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BTW, I only heard the term "blog" within the last 2 years, yet one of the quotes from the article said this guy ran weblog for 4 years. Is the term "blog" newer then this guy's service?

From: Jorn Barger (jorn@mcs.com)
Subject: Lively new webpage
Newsgroups: alt.culture.www, alt.hypertext, comp.ai
Date: 1997/12/23

After talking a lot about Frontier and Scripting News (www.scripting.com), I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis:
http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/weblog.html
This will cover any and everything that interests me, from net culture to politics to literature etc.

That would explain why Cheach Martin is endorsing it.

According to this "Dead Cosmonauts" page, this is a hoax, possibly a garbled version of an Apollo-1-style fatality of an early cosmonaut.

There is certainly enough conflicting infomation regarding the early soviet space program to raise serious questions as to who really was the first man in space. Right now the only thing we are sure of is that Yuri Gagarin was the first Cosmonaut who survived and was in good enough health to be an acceptable soviet hero.

This page was generated with the help of DOC++.

After the mention of cosmonauts that have died in space, I did some searching and found the following link...

Russian Aerospace Guide - Cosmonauts

This is an excerpt from a book by James Oberg titled "Uncovering Soviet Disasters"...about half way down the page is and interesting list of accidents that happened before 1973.

No mention of the MIR on this page (I think it's because this seems to have been done in 1985), but I thought that since everyone that mentions Cosmonauts that have died in space doesn't have the proof to back it up...well, this at least lends some validity to their complaints.

The strangest incident mentioned is this one "On February 4, 1961, a mystery Soviet satellite was heard to be transmitting heartbeats, which soon stopped (some reports even described it as a two-man capsule, and several "missing cosmonauts" were listed as Belokonev, Kachur, and Grachev)."

Thank you! You posted almost verbatim what I was going to! I think a lot of people here on /. and on the Internet in general need to go back and READ the Constitution of the United States and the Federalist Papers. I think many people here only know what they're fed by media sound bites about the way our goverment used to and still should work. People who decry our goverment are obviously uneducated about the governmental and political process and also didn't pay attention past their 5th grade history class. The US is running headlong to disaster becuase people are not educated about how our government should work and therefore have no initiative to do anything about it. I think that the Internet "subculture" would actually be very pleased at what they would read in the writings of our Founding Fathers. Even if you're not a citizen of the US, I think these documents are worth the read for a perspective on a truly free government.

Also, not everyone here on /. is a raving libertarian. I'm very proud to be a conservative.

Only the same "oxymoronic nonsense" espoused by the founders. The danger is discussed in Federalist Paper #51.

Isn't that, quite literally, democracy?

Yes, exactly. Democracy in its purest, awfulest form. The democracy which can execute a person for absolutely no reason at all as long as a majority says so. Fortunately, we do not live in a pure democracy, but rather a democracy tempered by the guarantee of certain rights. Even if the majority wants to revoke those rights.

If the majority can abridge people's freedom of speech whenever they desire, as you seem to believe, what is the point of having a First Amendment at all? Speech of the minority, you seem to believe, is not protected, but speech of the majority needs no protection.

Every issue tends to be demagogued these days... whether it's how many child seeking perverts are on the internet( probably FAR less than 1 in a million ), how many "innocent" kids died from guns last year( about 4000 child deaths, 85% of which were 16-19, 90% of which were drug/gang related - more innocent kids drowned in pools ), racism, or whatever.

I suppose "whatever" includes the issue of respecting the Constitution. :(

I would agree with you if you said that factionalism is alive, kicking, and (be it proud or futile) beating on the chest of our republic. But I would also take a cue from Madison; I think all the bickering is healthy.

Tim

According to this history of hypertext doc, Doug Engelbart's system was developed by 1968. Ted Nelson apparently coined the term in '65.

Also CERL had a system called PLATO Notes (forerunner to Lotus Notes, my own shameful little habit) in development from 1973, released in '76.
I think they implemented hyperlinks too.

For everyone who can't/won't do a google search themselves. ;-)

Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL)
www.google.com/search?q =Air+Force+MOL+&num=10&lc=www
www.airspacemag.com/ ASM/Mag/Index/1998/JJ/Contents.html
www.farhills.org/s/lees/space/air force.htm


Dyna Soar
www.google.com/search?q=dynasoar&lc= www
www.google.com/search?q=dyna+soar+%2Bsmithsonian&n um=10&lc=www&btnG=Google+Search BR> www.arnold.af.mil/aedc/systems/60- 933.htm
www.nasm.edu/galle ries/gal114/SpaceRace/sec500/sec540.htm
www.hq.nasa.gov/offi ce/pao/History/Timeline/1961-4.html

Blue Gemini
www.google.com/search?q=Bl ue+Gemini&num=10&lc=www
student.uq.edu.au/~s373901/land /coldwar.htm
www.hq.nasa.gov/office/ pao/History/SP-4203/ch6-2.htm

LK Lander
www.google.com/search? q=%2BLK+%2BLander&num=10&lc=www
www.interaxs.net/pub/spacey/lk1.htm
www.ninfinger.org/~sven/mode ls/sovietsp/lk.html

Spiral
www.google.com /search?q=%2BSpiral+%2Bspacecraft&num=10&lc=www
www.mcs.net/~rusaerog/spiral/spiral .html

General Spacecraft info
www.rocketry.com/mwade/spaceflt.htm Encyclopedia Astronautica

...I found his booth. Not nearly as busy as in the old days. And there in the back was Phil. Looking a little tired. But he always looks a little tired. I waved. He has no idea who I am of course. I tried to tell the young kids handing out his stuff how important he had been to all of us. But we live in Netscape time and version 1.10 was light years ago to them, I guess. The same product. The same trinkets. Not pens but one of the most useful gifts at the whole show. A little round plastic container containing a sponge and a shoe polisher. It was strange. But he has given those away for years. Just like he gave away PKZip. Did any of us ever register it? The show was almost over.. The kids gave me a handful.

http://www.mcs.net/~grossman/mjnk/mj nk0696.htm

Once again another lamer who thinks there is no Amiga community left...

Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

Didn't mean to call ya a lamer, but you really are up for a good flamin',

I'll let it go this time, but you better brush up on your flaming techniques before posting again on slashdot. :^)

The strategy of requiring Monsanto-patented adjuncts (fertilizers, pesticides) for use with Monsanto-patented seeds is the worst kind of dirty pool. It's like Microsoft's (aborted) strategy of making it nearly impossible to install another company's browser as well as MSIE.

Regardless of how good, bad or dangerous the tech is, the fact remains that Monsanto's business practices represent a real threat to farmers and those economic interests that depend on agribusiness.

OTOH, Monsanto sure knows how to build a nice oversized wheel of gouda.

(I want to reply to this article in two ways, so I'll make two different posts.)

You're severely underrating Chicago. I live and work here, and I think it's a great city with potential. They've carefully nurtured the city during the Long Boom, and we expect that the population will have grown in the 90s for the first time in 50 years. There's more housing in and near downtown than in a couple of generations. The worst vestiges of "urban removal" are being corrected, and the Loop is once again vibrant.

Ameritech has no unlimited local calling

Wrong. As you can see in this chart of Illinois Ameritech rates, Band A (and the Chicago area has poor DSL and ISDN access.

In 2000, DSL is readily available almost anywhere in the metro region, as dslreports.com shows. You may not always get a choice of providers, but it is available, and the fact that Ameritech sat this particular revolution out ought to be grating on them as they sleep. Your information is just out of date. (Rhythms claims that they'll have half the country DSL-covered by sometime next year, anyway.)

Commonwealth Edison can't keep the damn lights on in the summer, because their transmission and distribution systems are crud and Edison doesn't seem to realize this.

I'm not sure it's the network so much as the management. After the embarrassing downtown Chicago outage this year (my building was affected; I was inbound to work, but my coworkers had to walk down 20 floors), they hired a new team. I'm not defending them; I just don't think that frustration over a power utility is unique, and would point out that stress on a system is a sign of rapid growth.

Local regulations require that Ethernet cable be strung through metal conduit,

I believe this is true in the city, but I'm certain it's not true everywhere in the metro area. The bigger problem is dealing with the unions. You have to have a licensed electrician on site if you're a big shop.

So, despite having several major universities with very good CS departments (University of Chicago, Northwestern, DePaul, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Loyola University), not one but two nearby national research laboratories, and recently starting up a new communications center in the old Donnelly Directory building,

I won't quibble with this list, but I could add to it.

Chicago will probably never become a center of computer business. Chicago has Motorola in the suburbs and that's about as good as it's going to get.

Besides Motorola (which is not only the top high-tech company here, but the biggest company in Chicagoland period), there's: System Software Associates, Tellabs, CDW, Anixter, Whittman-Hart (bought USWeb), Comdisco, DeVry, Galileo, Tribune Corp. (AOL partner), US Cellular, yesmail.com, Hewitt Associates, and Zebra Technologies. Other companies from around here have been bought up: US Robotics (3Com), Platinum (CA), Whitewater Group (Symantec), and others I can't recall.

No, we're not flashy like Silicon Valley, but unlike some of those SV startups, we have people who've worked their whole careers right inside all those boring, low-tech businesses that are trying to get wired right now. I think it's more likely that Chicago will continue to be a center of this kind of boring "infrastructure" high-tech, as opposed to VC-attracting, Superbowl- one-shot- advertising, gone-by-next-year SV firms.

As an example, Hewitt is well-known as a human resources consulting firm. They've built a worldwide reputation, but they found themselves stagnating. The last few years they've turned their HR software and expert systems into the foundation for many human-resources intranet sites, which has turned into a thriving side business. Will it get them dot-com street cred? Nah. Will it pay the light bill? You bet.

US News profiles Chicago high-tech market

On the other hand, Chicago has very good resources for another industry entirely: biotech.

I agree with you here, where I don't agree is that this is overlooked. Try Chicago Biotech Network, a city-funded virtual incubator, and their parent organization says "The agricultural biotechnology revolution began in Illinois, and now there are over 1,280 biotechnology, biomedicine, pharmaceutical firms located here." I don't think that's overlooked.

ask, what kind of geeks can we attract to this city?

I think this is a good point. I just think you undersold Chicago, and didn't catch that even in the computer industry, there are different kinds of geeks ... maybe we're not web geeks here, but we are wiring geeks, manufacturing geeks, and appliance geeks.
----

It would have to be the writings of those wild-eyed radicals Jefferson, Franklin and Madison. When you read their hopes and fears for what they were building, you finally start to realize how far we've fallen and how badly we've been ripped off.
Try browsing the Federalist Papers sometime to get a taste of what "they" DO NOT want you to read.

This tech does exist it's called the Road Patriot. Bumper mounted, rocket car "luanched" under the suspect vehicle.

Check out his homepage. His (full) real name is "Robert Sanford Havoc Pennington."

I believe the point of this paper is that under a system of indirect representation, it is more difficult for a faction, even a majority, to put its own iterests above those of the country as a whole than under direct representation; furthermore that large republican bodies better insulate minorities the tyranny of dominant factions that smallers ones (thus a Federal system is better than a confederation of states).

Madison does say:

A rage
for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less
apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely
to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.

However, in context it's clear in context he is arguing that any minorities (such as landed interests) are better protected in a strong Federal system than in a confederation. This argument is striking, because people who are most in favor of strong defense of intervening to ensure equality of minorities, whereas those who see this as unwarranted interference tend to back states rights.

Year 2000 Challenge - Automobile Embedded Systems
This guy will give money to anyone who can prove that their car won't start on Jan 1, 2000 due to the Y2K bug

Did anyone read the HotWired article about Gary North's ulterior motives for hyping Y2K? Onward, Christian soldiers...

L. Ron