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http://www.geocities.com/infotaxi/starfish.html

imagine if it had gone badly wrong in some way ? no wonder there was a ban treaty on atmospheric tests like that, people need to get a grip , we only have this world to live on

Yes you can, but the moon is about 2100 miles across

Even the best laser will disperse to a spot a few miles across on the moon. When it hits there, it needs to be bright enough to be visible here. and it needs to be much larger.

Imagine the moon as a circle 2100 pixels across. For the writing to be visible on earth, the illuminated line probably needs to be 25 to 50 miles across. And bright enough to shine back 235,000 miles. Mind you, the moon is about the size of your thumbnail when you hold your hand out in front of you. Think something with the resolution of a 48 pixel icon file, maybe less.

The proportions are easy enough to figure out. Then we get to the power requirements of such a beam.

Typical entertainment grade lasers for light shows are 5 - 20 watts, and can be higher power. If you want a spot 6 kilometers wide on the moon, then normal 6 mm wide beams (about 1/4) would have to expand 1,000 times the diameter, 1,000,000 times the area, and would have to be about 40 megawatts. 6 KM = 3.728 miles.

If you want a 60km spot then you are taking about 10 the diameter, another 100x the area, and so 100x the power for the dot to scale properly.

This means a 4 gigawatt laser to draw your pretty design on the surface of the moon. You could probaly get away with a simple Gigawatt laser. The only ones currently made are scientific research grade, and generate pulses in the nanosecond range. a 10 gigawatt laser to push a solar sail as a means of interpalnetary propulsion. There is also this interesting paper.

Actually, I was thinking "Just like Red Dwarf" (the book, not the show).

It had taken the crew of Nova 5 six months to find a blue supergiant - a star teetering on the edge of its final phase in the right quadrant of the right galaxy. Another month and they would have ruined the campaign. They certainly felt they had good reason to celebrate.
Sipping her champagne Kirsty Fantozi, the star demolition engineer, started programming the nebulon missle. It had to explode at just the right moment to trigger off the reaction in the star's core which would push it to the supernova stage. A star in supernova would light up the entire galaxy for over a month, giving off more energy than the Earth's sun could in ten billion years. It would be a hell of a bang.
One undetected bug in Fantozi's programming could ruin everything. Not only did she have to push the star into supernova, she had to time it so the light from the explosion would reach Earth at exactly the right moment. The right moment was the same moment as the light from the other one hundred and twenty-seven supergiants, which were also being induced into supernovae, reached Earth.
For anyone living on Earth, the result would be mind-fizzingly spectacular. One hundred and twenty-eight stars would appear to go supernova simultaneously, burning with such ferocity they would be visible even in daylight.
And the one hundred twenty-eight supernova would spell out a message.
And this would be the message:
'COKE ADDS LIFE!'
For five whole weeks, wherever you were on Earth, the huge tattoo would be branded across the day and night skies.
Honeymooners in Hawaii would stand on the peak of Mauna Kea, gazing at sunsets stamped with the slogan. Commuters in London, stuck in traffic jams, would peer through the grey drizzle and gape at the Cola constellation. The few primitive tribes still untouched by civilization in the jungles of South America would look up at the heavens, and certainly not think about Pepsi.
The cost of this single, three-word ad in star writing across the universe would amount to the entire military budget of the USA for the whole of history.
So, ridiculous though it was, it was still a marginally more sensible way of blowing trillions of dollarpounds.
And, the Coke executives were assured by the advertising executives at Saachi, Saachi, Saachi, Saachi, Saachi and Saachi, it would put an end to the Cola war forever. Guaranteed, Pepsi would be buried.
OK, it wasn't wonderful, ecologically speaking. OK, it involved the destruction of a hundred and twenty-eight stars, which otherwise would have lasted another twenty-five million years or so. OK, when the stars exploded they would gobble up three or four planets in each of their solar systems. And, OK, the resulting radiation would last long past the lifetime of our own planet.
But it sure as hell would sell a lot of cans of a certain fizzy drink.

(Found here)

Circa 2000

That's exactly what I need. A robot whose main imperative is lust would be a perfect companion for life. (My God! He never took middle school hygiene. He never saw the propaganda film.) But seriously, having a female robot would be great, but what about the dangers of having male robots? What is a guarantee that my backdoor wouldn't be vulnerable to his exploit, so to speak? Is that something that could stop a manbot if he thinks I am a fembot? Not that I dress like one, but speaking strictly hypothetically, what safety measures should we need? Are the Three Laws really enough to keep us safe? What, e.g., if I mutter something about sex while I sleep and the robot takes it as an order? This is a promising technology, but I don't think I feel entirely comfortable with its unforeseen implications just yet. Let's see what happens when those ideas go into production. It is too early to predict anything right now.

At least it is an interesting read. Actually, I like OOP somewhat. When it is not overdone.

I'm not sure, but I don't think the US extradites US citizens to other countries.

Extracted from the US to:
Ireland

Hong Kong

Yugoslavia

I am by no means an expert on this, these are just some google results. zu

If I already know how to make AI?

darn, i thought tfa meant i could read them using Rapid Imaging Protocol instead of dialing in.

Well, it couldn't be worse than Cluedo Crusade where a gruesome murder mystery is solved with a little help from Space Marines...

if your sufficiently smart you could write code on paper and run it without ever debugging it. paul allen did it once. i read it originaly on a book (i think it was 'making of microsoft') but the basic story is :

Paul Allen flies from Harvard to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to meet with Ed Roberts at MITS, to demonstrate the newly written BASIC interpreter for the Altair. Paul writes a paper tape reader on the plane trip, for the Altair to load the BASIC software. At MITS, Paul enters the loader, the Altair reads the paper tape, and is ready to execute BASIC instructions. Despite never having touched an Altair before, the BASIC works flawlessly. Paul types "PRINT 2 + 2", and the Altair responds "4". Paul then types in the BASIC source code for a Lunar Lander game from a book. This becomes the first sofware program ever run on what would later become MS BASIC.

Please do check out the updated web page about Taiwan. Taiwanese companies and mainland Chinese companies have given nuclear-weapons technology to Iran. Washington has slapped penalties against Ecoma Enterprise Co. Ltd (based in Taiwan) and 7 other Chinese companies for assisting Tehran.

This is an implementation of the unicycles from Venus Wars.

The cycles from the racing game at the beginning of the movie are a dead ringer for the Embrio, but I couldn't find pics of those.

instructions and drivers here

Everything looked good to me untill the line that said "BatMax Principle" then it kind of started to look like bullshit.

If battery life is a problem for you I'd try a desulphater first. It's basicaly a square wave generator that you connect to the battery, the frequency locks on to any resonates that the battery has and pulse charges it better than a straight DC will. This Explains it in detail and has the circiut which can be built for about $10.00 in parts. A word of caution this circuit will put high voltage spikes and RF noise into the battery and anything connected to it, including blowing the computers in you automoble! unhook the battery from sensitive electronics befor using. People have reported that these work with NiCd and lithium batteries as well. I personaly have not used one.

A Google Linux distro...
I've remastered Knoppix 3.4 (running it now), and as a matter of fact, on the Firefox, and Opera browsers
I have included, the default home page, (built in) is this one, which has a google search therein. In the case of Firefox, that comes as default on the top of the browser, but as one can with Firefox, I have re-arranged all that, so the page provides the only google search entry box. Knoppix is a good place to start for remastering/customization.
I went the whole hog, with a new logo.16, rather than just tacking my remaster onto the "oem" knoppix logo.16. I also used icewm, instead of KDE, to lighten it up a bit for the older computers. Quite excited to see what Google will do in the way of a GoogleOS. Just my opinion, but the best live cd distros now are PClinuxOS, XFLD, and SuSE Linux 9.2. Personally, XFLD is the best, as everything works, followed by a close second, SuSE. (Well on some days I put it first, that's how close it is.) Google would do well to put out a liveCD distro, then it might run (well, mostly) on the PC's being sold today. We all know of Microsoft's efforts to get Dell, etc. to build "linux-proof' boxes!

A Google Linux distro...
I've remastered Knoppix 3.4 (running it now), and as a matter of fact, on the Firefox, and Opera browsers
I have included, the default home page, (built in) is this one, which has a google search therein. In the case of Firefox, that comes as default on the top of the browser, but as one can with Firefox, I have re-arranged all that, so the page provides the only google search entry box. Knoppix is a good place to start for remastering/customization.
I went the whole hog, with a new logo.16, rather than just tacking my remaster onto the "oem" knoppix logo.16. I also used icewm, instead of KDE, to lighten it up a bit for the older computers. Quite excited to see what Google will do in the way of a GoogleOS. Just my opinion, but the best live cd distros now are PClinuxOS, XFLD, and SuSE Linux 9.2. Personally, XFLD is the best, as everything works, followed by a close second, SuSE. (Well on some days I put it first, that's how close it is.) Google would do well to put out a liveCD distro, then it might run (well, mostly) on the PC's being sold today. We all know of Microsoft's efforts to get Dell, etc. to build "linux-proof' boxes!

IIRC, the clone makers told Steve to "pound sand", as he put it in some interview.

Basically Apple was honoring it's agreements, but made it clear that they weren't going to license future operating systems (OS X, maybe OS 9) under those same agreements. This effectively killed cloning, but but a continuation of cloning would have effectively killed Apple, which would have killed the clones anyway.

I think this is the interview. It's on the Steve Jobs Info site. If that's not the right interview, then it's another on the movies page. I just saw it the other day.

IIRC, the clone makers told Steve to "pound sand", as he put it in some interview.

Basically Apple was honoring it's agreements, but made it clear that they weren't going to license future operating systems (OS X, maybe OS 9) under those same agreements. This effectively killed cloning, but but a continuation of cloning would have effectively killed Apple, which would have killed the clones anyway.

I think this is the interview. It's on the Steve Jobs Info site. If that's not the right interview, then it's another on the movies page. I just saw it the other day.

Quick question - why is it "by definition" that half the population has an IQ under 100?

For the same reason half of 100 is 50: because that's the way the scale is defined. Looky here: http://www.geocities.com/rnseitz/Definition_of_IQ. html

Further, Washington must be consistent in its approach. Sales of subsidiaries to Taiwan should also be blocked. Last week, a Taiwanese company was penalized by Washington for assisting the Iranians in improving their missiles and other weapons of mass destruction.

As I wrote 23 years ago:

The question at hand is this: How do we mold the early videotex environment so that noise is suppressed without limiting the free flow of information between customers?

The first obstacle is, of course, legal. As the knights of U.S. feudalism, corporate lawyers have a penchant for finding ways of stomping out innovation and diversity in any way possible. In the case of videotex, the attempt is to keep feudal control of information by making videotex system ownership imply liability for information transmitted over it. For example, if a libelous communication takes place, corporate lawyers for the plaintiff will bring suit against the carrier rather than the individual responsible for the communication. The rationalizations for this clearly unreasonable and contrived position are quite numerous. Without a common carrier status, the carrier will be treading on virgin ground legally and thus be unprotected by precedent. Indeed, the stakes are high enough that the competitor could easily afford to fabricate an event ideal for the purposes of such a suit. This means the first legal precedent could be in favor of holding the carrier responsible for the communications transmitted over its network, thus forcing (or giving an excuse for) the carrier to inspect, edit and censor all communications except, perhaps, simple person-to-person or "electronic mail". This, in turn, would put editorial control right back in the hands of the feudalists. Potential carriers' own lawyers are already hard at work worrying everyone about such a suit. They would like to win the battle against diversity before it begins. This is unlikely because videotex is still driven by technology and therefore by pioneers.

The grace period may be about over.

...else of another keyboard with twenty-six functions on each key?

Let's see if the Linux community can match his generosity.

There is an interesting memory approach called Image streaming that deals with conjuring memories that you didn't think ever happened. The odd thing about it is that many times the things you forgot actually get remembered(and not fake memories). It makes one wonder if indeed we actually ever forgotten them at all or just misplaced them.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/6243/imstri. html

You can laugh and not believe it at all, but Image Streaming is remarkeably effective in remembering events you think you had forgoten. For you can start with an old childhood memory of a person but not remember exactly what they looked like. After a period of time streaming and describing what they looked like you can build up the image of the person that you thought you had forgotten. It's like putting together the peices of a jigsaw-puzzle. You start off with a little bit, but you slowly add peices to the puzzle. As time goes on and you see more of the puzzle you find peices that you thought you lost. Eventually, you get to see the whole puzzle.

It is also quite effective in creativity and random guessing. I was actually quite suprised at how much easier it is for me to come up with ideas or solutions that I would never have thought of before. Once you really get into it you'd be suprised how effective it actually is, and following the mental progression of images to some solution is quite remarkeable. If you don't believe me, check your local library and pick up the book and read the first few chapters. Try it for a week or two, and if you still don't believe it put it down. I bought the book more for shits and giggles between undergrad and grad but was quite suprised with the results and my creativity afterwards.

I'd still rather take my chances in this...

Dr. Chick N. Little

Chicken Little.

He's being sued by my law firm - Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe.

Dewey = Do We
Cheatem = Cheat them
and = and
Howe = how

Do we cheat them and how.

I recommend Filterset.G for use with Adblock. I find it eliminates most advertising.

That is not how Tesla was proposing we implement wireless power. A simple tesla-coil like that on a large scale would be deadly.

Here is an article explaining how Tesla's wireless power would work. http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/9654/t esla/projecttesla.html

The preferred method now, in all industrialized countries, to repress individuals engaged in activity that the government and powerful interests don't like, is to slap'em with a mental illness diagnosis. Then you fill'em full of powerful pyscho-active medication, which renders them incapable of doing anything which requires a high level mental focus and concentration.

If they start causing trouble again, well, they must have stopped taking their medication!

You know that they stopped taking the medication because anyone on that kind of medication is incapable of causing trouble, or doing anything of any significance whatsoever. So have your goons start harassing them with your secret, remote harassment technology ( http://www.geocities.com/mrmistermicko ) until they GET BACK ON THEIR MEDICATION and start behaving like good little boys and girls again.

There is a secret, coordinated effort to destroy the open source movement. Government and powerful interests don't like it because they don't control it, and it allows foreign countries like China, Russia, etc. to obtain operating systems and software that don't have any secret NSA back-doors. Open source software gives the power of softwar technology to everyone, not just the rich. They DO NOT like that.

Expect to see open source leaders like Volkerding to begin mysteriously manifesting symptoms of mental illnesses.

Dear Pat,

I wanted to make you aware of a possible cause for the chest pains and other symtpoms you've been suffering.

What you are suffering may be a simulated illness.

I am a victim of involuntary human experimentation. I am being used in research to develop technology for secretly and remotely harassing a target and influencing human behavior. I have a web site that describes my situation at http://www.geocities.com/mrmistermicko .

I have seen instances in which the technology being tested on me has been used to simulate an illness in a target. Also, on a number of occasions powerful, debilitating chest pains have been inflicted on me through this technology.

Your situation fits a pattern of victimization by this technology. I can't really give a better reason for my suspicions than that. Having been a victim of involuntary experimentation and harassment for many years, and having seen many other victims -- only a very few of which realized that they were being intentionally attacked -- your experiences triggered my "pattern recognition circuits".

The symptoms you've described, their sudden onset, the inability of doctors to diagnose them, your position as really the ultimate authority for the Slackware Linux Distro., and the fact that there is a concerted effort to undermine and destroy the open source community, your age -- I believe I read somewhere you're in your mid-thirties, which seems to be a typical age when victims begin to suffer a high level of harassment.

The fact your latest update says that your new cardiologist at the Mayo clinic "with no planting of any suggestion from me whatsoever came to the conclusion that it seemed to be infective endocarditis". The very best medical doctors are often the ones most likely to cooperate with these involuntary experiments, and to participate in the research. I have had many cases in which the group harassing me has used knowledge of my beliefs in an attempt to influence me -- by parroting my beliefs back to me in a context that they hoped would lead me to adopt additional beliefs, or adopt a course of action that they wanted.

One of the early goals, when this group begins attacking a victim, is to deprive the victim of all resources for self-defense -- to make the victim unemployed, penniless, if possible homeless, and to sever all their relationships with friends and family. Your comments about your savings fit that pattern. You might look at http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/mind_control/mc micro.html with regards to this.

Anyway, from my experiences, I just recognized a pattern in what you described that made me think you might be a victim of electronic harassment or involuntary human experimentation (usually it's both) with the kind of technology that's been used on me.

Perhaps you'll find the information in my web site, and the links, make for interesting reading. If you do ever think you are being victimized like I have been, you might consider having your heart condition examined in Cuba. Cuba doesn't seem to mind taking an openly hostile attitude towards the US and the West, and has good medical services. But don't wait until you've spent your last dime.

(You could also try seeing if electromagnetic shielding improves your condition, but it's tricky. Any holes in imperfect shielding can be exploited, and it is very difficult to shield against close-proximity alternating magnetic fields. Usually victims are implanted, and simply stimulating the implant can cause many symptoms, including chest pains. Such an implant is an antennae, so shielding yourself would be as difficult as shielding, say, a radio to the point it can no longer pick up any stations.)

A quick search turned up this site: http://www.geocities.com/prisonmurder/ken_trentadu e.html but I am sure there are many others. The photos on this page are not particuarly good but you can get the idea. I was shown poster sized photos of his Trentadue's body by a congressman from Idaho not long after this happend and the Taser burn marks and bruising inconsistant with a suicide are clearly visible.

I can understand why the FBI would want to cover this up. People are shocked when they hear about Abu Garab in Iraq and yet do not seem to realize that it can happen to you, an American citizen, here if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If there was ever a case that deserved more scrutiny this is it. While I am not a big believer in "conspiracy theories", this one not only has me convinced but a number of senators and congressmen as well. Unfortunately, until significant pressure is placed on the FBI and similar agencies, we will not get to the bottom of this.

Tell me what I am trying to say here

"Speaking of wasting time, I think my Slashdot break has gone on long enough."

Not as long as mine...I own my own business so I get to read the whole thing. Which brings me to my pet "Wish I'd Know This In School" peeve, which is why didn't anyone, not even my parents, tell me that I could actually start my own business and not have to necessarily go and get a job working for someone else.

During the last year of the English equivalent of high school, me and my classmates would go to the career counselling officer for lessons on how to get a job. We'd also take day trips local businesses and watch people we'd seen in the year above ours working at their little desks or operating machinery. We even took a few trips to local coal mines which really freaked me out (Anyone seen Kes? that was me).

Luckily I was interested in playing music - joined a couple of local bands - moved to London - joined a band that toured the World - moved to the Pacific NW - got a life - and managed get the hell out of the cycle of horrible, depressing life I was faced with, but it really needn't have been that way.

How about one single hour a week about how to start your own business. Or how to handle money that your business will generate, or marketing your business, Etc Etc Etc. instead there was nothing. It was ALL about how to get a job.

Needless to say we all knew that the rich kids at the private school down the road were being taught how to hire losers, or how to stay rich, so there was never any real mystery as to why things were the way they were, but I still feel sorry for my classmates.

It's also well worth the time to check out salvation army-style charity shops in your area. While a long shot, once in a while they'll be donated office equpment by small businesses looking for a tax break. In fact, I'm still recovering from getting this Deal of a lifetime 217,000 page HP Laserjet 5si with jet direct card into my toyota corrola for the ride home. Total cost: Ten US Dollars.

Mercedes-Benz (or rather, Daimler-Chrysler), for example, has been shipping an electronics system, LINGUATRONIC COMAND (for Cockpit Management and Navigation), for at least three years that is voice controlled. Voice recognition controls the radio, the CD, the integrated Motorola telephone. A 30-word vocabulary doesn't sound like much, but it gets the job done.

It's activated by a steering wheel stalk and is somewhat modal (but an MP3 player wouldn't have as many modes in the first place), but the hard part is all done by voice recognition.

I'm pretty sure other car manufacturers are shipping similar systems by now.

Mercedes-Benz (or rather, Daimler-Chrysler), for example, has been shipping an electronics system, LINGUATRONIC COMAND (for Cockpit Management and Navigation), for at least three years that is voice controlled. Voice recognition controls the radio, the CD, the integrated Motorola telephone. A 30-word vocabulary doesn't sound like much, but it gets the job done.

It's activated by a steering wheel stalk and is somewhat modal (but an MP3 player wouldn't have as many modes in the first place), but the hard part is all done by voice recognition.

I'm pretty sure other car manufacturers are shipping similar systems by now.

be thankful they aren't doing a movie for 3d man... it would be three times suckier, cost three times as much and somehow be 3 times more of a disappointment to all those who wasted their money on it...

Well, there are cards that are not Software Radio's yet have been "reverse-engineered" to operate "out of spec". Take the hermes chipset from Orinoco/Lucent/Agere/Proxim for example. It's trivial to add all the ability to use all 14 channels onto cards - soon it will be possible to change power rx/tx values too. Dig it : http://www.andrewhakman.dhs.org/orinoco/ http://geocities.com/lincomatic/software.html/

As many might have known, the Xanadu culture has a lot of neologisms -- more than most software projects. They tried to use these neologisms in a consistent manner but you can imagine how difficult it would have been to really get things right with all those new words. Roger said someone, Mark Miller I believe, ran a sourcecode conversion on the Xanadu sourcecode base which did a right-shift (or was it left shift?) of one for all the the Xanadu glossary terms.

This was supposed to be a "joke" since of course all of the major programmers of the Xanadu project were memory demigods (except of course Ted Nelson who admits he needs to videotape everything because of his faulty memory) but the effect was a bit more than a mere joke, resembling to some significant degree the effect the Elohim had on the builders of the Tower of Babel when they made them speak different languages.

As many might have known, the Xanadu culture has a lot of neologisms -- more than most software projects. They tried to use these neologisms in a consistent manner but you can imagine how difficult it would have been to really get things right with all those new words. Roger said someone, Mark Miller I believe, ran a sourcecode conversion on the Xanadu sourcecode base which did a right-shift (or was it left shift?) of one for all the the Xanadu glossary terms.

This was supposed to be a "joke" since of course all of the major programmers of the Xanadu project were memory demigods (except of course Ted Nelson who admits he needs to videotape everything because of his faulty memory) but the effect was a bit more than a mere joke, resembling to some significant degree the effect the Elohim had on the builders of the Tower of Babel when they made them speak different languages.

As many might have known, the Xanadu culture has a lot of neologisms -- more than most software projects. They tried to use these neologisms in a consistent manner but you can imagine how difficult it would have been to really get things right with all those new words. Roger said someone, Mark Miller I believe, ran a sourcecode conversion on the Xanadu sourcecode base which did a right-shift (or was it left shift?) of one for all the the Xanadu glossary terms.

This was supposed to be a "joke" since of course all of the major programmers of the Xanadu project were memory demigods (except of course Ted Nelson who admits he needs to videotape everything because of his faulty memory) but the effect was a bit more than a mere joke, resembling to some significant degree the effect the Elohim had on the builders of the Tower of Babel when they made them speak different languages.

Bacteria have a short generation time, therefore, they evolve very quickly. With billions of long-lived people living in crowded circumstances, bacteria will evolve to take advantage of the situation.

The same goes for viruses. Let us not forget that the influenza outbreak of the early 20th century killed far more people than World War I (25 Million vs 10 Million). Reference

In the begining (1954, according to my O'Reilly poster) was Cobol.

Check yer poster, it says Fortran in 1954 (which actually seems to have come from A-O), COBOL "flowed" from B-O and Flow-Matic.
And I have to agree with the poster that Postscript emerged fairly directly from Forth. What is an amazing language (it is interesting to see that relatively many languages are basically one person's vision - Forth, Pascal, Perl, Ruby, Python, APL, D, SmallTalk, C (two people), SNOBOL (3 people), etc

More here

If people want pragmatic design of languages, I like the author of D he designed and wrote C/C++ compilers and realizes that programmers often just want to get things done w/out the language getting in the way.

Another thing to contemplate is how few organizations the most useful languages emerged from - Bell Labs, IBM, the US Military, US Universities...

"I think it's very important that we become a spacefaring civilization, and that we eventually become multiplanetary."

Although I didn't want to encumber the story's synopsis with it, I really think Musk needs to discuss his vision of space migration with Gregg Maryniak who was the head of Space Studies Institute for sometime after Gerard O'Neill's death.

It was Gerard O'Neill who put forth the vision of space settlement after challenging his Princeton physics class with the question:

"Is a planetary surface the right place for an expanding technological civilization?"

His conclusion, backed up by much subsequent research, is that the answer is a resounding, "No!"

A better statement would by Musk would be:

"I think it's very important that we become a spacefaring civilization, and that we eventually become heliocentric."

How is that homoerotic? Unless...

I think you mean:

(Ranked from most crackable to least crackable)
Linux>Solaris> "Sugar Glass">Windows

Sugar glass being the fake glass used for special effects. It breaks easy, and is less likely to cut the poor sod who has to jump through it.

Sugar glass doesn't last long (warps or goes sticky) so make it close to the time when you plan to use it.
Keep it out of moist areas and direct sun. The same as a lolipop it will melt or go gooey.
The sugar can attract ants and other bugs so keep it packaged in plastic, etc. until you use it.
Though only sugar, the glass can have sharp edges/points when broken, so be careful when handling

(From: here)

Well, reading that, sugar glass really is pretty close to Windows. Best keep it in the plastic, so as not to run into any bugs.

Bah. Even with shoulder-fired weapons no other hockey video game can hold a candle to Nintendo's Ice Hockey!

OK, maybe Konami's Blades of Steel... maybe...

Although you may need to pay $2.95 to access the original articles at the Western news sources (e.g. "Los Angeles Times"), you certainly can verify the validity of the replicated news articles at the Geocities web site.

Taiwanese behavior is damn sick.

The second advantage is the real reason for the success of news on the Internet. The Internet serves as a huge database of old stories, facts, and analyses. In the old days, 2 years after you read a story in the "Washington Post", you may forget the exact details. Retrieving the original story requires a trip to the library and manually scanning through hundreds of reels of microfiche. In short, accessing the old story was prohibitively expensive, but that old story may contain critical information for assessing government policy towards, say, Taiwan.

Now, you can use Yahoo! Search to simply find the old story and access it within 15 seconds. You can quickly determine whether our government policy towards, say, Taiwan is correct. No longer can charlatans and quacks fool or manipulate you as easily.

In fact, I myself have used the power of the Internet to find the latest news about Taiwan and have summarized what I found. The reality of Taiwan is quite damning of current American policy.