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So that's where those very low cost-per-flight numbers came from. They were never real.

From Robert W. Bussard's letter to Congress regarding the Tokamak fusion program:

Each of us left soon thereafter, and the second generation management thought the big program was real; it was not.

The original song is Forget-Me-Nots by Patrice Rushen. According to this site, Weird Al has also done a version of it.

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/2948/or gel.html

http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/NM/miller.html

http://www.resa.net/nasa/origins_life.htm

However there is an especially insidious reason to believe this market will be quite limited this time around, compared even to the depression of the 1930's, and that is the nature of the individuals in whose hands the net assets are concentrated.

When Greenspan decided to depart from his gold standard by keeping interest rates high relative to gold during the crash he in effect decided to concentrate net asset ownership in the hands of people who don't necessarily have the best of characters -- indeed they are far from the ideal of heroic capitalists so promoted by Alan Greenspan himself when he was a devotee of Ayn Rand's.

As I stated in a white paper posted to sci.space in 1992 (resulting from having spent a few years doing politics in Washington to promote commercial incentives for space launch companies):

Just as important, capital welfare severely distorts the
optimization of asset ownership in society by placing, as a
matter of public policy, ever more assets under the control of
those who already have the most assets. Capitalism expresses its
worst potentials when capital welfare debilitates the character
of the wealthy while it gives them ever more economic authority.
This asset centralization impoverishes the population at large,
ending with a collapse in consumer demand. Supply-side theory
fails to predict this collapse because it fails to deal with the
fact that the wealthy are just as prone to character erosion by
welfare as are the poor. It is even more destructive than
welfare for the poor because it corrupts the decision makers in
the economy. In the face of collapsing consumer demand and
capital welfare, acquisition of more capital assets is promoted
over the productive use or investment of those assets.

Political rhetoric defining "the rich" or "the wealthy" as those
with high levels of income or capital appreciation, focuses
public sentiment against the most productive members of society
and away from the centralization of net assets as the underlying
problem.

The incentive for productivity in the economy, left after the
disincentives of capital welfare are subtracted, is the long-term
economic growth rate minus the interest rate on the national
debt. When the interest rate being paid on the national debt
equals the growth rate of the economy, the fruits of all
productivity are being confiscated to pay capital welfare and the
incentives for productive investment and labor disappear. When
the incentives for productivity become negative due to capital
welfare in excess of the economic growth rate, wealth is
structurally centralized at the expense of others in the economy.
The absolute level of net assets owned by the general population
actually decreases so as to increase the net assets of the
wealthy. This not only removes all incentives for production and
entrepreneurial investment from the economy, but consumer demand
collapses as credit is liquidated to pay for necessities.
Depression ensues. It is under these circumstances that demands
for socialist intervention in the economy via "pub

However there is an especially insidious reason to believe this market will be quite limited this time around, compared even to the depression of the 1930's, and that is the nature of the individuals in whose hands the net assets are concentrated.

When Greenspan decided to depart from his gold standard by keeping interest rates high relative to gold during the crash he in effect decided to concentrate net asset ownership in the hands of people who don't necessarily have the best of characters -- indeed they are far from the ideal of heroic capitalists so promoted by Alan Greenspan himself when he was a devotee of Ayn Rand's.

As I stated in a white paper posted to sci.space in 1992 (resulting from having spent a few years doing politics in Washington to promote commercial incentives for space launch companies):

Just as important, capital welfare severely distorts the
optimization of asset ownership in society by placing, as a
matter of public policy, ever more assets under the control of
those who already have the most assets. Capitalism expresses its
worst potentials when capital welfare debilitates the character
of the wealthy while it gives them ever more economic authority.
This asset centralization impoverishes the population at large,
ending with a collapse in consumer demand. Supply-side theory
fails to predict this collapse because it fails to deal with the
fact that the wealthy are just as prone to character erosion by
welfare as are the poor. It is even more destructive than
welfare for the poor because it corrupts the decision makers in
the economy. In the face of collapsing consumer demand and
capital welfare, acquisition of more capital assets is promoted
over the productive use or investment of those assets.

Political rhetoric defining "the rich" or "the wealthy" as those
with high levels of income or capital appreciation, focuses
public sentiment against the most productive members of society
and away from the centralization of net assets as the underlying
problem.

The incentive for productivity in the economy, left after the
disincentives of capital welfare are subtracted, is the long-term
economic growth rate minus the interest rate on the national
debt. When the interest rate being paid on the national debt
equals the growth rate of the economy, the fruits of all
productivity are being confiscated to pay capital welfare and the
incentives for productive investment and labor disappear. When
the incentives for productivity become negative due to capital
welfare in excess of the economic growth rate, wealth is
structurally centralized at the expense of others in the economy.
The absolute level of net assets owned by the general population
actually decreases so as to increase the net assets of the
wealthy. This not only removes all incentives for production and
entrepreneurial investment from the economy, but consumer demand
collapses as credit is liquidated to pay for necessities.
Depression ensues. It is under these circumstances that demands
for socialist intervention in the economy via "pub

However there is an especially insidious reason to believe this market will be quite limited this time around, compared even to the depression of the 1930's, and that is the nature of the individuals in whose hands the net assets are concentrated.

When Greenspan decided to depart from his gold standard by keeping interest rates high relative to gold during the crash he in effect decided to concentrate net asset ownership in the hands of people who don't necessarily have the best of characters -- indeed they are far from the ideal of heroic capitalists so promoted by Alan Greenspan himself when he was a devotee of Ayn Rand's.

As I stated in a white paper posted to sci.space in 1992 (resulting from having spent a few years doing politics in Washington to promote commercial incentives for space launch companies):

Just as important, capital welfare severely distorts the
optimization of asset ownership in society by placing, as a
matter of public policy, ever more assets under the control of
those who already have the most assets. Capitalism expresses its
worst potentials when capital welfare debilitates the character
of the wealthy while it gives them ever more economic authority.
This asset centralization impoverishes the population at large,
ending with a collapse in consumer demand. Supply-side theory
fails to predict this collapse because it fails to deal with the
fact that the wealthy are just as prone to character erosion by
welfare as are the poor. It is even more destructive than
welfare for the poor because it corrupts the decision makers in
the economy. In the face of collapsing consumer demand and
capital welfare, acquisition of more capital assets is promoted
over the productive use or investment of those assets.

Political rhetoric defining "the rich" or "the wealthy" as those
with high levels of income or capital appreciation, focuses
public sentiment against the most productive members of society
and away from the centralization of net assets as the underlying
problem.

The incentive for productivity in the economy, left after the
disincentives of capital welfare are subtracted, is the long-term
economic growth rate minus the interest rate on the national
debt. When the interest rate being paid on the national debt
equals the growth rate of the economy, the fruits of all
productivity are being confiscated to pay capital welfare and the
incentives for productive investment and labor disappear. When
the incentives for productivity become negative due to capital
welfare in excess of the economic growth rate, wealth is
structurally centralized at the expense of others in the economy.
The absolute level of net assets owned by the general population
actually decreases so as to increase the net assets of the
wealthy. This not only removes all incentives for production and
entrepreneurial investment from the economy, but consumer demand
collapses as credit is liquidated to pay for necessities.
Depression ensues. It is under these circumstances that demands
for socialist intervention in the economy via "pub

There's actually more philosophy in Conan the Barbarian.

This site (linked to from widescreen.org) seems to be a bit more fair, even if the quality of the captures aren't as high (VHS, after all :)

I have concluded that it is best if the GUI goes over regular HTTP. The red tape to get non-HTTP thru many companies is too great.

Although HTTP may not be the ideal protocol for GUI transport, I have concluded that it is satisfactory for most B-to-B biz forms if you "tune" it right.

My own pet draft GUI protocol, SCGUI, is an attempt to define such a standard. There is also XWT, but it is more fat-client than SCGUI, which attempts to define a non-Turing-complete protocol for improved security (although client-side T.C. scripting could be added).

The unit also easily stores data files. w00t!

Another feature I keep looking for in jukeboxes is a bookmark feature, so I can resume listening the the middle of a track. I listen to a lot of spoken word stuff, so I won't get a jukebox without this feature. The new iPod seems to have it, but only for Audible.com downloads. Or am I mistaken?

Perhaps you should use this operating system.

1a. DOOM, AlienTC (Total Conversion). 30 minutes to _very_ shaky hands and no contact yet (on the first level). Scary bugger. Very little ammo, practically no medpacks, aliens dropping down on you ...

"Remember: short, controlled bursts."

"Let's finish our sweep. We're still marines and we got a job to do."

Privacy is not liberty, nor is it a "civil liberty", although it might be a "civil right". A liberty is a right to carry out some type of action without being obstructed by anyone else. Privacy rights restrict the actions of others (to obtain or publish information about you) which makes them claim-rights. So the US complaint about Canadian privacy laws has nothing at all to do with liberty.

This gives a pretty good introduction to the theoretical classification of rights.

The stuff about legalizing dope is of course another matter entirely. I have no idea why American politicians gets so wound up about dope, when most Americans have used it without comming to much harm.

For me the first XCOM is probably the best game ever. It completely absorbed me for several months. It really gets into your mind, and I remember that I use to be in class in highschool thinking on ways to optimize the research path, new considerations on where to build a base, etc.

The settings were just great, the rural areas, fighting in the greys in barns or even worst, in cities with civilians that were minding their business. The game really had a strong personality. The first times you played you could pretty much scream during the battles, as one of the "greys" turned around a corner, shoot one of your soldiers, and turned around.

I still remember my mother opening the door to my room at 3 am during a weeknight, while I was really tense and concentrated on a city mission looking for the last ethereal that was mind controlling my troops ... I think I woke up the whole neighborhood with the way I screamed ...
And of course, after playing it for several hours at night there was NO way I would open the door ... even to go to the bathroom I had to turn on all the lights in the house.

I still have it installed on an old 486 laptop I have and play it once in a while. I also got the Win95 version when it came out, but it runs way too fast on my P3 500 desktop.

It is funny the impact this game had. I still have several stories written by fans of the game back in the day. There were also tons of hacks to get more money, fiddle with your soldier's stats, etc. You can check a couple of nice sites here and here, or just do a quick search on google. There's also an interesting story about the phenomenon here

For all of you who didn't had the chance to play this great game, it is a combination of resouce management/strategy stage where you build bases, purchase equipment, recruit troops, etc. to build up earth defenses for an alien invasion. When you spot an UFO, you have to shoot it down and then engage the aliens in turn-based tactical combat. The trick is that depending on how you performed on those missions, you would get new technologies to research and the country you fought on increase/decrease your budget.

You also grew fond of your troops, since they stayed with you through out the game, and as they gained experience became pretty good fighters. I almost cried several times when they killed (or worst, mind controlled) one of them.

It's a shame that the other X-Com games didn't really live up to the original. The second one just didn't have the same personality, it was basically the same game, with weaker aliens, and under the sea. And don't get me started on the third one...

Any way, if you have a chance, try to get it, it might still be on a baragain bin somewhere.

For me the first XCOM is probably the best game ever. It completely absorbed me for several months. It really gets into your mind, and I remember that I use to be in class in highschool thinking on ways to optimize the research path, new considerations on where to build a base, etc.

The settings were just great, the rural areas, fighting in the greys in barns or even worst, in cities with civilians that were minding their business. The game really had a strong personality. The first times you played you could pretty much scream during the battles, as one of the "greys" turned around a corner, shoot one of your soldiers, and turned around.

I still remember my mother opening the door to my room at 3 am during a weeknight, while I was really tense and concentrated on a city mission looking for the last ethereal that was mind controlling my troops ... I think I woke up the whole neighborhood with the way I screamed ...
And of course, after playing it for several hours at night there was NO way I would open the door ... even to go to the bathroom I had to turn on all the lights in the house.

I still have it installed on an old 486 laptop I have and play it once in a while. I also got the Win95 version when it came out, but it runs way too fast on my P3 500 desktop.

It is funny the impact this game had. I still have several stories written by fans of the game back in the day. There were also tons of hacks to get more money, fiddle with your soldier's stats, etc. You can check a couple of nice sites here and here, or just do a quick search on google. There's also an interesting story about the phenomenon here

For all of you who didn't had the chance to play this great game, it is a combination of resouce management/strategy stage where you build bases, purchase equipment, recruit troops, etc. to build up earth defenses for an alien invasion. When you spot an UFO, you have to shoot it down and then engage the aliens in turn-based tactical combat. The trick is that depending on how you performed on those missions, you would get new technologies to research and the country you fought on increase/decrease your budget.

You also grew fond of your troops, since they stayed with you through out the game, and as they gained experience became pretty good fighters. I almost cried several times when they killed (or worst, mind controlled) one of them.

It's a shame that the other X-Com games didn't really live up to the original. The second one just didn't have the same personality, it was basically the same game, with weaker aliens, and under the sea. And don't get me started on the third one...

Any way, if you have a chance, try to get it, it might still be on a baragain bin somewhere.

Only the ones who are attached (hung up) to things, people and concept such as spelling...

...Daff's beak is on upside down and backwards and he's screaming and trailing smoke all over the place

That would be Wabbbit Season.

Kryten

Here's my opinion on some famous robots that should go into the hall of fame.

BBC Article on robots
AlexDaveRobots, highly rated
The History of Robots from about.com (formerly The Mining Company)
Robot Games 2002 - surely the winners are HoF-worthy?

[Borg] Definitely one of the most original sci-fi enemies ever.

the humanoid population of that planet perfected the science of cybernetics. They replaced their bodies with mechanical counterparts, and even altered the thought processes of their brains. Thus, the Cybermen were born. Ruthless and emotionless, the Cybermen began a campaign of conquest to rule the galaxy.

The Cybermen were originally humans, and the scientists of their home planet Mondas perfected cybernetics. They initially replaced only their limbs with metal and plastic, but they gradually progressed to the nervous system and finally the brain. The end product was the Cyberman, who were huge metal giants, devoid of emotion, only acted on logic, immensely strong and intent on conquest.

[Borg] Definitely one of the most original sci-fi enemies ever.

the humanoid population of that planet perfected the science of cybernetics. They replaced their bodies with mechanical counterparts, and even altered the thought processes of their brains. Thus, the Cybermen were born. Ruthless and emotionless, the Cybermen began a campaign of conquest to rule the galaxy.

The Cybermen were originally humans, and the scientists of their home planet Mondas perfected cybernetics. They initially replaced only their limbs with metal and plastic, but they gradually progressed to the nervous system and finally the brain. The end product was the Cyberman, who were huge metal giants, devoid of emotion, only acted on logic, immensely strong and intent on conquest.

What I've found frustrating is the lack of adventure games available for Linux

Really? I've found that adventure game support for Linux is actually quite good relative to other genres.

There's an entire commercial seven-episode line in the LadyStar series.

Hopkins FBI was, I believe, the first commercial SDL-using game available for Linux.

Want to play older adventure games in Linux? ScummVM can run older Lucasarts adventure games. AGIL lets you play old AGI Sierra games, and FreeSCI old SCI Sierra games. TADS can run on Linux to let you play TADS-based text adventure games (it *is* true that there isn't an HTML-enabled runtime for Linux, but that hasn't turned to be much of a big deal), and Frotz lets you play text-based Z-Machine games on Linux. Both of these have massive libraries of games, some of which are very good (I dearly love Tower of Babel for TADS). There are runtimes for numerous other, less widely-used systems listed on ifarchive.

Finally, I realize it's not a fantastic solution, but adventure games that use DirectX are more likely to work with WINE than the latest 3d shooter because they tend to use fewer features. Riven, for instance, works this way.

But I wonder if the Linux gaming market isn't somewhat different than the Windows gaming market. Many of the people who run Linux are older professionals. We're often not runnng the latest and greatest equipment. Perhaps one explanation for the lackluster sales of Linux games is that they're targeting the wrong population.

I agree -- the best selling games for Linux have been Civilization, SimCity 3, Kohan...the games without high end system requirements on 3d cards or CPU. They tend to be less twitch games.

I wish adventure game developers would return to the VM-based approach that Sierra and Lucasarts used to great success. The portability and ease of debugging is well worth it.

LOL

Current development of GEM
Open-source (GPL!) ROM replacement for Atari ST, featuring GEM/3

GEM isn't dead yet!

(BTW, neither is CP/M (link is to a work in progress on DOSPLUS, which is based on CP/M 4.1)

-uso.

here's a link in case you care to remember: Hologram Time Traveler Review

It was a New York chain of stores whose commercials became legendary on the East coast in the 80s. There is a tribute page here . Crazy Eddie even got a nod on Futurama as Malfunctioning Eddie the robot (this episode was just on Adult Swim the other night, which is why it was fresh on my mind).

I'd love to see a Mozilla feature similar to the right-click "Block Images From This Server" option that blocks an entire domain upon request. A month later when I forget and try to return it could play a little sound like ummm, no to remind me of the blacklist.

...without mention of the Boulder Kinetics race, which has been run every year since 1979. While not the original according to this page, it still predates Baltimore's by 19 years.

I think you're thinking of LORD -- Legend of Red Dragon (replace 'the Green' with 'red') Written (in turbo pascal no less) by Seth Able Robinson. This was one of the most popular games of the era, with many-many add-ons produced by various people (the game was designed to be expandable by third parties, and even came w/ instructions to do so). All the bbs's in my area had this game --
I'm amazed that you don't remember it.

Here's a link to some guys sites:

LORD on gamefaqs

Some guys website

Some guy who met him (tradewars)

Search on google (try the terms "Seth Able Robinson" [where I got the above links] or "Legend of Red Dragon") for tons of info on one of the best games ever written.

_______________________________

Wow, linux is cool.

Here are some additional ASCII art sites worth visiting, some of which host artwork dating back to the early 1970's...

The Textfiles.com Computer Art Collection
Features a wide range of computer-oriented text-based artwork beginning with teletype (RTTY) art which predates ASCII. An archive of archives.
http://artscene.textfiles.com/

The ACiD Artpacks Archive
Indexed and sorted by year. Hosts a collection of over 13 years of ASCII, ANSI, RIPscrip and other digital artwork.
ftp://artpacks.acid.org/pub/artpacks/

The Christ ASCII Archives
Indexed and sorted by artgroup. The authoritative archive of IBM-PC and Amiga ASCII art.
ftp://ftp.mimic.ca/pub/ascii/

Thuglife ASCII Art/News Portal
http://www.thuglife.org

Joan Stark's ASCII gallery
More mainstream but rich in content regarding the different facets ASCII artscenes. Unfortunately this site is constantly plagued by Geocities bandwidth caps.
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/

It was Matt Foley, played by Chris Farley. He lives in a van down by the river.

Gabe and Tycho surely don't want Pizza to send out for them!

Though the Darth Vader head is new to me there has been a much scarier human "gargoyle" has been there for many years. This human gargoyle is a LAWYER. For a brief history of gargoyles check this out Some info about the human "gargoyle" is near the bottom.

Some links:

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answer s/970207e.html
http://www.geocities.com/~kcdreher/sundogs.html

They may be pretty, but they'd be easier to appreciate if they didn't signify that it's freakin' cold outside :-/

BTW, I am, of course, usually carrying a pair of ceramic plates in my briefcase so that I can shield my head. My SO (we work as a team when necessary) has a similar accessory containing a breakdown NEF single-shot 300 WinMag with an 18" bbl. The plan is that I shield us with my body and "catch the rounds" while she assembles the NEF. I lay down covering fire with my 23 (Bar-Sto .357 Sig barrel) and she makes the long shots. I will then throw smoke grenades to obscure the area while continuing to lay covering fire. The problem, of course, is when I have to turn my back to run, and then the problem crops up.

Mac mice have never had an issue with left/right-handedness. (Also note that many creative types are right-brained, thus left-handed. This is important to some.)

The "anti-spam crowd" are those that firmly believe that email is for their personal communications only. Any commercial use violates the terms of how the Internet was created and that is exclusively for the benefit of the user community.

I believe that there are people like that, but calling them the "anti-spam crowd" is bizarre. Look on the anti-spam websites listed on Spamlinks. I haven't looked at all of them, but I still doubt you'll find *anyone* there espousing the view above.

Duncan Murdoch

The Apple / Bandai Pippin Controller had something similar to the trackball you are speaking of and it was/is the easiest to hold, most comfortable, game controller I have ever used. In fact, I use it with my Mac still -- with the ADB adapter and the USB adapter.

I would love for Apple to bring this down to wireless bluetooth mouse size. For now I like to use a Logitech Trackman Marble due to the fact I hate moving mice on the desk and the pippin controller.

Why aren't these billionaires exploring the depths of the oceans as James "King of the World" Cameron does?

Surely there's interesting stuff down there, like nucular radiation-enlarged squids, slime monsters and maybe a Godzilla-like creature or two.

Are any of them funding research into solar cells, wind technology, tidal power or geothermal or is it all a great big ego boost?

Yes it will run linux but you can only run this one distribution.

• The slimmed-down son-of-Mozilla (nee Phoenix/Firebird) must be renamed Mozooki.
• The three-headed mail-news-irc client is obviously Mozidrah.
• And there's plenty of room for future projects: Mozthra, Modan, Mozamera, etc.

The Online Museum

Vintage Moist Towelette

The Moist Towlettel page

It wasn't that long ago you could search for 'Lumos' and get one hit (me). Then it was some company, then a Harry-Potter-ish font, (then a hundred other Harry Potter things) and now I'm a spam registry.

Anybody else out there with extremely rare last names but the domains are all taken by companies anyway?

I guess I should be grateful that they opened up .us and I was able to jam myself in there before somebody else did.

That's what everyone thinks until they encounter a drop bear

Well, the experience, one would imagine, would be similar to this.

Excellent

Here is the answer
http://www.geocities.com/we_all_love_saddam/

Is SimFarm close enough?

Not anymore!

YES!

My sentiments exactly. At first I couldn't place her face and thought she was Claire Forlani(who I liked in Meet Joe Black) but Jennifer is more beautiful IMHO.

But damn, she looked good in her scenes, both from an acting and eye-candy point of view.

I honestly find your comment condescending. I wonder why going to a US university to study is such a success, as though per se, US universities are better than those in Ghana. You just assume that, which is not right. You also seem capable, after spending just a few months in another country, to determine how good or bad professionals they are, how well they think, how well they reason... I wonder how much previous "western" teaching experience you had before going into Ghana, because you would be surprised about how many stupid people we have in Europe and the US.

By the way, I am not trolling, I spent a few years working in Africa (Argelia and Morocco) working in this kind of projects until I realized how easy to do the wrong thing is, and how extremely difficult it is to really be helpful going there.