDAs___Handhelds_OZ730PC) and it has a nice size QWERTY keyboard on it. Sadly, it is now outdated, and can not even dream of doing most of the things that this artical speaks of. When the Wizard line went to the stylus pen, I swore it off. Looking again at Sharp's site, I found this product (http://www.sharpusa.com/products/TypeLanding/0,10 56,74,00.html) that looks more like my beloved OZ-730, upgraded to more modern specifications (although it runs damn windows). Its called a Mobilion, and the website makes it seem as if the product is discontinued.

Does anyone have one of these Mobilions, or ever seen/used one? If not, does anyone know of a good replacement for the Wizard OZ-700 series that has some of the features that newer PDAs have? I would like for one that would be able to keep a schedule, take notes or memos, keep birthdays and anniversaries, store telephone and adress information, keep user files (like databasing to keep an index of things like my CD collection), and light web features (e-mail and light web-browsing would be nice, but not a nessesity). If anyone has any information/suggestions, I would really appreciate a reply.

I was once looking for a video tape for my friends in Ukraine (different video standard from US). I found it through Yahoo! Shopping Australia...

That said, I also visit CNet and EPinions for product reviews and -- right before buying from a particular vendor -- search Google for

vendor sucks

Agreed, read the discussion at http://www.epinions.com/content_73675148932

Woz dropped out too. I'd put him into the great minds because he did a hell of a lot more technologically than a lot of grads still can't do.

you guys know you're just strengthening the "geeks are wimps" stereotype, right?

Modern 21" monitors weigh less than 70 lbs and 19" less than 50 lbs (link link link link), so you guys breaking your backs over 50 lbs are not exactly hitting the gym too often are ya?

you guys know you're just strengthening the "geeks are wimps" stereotype, right?

Modern 21" monitors weigh less than 70 lbs and 19" less than 50 lbs (link link link link), so you guys breaking your backs over 50 lbs are not exactly hitting the gym too often are ya?

you guys know you're just strengthening the "geeks are wimps" stereotype, right?

Modern 21" monitors weigh less than 70 lbs and 19" less than 50 lbs (link link link link), so you guys breaking your backs over 50 lbs are not exactly hitting the gym too often are ya?

Width 22.88 in.
Depth 21.63 in.
Height 19.75 in.
Weight 90 lb.

Last year before the craze I bought 4 and I've been cannibalizing them for button switches mostly. The downside to the FX is that it doesn't have a scroll wheel, though most applications will recognize the third button as a sort of "scroll lock" action.

A close second would be the Kensington ones. The older models had HUGE balls - so much so that you could safely replace them with a pool ball. They were actually the same size. The only problem with those is that they were completely unergonomic.

Where are you looking that you find so many negetive reviews... perhaps you're just looking in the wrong place(s). I tend to check sites such as Epinions, wherein many of the projects have a nice mix of good and bad reviews. And when reading bad reviews... pay attention to the comments. If somebody is bitching about how an mp3 player doesn't have "as much capacity" as others (which people do, even though the capacity was stated before purchase) you can disregard it... if they're regularly bitching that the thing sucks batteries and corrupts files then perk up a bit...

They didn't figure out a way to leverage what epinions is doing and just promote that. I know that epinions is business oriented, but it is almost exactly the same concept.

http://www.grandstyle.com/roomycoa.htm

In a reprint of a Consumer Reports article, I saw the following stats, based on Delta, United, American, and US Air fleets.

DC 9's and MD 80's have seat widths of 20 to 23 inches. Southwest Air's seats are 14 to 25% narrower than average seat widths on DC 9's and MD 80's.

757's and 767's have 19 inch wide seats--10% roomier than Southwest Air's seats.

747's have seat widths between 19.5 and 20.5 inches--12% to 16% roomier than Southwest Air's seats.

L1011's have seat widths between 18.5 and 20 inches--7% to 14% roomier than Southwest Air's seats.

• First, the Baja Claw is generally a accepted to be a good sand tire. If I was mudding and needed traction I'd use a Super Swamper.
• Second, the amount of traction that's good for a sand tire depends on several factors. What I've found over the years is that a vehicle with low horsepower generally does better with a smoother tire will spin, keeping wheel speed up and not digging in to the sand. If you have enough power, a tire with more traction will actually work better, as long as the air pressure is low. If you look at the trucks that race in SCORE you will see that most of those have aggressive tires with transverse ribs, unlike the Landrover article you cited.
• Third, Landrover is the most overrated, underpowered, ridiculous excuse for a 4x4 on the PLANET. If you doubt I know what I'm talking about, show me a Landrover that can do this.
• Finally, the word is TIRES, spell it with me T-I-R-E-S

[Excerpt from the "Stanford Report", May 19, 2004, by Ray Delgado]:
-Faculty participation in advising has dropped from as much as 48 percent in the late 1970s to 12 to 15 percent today, partly due to ever-increasing demands on their time.
-Some advisers complained that they were matched with groups of students with nothing in common with each other or their adviser and felt uncomfortable participating in the standard socialization events. He said some faculty also complained about having too much information to digest when they became advisers.
-Many students do not take full advantage of advising opportunities or resources. He said his own experience since 1992 has shown that 23 percent of students who had scheduled appointments with him didn't show up.
-Students are increasingly arriving at the university with complex personal issues, including many who take psychotropic medications, which add another challenge to a sound advising program.
-Too many over-corrective efforts for advising have resulted in too many specialized groups and a general sense of confusion for many students. Bravman said programs have been offered through residential education, the advising center and the office of the Dean of Freshmen and Transfer Students, as an example.

"We have added layer upon layer upon layer and one of the results of that is that there's a total information overload and a total block about where to go to get even the most basic questions answered," Bravman said.

[Excerpt from the "Stanford Daily", May 14, 2004]:
Bravman was absolutely correct when he told the Senate that "our advising programs fall well below the standards we have set and achieved throughout most of our other undergraduate reforms." Indeed, advising has developed a notoriously bad reputation among many freshmen and undeclared sophomores, who perceive it to be inadequate to their needs.

Is it society's fault that students are paying a fortune to attend a university that ignores its undergraduates? Is it society's fault that faculty members are too busy consulting? Here's an example of Stanford consulting gone awry, at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1642588,00.as p:

[Excerpt from EWeek article of June 8, 2004, by Deborah Gage, bold emphasis mine ]

Stanford has spent more than seven years transferring its financial systems onto applications from Oracle called Oracle Financials. ...
What makes Stanford's troubles all the more ironic is the institution's proximity to Oracle and PeopleSoft. Stanford, with its gracious red-tiled roofs, and Oracle, with its gleaming metal-and-glass towers, sit just 10 miles apart along Route 101, the main thoroughfare through Silicon Valley. Three Stanford professors serve on Oracle's board of directors, and CEO Larry Ellison has pledged $10 million to the university as director of the Ellison Medical Foundation. Across San Francisco Bay behind a range of hills is PeopleSoft, which has been fighting Oracle's hostile takeover attempt for the las

If someone told you that the PSP is a portable gaming device, shoot these people. The PSP is not a portable gaming device, it is really a convergent portable entertainment device.

Right, because the history of convergent entertainment devices is long and illustrious. They would be fools to not want some of this action.

And going with a brand new disk standard that nobody has and nobody sells as a medium for selling movies? It's a brilliant maneuver from some of the industry's best minds.

I should say that the Sony reps I've worked with about other things have been completely with it and didn't lose sight of reality. So what happened to this guy?

I first heard of the site from reading this paper in www2004, which used epinions data as the basis for a reputation system. (I don't know if epinions uses that same system internally, but they at least do something similar.) The cool part is that you can rate individual reviewers as "trusted" or "untrusted". By examining the graph of trust and distrust relationships between users, they can come up with a reasonable guess for how much any user should trust any other user, and sort reviews accordingly.

I don't know what the motives are of the people who run the site. Perhaps they're just trying to grease the wheels of capitalism by giving people good information to make informed decisions about what products to buy (or, more formally, to avoid information asymmetry). Perhaps they're secretly tweaking the ratings to support companies that send them money. Perhaps they're just trying to generate ad banner revenue. Who knows.

Here are two keyboards with touchpads built into them, PLUS countours, so you can have MORE than the basic ergonomic feature of the RollerMouse.
one
two

I prefer touchpads too, EXCEPT for their so-called feature that causes mouse-clicks whenever you touch them too hard. I suspect the non-popularity of touchpads is directly related to how many people don't know that that "feature" can be disabled in the driver/property settings. Too bad this "feature" is enabled by default. If it was disabled by default, then I bet the popularity of touchpads would soar.

H-A-T-R-E-D is one of the best breakup songs of all time. IMO. :-)

Music for people who think Warren Zevon is too light and cuddly

[Ars-Fartsica:] any of these Valley firms are hiring developers from the east coast, IIT (India) and universities in Russia and China. The proximity to Stanford and Cal is not relevant anymore. In fact I might say it is even irrelevant. These universities have moved on to biotech and to a lesser extent nanotech anyway as "big idea" fields.

Didn't he publish "The Art of Computer Programming" in 1968, when he was still at Caltech (according to the preface to the first edition, which was written from Pasadena, California) , just before he arrived at Stanford?

Over thirty years later after finishing the third volume, he's almost finished with its successor. That's way too long, pretty inexecusable, and bordering on the laughable.

The greatest computer scientist in the world created, in the intervening years from third volume to retirement, the ...TeX.

A typesetting language.

Not HTML.

Not the World Wide Web.

Not the Internet.

A typesetting language so that nerdy graduate students could have an excuse for not socializing or doing original work while they fiddled around for hours using TeX to pretty-print their papers. After all, they are "working on the computer", aren't they?

Is this what Arthur C. Clarke thought we'd be doing in the year 2001? I don't seem to remember that "Dave" was conversing with the computer HAL via TeX formatted files. HAL was able to comprehend people just by READING THEIR LIPS, for crying out loud.

By contrast, consider a 27 page Ph.D. thesis written by a guy named John Forbes Nash back in 1950 at Princeton University. With no TeX in those days, the double-spaced typewritten thesis has hand-written mathematical formulae and Greek symbols scribbled among and in between the lines. That thesis would win Nash the Nobel Prize in economics in 1994. If I recall correctly, you can see an actual-sized reproduction of the entire thesis, complete with hand-written scribbles, in the book The Essential John Nash . (Somehow, the hand-written stuff makes you feel as if Nash is sitting in the room with you, and -- corny as it sounds -- closer to his genius, as if you peeked inside his diary or something. )

You don't need TeX to be successful; you just have to have good ideas, and you need to be spending time developing those good ideas rather than iteratively kerning your fonts.

Just what did Knuth do?

http://www.epinions.com/content_73675148932

GOOGLE, the internet search engine company, admitted it may have broken United States stock market rules after it revealed it illegally issued about 30 million shares worth £1.69 billion to current and former staff. ... ...
The firm, whose search engine gets more than 200 million inquiries every day, said it may have broken federal securities laws and the securities laws of 18 states , including New York, Texas and Virginia, by failing to register the stock and options or exempt them from registration.

All software patents are evil, and Google's search algorithm is patented and owned by Stanford University. Stanford isn't exactly a saintly university fulfilling its original mission of educating the children of California. Instead, the university has become a vehicle for fattening the wallets of the so-called "professors", who spend little time on their charades of teaching, and a lot of time on finding ways to get more money. See also http://www.epinions.com/content_73675148932 for similar information.

A case in point: On the Google board of directors is Stanford University president, John Hennessey, who was personally given $6 million worth of shares (or more precisely 65,000 shares).

This is a conflict of interest, which is bad in many ways.

First it almost looks like a payoff of some sort. A payoff is a bad thing, because it breeds the potential for wasting money. For example, three Stanford professors serve on the board of directors of Oracle, a database company, and Stanford miraculously bought its services to migrate its internal financial software to Oracle's.. The result was a disaster to the tune of $93.4 million in wasted money, five years late and over-budget, with a lot of unhappy users in the end. (See the article by Deborah Gage at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1609179,00.as p

Second, it drains Hennessy's time away from working on the multitude of problems at Stanford, including uneven undergraduate advising (see the November 23, 2004, issue of the Stanford Daily which states "For several years now, Stanford students have generally agreed that undergraduate advising at the Farm is unreliable and ineffective.") and a shortage of freshman/sophomore seminars (see the January 19, 2005, issue of the Stanford Daily) , which causes a lack of faculty-student interaction. In the May 19, 2004, issue of The Stanford Report, journalist Ray Delgado revealed

-Faculty participation in advising has dropped from as much as 48 percent in the late 1970s to 12 to 15 percent today, partly due to ever-increasing demands on their time.

-Some advisers complained that they were matched with groups of students with nothing in common with each other or their adviser and felt uncomfortable participating in the standard socialization events. He said some faculty also complained about having too much information to digest when they became advisers.

About 60% of the undergraduates are on financial aid, so please none of the rubbish about Stanford students being rich snobs.

Third, Hennessey doesn't need the money. As President of Stanford, Hennessy earns about $400,000 a year in salary. In addition he is rich from the company he founded (and is a board member of), MIPS Technologies, which licenses its chip architecture and CPU cores to everything from game consoles (the Nintendo 64 , the original PlayStation, and the PlayStation 2) to PVRs, earning the company several hundred million dollars a year.

http://www.epinions.com/elec-review-6E7E-2859892-3 9CD5C1D-prod1 and uses technology from Sensory http://www.sensoryinc.com/html/showcase/showcase.h tml#8. I guess the novelty depends on how far they're taking the voice-recognition.

I'd guess they're going for pattern matching of a static number of commands, it's been done before (with varying success) - hey even mobiles do it today.

If on the other hand they're going to provide speech to text conversion ("Play unforgettable fire"), that's an entirely different (and processing-intensive) thing.

Netcraft confirms: 2pac was shit. http://www.epinions.com/content_4038762628

Thanks for the blessing - a better Christmas present than some cheap toy ;). Apropos to my post, put my statement in your .sig, linked to a reviews website. I like Epinions.com, but I'm sure there are better ones.