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All these word relation AI's make me laugh. We could have real AI if you wanted to put effort into it. Link

I tried signing into one of the listed Geocities site and nothing happened... what gives?

You mean to tell me this is not a legit Yahoo Photos gateway?!

I guess they're Andy Griffith fans. Vulture is a go.

http://geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/9782/ salvage1.html

http://www.geocities.com/win32mutt/win32.html

Still, it's a better solution just to telnet to a real computer.

Until citizen's dividends derived from taxation of nonsubsistence property rights are a reality, Perelman's principles are destructive for those of us who might want to support a family and raise children. It should be immoral to promote, as Perelman does, the future portrayed in Idiocracy.

-FL

you fucking communist

Most Taiwanese do not want to be ruled by Beijing, but they view being ruled by Beijing as simply an inconvenience. They can live with this inconvenience if they are earning plenty of money.

The Taiwanese love Chinese money: the Taiwanese voluntarily made Taiwan dependent on mainland China by investing more than $100 billion into more than 50,000 businesses in mainland China. More than one million Taiwanese have already emigrated to mainland China to live and work there.

We Westerners should not lift a finger to help the Taiwanese bastards. Their treatment of Tibet is outrageous.

Oh, I'm not saying Microsoft hasn't done any good. Hell, I'm sure Gates even thinks he's doing something about malaria even though the world's foremost authority on evolutionary medicine says the approach he's taking is tragically ill-advised. The problem is Gates had a chance to exploit a bug in the system and then correct it with intimate knowledge of it -- the way a white hat cracker would. Instead, he exploited it and has convinced himself (with the help of many toadies I'm sure) that he deserved to be the world's richest man. He's a black hat who deludes himself he's a white hat so he can hang out with other rich folks in denial about their fundamentally evil ways and have a whole lot of sycophants with them at all times to ensure they luxuriate in the opiated haze of self-righteousness.

Microsoft? Its the expression of Gate's delusions writ as large as Moore's Law can support -- which is really impressive.

Install and "get started" with PGAdmin3 instructions for Windows can be found right here:

http://www.geocities.com/operationsengineer1/

it is very easy if you know what to do. it is not so easy if you don't.

the traffic limit on the pdfs linked from the page above is pretty limited, so bookmark it and come back in a few days if you can't get it now.

good luck.

I have a similar problem: I can't play real-speed very well, but in 1994 I built a special MIDI sequencer that makes it easier for me to hand-edit and "see" music patterns:

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

(Unfortunately I don't currently have any samples ready. I put my equipment away when my kids were became toddlers because they couldn't keep their fingers off of it.)

Wow, free web hosting! How could it fail?

It's amazing how similar humans are no matter where they are from. Take the swastika for instance. It has turned up, in many different forms, and in many different cultures prior to the Nazi use of it. In fact, they borrowed it from other anti-semitic groups that used it before them.

Not to mention that there were native Americans (well, Siberian immigrants, but anyway) who also used the symbol for issues unrelated to Judaism.

Back on topic now. I wonder how many other cultures have used a snake on a rod as a symbol of healing.

Here's an interesting read on serpents and religion: THE DIVINE SERPENT IN MYTH and LEGEND Note that the rod is basically one of our oldest symbols, usually representing the phallus, which is why the fact that kings sit around on thrones stroking their sceptres is so hilarious. The snake, of course, frequently represents the same thing...

I was watching Futurama the other day, and Amy had on her Turquoise Reveal-O-Dress I began to wonder how to put together a dress like this in this century. I was thinking of a fine mesh for the revealed parts, but if Geck-o-Tape becomes a reality, woohoo!, the fashion world will definitely change.

The case I referred to is US case law (not even Supreme Court case law), on Wikipedia here; I have no idea what the law is for Australian works.

Hey, do you guys refer to December as being "summertime" there, or does "summer" still mean June-July-August but mean cold and snowy? I'd always wondered that.

ALL Mathematics is COMPLETELY synthetic. That's the whole point -- that's the power of mathematics. You can define any set of rules, any set of axioms, any set of symbols, and start deducing. If the tools you need don't exist, you make them up.

Related blog article on the nature of software: http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/science.htm

-FL

-FL

Even if you're blind, you need to know your room to navigate and think. I get so much flack about my implementation of Artificial Intelligence that it needs a modern 3d card and high end CAD to work because people tell me it has no eyes so it can't think for itself. I have half a notion to spend my entire life on AI, but I won't since there are more pressing matters to attend to.

You can try a live cd linux, that runs off the cdrom drive and motherboard memory.
Mine, Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux, is designed to run well on older computers, that originally had Windows 98 on them. You can keep Windows 98, and run the live cd to try it out. I have a rather lengthy Getting Started Guide here, and screenshots of the linux system are below in my signature.
An application is included to partition the Windows 98 hard drive, to provide a swap area, to improve performance.
There's more to it, I do routinely run from the hard drive, with a "poor man's install", where the entire /knoppix filesystem is copied to a hard drive partition, and you run the linux system from there.
My computer: I have an AMD K6-2 processor running at about 400 mhz, and 256 MB of memory on the motherboard. That's all that is needed, so we have a way of using rather old computers to run the linux system, but not too old. The minimum is 128 MB of RAM, with a 200 MHZ processor.
Once you have your hands on the CD, you may copy it and run it on all of the school's computers.
The linux system is primarily designed to run the three major web browsers, with broadband. I have Mozilla Firefox, Flock, and Opera.
Main drawbacks with a live cd linux is that all of the hardware may not be detected correctly, in my case I could not use a Gigabite NIC card, had to go with a less-expensive 10/100 card. With a live cd linux, you are limited in what programs and applications that can be added, very limited. It is almost like the filesystem is "set in stone". That's good in a way, the users cannot alter or foul up the linux installation to the degree that Windows can be tampered with.
I do use a loadlin batch file setup, and use Windows 98 "DOS" to make a menu that appears when the computer is turned on, so the user can select from Windows 98 or Linux. The CD is no longer needed, and in fact, the CDROM drive can be removed from the computer, once the system is set up. These batch files can be altered so Windows is not a choice, only the administrator would know how to get past the menu and boot the Windows installation.
Technically, a live cd linux can "see" the Windows partition, and harm can be done to the system if anyone figures out how to get into the Windows area and start deleting or altering files.
No viruses can enter the linux filesystem, so if it is used to surf the web, the school can save on "antivirus" software. There is a free UNIX virus scanner that can be downloaded and installed in the linux filesystem, that can scan the entire hard drive. I have used it, but most of my computers are rather clean of viruses, so I have yet to find anything.
Once various hard drive partitions are set up, one can be for a "persistent home directory" that will allow downloaded files to be retained on the hard drive for use from day to day. Examples are pdf files, or other documents obtained from web sites. For instance, if you find a nice article on a particular science topic on a web site, it's possible to save the entire page, locally, and return to it later. Usually one just "selects all" in a web page full of useful information, and saves it to a file, using the included "emelFM" file manager and SciTE editor. I do that all the time, usually with something like confirmation e-mails on online bill pay.
Lots of possibilities once one gets used to working with linux.

Best thing about a live cd linux remains that it is (or can be) "temporary", and when the computer is turned off, it's gone. Your Windows installation remains, untouched.

Rapidweather

A violent criminal usually falls either below 85 IQ or above 185 IQ. The frequency of this below IQ 85 is about 85% of the population of such persons with about 13% above IQ 185. Only a tiny fraction falls in the middle.

Can't you people see that every time you start spouting socialist crap, anywhere, what you end up doing is devaluing the people you're trying to help?

Can't you people see that you ought to get a clue as to what socialism is before spouting crap like that?

The easiest way to approximate a tax on economic rent is to replace taxes on economic activity -- all of them, including income tax, capital gains tax, value added tax, sales tax, inheritance tax, etc. -- with a single tax on the value of unimproved land, or lot, value. Means of establishing land value are quite well understood and used in eminent domain proceedings all the time. The late Milton Friedman, hardly an enemy of the rich, declared this kind of tax to be the "least distorting" of various tax bases.

A more accurate approximation of economic rent taxation than land value only is to tax net assets at the short term Treasury rate, aka the zero risk interest rate used in modern portfolio theory -- with assessment of asset value by the government the same way it would assess asset value for eminent domain compensation, with the owner having the right to demand that the government purchase the asset at the assessed value.

In this scenario antitrust cases evaporate since the proper way for the government to express its perception of monopoly profits is merely to increase its bid for the tax net asset, thereby increasing the economic rent tax on the owner.

The government should tax net assets, in excess of levels typically protected under personal bankruptcy, at a rate equal to the rate of interest on the national debt, thereby eliminating other forms of taxation. Creator-owned intellectual property should be exempt.

The levels typically protected by personal bankruptcy can be approximated by the median price of housing an individual added to the median capitalization of a job in the economy. Together, these exemptions [back in 1992 when this was originally written --JAB] add up to between $50,000 and $100,000. Additional but smaller exemptions may be added to represent the lower levels of bankruptcy protection typically extended to children within families.

The NAT is a self-adjusting system that seeks an equilibrium between government debt levels, current tax rates and private wealth distribution, without attempting to achieve an outright balanced budget or direct intervention in the economy.

Under current (1992) asset distribution and government debt the NAT would generate between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion in revenue, thus totally displacing other forms of taxation. ...
only assets whose existence is legally recorded in titles, insurance documents, etc., or that are currently reported for capital gains and losses would be individually assessed. Since most households own few major assets changing little from year to year, the NAT would greatly simplify tax computation.

and

With the exception of basic functions of government and the pay down of debt, the government budget should be dispersed to citizens as cash, rather than being spent in government programs or even limited in the form of vouchers. This is "market democracy" in which the citizens and their markets, rather than central planning and politics, influence the selection of goods and services to be capitalized and provided.

Based on the pictures at http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/9172/enfiel d.html and some exploring in Google Earth, I *think* it is here:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Enfield,+C T&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=42.008888,-72.516053&spn=0.00490 3,0.012445&t=h&om=1

(But I'm not sure.)

I've actually seen (well, as far as you can "see") Lego bricks in production. Up until this year when they announced they were going to close it (as part of moving all their production to Eastern Europe, China, or Mexico), Lego ran a factory in Connecticut. Once upon a time, they used to allow kids to tour it. I must have been in middle school or so when I saw it.

IIRC, there's nothing particularly special about the production process. It's basic injection-molding. The plastic comes in bulk as small pellets, pre-dyed (I think, I'm a little fuzzy on this), and gets fed into machines that produce the bricks. I don't think that they make or dye the plastic on-site. The vast majority of the plant, as I remember it, was actually devoted to inspection, sorting/packing, and packaging for shipment. At the time this really surprised me; the "making stuff" part of the factory was far smaller than I had thought. It was cool to see them wheeling around big bins of bricks, though. (This was before they made quite as many special pieces as they seem to now.) I really should have brought a camera but never thought about it at the time. (I think I was probably in that period of life where I was trying hard not to show that I still thought Legos were really cool.) Somebody else visited and has a few photos here.

About the only thing I never worked out is how they get them to release from the molds so cleanly, and with such straight walls (normally to guarantee mold release you avoid straight walls and sharp edges/corners). On some bricks if you look closely though, you can see mold lines and sprues if you look in the bottom carefully.

It's sad to hear that they're closing the plant in CT; I had always hoped that maybe it was heavily automated enough to cope with the higher costs of labor in a high-cost area, but it seems not. I wonder what this leaves for industry in Connecticut these days? Without Lego, their principal exports are going to be nothing but a handful of helicopter parts and lawyers.

Germans also used comic book style field manuals for their troops during WW2.

Of course, no post on this subject would be complete without the obligatory $500 potentiometer knob and concrete turntable links.

I wonder what kind of information (Very Work Safe) is stored on this page?

Must be top secret info!!!

Now can it get much worse then that?

Well, the best stupid/evil cable company story I've ever heard involves getting wrongly prosecuted for cable theft. About 8 years back, Comcast's cable TV and cable internet entities each didn't know what the other was doing. A woman got Comcast internet service but chose to not get cable TV. Comcast's TV techs kept disconnecting her because their records didn't show her as a TV customer, their internet service techs kept reconnecting her. Eventually they attempted to prosecute her for theft of cable TV service.

~Philly

Pretty soon it will be unnecessary for guys like me to respond to crap like:

These are real differences, but do not really rise to the level of different races as that word is used about other animals...There still is virtually as much genetic variation within those categories as between them.

With hard data like:

1. As regards the "more variation within, rather than between groups" argument, Kaessman et al. (Science 286, 1159-1162, 1999) note that there is more genetic variation between some subspecies of Chimpanzee than between some Chimp subspecies compared to Bonobo chimps, a separate species. Thus, this "argument" is worthless, and one can find, in nonhuman animals, more variation within a species than between species, without abrogating the idea of species and species differences. That there can be more individual variation than racial variation also does not invalidate race.
2. The 99.9% = we are all the same argument suffers from the following
   1. According to some studies, for example Sibley and Ahlquist (J. Hum. Evol. 20, 2-15, 1984), humans differ from chimps by 1.9%, bonobos by 1.8%, gorillas by 2.4%., and orangutans by 3.6%. Thus, the human racial difference is a full 5.3% of the human/chimp differential, 5.6% of the human/bonobo, 4.2% of the human/gorilla, and 2.8% of the human/ orangutan. In addition, data from Jared Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee" book can be interpretated in making the human/chimp similarity as high as 99.1%, a mere 0.9% difference, which would make human racial variation more than 10% of this (11.1%).
   2. According to Prof. Hrdy in her book, Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection, the current evidence suggests that the human/chimp difference in cognitive skills is the result in differences in only about 50 genes (out of tens of thousands), with differences in regulatory genes being important. Again, the relevance to human racial differences should be obvious.
   3. A post by A. Hu in the "Upstream" site discussion makes the follwing point. Microsatellite genetic analysis of dog breeds (Zajc et al., Mamm. Genome 8, 182-185, 1997) points to a difference between Greyhounds, German Shepherds, and Labrador Retreivers having an index in the 0.028-0.054 range. This compares to a similar study in humans (Kimmel et al., Genetic 143, 549-555, 1996) which shows that Japanese and Chinese have an index of difference of 0.029. Also stated in the post is that larger racial differences are in the range of 0.087 - 0.363. Therefore, genetic differences between dog breeds, which result in large phenotypic consequences, are about equal to intra-racial ethnic differences, and smaller than human inter-racial differences.

Yes, but the URI-with-malicious-code is usually something like: http://www.geocities.com/xxxxxxx/xxx.txt

At least that's what I usually see every time I check the logs of a website I'm going to shut down for allowing foreign includes (to be run).

Islam is a religion of oppression and hate. We can all sit in a happy circle and sing kumbaya wishing for peace, but that is a fantasy. The stated goal of Islam is to convert the entire world, by the sword if necessary.
I agree with the above statement, but try to back it up with evidence from koran such as:

What do you think about Koran 04:34, which instructs men to beat their disobediant wives and koran 09:29, which orders believers to fight non-believers until they pay tribute tax called jizya and feel themselves subdued: Koran 09:29 rejects Brown vs Board of Education and the decision of Thurgood Marshall and the concept of equal rights for all.
By accepting Koran and Koran 09:29, you are rejecting Brown vs Board of Education and the decision of Thurgood Marshall. Both Koran 09:29 AND Brown vs Board of Education cannot be SIMULTANEOUSLY TRUE.
I challenge you to answered my post at http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t= 8784
(This is from your idol quran ):
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/009.qmt.html..00 9.029
009.029 YUSUFALI: Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
Thougt Control quran style:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/004.qmt.html..00 4.1442">
Believers, do not choose the unbelievers rather than the faithful as your friends. Would you give Allah a clear proof against yourselves ? http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/003.qmt.html..00 3.0282">
Let not the believers Take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah: except by way of precaution, that ye may Guard yourselves from them. But Allah cautions you (To remember) Himself; for the final goal is to Allah. QUESTION:would muslims accept to check a box in their income tax form and pay an extra $5000/yr and feel themselves subdued. if they are muslim? This is what koran (09/29) instructs them to do to others. QUESTION:WHAT WOULD MUSLIMS SAY IF THE BOOK OF ANOTHER RELIGION REVEALED TO THEIR PROFIT Mickey Mouse BY THEIR F FICTITIOUS SUPREME FASCIST Minnie Mouse SAYS: Fight those who believe not in Minnie Mouse nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Minnie Mouse and Her Messenger Mickey Mouse, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) muslim, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?i dx=516
http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=362
Short Article to the heart of the subject by a former muslim: Can Islam, Koran and Muhammad Command Unqualified Respect from the Westerners? http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/MAKhan60207.htm
http://www.geocities.com/realitywithbite/islamandu nbelievers.htm
http://www.geocities.com/humandecency
Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submissio

Islam is a religion of oppression and hate. We can all sit in a happy circle and sing kumbaya wishing for peace, but that is a fantasy. The stated goal of Islam is to convert the entire world, by the sword if necessary.
I agree with the above statement, but try to back it up with evidence from koran such as:

What do you think about Koran 04:34, which instructs men to beat their disobediant wives and koran 09:29, which orders believers to fight non-believers until they pay tribute tax called jizya and feel themselves subdued: Koran 09:29 rejects Brown vs Board of Education and the decision of Thurgood Marshall and the concept of equal rights for all.
By accepting Koran and Koran 09:29, you are rejecting Brown vs Board of Education and the decision of Thurgood Marshall. Both Koran 09:29 AND Brown vs Board of Education cannot be SIMULTANEOUSLY TRUE.
I challenge you to answered my post at http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t= 8784
(This is from your idol quran ):
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/009.qmt.html..00 9.029
009.029 YUSUFALI: Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
Thougt Control quran style:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/004.qmt.html..00 4.1442">
Believers, do not choose the unbelievers rather than the faithful as your friends. Would you give Allah a clear proof against yourselves ? http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/003.qmt.html..00 3.0282">
Let not the believers Take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah: except by way of precaution, that ye may Guard yourselves from them. But Allah cautions you (To remember) Himself; for the final goal is to Allah. QUESTION:would muslims accept to check a box in their income tax form and pay an extra $5000/yr and feel themselves subdued. if they are muslim? This is what koran (09/29) instructs them to do to others. QUESTION:WHAT WOULD MUSLIMS SAY IF THE BOOK OF ANOTHER RELIGION REVEALED TO THEIR PROFIT Mickey Mouse BY THEIR F FICTITIOUS SUPREME FASCIST Minnie Mouse SAYS: Fight those who believe not in Minnie Mouse nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Minnie Mouse and Her Messenger Mickey Mouse, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) muslim, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?i dx=516
http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=362
Short Article to the heart of the subject by a former muslim: Can Islam, Koran and Muhammad Command Unqualified Respect from the Westerners? http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/MAKhan60207.htm
http://www.geocities.com/realitywithbite/islamandu nbelievers.htm
http://www.geocities.com/humandecency
Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submissio

The Launch Services Purchase Act was intended to prevent this kind of development. I should know since I was intimately involved in the drafting and passage of that act. The intent was to get NASA out of the launch services business and by implication they should not be doing design of launch service since to do so usurps the role of the private sector in risk management. Designing an entire launch vehicle is such a large part of designing a launch service that it simply isn't reasonable to allow NASA to do so.

http://www.geocities.com/mikorange/SpaceAndEden.ht ml

Why not try this solution

http://www.geocities.com/mikorange/SpaceAndEden.ht ml [geocities.com]

http://www.geocities.com/win32mutt/win32.html
I know, I know...flame away

Indians live in that subcontinent over near the Asia. Various Native and Indengious people live in South America.

Aboriginal, Indigenous, or Native people also live in India, such as the Hmar, Arunachal Pradesh, Boro, and many others.

Regarding the Antarctic ice sheet: the article was from 2002.

More recently (March 2006): NASA Mission Detects Significant Antarctic Ice Mass Loss. "The researchers found Antarctica's ice sheet decreased by 152 (plus or minus 80) cubic kilometers of ice annually between April 2002 and August 2005."

Personally, what I find most convincing is graphs of current and historical CO2 levels.

Much as I'll agree that port was lame, the 32X was the first console to get that game ever. None of the other consoles from that generation had even a half-assed port.

I believe the Atari 2600 beat the 32x to the punch... (note to overzealous mods, I'm aware this is a hoax.)

In all seriousness, Doom had to be the most ported game ever. The Jaguar got a port in 1994, same as the 32x, the 3DO in 1995, The Playstation and Saturn in 1995 and even The SNES got a port of DOOM in 1996. All were arguably part of the same gen, though the 32x is tough to place in a specific "gen" as it was a stopgap add on rather than a true standalone console.

Take a look at the screenshots in the signature below.
I run this knoppix remaster on machines with 128 MB of ram, that were originally designed for Windows 98.
I do use the Windows 98 "dos" to have the autoexec.bat run a menu, from which I can choose Windows or any of the various windows managers in my remaster, KDE, twm, Fluxbox, and the default IceWM. The one item recommended is the "persistent home directory", a file called "knoppix.img" that is accessed via the loadlin command line in the various 'linux.bat" files that are selected with the menu. Here is an old page of mine describing the msdos menu now being used to multi-boot linux and windows. I do have one box that boots Debian 2.2, Mandrake 8, my remaster, and Windows 98. Only my remaster can run the latest web browsers, Opera 9, Flock, and Firefox.

No problem at all running my remaster on a 200 MMX box, I'm doing that now, using Firefox 2.0 to make this post.
The remaster is based on Knoppix 3.4, which uses a 2.4 kernel, so that is why it runs so well on older hardware.
I have experimented with livecd linux with 2.6 kernel, and that really slows down on these boxes. Some of those won't run at all.
There are some tricks to it all, one of them is to get the isolinux.bin file to test 100% with the "testcd" knoppix cheatcode. Not even the original Knoppix 3.4 can do that. If you get 100% in that test, then the livecd linux will boot on almost all older machines bios'. Damnsmall linux did not figure that out, and I had nearly 3/4 of my older boxes that DSL would not boot on once they went to an isolinux setup. They now have to offer a parallel "syslinux" setup to keep everyone happy. I don't need to do that.
I don't need a CDROM drive to "install", just use a backpack cdrom external drive to copy the 492 MB "/knoppix" to the Windows partition, set up the menu with the loadlin batch files, and reboot, choose your OS.
Most of the time I do place the /knoppix folder in a ext2 partition, however. Once you get going, you can refine your setup to do that.

I didn't just add some applications to the base Knoppix 3.4, I made a lot of my own, see the Getting Started Guide to see all the details.
I have used my livecd linux to boot into XP boxes that would not boot up at all, just a few lines of error message on a black screen. Then I can see what is missing, and have some idea what to do when I use the XP restoration CD to bring Window XP back to life. You can do a virus scan of all of the XP partitions using my livecd linux, if that makes one feel better.
I can use QTParted to partition the XP hard drive, and I have set up two separate XP installations on the same box, so each user can really have his/her own Windows XP. You have to reboot to get to the other one via the ntldr screen.
My main point here is bringing the latest web browsers to an old Windows 98 box, with my livecd linux.
I have a whole row of machines here that all do that, all were originally Windows machines, most with less than 256 MB of ram. There's a Toshiba 4015CDS with 160 MB of RAM, that boots my remaster, without the CD in the tray.
Very stable, with Guarddog firewall in place by default.

--Rapidweather

I came up with the name "rapidweather" for my site(s) because I designed most of the pages in the day when 14.4 dial-up modems were being used. I have weather pages, and got tired of waiting for the TV weatherman to finally appear some 20 minutes or so in the newscast, with that "killer tornado on main street" that he promised to tell us about at the beginning of the show. Most TV weathermen vary the actual time of their appearance onstage, to keep you guessing, and expose the viewer to the maximum amount of useless commercials.
The internet came along, and I got busy and made the weather pages you see on rapidweather.com
My weather maps page is designed to load quickly, although I went overboard and provided too many weather map links. Idea was to provide maps, and backup maps, etc.
Very popular page when something like Katrina comes along.
I have watched usatoday.com go from a fast loading page to the one we get now, although it is not really all that bad. One page I provide is this one, designed to give the user a nice selection of decent pages, all tested and approved in their loading speed and usefulness. One might ask why I don't host all of my pages on rapidweather.com. Well, I like to keep some of them right were they are, so the "return visitors" can find them. Also, geocities is reliable, and does provide me with some statistics about the visitors to the pages, and I find that interesting to review from time to time. If I get a page that no one comes to, I might close it, and redirect to something similar in my collection.
In my knoppix remaster, (see screenshots link below), I provide a local copy of "web.html" as a built-in start page for all three browsers, Opera, Flock and Firefox. Start up the browser, and that page appears, ready to go to work. The idea behind "web.html" is to keep the user out of a "walled garden" like they get with using msn.com or aol.com for a "home page". I often take a look at what the "webby awards" has chosen, and see if any of those sites will be something I will want to put on "web.html".

-- Rapidweather

"Of course if the user is deaf and blind, I'm not sure how they are using a computer to begin with."

Pinball interface.

I once dropped my A-1 in a Mexican river while on this trip, and although it was a quick dunk (no water in the film compartment) and it worked the rest of the day, I had to replace the shutter coil once it had dried out. I also had to get the lens cleaned as it got just enough moisture inside to grow stuff. (28-85mm f/4, it was well worth fixing.)

Since I was on a cruise ship and didn't really want to send my camera off for however long, I found a TV repair shop in Puerto Vallarta and bought a spool of coil wire. My handwound coil is not quite up to spec, so there is a slight overexposure issue at 1/750 and 1/1000 shutter speeds as I had to weaken the spring that the coil opposes. But it works to this day, and I made that emergency repair over ten years ago.

For all the abuse that camera has takes, it has held up rather well. I've gone through multiple power winders, had lenses freeze up on me, had film come off the rewind spool (that's a fun one to fix without spoiling the roll), and once even had a battery go *pop*. The camera doesn't seem to care. It was close to 20 years old when I got it and has been my primary camera for a decade. Aside from the water damage, it has never failed. This is why I wish I could just convert it to a digital back. Instead it looks like I will have to start over, as far as the body and the glass are concerned.

Ah well, the price of progress...

Mal-2

Most of the spam blocking systems depend upon IP addresses.
Firefox 2.0 can download a list of known "phishing sites", and compare what you are looking at in the browser to that list. It's a big list, and probably will get bigger as time goes on. I wonder how the IPv6 discussion here would relate to that. Will the Firefox 2.0 list get extremely big? They have to manually update the list, and your browser downloads the list. Other choice is to have Google check the site for you, for each site.
I don't use either choice by default in my knoppix remaster, the list would take up /ramdisk space, unless the user has a "persistent home directory" set up on a hard drive partition, something very few will do. I use one, however, usually a 2 GB one, so I can have almost unlimited "/ramdisk" space, compared to what would be available on a 128 MB box, for instance. Not many users would want Google to "track" their Firefox 2.0 surfing.

-- Rapidweather

It's not so much the pre-installed OS, one can run a livecd linux easily on the new machines. I see 2 GB of ram on many, for about $1500 for a loaded laptop, with a 256 MB ATI graphics card, and a Intel Centrino Duo, "Core 2 Duo inside" processor. Imagine, turning on the machine with the livecd already in the drive, and missing the Out of Box Experience for today, possibly putting it off until tomorrow. With 2 GB of ram, one can just do "toram" at the boot prompt, and quickly place the OS in ram, then remove the CD from the tray. Stay booted up, and you're good to go. If you like what you see, partition the hard drive with QTParted, and next time, place the OS in a partition with "tohd=/dev/hda6", set up a swap, perhaps a small partition for a "persistent home directory", so you can save new applications, such as Google Earth, between bootups.
All this is an alternative, but in the end most purchasers of a PC are going to want to give Windows a try, since they paid for it, and all of the installed hardware is supported, that may not be true in all cases with a livecd linux. I'm not going to claim that an autoconfiguring OS will detect all of the hardware, but it is a good bet that your broadband connection will be up and running, with a firewall, and that you can use Firefox 2.0 to surf the web in an environment that is more secure than Windows.

-- Rapidweather

I noticed the resemblance to Mahir also...but let's not forget Ali-G and his resemblance to Super Greg: http://www.geocities.com/goodgawd2001/