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I'd heard of fractal antennas, of course, but I don't think they're widely available (other than LP's, as you mentioned). Here are some pics of the largest LP I've ever seen. I'll be seeing it again next week. :-)

This is facilitated by a link off of the homepage of one of the largest usergroups , HAL-PC.org
Critical Updates

When Microsoft goes !Live! with just Windows web Update ... Voila, it's not a patch anymore.

http://www.hal-pc.org/journal/03feb/column/baby/ba by.html

To summarize the portion of that article of interest: A silicon atom is .3 nm across. We are currently building transistor devices on 45nm processes. So if we reduce the process size to a single atom (and that's being generous: how do we control a device composed of one atom?), we'd achieve 150x density, in two directions, which would be 22,500 times improvement. That's enough for less than 15 more doublings, but I'll be generouse and give you the full 15. So if Moore's law is 18 months (and heck, I'll give you 24 months for doubling these days as things slow down, and remember when it was 12 months?) then we have 30 years left in Moore's law, before we hit 'devices' that are somehow magically made out of single atoms, yet still do the work we expect them to do.

It's relatively clear now that soon we'll have to learn how to build multilayer (3D) chips to keep making meaningful advances in conventional computer performance (there's always the possibility that quantum computers will make conventional computing performance meaningless).

Thing about Word 97 is that it was unwilling to save in word 5/95 format. This is something that MS refused to fix for the better part of a year.

In the meantime, any company that bought a new PC was only offered word 97 for the new machine. This meant that, the first time they saved a document that needed to be read anywhere else in the company, all recipients needed to buy the '97 version to read it (much less to edit it). You could save your document in RTF format, but the '97 RTF format was sadly broken.... Back to plan A.

MS did, in time, release an official plugin that allowed you to save in word'95 format (as long as you were willing to work your way thru the warning messages), but I don't believe that it was possible to set '95 as the default save format, so -- sooner or later you'd accidently just 'save', and the next thing you know, your recipients can't read your document.

The end result of this is that MS raked in Billions of dollars in spurious sales by forcing people to abandon all older versions of their word processors. This is part of the way that they cemented their monopoly on the office software market.
_____

Then of course, there's the NT filesystem that is sorely short on public documentation, and almost impossible to figure out. As far as I can tell, Microsoft is entirely uninterested in letting others interoperate with it. In fact, I'm guessing that they put in some strange land-mines just to piss off people trying to use it other than from inside of the most recent versions of Windows.

Wouldn't kick her out of bed..... Unless she wanted to go at it on the floor: http://www.hal-pc.org/~bbaker/kfest2003-4.html

very cute

Not really surprising, as the PIII has been faster than the PIV for awhile. Curiously at the same time, people were also noticing that NT4 was faster than 2000 at server tasks, yet most who reported such at the time were gagged by the no-publishing-benchmarks EULA fine print...

"Only if 3Com provided a IOS-like command line interface"

The only non-NIC 3com device I'm familiar with is my $300 OfficeConnect Dual 56k LAN modem (I didn't see anything else out there like it at the time). While "everything" is "supposed" to be configurable, there is an undocumented, unsupported, disavowed CLI interface accessable through Telnet that does a lot more than their port 80 stuff can do (like, say, filtering). Unfortunately, it's malformed (as if the people who made it cobbled it together like a hobby, with no real intent in making it completely functional) and it seems the odds of it being able to do even everything it claims to be able to do seems slim to none.

Between that and the way it locks up for inexplicable reasons (to the point where the disavowed Telnet interface is the only responsive interface at all) and needs to be hung up or reset... but it's not as if anybody else makes a small end-user router with two 56k modems, or at least not anybody that would sell me just one without having to set up a freakin' commercial account (are you listening, Cisco?)...

• Easterbrook's recent TIME article
  
• Easterbrook's 1980 article...
  
• A rebuttal of the Easterbrook article
  

It's a very debatable point about whether certs mean diddlysquat in today's market. I tend to think they help a bit for entry level and mid level jobs, but you have to be able to demonstrate that you have more than that...experience, potential, initiative.

I've been pursuing the Master CIW Administrator cert. Not particularly well known, but it tests on a lot of core networking and server techologies without bogging you down on proprietary stuff.

Enroll in a cert only if the knowledge is interesting, not because you think the cert will influence people. Certs don't impress, but knowledge does.

I tend to recommend against taking classes like that. If you are in a big city, it's possible to find study groups or special interest groups about special topics. In houston we have Hal-PC which has study groups on these certifications. For free!

Unless the cost of the hardware is way out of your league (i.e. more than 1000), it's probably a good idea to do the configuration and learning on your own system than at some school. You'll learn more from the ground up.

Go down to the LUG at HAL-PC. I've been in there a couple of times, and they have some hardcore Linux users who know their stuff. Let them know and I'm sure they will want to go. As far as LUGs go its one of the largest I have ran across. I for one am interested: PrimeNumber@excite.com

I just bought next month's issue of Popular Mechanics, and in one of the articles under Technology titled "RVs Get Wired" they had a little speil about a TracNet Sattlite Internet by KVH industries. The article states the downlink is by sat and the uplink is by cell modem at 14.4Kbps or satellite modem at 9600 bps. Cost is $5995 not including the sat which is another $2999. Base usage fee is $75/mo plus 99 cents/min while conneted. After 900 min charge drops to 79 cents. This sat can also tune into tv broadcasts, but you cant watch tv and surf at the same time.. sats are too far apart. The setup requires having a server which while the sat is locked in on the internet satt, it will download certain websites as a local cache which can be viewed while watching tv.

Not the prefect deal, but the system is good for on the move.

Another system mentioned was stationary only. It was MotoSat. 400kbps down 128kbps up. Designed with gps to find it's own sats by itself and lock in. Raises to 42in high for sat lock.. folds down to 10 inches for ride.. This sat can tune into the internet sat and the tv sat at the same time, allowing you to watch your favorite scifi's using direct tv or dish sattlite network's gear (bring your own reciver deal tho). Cost? $4995 for the hardware. $79/mo unlimited usage.

Sattlite as little lag, but who would notice if they havent ever surfed broadband? They wont be able to frag, but who said you couldnt schedule local lan frags?

I remember waaaaaaaay back when windows 95 was already out and 98 was in the works, Microsoft set up a little bus with about 8 desks, monitors and tower computers and networked them all together and seemed to have a main server in the back with a generator running. The system wasnt internet connected, just had advertizements and demos of games and other software they were proporting. The bus came to houston during one of the Hal-pc general meetings. I probably spent an hour or two playing around with those pcs. They altered the registry to disable access to everything but the programs folder under start menu.

I would say the mini school bus does have a certain appeal as they are a wider vehicle, but they are also a higher platform and are usually hard to get on for the elderly or very young. I would suggest building it out of a 5th wheel trailer or camper. They can be very well stablized and with a 5th wheel you can store the gear in the over bed area. Some campers have electric flyouts that might afford more room while in use, but require leveling of the trailer before use (drive on blocks, jacking up). Another thought about a 5th wheel is, you have engine failover, if the truck you are using is troubled, you could easily get another one rather than taking the whole damned rig to the shop, putting it into the hands of mechanics who might just play with those computers sitting the back if it was a motorhome.

DRACO-

Sorry, I got caught up replying to the "Why Perl" comment, and then I realized I should have just posted this link.

Greenspun has a PhD from MIT (good paper credentials) and has made a hojillion dollars building websites (real world success). Sadly, the company he started was taken over my Sinister Venture Capitalists (TM).

Great book, and it's free. You can also buy a copy if you want. It's big and pretty. That's important.
:-)

Seriously, the book includes a good bibliography, and links to books he's written on SQL and other things. They're also free. You really can't go wrong starting here.

Now, go get yourself a Linux box (I plan to get an extra one free Saturday from my beloved Hal-PC at their giveaway), set up a webserver and a database and get to work!!
:-)

HTH,

That'd be gp3.jpg, not gp3.jpg. Try this link.

No MS Office, true, but there WAS (and still is) Gobe Productive.

Gobe Productive is still alive and kicking ass despite the failure of the Be operating system. (It's just screenshot, guaranteed goatse.cx free.)