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NASA got awesome mileage out of this vehicle... considerably more than was initially expected- over 7700 meters!

Bah on your 7.7k meters;I demand nothing less than total disambiguation. We need sufficient variation in measurement to make sure that the sense of each number is clear. I shouldn't have to depend on context to infer what you mean. If you reply to this post and call me "slipshod," I want to know that you are referring to the sloppy, careless reasoning of my post, and not to the looseness of my footwear (for which I propose to the new substitute "slipshoed"). Likewise, trademarks using common words will be disambiguated from the meaning of those words - popular word game Scrabble would need to be renamed, as this spelling is already in use by at least four other meanings, each of which will need its own variation anyhow. We can keep "scrabble" for "to scratch or scrape," but make subtle changes to the rest; "scragble" for "to struggle toward a goal," "scrubble" for "to climb over" (as over rubble!) and the sense "to scribble" should simply be eliminated, as "scribble" is already too close to "scrabble" anyway and might as well be handled as a variant of pronunciation. The game itself might be renamed B-3, after the second letter in the alphabet and its point value in the game (A-1 having been used for the tasty steak sauce and several thousand local plumbing, towing, and other services companies vying for the first spot in the telephone directory, each of which will celebrate its uniqueness with a new, never-before-seen name). Each town with the same name as another will also need to be reborn under a new moniker (surely a cause for revelry in the Midways, Fairviews, and Oak Groves [nwlink.com] of the world!). Finally, each of us whose name unfortunately coincides with that of another, shall have to make the tiniest of adjustments, on a first-come, first-served basis; thus, the eldest John Smith on record shall keep his spelling, while the next shall have to be subtly altered (Johnn Smith), and the next altered only the tiniest bit (Jahnn Smith), and so on (Djahnne Pschmiythe). For completeness, the birth and death certificates, tax and census records, and headstones or memorial plaques of some few billions of our ancestors shall likewise need to be "tweaked," possibly according to some fractal algorithm in cases where no living relatives can recommend how John might have preferred it, if only he'd taken the opportunity.

=smudge=

This is what I was thinking, i.e., that it would produce some sort of Hawthorne effect.

As for me, I demand nothing less than total disambiguation. We need sufficient variation in spelling to make sure that the sense of each word is clear. I shouldn't have to depend on context to infer what you mean. If you reply to this post and call me "slipshod," I want to know that you are referring to the sloppy, careless reasoning of my post, and not to the looseness of my footwear (for which I propose to the new substitute "slipshoed"). Likewise, trademarks using common words will be disambiguated from the meaning of those words - popular word game Scrabble would need to be renamed, as this spelling is already in use by at least four other meanings, each of which will need its own variation anyhow. We can keep "scrabble" for "to scratch or scrape," but make subtle changes to the rest; "scragble" for "to struggle toward a goal," "scrubble" for "to climb over" (as over rubble!) and the sense "to scribble" should simply be eliminated, as "scribble" is already too close to "scrabble" anyway and might as well be handled as a variant of pronunciation. The game itself might be renamed B-3, after the second letter in the alphabet and its point value in the game (A-1 having been used for the tasty steak sauce and several thousand local plumbing, towing, and other services companies vying for the first spot in the telephone directory, each of which will celebrate its uniqueness with a new, never-before-seen name). Each town with the same name as another will also need to be reborn under a new moniker (surely a cause for revelry in the Midways, Fairviews, and Oak Groves of the world!). Finally, each of us whose name unfortunately coincides with that of another, shall have to make the tiniest of adjustments, on a first-come, first-served basis; thus, the eldest John Smith on record shall keep his spelling, while the next shall have to be subtly altered (Johnn Smith), and the next altered only the tiniest bit (Jahnn Smith), and so on (Djahnne Pschmiythe). For completeness, the birth and death certificates, tax and census records, and headstones or memorial plaques of some few billions of our ancestors shall likewise need to be "tweaked," possibly according to some fractal algorithm in cases where no living relatives can recommend how John might have preferred it, if only he'd taken the opportunity.

Problem is, it doesn't work for everyone. I know that at my school there were a hell of a lot of people for whom the education system was just a hoop they had to jump through til they could get on with their actual life. Their response to this would have boiled down to "yeah, whatever. Now where did I put my ciggies?"

If we're going to put these people in a program like this, we might as well just send them home, cos the fact that the school environment is so structured is the only reason they absorb anything in their entire time there. The eternal balancing act of the public education system is to provide a military academy for the yobs and a miniature university for the smart kids, all on the same premises and with a limited budget. Neither type of kid thrives in a class aimed at the other type. There's actually a decent chunk of management theory behind this, which I only just this second made the connection to.

Here's a better article about the Hawthorne effect
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/history/hawtho rne.html
You'll have to do your own checking but the story is consistent with what I remember. Not in Germany at all, and there was a lot more to it than just the big brother effect.

About the old Western Electric Hawthorne plant - it was in Cicero, IL, which is now just outside of Chicago, but when it was built, it was the prairie. It closed down about 20 years ago and most of it is demolished.
http://www.assemblymag.com/CDA/ArticleInformation/ features/BNP__Features__Item/0,6493,98914,00.html

There's your proof. Dvorak was designed sensibly, reducing finger movement distance and frequency. Typing feels like drumming your fingers, and is incredibly rapid and comfortable.

I guess that doesn't seem much like proof to me, at least of the "type faster, reduce RSI" claims. I could imagine Dvorak helps, but I could also imagine that it doesn't really matter. Indeed, I could imagine that QWERTY, because it requires more variety of movement, is actually better for RSI.

I know some people are happier with it. But some people are just as enthusiastic about Herbalife products. Maybe it's real improvement; maybe it's akin to Hawthorne Effect improvement.

For proof, I'd want to see somebody train QWERTY typists on several alternate layouts and compare productivity and RSI incidence across the alternate layouts. It'd be nice if they could get some life-long Dvorak typists and do the same experiment with them. Until then, what you have is a competing theory, not proof.

Hmm, the Hawthorne Effect is a bit deeper than just changing the work environment, it's that they realized they were being studied, so they increased productivity. They wanted to have the experiment "work" so they did what they thought they wanted, increase productivity, even when the light was dimmed to candlelight intensity. This is why we have control groups. Awareness of being studied and wanting to do the "right" thing for the experiment is a confounding factor.

As a trivia thing, I actually lived not that far from there. It was the Western Electric Hawthorne works plant, Cicero and around 24th just outside of Chicago. My best friend's dad still wears his old jackets every once in a while. It's now a strip mall. I doubt that maybe .00001% of the people that go by there have any idea that some of the great work psychological experiments were performed somehwere in (what's now) that parking lot.

The true source of java has been known for many long years now: "The best Java coffee is grown on the far eastern end of the island on five estates established by the Dutch government." Evidence.

warmest regards,
Juan Valdez

• Coffee Quotes
• Coffee Recipes
• More Coffee Recipes

I have tried some of them. They are another good reason for drinking lots of coffee.

MCSE knows best. Haha, what a lamer.

They are $200 and you save time, money and effort. Even the geek effect isn't worth it this time.

It took me at most an hour to hack up a script to record using Ruby and mp1e from RTE. Here it is, and here's a sample listing. Real hard. Not. It finds dupes, conflicts, and can easily support multiple cards just by running multiple instances.

Granted, it doesn't track showtime changes, and it's not fancy at all. But it gets the job done, it was easy to write, it's easy to modify, and it's been recording all the TV I watch for the past few months without a hitch. It cost me an hour of my time.

Spend the money and help a company.

Why would I want to do that? TiVo isn't exactly a "nice" company, either. It might be one thing if these came with open specs for modification, pulling the files off and burning them, and modifying the source to do what I want. But they don't. And they won't.

Here's a list of sites that can help if you're married to doing this:

How could you forget MythTV, particularly when Freevo is just a ripoff of MythTV source?

They are $200 and you save time, money and effort. Even the geek effect isn't worth it this time.

It took me at most an hour to hack up a script to record using Ruby and mp1e from RTE. Here it is, and here's a sample listing. Real hard. Not. It finds dupes, conflicts, and can easily support multiple cards just by running multiple instances.

Granted, it doesn't track showtime changes, and it's not fancy at all. But it gets the job done, it was easy to write, it's easy to modify, and it's been recording all the TV I watch for the past few months without a hitch. It cost me an hour of my time.

Spend the money and help a company.

Why would I want to do that? TiVo isn't exactly a "nice" company, either. It might be one thing if these came with open specs for modification, pulling the files off and burning them, and modifying the source to do what I want. But they don't. And they won't.

Here's a list of sites that can help if you're married to doing this:

How could you forget MythTV, particularly when Freevo is just a ripoff of MythTV source?

I left NWLink DSL a couple of weeks ago over their mediocre uptime and high costs, especially bandwidth costs. They were down quite a few hours per month lately (that I noticed) and their tech support was not so good. They seemed to have a lot of router configuration problems: there were frequent router loops. This may have been partly due to their prime (only?) feed to most of the world being alter.net, which at least in this neck of the woods is quite slow and tangled. NWlink claimed at one point that they were just finishing up some big network reconfiguration, and things should get better: when things didn't seem to, that was the end for me. I should have waited to switch: it would be nice to dump them now in protest over their DDOSing of SDF :-).

I chose NWLink several years ago because at the time their prices were good, and my previous provider, NW Nexus, had been bought out twice and become expensive and quite unreliable in the process. Now I'm with DSL Only, and so far they seem great. ISP service is $18/month for 640/256 DSL, with no bandwidth charges, no restrictions on use, a static IP, and two mailboxes. It's been reliable so far, and they are direct to a local exchange that in turn is direct to my work and to Internet2, so ping times and bandwidth are excellent.

It would be nice to be done with ISP switches forever: maybe this is it. The other good news is that this was the easiest ISP switch so far: Qwest seems to have it figured out now, and it was completely routine.

FYI. As always, YMMV.

SEMAPHORE will cost SDF more than double its current rent, however, the technical team seem much more willing to help us. Please watch here for updates.
A breach of contract, a new ISP, and couple the costs for a public service that has been running for fifteen years all because of a dumb DoS attack. As they say, many people have come to rely on SDF. This is one of the dumbest stunts that I have seen an ISP pull in a long time and I hope that NWLink have apropriate and successful legal action taken against them.

A: It's previously been announced elsewhere that yes, it will.
B: Or you could just blocked WMP's plug-in installation.

I set up a box for my mom to use. She's a teacher, she types papers, prints them out; occasionally browses the web; and checks email about once a week (now that she can). The box runs Linux.

For awhile, I had her running KDE, but the box was as Celery 400 or so with 128MB of RAM, and KDE 2.x is a dog for performance. So I switched her over to ROX (RiscOS On X) and sawfish with a pretty theme (much like one I use).

She has icons for printing, trash, logging in, and OpenOffice, in addition to folders for her documents and public_html (which I explained to her was the place to put documents she wanted to share, so my Windows-using dad had a way to get at them). It works great. She loves it. I can modify it remotely. It doesn't break. It runs Linux.

"Funky" video codecs? If it's DivX-related, it's got a good chance of being one of the endless bad hacks of the Microsoft MPEG4 codec. If it is, then getting it working in the first place was a miracle. Regardless, this FAQ tip should get your friend going again.

Frequently-asked questions:
http://www.avsforum.com/hdtvfaq/HDTV-FAQ.htm
http://www.nwlink.com/~rxg/hdtv.html

Reviews, tips, tweaks, etc:
http://www.hometheaterspot.com
http://www.avsforum.com
http://www.keohi.com/keohihdtv/index.htm

Just what do folk pay for bandwidth? I pay my ISP, Northwest Link, $25 for service including the 1st Gig of bandwidth then $10/Gig there after(which I consider expensive)...

I don't know about performance, but Java looks really cool on OS X. See ArgoUML running on a Mac... http://www.nwlink.com/~stevep/ArgoScreenShot.jpg
I wish it would look half as good on my Linux box...

ac wrote:

Anyone know where SQL Server and Exchange server fall in the split between OS and apps?

They're clearly not OS elements, since you can buy and even install Windows without them, and you can install competing SQL servers or mail servers on Windows. That makes them applications.

http://totem.fdns.net - totem@nwlink.com

Another place I've seen extreme microfilaments mentioned was in Orson Scott Card's Wyrms . The protagonist, a 15-year old heiress trained as an assassin, kept a very thin (i.e., molecules wide...) cord in her hair for strangling herself if necessary. Wyrms is a great book, BTW. Very strange in places but flows extremely well.

Artist's conception of International Space Station BURNING IN HELL.

Blue-green fireball sightings over Washington

Here's an index of Fireball reports at the National UFO Reporting Center.

There have been some references made to comments by Rick McCallum, producer for the SW prequels, about waiting for high-capacity (blue laser) DVDs to become feasible. Here's a link to the comments. Of course, these aren't exactly Associated Press-verified comments, but it certain seems like something Lucas would do. Of course, you could argue it's either for the sake of quality or for the sake of money. Lucas has claimed in many interviews that it took 15 years for movie technology to get to the point where he felt he could finally make the prequels, so he may be convincied it will take another 6 years for DVD technology to reach the point where he can do the types of things he'd like to do. Let's face it, up 'till now most DVDs have lived up to only the improved picture and sound promises, not the interactive, multi-angle, personallized experience it was hyped to be.

And, just to catch you up with the latest on blue laser DVDs, check out this article at E-Town.

Finally, there isn't any rule that says you have to buy the VHS. And like someone else commented, it took 8 years before the original trilogy appeared on VHS...