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http://br.geocities.com/francasite/waternet_index. html (site is in portuguese)

the "water modem" is already an old joke here in the tropics (the website was created in november 2001).

some of the seling points:

- sharing internet connection was possible, as long as every PC had access to a faucet;
- optional "waterwall" to protect your computer
- WaterNet(tm) pressure gauge

and more. it came with 2.000 liters/month (256 kbps), 6.000 liter/month (768 kbps) and 12.000 liters month (1.5 Mbps).

i laughed my ass of the first time i saw it. the worst is that the 1st coworker i showed it to believed the thing was real, to the point of filling the ordering form.

Computers are now being put into embedded devices, but they shouldn't look or act like computers. My prime example is the digital camera:

My mom was an amatuer photographer who used a fully manual camera in the 70's. I bought her a very easy to use Canon Powershot with the same features, and she was completely lost. Imagine this: She wants to set the f-stop, aperture, and exposure time. On her old Miranda that was a switch, a knob, and a slider (or something like that). Now, it's switch to "M" mode, then arrow left to one setting, then arrow up and down, then arrow right, then repeat for the next setting... it takes 10 times longer, and the buttons are much smaller and harder to push. She can't just go by feel while looking at the screen or viewfinder.

Buttons are not the universal replacement for all settings for the same reason that the mouse cannot replace a keyboard and vice-versa. There are multi-modal input devices which map better to some things than others. Use the most appropriate input for each setting. It actually makes it easier.

Oh, and more buttons isn't the answer.

lorem ipsum spamtrap thank you. http://www.geocities.com/testitestitestaaja/

I have a Toshiba 4015CDS that has Windows 98, and I can run my livecd linux, a Knoppix Remaster on it with no problem. Very secure, only problem I have had is that the battery has gone bad, that is expected after so long a time.
Never had to call them up about anything, but I could show them the machine with only Windows 98 on it, even thought I might run linux on a daily basis, and they would not know the difference. It's not on the hard drive, but having said that, I would have to delete the swap file before having a Toshiba service rep look at the machine, to be able to have everything as it was when new. They do give you a restoration CD that will put it back as new, and it does not use a "restoration partition" as some machines do, Dell notably.

Sure, they make a statement that linux is greener than Windows, and it's open to all sorts of interpretation and comment.
It's true that one can have a linux install that does not have the hardware requirements of Windows Vista, and still get the job done.
Powerful hardware usually translates into more power consumption, so linux, able to do the job on less complicated/powerful hardware, is greener.
I can surf the web with Firefox 2.0.0.3 with my Knoppix remaster, using only 256 MB of system RAM.
I don't need a GB or two of RAM, but it would be nice.
Not greener, however.

I honestly cannot think of anything more compassionate that has a realistic chance of working than to force decentralization by individuals, acting alone and undetectable, making synchronized, but otherwise uncoordinated and unplanned, attacks on its control nodes to bring it down. Yes, I know this means many people will suffer but I really think it is the least painful of a wide range of bad options.

I'm a U.S. Marine.

The distinction between sailor, soldier, and Marine is important to us.

Just thought I'd chime in.

What web 2.0 and the semantic web can do together is better than #1 and #2. Instead of a dedicated team of 20 you get a completely arbitrary and undedicated team of 20 million doing their best to tag content with keywords.

I agree, the speculation about the end of time for the "physical pirates" is pure bullshit. I am from Mexico, and, the prime example is the Tepito Market where people sell copies of movies and DVDs before they are available even at the cinema. They even sold the Xbox360 *before* it was out in Mexico (and the release time was the same in Mexico and the USA, usually what they do is assault trailers with merchandise).

If anyone wants to practice their spanish, here is a really good description of what the Tepito market is famous for in Mexico. Gosh, one of the main reasons why no one makes anything against it is that usually the heads of those markets (and the people moving the money) are the same of the people from the government!

So yeah, there is still *plenty* of demand for pirate DVDs and CDs (and even VHS!!) in the street.

I don't have a link for her design, but if you like the DIY spectrograph, you might like the DIY NMR machine.

Every operating system has it's bad days, I have odd things happen to mine once in a while, probably related to some of the strange web sites Mozilla Firefox and I surf.
Surely Windows Vista will sit there, stable as a rock, and let me run Firefox just as if I am using my livecd linux. I understand that Vista will want a much more powerful PC than the dual pentium pro machine I'm using, with a hefty 256 MB of 72-pin RAM. That's why I am also requesting a new PC from Mr. Ballmer, to go with the free Windows Vista. Something with a dual core, and 2 GB of RAM will do nicely. No need to thank me for my restraint here.
Thank you very much for your patience.

Careful with that chair...

Sorry, but you've bought into the lie.

Agriculture is technology, and as such, is capable of being used in both constructive and destructive ways.

Lacandon
Agroforestry
Sustainable Agriculture

The only reason rain forest agriculture is currently unsustainable is because of the ease of slash and burn techniques and, frankly, laziness.

If the universe could pop into existence from nothing, why isn't it also possible that nothings appears from everything?

http://www.dichotomistic.com/matter_infinoverse_on e.html

http://www.geocities.com/spatlavskiy/OTHER-PAPERS- 5.html

After all, it's somewhat easier to imagine that stuff can emerge from some sort of mathematical soup of inifinities and negative infinities and everythings rather than from nothing.

I have started an internet collaboration project to develop a next-generation image format for digital photography. It is here:
http://geocities.com/repstsb/libima.html

The codec is still in alpha stage. It has lots of features, such as lossless compression of images in the OpenEXR 32 bits per sample floating point format.

I proposed this to them about 5 years ago....
....I wonder if I would even be a foot note as the person who lead them to this idea?

Oh, if you are wondering if I'm full of it, take a look at where I got my idea form:

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/8947/projec t.html

and replace 'hobby rocket' with 'aircraft under distress'. I still have all of my original documents too.

I know I'm a sad fanboy for pointing this out, but the "Doctor Who" scarf pictured in the article and purported to be part of Tom Baker's costume, looks nothing like any of the scarves he wore on the show.

Hell, I didn't.

I though this was the extent of our military.....

i think some of the Saturn stages had internal insulation...

http://www.geocities.com/launchreport/satstg5.html (the s4b stage)

http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/01launch_ascent.htm

(sorry, not the best links, and i don't know why this was chosen, and apparently forgotten....)

In Reusing old PC's, we need to know what secure operating system will be used.

I have several older PC's that came with Windows 98 on them, but I'm not using that, I run my livecd linux.
I don't really run it off the CDROM drive except one time to set it up, I use these files to use loadlin to run it off the hard drive.
  I can use MSDOS here, to provide a menu at bootup, that in turn runs the loadlin batch files to start linux. So, I am not wearing out an expensive CDROM drive, just to run the OS on a daily basis. One can keep Windows 98, and use that, it has DOS in it, and the Windows 98 splash screen appears briefly before the menu comes up.

I am posting this using Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.2, and the box has 256 MB of 72-pin RAM, and two 200 MHZ Pentium Pro processors.

I use a 40 GB HDD, partitioned to provide a "persistent home", and with this setup, the drive activity is very low, compared to what it was when Windows 98 was being run as the primary OS.

Only problem I have is the monitor, an ADI Microscan 4V, probably using more power than a LCD, but I am reusing an old piece of hardware, rather than throw it away. I usually run 800x600, since the monitor is about 13 inches diagonal.

As with most upgrades to the latest power-saving technology, money is always a problem. I got the ADI monitor at a thrift store for $20.00, upgrading would be expensive, in comparison to the cost of the rest of the system.

Obviously, the ideal shape for any space-bound inflatable structure is a sphere.

I think we all know what this means.

http://www.geocities.com/yank2010/SBCITY2.JPG

Oh shit, there goes the planet.

Nope, you're wrong. It most certainly IS possible:
http://xbox.fuzzymuzzle.com/DreamX/cpuupgrade.htm - Xbox explanation
http://www.geocities.com/_lunchbox/ms6905_tualatin _mod.html - Processor specs

Maybe all the "junk" DNA is really a message from an alien civilization? Maybe SETI should be decoding it instead of the Biologists?

http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/dnaid.htm

The CIA's experiments in radio control of the brain are based on the development of the EEG in the 1920's. In 1934, doctor's Chaffee and Light published a pivotal monograph, "A Method for Remote Control of Electrical Stimulation of the Nervous System". Work along the same lines allowed Dr. Jose Delgado of Cordoba, Spain to climb into bull-ring and, with the push of a button, trigger an electrode in the head of a charging bull and stop the beast in it's tracks.

Further groundbreaking advances were made by L.L. Vasiliev, the famed Russian Physiologist and doyan of parapsychology, in "Critical Evaluation of the Hypnogenic Method". The article detailed the experiments of Dr. I.F. Tomashevsky in remote radio control of the brain "at a distance of one or more rooms and under conditions that the participant would not know or suspect that she would be experimented with...One such experiment was carried out in a park at a distance," Vasiliev reported, and "a post-hypnotic mental suggestion to go to sleep was complied with within a minute."

-FL

This reference Karl Popper on the scientific status of Darwin's theory of evolution might be handy.

The CIA's experiments in radio control of the brain are based on the development of the EEG in the 1920's. In 1934, doctor's Chaffee and Light published a pivotal monograph, "A Method for Remote Control of Electrical Stimulation of the Nervous System". Work along the same lines allowed Dr. Jose Delgado of Cordoba, Spain to climb into bull-ring and, with the push of a button, trigger an electrode in the head of a charging bull and stop the beast in it's tracks.

Further groundbreaking advances were made by L.L. Vasiliev, the famed Russian Physiologist and doyan of parapsychology, in "Critical Evaluation of the Hypnogenic Method". The article detailed the experiments of Dr. I.F. Tomashevsky in remote radio control of the brain "at a

To me, fantasy is more than just roleplay. I actually think of the people who may have engaged in the behavior in reality, and judge for myself if it's good or bad fantasy. For example the suicidal robot is supposed to be a joke to most, and we've had a suicidal robot before the robotic arm: Bender. When I look analyze the fantasy, they're making a joke about going suicidal with the arm in a legitamate manner because he lost his job. To me the commercial is more sad than funny because in the past there have been many people who've killed themselves over the loss of a job. People who have lost a family member to suicide gets to relive it every time they watch this commercial.

Another example is Grand Theft Auto. Before I became a Christian and analyzed things to their core, I used to lay waste everything that walks or drives in Vice City. Now that I've moved away from anything that has 'bad fantasy', I don't play GTA anymore. The way I look at it is this,"There are real people who die from being run over by a car every year, and its a tradjedy. Why should I be eliciting morbid excitement over running people over. If I knew someone who was run over by a car, I certainly wouldn't be playing this game with the intent to commit vehicular homicide."

Finally I don't see the problem with 2 year olds driving in a commercial. When I was a kid, I always fantasized about driving like most kids. This commercial isn't going to add to the instinctual desire to drive. I'm just chiming in with my post because I have two unique views on wicked fantasy:
A longer look at this post entitled: Wicked Fantasies

Do you hate true evil and injustice with a passion

Just wrote this one up last night.

To me, fantasy is more than just roleplay. I actually think of the people who may have engaged in the behavior in reality, and judge for myself if it's good or bad fantasy. For example the suicidal robot is supposed to be a joke to most, and we've had a suicidal robot before the robotic arm: Bender. When I look analyze the fantasy, they're making a joke about going suicidal with the arm in a legitamate manner because he lost his job. To me the commercial is more sad than funny because in the past there have been many people who've killed themselves over the loss of a job. People who have lost a family member to suicide gets to relive it every time they watch this commercial.

Another example is Grand Theft Auto. Before I became a Christian and analyzed things to their core, I used to lay waste everything that walks or drives in Vice City. Now that I've moved away from anything that has 'bad fantasy', I don't play GTA anymore. The way I look at it is this,"There are real people who die from being run over by a car every year, and its a tradjedy. Why should I be eliciting morbid excitement over running people over. If I knew someone who was run over by a car, I certainly wouldn't be playing this game with the intent to commit vehicular homicide."

Finally I don't see the problem with 2 year olds driving in a commercial. When I was a kid, I always fantasized about driving like most kids. This commercial isn't going to add to the instinctual desire to drive. I'm just chiming in with my post because I have two unique views on wicked fantasy:
A longer look at this post entitled: Wicked Fantasies

Do you hate true evil and injustice with a passion

Just wrote this one up last night.

I did try Windows 3.1 on a 386 once, and I think it didn't want to have a "page file", known to us Linux folks as a swap file. It did connect to the internet, but mostly only to text sites, such as government weather sites. I was using dial up which can have problems contributing to the text-only surfing on tiny processors.
On another one, I put Basic Linux on a small Compaq Contura notebook, and set up a dial-up web server, (for test only), one could edit the served page (text only), and view it in Netscape 3.0. Slow, but it was reliable and worked. Had two hard drives for the Contura, one with Windows, so I removed it, and put the test drive in, to install Basic Linux.
I did get some very old Mac's to connect to the internet, same thing, mostly text-only pages available.
The trick here is to set up the hard drive on a more powerful computer, then move it to the old box.
I have a newer Mac Quadra 660AV, and one can easily download the iCab browser, it automatically installs, and does not have a time limit for the 68K Macs. Makes a mess of most modern web pages, however.

Yes, we can all waste time on projects like this, but they do tend to increase our overall range of knowledge about the subject of "installing OS's on PC's".

For those of you wanting to try a "loadlin" install of Knoppix 3.4, or my remaster of it (screenshots below), I have a tarball of the files to set up a MSDOS menu, all of the loadlin batch files, and the 2.4 kernel to use, here.

For this setup, I put MSDOS 6.21 on a small hard drive at /dev/hda, and then use a larger hard drive for linux, having copied the livecd using the "tohd=/dev/hdd1" Knoppix cheatcode. On this box my "hdd" is 40 GB, on another, I have a 160 GB drive, both with many partitions. I always use a 2 GB or so partition for a "persistent home", that makes the system automatically save all kinds of files and applications for you, to return on the next boot-up of the livecd system. Your Mozilla Thunderbird mail settings return, as well as your printer configuration.
You'll notice the "home=scan" knoppix cheatcode in most of the loadlin command lines in the tarball.
One big advantage to using a "persistent home" is the ability to download and test (and keep) the nightly builds of Firefox, or Opera (weekly builds). You can easily set up a separate IceWM (my default wm) menu item for the test build, and keep that too. Lots of options here for experimenters.

If you don't have MSDOS, Windows 95 or 98 will work, the machine just displays the Windows splash screen briefly before going to the Menu, where you can then multi-boot. I threw in MSDOS "Edit" and "Scandisk" in the Menu, to give me a way (With Edit) to fix the loadlin batch files if they have any problems.

I do this on all of my computers, none have more than 256 MB of RAM, this box I am on now has two 200 MHZ Pentium Pro's. The setup runs as fast as one could possibly want, I use a Diamond Stealth S60 Radeon 7000 ATI 32 B card, and use the DVI output to a 17 inch Dell Ultrasharp LCD monitor.

These "loadlin" installs are faster, quieter (won't beat your hard drive up) than XP, and run on much older computers, usually from the Windows 98 era. QTParted is available in the CD, so you can set up the /dev/hda with the swap file, and other partitions.

Rapidweather

Well, that's what we have here, computers with various hardware installed, and an OS that works with everything the box ships with. That's what Microsoft has done all these years.
I like Linux as much as anyone here (see screenshots below), but to think that Dell, or anyone else will "ship a box with linux on it", and not expect to test everything first, and settle on a nice distro that has some commercial backing somewhere, for the boxes that ship with "linux".
Even more complicated for them to dual boot something like Vista and some flavor of Linux. Sounds like they would really lose money on that kind of product, when all of the hardware vs OS has been done for them by Microsoft.
I am advising people that buy a new Vista computer to just run it like it is, and not get caught up in a merry-go-round of buying software and add on hardware for it every weekend, and expecting all of it to work. They do provide drivers for 5000 or so devices and or programs, so that ought to prove me wrong, or I hope so, for the benefit of the buyers.
As far as the "not-installed" livecd linux is concerned, I test a lot of them, and find that there are problems, one big one is the wireless driver. No internet, no computer, they say. I do extensively test my livecd linux, and although I can boot on lots of boxes, and plenty of older machines, If the network card is not one I provide a driver for, then no internet either.
Most of the older Windows 98 boxes I target don't have a network card, so one can be easily added that works with my livecd linux, and we have internet.
I don't need Windows, just MSDOS, and perhaps a 20 GB or so hard drive to partition, provide a swap, and lots of space for a "persistent home".

Most of my computers only have 256 MB of RAM, or less, and 200 MHZ - 400 MHZ processors. Do like to put at least a 32 MB graphics card in there, however.
With setups like that, I get good response, nothing is "slow". Shows you what a 2.4 kernel can do. The 2.6 kernel bogs down big-time, so I stay away from it.

In my rapidweatherlinux.blogspot.com blog, I have a recent post where I have a downloadable archive of files to set up loadlin and a menu on a msdos box, to go with my livecd linux. If all you want is Firefox 2.0.0.1 and a broadband connection, then we are on the same page. I have GIMP, too, so you can create your own Worth1000.com style images, and entertain your friends from now on.
Check out the Getting Started Guide here.

So, my livecd linux is "installed", and no longer runs from the CDROM drive after that first setup day.

If I buy a Dell, I'd be prepared to opt out on a lot of hardware, and pick my own, later. Sure would like to get ahold of their water-cooled gaming box, however.

An there is scientific evidence that the earth is only 6000 years old. A great website with free vids on the info http://www.drdino.com/downloads.php [drdino.com]

I am curious as to why the claims of a known liar should be considered.

My AI page

Once you have the ability to interpret vision into 3d objects, you can then classify what they are and what they're doing in a language(English is good enough). You can then enter in sentences and the AI would understand the representation by 'imaginging' a scene. And what you have isn't really a thinker, but software that understands English and can be incorporated into robots too.

You're assuming that the 4th dimension is time. Nobody has ever said that was the case, although many people have ASSUMED it to be true. The 4th dimension is a direction, much like up, down, or sideways, but is orthogonal to all three. See here for a description.

I'd mod your troll to something else if it wasn't for the "You are stupid" comment at the end. It's interesting, though, to see such careless disregard for other people's feelings.

Glad to hear that the current 2.x stuff is not affected. I'm using FF 2.0.0.1 now, in my knoppix remaster (see screenshots below), and have other things I need to be doing with the remaster than upgrading FF. I do, however, jump on it and upgrade the browsers whenever they have new versions out. With Firefox, I put 9 RSS feeds on the toolbar by default, and for it's home page, I use a local version of this one, but with a slide-out ~/ menu setup, for browsing the /ramdisk.
I notice that Netscape 9 for linux may be released in a couple of months. I'll try it out. Since I usually run my knoppix remaster with a 1 or 2 GB "persistent home" partition, I can easily download it and have it up and running in a few minutes, and can keep it around for a while to see how it does compared to Flock, Firefox and Opera. If it has anything to offer, and is not loaded up with AOL stuff, I might put it in the CD. I still use Netscape 4 on a Macintosh Quadra 660AV, and it seems to do a better job with the web pages than icab 2.99.
That version is free, with no time limit, since it is for older Mac systems. Downloads quickly and installs automatically, however. Just a little disappointed in how many of the web pages look, so I tend to stick with Netscape.

Rapidweather

Ever since the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 (PL101-611) NASA has been required by LAW to purchase all launch services from the private sector that could be reasonably provided by the private sector. As the person who testified before Congress about the passage of that grass-roots law I was fairly galled by the invitation I received a few years later from NASA to sit in the VIP stand and watch them launch the Advanced Communication Technology Satellite upon a shuttle. Well, actually, by that time I had somewhat come to expect that it was hopeless for a grass-roots legislative effort to actually have an impact on a governmental behavior but to actually receive an invitation to see them blatantly violate the clear intent of the law was still annoying.

Seriously. What's the point of building a lunar base, all told? Sure, it's been suggested we can mine there for needed minerals, but look at the cost of doing so. It's something like twice as hard to get to the Moon as it is to achieve Earth orbit, and maintaining a Moon base would be phenomenally expensive. Think of the fuel, food, water, oxygen, etc. that would have to be ferried there on a regular basis. It seems to me that maintaining a base (mining or otherwise) on the Moon would be a net loss.

Also, think of the comparative risk: if you're in Earth orbit and run desperately low on supplies, or if something goes disastrously wrong, taking an escape pod home is a viable option, so long as you have one: hop aboard and drop out of orbit. But it would be a lot more complicated from the Moon: gotta lift off the surface, spend a couple days in transit home, and go through a harder reentry (reentry is faster--therefore hotter--coming back from the Moon than coming down from LEO).

As for using it as a jumpoff point for a trip to Mars, why the Moon? Why not Earth orbit? It's a lot easier to get to LEO than the Moon, and you don't have to lift off from the lunar surface.

Don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of space science and exploration, and love the history of the Space Race (and enjoy playing a game that relives it: http://www.geocities.com/raceintospace/index.htm). I'm just not convinced that a Moon base is the most appropriate next step.

because, I would like to see a dynamic relational database built.

We had X-Prize for getting into space. Can we not get C-Prize started to find a cure for cancer?

I'll stick with the (ahem), less derivative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Stouffer

Pics of Larry:
http://www.geocities.com/versetrue/rowling.htm

I'd like for everyone who still supports GWB for whatever reason to just consider the following few points and try to compose literate and thoughtful responses to justify his track record on any of these issues.

1. Political Appointments - The role of the president is to look out for the best interests of the 'People'. That means trying to represent the many varied interests of ALL the people. Now, Corporations are part of that group, as are members of Greenpeace and all us regular Joes who fall in the middle. The Bush administration has consistently biased most appointments in favor of corporate interests over all other interests. As detailed in the originally referenced article, "Cooney () was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute before becoming chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality". How can he be expected to provide impartial leadership? This is just one of hundreds of obviously poor choices detailed here. I'm not saying that a former Greenpeace executive would be a better choice for any of these positions. The presidents job is to appoint knowledgeable people who have worked in the field and who are capable of weighing the needs and interests of all sides of an issue to provide decisions that balance those interests. Bush has always failed to do this

2. Personal Freedoms and Liberties - The documentation of the Bush administrations poor record on this topic is pretty extensive. Bush continually uses 9/11 as an excuse to chip away at the basic rights our country was founded on. Illegally tapping domestic phone calls, gathering huge databases of personal financial and travel information, and that small matter of imprisoning and torturing people for indefinite periods without regard for the basic civil liberties spelled out and defended by the constitution. All in the name of preventing another attack that may or may not be preventable. Millions of people die every year for millions of reasons. Tossing away the foundations of our country for a 2% improvement in the chances that you might learn something that could lead to a possible disruption of a plot that may or may not have been successful is not in the best interests of our nation and has been specifically warned against by just about every one of the founding fathers and other great American leaders since then, as seen here !

3. Iraq War - The decision to invade and occupy Iraq and the continued resistance to every sane voice begging for a change in policy will go down in history as the worst single piece of leadership in the history of our nation! Even if you ignore the fact that the American people were deliberately lied to in order to foster support for Saddam's removal, the disastrous planning, execution, and failure to learn from a single mistake or appropriately adjust policies or tactics based on past failures is mind-numbing.

4. Corporate Welfare - One of the few things GWB has done "For" the people is some tax cuts for middle America. Of course, this was done with gimmicks (mid year refund checks etc.) to mask the fact that the real tax breaks were going to huge corporations that were in no dire consequences before GWB came along. The Bush administration has taken every opportunity to push money back to corporate America in one form or another at the expense of many many programs to assist poor and

Next thing you know, we'll be harvesting spice.

yeah, then we'll knock it up another notch, and give it a big blast from our spice weasel! BAM!

I do recommend using a livecd linux to see how it goes. Detecting your hardware, coming up with a decent "X", sound, network, and so forth.
Installing linux to the hard drive is not a safe option for those who do not know how to do this, here I recommend trying it on a spare machine. Spare machines are hard to come up with, since XP, and now Vista are more or less married to the machine. Who would want to experiment with your nicely set up XP box?
I tried FC6 dual boot with XP and had to give up, took hours to restore XP, since I did hose the ntldr. Did use my livecd linux to look around in the filesystem and see what I needed to do with the Dell restore CD.
On my older PC's I do use Windows 98, or preferrably MSDOS 6.21 to do a poor man's install of my live cd linux with some loadlin batch files, and a MSDOS menu to select.
On boxes with small monitors, I have an additional choice, 800x600, instead of 1024x768. I use QTParted to partition the drive, and usually put the main filesystem knoppix folder in a 1 GB partition, have a swap partition, and put a 1 GB "persistent home directory" image in the Windows or DOS partition.
So, with XP, or Vista, I would just run the livecd linux with the "toram" knoppix cheatcode boot option, that would work well on boxes with a GB of RAM.
I notice in today's paper, Office Depot and others have tons of new Vista laptops and desktops for sale, in their flyer. A lot have only 512 MB of RAM, that might result in a "slow" Vista, I suppose.

-- Rapidweather

For different flavors of the story, see here, here, and here.

Wikipedia links to this page of Ishihara plates, which is pretty thorough. There's also sites like VisCheck, which can take an existing image or webpage and simulate viewing it with color blindness.

I'm not sure, but I have noticed the same thing when comparing Debian 2.2 to some of the later Linux distros that use a 2.6 kernel. The older kernels use less RAM to start up, probably because they have fewer features, drivers, etc.
  I have stayed with the 2.4 kernel in my knoppix remaster, because a lot of my older computers would get really slow with a 2.6 kernel.
Undoubtedly, Vista has a "heavy" kernel.
Mossberg said some machines would run very slow using some of the features that Vista has. Yes, I do have a subscription to the WSJ, and read (most of it) Mossbergs column early today.

Apparently Microsoft does not have that much control over how much RAM and what processor speed (dual-core, etc.) that the manufacturers computers will be using when they put Vista on them.
As soon as the Christmas buying season was over, the story about needing a dual-core and a gig of ram surfaced, probably leaving a lot of buyers stuck with something less.
Just because they get an upgrade coupon for $9.95 shipping and handling to Vista would lead these hapless buyers to think that their computer is OK, but it's not, according to the Post_Christmas announcement.

I know of a case where XP was preloaded on boxes offered at Walmart stores, with only 128 MB of RAM, and they were reported to be very slow. Combine that with Dial-Up, and you get an unhappy XP user.

Microsoft winds up in league with greedy merchants, trying to offer something that it is not, to buyers that are wanting to pay bottom dollar for their new computer. "You get what you pay for", sure, but there is some deception here to my way of thinking.

I use both Windows 98 and MSDOS 6.21 to boot my Knoppix remaster from the hard drive.
I don't use both on the same computer, If I installed Windows 98 for some reason that now escapes me, then I use
Windows 98 "dos" with a set of loadlin batch files and a menu to boot up from the hd.

If I want to avoid Windows on a box that I am just going to run my remaster, or perhaps RHL 9 (dual boot), then I just install MSDOS, and put all the necessary loadlin and menu files in place, and I am good to go.
  I always have MSDOS edit in the menu that comes up from autoexec.bat, so I can take care of any problems with the batch files, or if there are some changes to be made.

I like to use both Windows and Linux operating systems on the same box, but I suppose all that will go by the wayside one day when Vista comes standard on all boxes. Won't be installing it on everything like I do now with '98 or msdos.
I usually get donated boxes, or ones that "won't boot", or are obsolete when the owner or business gets all new computers. So, I get Windows preinstalled, but I can install Win 3.1, Win 95 and 98 myself if necessary.

I have figured out how to have two complete installations of Windows XP on the same computer, dual boot with the ntldr screen. Sure takes care of the problem of other user's desktop icons showing up on everyones desktop, when only one installation of XP is on the box, and a few "user" accounts are set up. If you don't like AOL, then you get your own clean installation, with no aol.

About the Macintosh computers, I have had lots of fun with my Quadra, and the voices. Big time-waster.

With my Knoppix remaster, I do like to have all three web browsers in the LiveCD, Firefox, Opera and Flock, and I keep them up to date. I have some screenshots below, some are not entirely up to date, however, but I am sure you will enjoy the girls in the wallpapers. My Wallpaper Control Center in the remaster has a set of buttons to download and install wallpapers from my server. One click, that's all. I have redone all these with GIMP, here is a sample.
The idea is that I'll change the wallpapers on the server from time to time, they are not in the liveCD, just the software to "install" them in the running linux system.

I just wanted to point out that there are lots of us out there that enjoy and use both Linux and Windows.
I'm sorry to read all the bad press about the zombie Windows Computers, (it's true, sadly).
We would not have all these relatively cheap PC's to run Linux on, if it were not for Bill Gates getting Windows preinstalled on almost all boxes from the beginning. (regardless of how).
I would not want to see the end of Microsoft because of virus problems, but would welcome a more secure Microsoft Linux OS preinstalled to the degree that we have Microsoft Windows today.

I know we're mostly fashionably secular/atheistic here on Slashdot, but I've spent some time recently reading on Wikipedia about a particular Hindu Goddess who among other things, apparently reminds people to be willing to work through their dark sides, and I'm assuming looking at pornography would fall within that category.

One of the things I've noticed about the so-called "guardians of morality," is that they almost always tend to actually be doing worse things behind closed doors than the people they persecute...the only difference is that they're very secretive about it, and because of that, they can have a much harder time than others controlling it. The sorts of people I'm talking about are politicians who do such things as taking bribes/holding orgies or bucks parties with a heap of prostitutes, etc...and try very hard to make sure that nobody ever finds out about them doing it, while at the same time condemning and punishing people who openly do the same.

The bottom line is that a dark side is something we *all* have, every last one of us...and you're either intimate with it, know its' dimensions, allow it expression in controlled ways, and thus are able to stay on top of it...or you try to deny its' existence, repress it, stuff it underground, and condemn others who express theirs...and reap the negative consequences of doing so.

"Posted by FHardison at 1/11/07 9:20 p.m. Hello, this is Frosty E Hardison. This is typical. All you can see is a snapshot of a persons life and you can make these comments? As with any interview, an entire 45 minute conversation is boiled down to a three sentence of sound bites or a blurb that only exerpts the most abject sensationalistic thing the interviewee has to say - to sell a newspapaer. If you would REALLY be interested in what was said in the interview - I took better notes on the subject." Sourced at Seattle P-I - comment #112698

Frosty's notes don't paint him in much brighter colors than the 3 sentences posted by the original reporter I'm afraid...

There's not a lot, but try these links for starters:

Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station

Fast breeder reactor - History in USA

Potentially much more severe was the one that occurred at the Enrico Fermi fast breeder reactor in Michigan, U.S.. In October 1966, while operating at about a sixth of full power, the reactor suffered a partial meltdown resulting in radioactive release into the reactor building.

I just want to see Apple get in trouble with these guy.

I think he meant Link.