Slashdot Mirror

The Winner: http://www.geofffox.com/wp-con...

Pre-divestiture Western Electric telephones (500 series in particular) - http://www.geofffox.com/wp-con...

The weather and air quality have been fairly close to the worrisome scenario painted months ago. I've been checking meteorological observations every day, finding the dew point at Beijing's airport in the mid and upper 70s on a regular basis and visibility of 1-2 miles common (It is currently under 1 mile, but there is rain falling).

Back in February I wrote on my blog of the potential Olympic weather: "So, when the deputy chief engineer of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau says, "Even if the rare extreme weather hits Beijing in August, people will not feel muggy. High humidity will not accompany the hot weather in August because their climax periods are different, " I'd hide the silverware and other valuables."

Current Beijing observations are here.

Dew points (the real number you should look at when you think humidity) have been consistently in the 70s--often the upper 70s. That's like walking around with a warm, damp cloth wrapped around your body. Much of yesterday had Beijing more humid than Miami.

I would feel better about what the Chinese say if dissenting voices were allowed to speak about the air!

There is an independent group from Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants in England who have been monitoring the air and issuing their own forecasts which have been much more pessimistic than the official government version. Now that forecast is gone! From Telegraph.co.uk: British scientists monitoring air quality in Beijing have been ordered to close down their website after their readings clashed with official statistics showing the city was meeting its pollution targets.

"Cosmological theory implies that because the universe is expanding, any living creatures outside the observable universe are and will forever remain causally disconnected from us: they can never visit us, communicate with us, or be seen by us or our descendants."

Yeah, but we still have to deal with Comic Sans...

I have read through the comments, and I haven't seen anyone mention (I could have missed it) the major change that's brought this about. Search engines are the outward evidence of a totally different way to use information. It used to be you would pick up a paper or turn on the TV news and see what someone else had planned for you. Now, it's information on demand. That's an immense change.

Oh - the Times article's own headline will be ineffective to search engines.

I've written more about this on my blog: http://www.geofffox.com/MT/archives/2006/04/09/its _not_smart_to_be_clever.php

So, this doesn't reflect heating or cooling, but is the natural variability of our climate. At least that's my read on this. I've written about this on my blog, and since this entry is now well enough buried to get minimal traffic, I'll add a link.

A few days ago I checked my Gmail and found a tsunami plea in my spam box. After enabling the graphics, I was pleased to see the actual charity whose name was being used realized one of their graphics was linked in the phishing email. So they changed it! Here is the result. Very clever. They deserve a donation for doing this, if nothing else.

Carrot Top shirtless! Someone's gotta get a life.

Google also sent a lot of traffic my way because of an entry I had which debunked a popular picture of a tanker sailing into a hurricane. If you search Google images for "hurricane photo" my enticing picture is on the bottom right. This one link was clicked 55,599 times by Google's users in 2004.

Some people find me interesting. I'm afraid many others find me randomly.

We put our pumpkin out uncarved. We were going to carve it, but a local squirrel decided to take care of it for us! Here's the photographic evidence http://www.geofffox.com/MT/images/nutti-goes-in.jp g

I have the low-def version of the SA 8000. Maybe the problem with the HD version is Scientifc Atlanta's and not native to HD in general?
I understand what SA's trying to do, but it just isn't implemented well at all. When I got my 8000, I posted this observation to my blog. Not much has changed since then. I posted a follow-up last month. They have updated the software a few times, never telling me and sometimes busting recordings I've set. The channel guide has been moved farther from the main menu. The video-on-demand features a different keystroke for the same function on back-to-back menus. Sometimes a keystroke won't register for a few seconds. Of course you think you just missed with the remote, so you hit it again, only to have two clicks register.

I have the low-def version of the SA 8000. Maybe the problem with the HD version is Scientifc Atlanta's and not native to HD in general?
I understand what SA's trying to do, but it just isn't implemented well at all. When I got my 8000, I posted this observation to my blog. Not much has changed since then. I posted a follow-up last month. They have updated the software a few times, never telling me and sometimes busting recordings I've set. The channel guide has been moved farther from the main menu. The video-on-demand features a different keystroke for the same function on back-to-back menus. Sometimes a keystroke won't register for a few seconds. Of course you think you just missed with the remote, so you hit it again, only to have two clicks register.