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(For the record, I wrote this during a second year maths lecture...good ol' vector calculus inspiring my creativity.)

A related news article.

<Credit>Ripped off from The Onion.</Credit>

Did The Children's Crusade Of 1212 Really Consist Of Children? Problems Of Writing Childhood History (The Digital Archive of Psychohistory)

Tortoise: Oh, yes. Well, you see, the Crab came over to visit one day. You must understand that he's always had a weakness for fancy gadgets, and at that time he was quite an aficionado for, of all things, record players. He had just bought his first record player, and beign somewhat gullible, believed every word the salesman had told him about it -in particular, that it was capable of reproducing any and all sounds. In short, he was convinced that it was a Perfect phonograph.

Achilles: Naturally, I suposse you disagreed.

Tortoise: True, but he would hear nothing of my arguments. He staunchly maintained that any sound whatever was reproducible on his machine. Since I couldn't convince him of the contrary, I left it at that. But not long after that, I returned the visit, taking with me a record of a song which I had myself composed. The song was called "I Cannot Be Played on Record Player 1".

Achiles: Rather unusual. Was it a present for the Crab?

Tortoise: Absolutely. I suggested that we listen toit on his new phonograph, and he was very glad to oblige me. So he put it on. But unfortunately, after only a few notes, the record player began vibrating rather severely, and then with a loud "pop", broke into a large number of fairly small pieces, scattered all about the room. The record was utterly destroyed also, needless to say.

Achiles: Calamitous blow for the poor fellow, I'd say. What was the matter with this record player?

Tortoise: Really, there was nothing the matter, nothing at all. It simply couldn't reproduce the sounds on the record which I had brought him, because they were sounds that would make it vibrate and break.

(More is here. Buy the book, those dialogues are really fun to read, even if you are scared by the remaining parts of the book.)

The Apple vs. Real battle will be fun to watch, and of course, Apple has no chance of winning within the system. We'll see when Apple realizes this, steps out of the system, and sues Real.

For why C# is "better" see Hot Topics and the tests at http://www.geocities.com/petilon/csharp/index.html - lovely!

Perhaps even made up sports. Calvinball anyone?

Maybe you are a little bit luckier than you thought.

I've noticed a lot of affluent first-worlders need to believe they're solely responsible for their own materalistic success.

How does that line in the song go ... oh yeah.

"You know where it ends, yo, it usually depends on where you start"
What It's Like ~ Everlast
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Backstage/168 7/wil.html

How right they are about Wing Commander 2 and the sound card. I remember working to get a friends brand new SoundBlaster 16 working with Wing Commander 2. I listened to the opening enough that I now have engrained in my brain the phrase "How goes the war against the humans?" which almost always meets with puzzled looks when used. It's especially funny when talking to people who deal with desktop support.

For those who don't remember it I found an mp3 of the opening.

Having consulted with SAIC for 15 years and worked on its software process committee I guess I must have missed that. Or maybe it was that defense acquisition priority 1 project I worked on when several of us were called in to solve a problem that had halted the oil tankers in the Persian gulf, and the Joint Chiefs were giving us daily reviews -- a "pig fuck" I believe the crew was calling it...

Look, genius -- NASA managed to figure out how to violate President Reagen's policy that no payloads that could be launched via commercial launch service would be launched via the Shuttle, continued to do so under Bush, who had the same policy, and then even when Congress acted and Bush signed into public law 101-611 what was already presidential policy, NASA STILL proceeded to launch the Advanced Communication Technology satellite on the Shuttle.

With such creative interpretation of Presidential policy as well as very specific public law, I'm sure NASA bureaucrats can come up with ways of interpreting the FAR so that they are geting performance for taxpayer dollars. I don't see anything in that 800+ page document prohibiting performance-based awards of contracts. You just don't have what it takes to be a real bureaucrat when you throw up your hands and go ask Congress to write yet another law because you don't see a specific provision written up for "X-Prize-like Contract Awards" or whatever it is you are expecting Congress to do to make the FAR compatible with prize awards.

It would hardly make any difference anyway if NASA weren't being embarrassed all to hell by the private sector doing what they should have been doing from the get go.

The article goes on and on about how Silicon Valley can capitalize on the solar energy business (and other forms of high-efficincy energy production). There are a couple new and exciting renewable energy companies in the valley.

The first order of business for an energy consumer should be to minimize energy consumption. The economics are simple: a reduction in demand will reduce costs.

Many people are shocked when they learn that it's very easy to save $1000 in energy costs a year by spending less than $100 and an hour's worth of time. This guy and this guy seemed to do just about nothing for 50% energy savings.

Even though it's always exciting to look at the state of the art in the energy business, it's more useful (but less exciting) to look at how it impacts you personally.

This page seems to indicate that the new Trillian 3 will be able to do this.
http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/sneakpreview/index. php?select=7
-- Josh

Shameless Plug:
Check out my plugin (for Trillian) 'Message Notifier' which allows your keyboard lights to flash when you receive a message. (Also can play music through the PC speaker, as well as priority music/sound based on user.) (Works best with PS/2 keyboards.)
http://www.geocities.com/joshprogramming/

There have been no real incentives to make fusion work. Twelve years ago, these guys has a chance and they blue it. The lawyers in congress refused to create sane incentives-and now are risking their own lives due to that failure. The world would be a very different-and imho better-place if viable fusion now existed. The middle east would not be a hotspot like it is now for example. The problem is that the kinds of people that run congress love centralization of power-more than they love life itself. In their eyes, the only suitable role for technical people is as obediant servants that like doing what they are told. What the last 20 years has shown, you just can't run a technological society that way.

NT confused? First, the bios decides which drive to boot off of; it loads the boot sector and executes it. If NTLDR is at the boot sector, it searches for "boot.ini" on the same volume. It'll see a list of OSes and a line like
default= multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
The first part is an ARC (Advanced RISC Computing) standard path to find the volume to boot off of. multi is the disk controller; how these are numbered is up to BIOS.
disk is for SCSI, rdisk is the drive number on the controller (0 for master, 1 for slave on IDE), and partition is self-explanitory.
The \WINDOWS is the path from the volume's root where the OS is installed. This could also be the name of a file to load and execute directly.
The volume that it should be booting off of is detirmined first by the BIOS and then explicitly by boot.ini
Here's a good link about it.

I'd say that NTLDR's internal implementation is so undocumented that it would be difficult, but possible, to infect with a boot virus. There are easier ways to infect the system, though.

The Taiwanese voluntarily told both the Philippines and Japan to back off of the Spratly Islands and the Senkaku Islands because they are supposedly "Chinese territory". Beijing did not force the Taiwanese to act in this manner. They voluntarily support all of China's geopolitical objectives, except for rule by Beijing.

whoever it was that did "Disco Duck" for their inspiration.

Rick Dees (link). Sorry - one of those trivia facts that hasn't fallen out of my head yet.

Taipei has told both Japan and the Philippines to back off from the Senkaku Islands and the Spratly Islands because these Islands are supposedly "Chinese territory". Taiwanese high schools teach that Tibet is rightfully part of China, and the Taiwanese constitution insists that Tibet should be integrated into "One China".

The West is the most popular destination of Taiwanese emigration. The second most popular destination is mainland China. (reference: "Los Angeles Times")

Great strategy game, especially since you're forced to barter with other players to succeed, there's lots of strategy involved.

For people that like the bartering more than anything else, I recommended Kuhhandel. Don't let the goofy pictures set you off: this game can be very hard to play, with the right (determined to win) fellow players.
There's a Dutch* downloadable DIY version so you can try the game for the cost of a couple of color prints.

* There's no text on the cards, only the instructions are Dutch. But you will find PDF's of the rules at boardgamegeek anyway.

1) "To me the evidence is conclusive...Over and over again in the high court I have secured the verdict on evidence no nearly so compelling [as the evidence for Jesus' resurrection]."--Sir Edward Clarke, former Justice of the High Court of England
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/num9.htm,
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2964/resurrecti on-evidence.html,
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth22.html

2) Not true. Christian teaching is that sex is a gift from God, and cannot in itself be sinful, but it is sinful to indulge yourself, to the exclusion of God. Never mind the psalms, read the song of songs.

3) hardly a basic or core belief, but prove it never happened, and that it was meant literally, which you must do say it is "bunk"

4) "The odds against a universe like ours coming out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications" (John Boslough, Stephen Hawking's Universe, p. 121).

-1, Offtopic. We were talking about schools. What do schools have to do with education?

You will find some background on education versus schooling here. I've got a very brief commentary on American vs foreign school funding here.

What it all boils down to is that American schools do their job very well, but that job is not providing the kind of education which makes good citizens for our republic: that job is to churn out docil workers for the 19th century industrialists, and cannon fodder for the 19th century armies.

If it weren't for a great many good teachers doing what they can in spite of the system, our educational system would be far more destructive than it is.

Don't bother actually clicking this right now, it's probably maxed out its quota for the day. But anyhow:

I was looking up the rules for 1000 Blank White Cards, and found that Geocities now gives a little not-quite-popup in the upper right corner.

(There was a tiny 'X' close button, but the whole not-quite window is just off the right-hand side of the browser, so you can't see the 'X' unless you side-scroll. Fuckers.)

I already run Privoxy, and it rocks, and it serves multiple computers here. And it will let me rewrite Javascript, if I knew what I was looking for. (I am not a web developer.) So I'm not really interested in changing filtering/blocking software entirely, I'm just looking for what I need to strip in Privoxy.

1000 Blank White Cards is the Best game of all time!

The game is totally self-adjusting to the playing environment, creative, fun and good for all kinds of times.

Plus it's the best game ever invented for getting women naked and doing nasty things!

-posted anonymously to protect the identities of women ive gotten naked-

For those of us not savvy enough to write our own Adblock filters, try these filters out. They are updated almost daily!

http://geocities.com/pierceive/adblock/

Detailed instructions for those who need it:
http://geocities.com/pierceive/adblock/-instructio ns.txt

For those of us not savvy enough to write our own Adblock filters, try these filters out. They are updated almost daily!

http://geocities.com/pierceive/adblock/

Detailed instructions for those who need it:
http://geocities.com/pierceive/adblock/-instructio ns.txt

For advanced filtering use the Filterset from G

Read instructions.txt first.

I think the poster is on to something. BTW, adblock with filterset G http://www.geocities.com/pierceive/adblock/ doesn't block the google ads on the right, but does take care of all the rest. It greatly enhances my Internet experience!

I've found Filterset.G to be pretty effective.

And you'd be right up there with the likes of Mr. ABC, who wants to bar mountain bikes from every park and open space in the world. A prolific writer of pseudo-intellectual skewed information and outright fiction, he's actually effective, because he cares enough to show up for every meeting, contact every policy maker and flood USENET newsgroups with disinformation in his crusade, while mountain bikers are generally oblivious until the find a big NO BIKES sign in their favorite park.

Squeaky wheels get the grease, which is why it's important to be ever vigilant against those crusaders out to change your way of life to make themselves feel better.

like this?

Right now, the single greatest threat to American intelligence agencies is the Chinese. The Chinese have an aggressive program to acquire the latest military technology developed at America's weapons laboratories. Indeed, the Taiwanese immigrant community has supplied the largest number of spies for Beijing.

Requiring clear identification of all federal employees is acceptable at this juncture in time. Banning Islamic foreign students and Chinese students (including those from Taiwan province and Hong Kong) from federally funded projects at American universities is also acceptable.

Right now, the single greatest threat to American intelligence agencies is the Chinese. The Chinese have an aggressive program to acquire the latest military technology developed at America's weapons laboratories. Indeed, the Taiwanese immigrant community has supplied the largest number of spies for Beijing.

Requiring clear identification of all federal employees is acceptable at this juncture in time. Banning Islamic foreign students and Chinese students (including those from Taiwan province and Hong Kong) from federally funded projects at American universities is also acceptable.

>do they retain their freedom or not?

According to the jesus of borg website all those who reject the Galactic Obliteration Device (G.O.D.) retain their freedom.

http://www.geocities.com/llfptfu/borg.html

It is a funny website. but it is true. (at least according to the early gnostic christians and the OTO )... :P

The original Prince of Persia game was released back in 1990 and was one of the greatest games of all times. It featured THE best character animation to date. Good times, good times.

When I was in sixth grade, my teachers all got together and decided to ban me from writing cursive (D'Nealian, to be exact). I've never looked back.

(Of course, I just turned 30.)

While I'm there, why don't you go click on a few adds on my site.

Make your our!
http://www.geocities.com/milwaukeemachineman/final 2a.jpg

Or order:
http://www.geocities.com/milwaukeemachineman/
Currently on hold.

Make your our!
http://www.geocities.com/milwaukeemachineman/final 2a.jpg

Or order:
http://www.geocities.com/milwaukeemachineman/
Currently on hold.

Twelve years ago fusion prize award legislation was proposed. It had the support not only of cold fusion researchers but of one of the three primary founders of the US fusion program supported the legislation. Prizes actually work. Let the DoE go ahead and do its skeptical measurements and the let private sector do what it does best -- take risks and compete -- peacefully -- while we still can compete peacefully.

The Reagan administration told the Taiwanese that if they did not punish the person who masterminded the plot, then the USA would levy sanctions against Taiwan. The Taiwanese promptly complied, and the military officer who masterminded the plot was sent to prison.

Ummm.. The "Los Angeles Times" is twisted? I don't think so. It states clearly that, after the West, the 2nd most popular destination for Taiwanese emigration is mainland China.

Like Taiwan, Hong Kongers have made their island economically dependent on mainland China. Indeed, a 1997 CNN/Time poll states that more than 60% of the Hong Kongers enthusiastically supported unification with mainland China.

The Taiwanese bigots claim that Beijing put a gun to their heads to force them to repeatedly claim that both the Spratley Islands and the Senkaku Islands are Chinese territory Do you folks believe this claim?

The Taiwanese bigots claim that Beijing put a gun to their heads to force them to invest more than $100 billion into more than 100,000 businesses in mainland China. Do you folks believe this claim?

I do not believe any of these claims. The Taiwanese could easily stop claiming that Tibet is part of "One China", but the Taiwanese refuse to do so.

Note that the Dalai Lama also has good relations with Russia and a number of other countries. Nonetheless, they claim that Tibet is part of "One China" just like Taiwan.

What is egregious and disgusting is that the Taiwanese continue to claim that Tibet is part of "One China" even while the Taiwanese bigots don't want to be ruled by Beijing. You tell me about hypocrisy and bigotry. God damn those Taiwanese.

One thing that the Chinese have planned is to install a particle-beam laser battlestation in low earth orbit. Not coincidentally, Peter Lee, a Taiwanese immigrant to the USA, was arrested and punished for giving top-secret laser technology to Beijing. Also, not coincidentally, another Taiwanese immigrant to the USA gave neutron bomb technology to Beijing, according to the Cox Report produced by a Congressional committee on national security in the early 80s.

Get the facts. Here is a summary of the facts. By the way, that web site that you slandered draws all its information from Western sources: "Los Angeles Times", "Asia Week", "Wall Street Journals", etc. You lying Taiwanese filth.

1. The Taiwanese deliberately and conscientiously tell both Japan and the Philippines to back off from the Spratly Islands and the Senkaku Islands. The Taiwanese say that these Islands are Chinese terroritory. (Taiwanese liar says, "Beijing put a gun to my head. That's why I am doing this.")

2. The Taiwanese deliberately invested more than $100 billion into mainland China and voluntarily made Taiwan dependent on mainland China. (Taiwanese liar says, "Beijing put a gun to my head. That's why I am doing this.")

3. Mainland China is now the 2nd most popular destination for Taiwanese emigration, after the West. (Taiwanese liar says, "Beijing put a gun to my head. That's why I am doing this.")

4. The Taiwanese insist that Tibet is part of "One China". Note that Beijing does not insist that outer Mongolia is part of "One China", but the Taiwanese insist that outer Mongolia is part of "One China". The Taiwanese education system teaches Chinese classics and insists that Tibet is part of "One China". (Taiwanese liar says, "Beijing put a gun to my head. That's why I am doing this.")

The Taiwanese bigot is correct about one thing: American policy toward Taiwan is a relic of the Cold War. We Americans should terminate relations with Taiwan.

Pardon me, but the Taiwanese seem to be morally bankrupt. In 1984, the Taiwanese government was and still is the only foreign government to ever commit a successful assassination in the USA.

Remember the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Serbia? 2 people died. The Chinese at American universities staged their, first ever, clamorous demonstrations against the USA.

As for the rape of Tibet, the Chinese are stone cold silent. There is not even a peep out of them. Indeed, even the Chinese in Taiwan province support integrating Tibet into "One China".

Getting back to the censorship issue, Google generally acquiesces to the policies of Beijing. The majority of Google's employees are former or current H-1B employees. Many of them are Chinese and, hence, support the policies of Beijing.

Google management caring about human rights? Yeah. Right. The management does not even care about the plight of unemployed Americans and hired H-1Bs, left and right, when American engineers were unemployed during the 2001-2003 recession in Silicon Valley. The only ethics that Google understands is the kind spelled with a dollar sign: ethic$.

It's called AIF (Adult Interactive Fiction), and if you're really interested you can pick up some stuff from the AIF comps. Be forewarned that a lot this stuff is generally really poorly written. Like any sort of "erotica," I suppose.

its been done

Get the facts. Here is a summary of the facts.

1. The Taiwanese deliberately and conscientiously tell both Japan and the Philippines to back off from the Spratly Islands and the Senkaku Islands. The Taiwanese say that these Islands are Chinese terroritory. (Taiwanese liar says, "Beijing put a gun to my head. That's why I am doing this.")

2. The Taiwanese deliberately invested more than $100 billion into mainland China and voluntarily made Taiwan dependent on mainland China. (Taiwanese liar says, "Beijing put a gun to my head. That's why I am doing this.")

3. Mainland China is now the 2nd most popular destination for Taiwanese emigration, after the West. (Taiwanese liar says, "Beijing put a gun to my head. That's why I am doing this.")

4. The Taiwanese insist that Tibet is part of "One China". Note that Beijing does not insist that outer Mongolia is part of "One China", but the Taiwanese insist that outer Mongolia is part of "One China". The Taiwanese education system teaches Chinese classics and insists that Tibet is part of "One China". (Taiwanese liar says, "Beijing put a gun to my head. That's why I am doing this.")

The Taiwanese bigot is correct about one thing: American policy toward Taiwan is a relic of the Cold War. We Americans should terminate relations with Taiwan.

Pardon me, but the Taiwanese seem to be morally bankrupt. In 1984, the Taiwanese government was and still is the only foreign government to ever commit a successful assassination in the USA.

What I personally think would be optimal is a both some major prizes for achievement of significant milestones(i.e. creation of the viable first fusion reactor or a cure for AIDS) and a series of smaller prizes that would involve smaller lifetime payments(work out a set of criteria that would be used to award small lifetime stipends to researchers/inventors on the order of maybe twice what social security pays so these folks don't have to mess with the mundane realities of just scraping by--and have thousands of these awarded every year so that a big chunk of Pro-Ams can expect to get one once they've showng themselves to be serious contributors). Frankly, if the government wants to be anything but a deadbeat, they ought to start giving out these prizes because a lot of agencies could barely run without free software!

The Taiwanese voluntarily made Taiwan dependent on mainland China and supports most of Beijing's geopolitical objectives: e.g. Tibet, Spratley Islands, Senkaku Islands, and others.

You tell me about Taiwanese hypocrisy. Let's terminate our relations with Taiwan immediately.

Sharp develop was the first and only IDE i use for .net programming. True, i am a college student, not known for having much money. And, add to the fact, i am a fairly new programmer (about 2.5 years now (some c++ , java, c#)). But, yeah...good for making windows applications fast and easy. Also there is a sharp develop linux port (not official) at Monodevlop.com http://www.monodevelop.com/ [monodevelop.com]. This port has started quite recently and uses GTK#. Screenshot to a sticky note app i made. http://www.geocities.com/themanwiththechair/sticky noteapp50.JPG 50% transparency [geocities.com/themanwiththechair] http://www.geocities.com/themanwiththechair/sticky noteapp100.JPG 100% transparency [geocities.com/themanwiththechair] ---- first post ever on /.

Sharp develop was the first and only IDE i use for .net programming. True, i am a college student, not known for having much money. And, add to the fact, i am a fairly new programmer (about 2.5 years now (some c++ , java, c#)). But, yeah...good for making windows applications fast and easy. Also there is a sharp develop linux port (not official) at Monodevlop.com http://www.monodevelop.com/ [monodevelop.com]. This port has started quite recently and uses GTK#. Screenshot to a sticky note app i made. http://www.geocities.com/themanwiththechair/sticky noteapp50.JPG 50% transparency [geocities.com/themanwiththechair] http://www.geocities.com/themanwiththechair/sticky noteapp100.JPG 100% transparency [geocities.com/themanwiththechair] ---- first post ever on /.

Each year, the Chinese brutally rape and kill Tibetan women and children. Most Chinese simply do not care about their suffering. Look at Taiwan. The Chinese in Taiwan have the audacity and bigotry to insist that Tibet should be integrated into "One China" [geocities.com].