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I used to work for Time Inc. New Media, back when it ran a little website called Pathfinder. It was, at one point, the biggest draw on the Net. There is still a a vestigial webpage.

The Time Inc. building is a bastion of "liberal media"; the company is beyond politically correct in all ways.

Interestingly, no one seemed to have an issue with the fact that some employees created a Doom level of the editorial room, and that the map was made freely available to anyone. There was even an open game server for anyone to frag some Time Inc. "employees". And yes, we used to really enjoy "killing" someone in their own office (which had accurate furniture layout, even some wallhangings, if memory serves).

This all passed muster with the most liberal, politically correct tightasses on the planet. That says something about how silly this society is becoming in general.

From Arthur C Clarke's future history:

2025 Neurological research finally leads to an understanding of all the senses, and direct inputs become possible, bypassing eyes, ears, skin, etc. The inevitable result is the metal "Braincap" of which the 20th century's Walkman was a primitive precursor. Anyone wearing this helmet, fitting tightly over the skull, can enter a whole universe of experience real or imaginary - and even merge in real-time with other minds. Apart from its use for entertainment and vicarious adventure, the Braincap is a boon to doctors, who can now experience their patients symptoms (suitably attenuated). It also revolutionizes the legal profession; deliberate lying is impossible. As the Braincap can only function properly on a completely bald head, wig-making becomes a major industry.

Every couple of days we see a new example of how China is restricting the masses' communications through the 'Great Firewall of China' or some stupid phrase like that, so it kinda makes me wonder: When will the Chinese revolt against this. Locke put it best: All people are endowed when then come into this world with basic inalienable rights (guess where the Declaration of Independence came from). It is the job of the government to protec these rights, and when they cannot, it is the job of the people to restructure their government so it does. This has happened a lot. France. The United States. Most of Europe in 1830 (and a few places in 1848). Tiananmen Square? No, I'm not talking about the guy in front of the tanks. I'm talking about the actual demonstration that led to that. The first Bloody Sunday.

So, when do you think there will be a full-fledged revolution? Hasn't Big Brother gotten too strong? It's bad enough that major forms of communications are blocked, such as internet access, but now much more smaller things, like SMS messages are beginning to be blocked?

Matt Damon is Darl McBride in "Holding Up Hollywood", this fall on HBO.

Spiderman sounds way cooler than Geckoman though. I mean, what's Geckoman going to use instead of a web-shooter, his super long tongue shooter? Who would make a comic book character that does such a silly thing. Oh...wait...

After this and Declan's previous article (something along the lines, "there should be a seperation of techies and state"), which seem, well, non-Declan (who is generally a fierce advocate for freedom and is anti-DMCA) I am wondering if this is applicable...

** MISSING **
Declan McCullagh
ACLU Award: Free Speech
Time Magazine Advocate for: Privacy
Previous Plaintiff: Challenging the Communications Decency Act
Anti-DMCA Efforts: Intervened in the landmark DVD/DeCSS lawsuit asking the court to open proceedings.

Declan McCullagh was reported missing to the /. user community. He was last known to be in Washington DC, and is believed to have undergone philosophical changes upon employment with CNET's News.com.

Incident Type: DMCA Abduction

If you have information regarding the disappearance of this individual, please contact: the /. community at http://www.slashdot.org.

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these guys got chicks.

Umm, last time I checked, Fortune One was General Motors, not Microsoft. It looks like Wal-Mart may overtake GM in 2001... but Microsoft is down at number 84.

Not to take away from your comment - I do think the headline was flamebait and an obvious troll (just look at the comment id - it worked!) but MS isn't that huge.

Nothing wrong with Devil's Advocate :)

I don't know how "reliable" this is but I did find this picture and blurb about the remains of Tutankhamen. I realize we wasn't buried in one of the pyramids at Gizeh but it could definately be used as a point of reference in time.

Also, I believe that pigments (on pottery) and some of the "debris" (like rotted wood and food) found in the tombs is organic based and can be carbon-dated.

I think you're right about the pyramids at Gizeh being empty.

It's much easier to reply to the parent than to all the "but they are only aol ads" or "but they allow free *nix clients" or other people objecting to this post, so, I am.

I bring you a dictionary definition:

loss leader (lôs ldr) -- n. -- A commodity offered especially by a retail store at cost or below cost to attract customers.

AIM is, in a sense, a loss leader. They provide the service free of charge in order to get more people using the service. The ads may be only AOL ads, but they do get money when someone signs up.

AIM has another loss leaderish aspect. "Look how good this product is, and imagine how great the whole service must be!" Sure, that doesn't apply to the TiK using group (and other flavors), but it does to the geek's friends. (I'll refrain from posting the definition of "friend.") One doesn't lose the ability to "talk" with TiK using buddies when they sign up for AOL.

Oh, and my Win AIM client just put up an ad for th is page, which seems not to be an AOL site. But that has nothing to do with the idea of AIM being a loss leader.

"The whole point of Google is to get you on and off the site as soon as possible."

Considering that Google has introduced the concept of democracy to ranking the prominence (or relevance) of sites is revolutionary thinking, and they deserve to reap the rewards of their thinking. Google know that by refusing to offer the top-heavy extras of other sites, they too will rule supreme on the democracy of the Internet as one of the most popular search engines.

Google will continue to offer speedy search engine results, and they will probably do all they can to preserve their unique status. By cutting down on advertisements and extras, combined with their Linux-operated rack systems of off-the-shelf motherboards and spaghetti wiring, Google is also making enormous savings compared to conventional search engines.

Sure Google is going public next year, but they won't need massive ads and extras to draw in revenue. Unlike conventional search engines, Google doesn't charge a flat rate, but based on per search basis when other sites link it to, and the revenue will keep pouring in, without killing both the principle and advantages of Google.

MashPotato - Mobile Array of Support Helpers for Potato

Yes, but they've been the enemies of "upstanding" Americans for years anyway - see here for a Christian perspective on D&D and here for a Time magazine article, both of which are anti RPGs. There is a good overview of the whole situation with lots of links here at about.com.

Essentially, Pinkerton sued Weezer and Geffen Records over the title of their album Pinkerton as trademark infringement. Weezer won the case, but the fact that something so obviously non-detective-agency-related as their album (Pinkerton refers to a character in the Pucini opera Madame Butterfly) makes these guys look pretty bad... not to mention the judge who had the gall to issue a preliminary injunction.

-l

Yes! Glad to see the good old IBM Personal Computer (PC). Not the AT, not the XT, but the original PC. I got one in Dec. 1997 which is pretty sad when you think about it. I was crusing along on an 8-bit bus and 4.77 MHz CPU. CGA (2-bit color) graphics, but I bet the text mode would work just fine in Linux (too bad the shape of the full-length board prevents me from putting it into a 16-bit ISA slot). The one I had, had a (c) 1984 BIOS (probably an upgrade) with a Seagate 20 MB (that's MB, not GB) drive. 6-pack plus card (to bring me up to the max: 640 KB RAM, game, serial, parallel, a clock that kept the time when you turned off the computer (heh)), 8087 Math Coprocessor (i.e. floating point unit on an external chip). Clicky-clacky 83-key keyboard. Cassette port. BASIC in ROM. Full height (think two CDROM drives on top of each other) 360 KB 5.25" floppy drive. I replaced the Intel 8088 with a clone that had fewer clock cylces for some instructions. I used that baby until I got my spanking new 486/66 in 1993. All you Apple II and Amiga fans harassed me all the while, but where is your Apple II and Amiga now? Ha! Now everyone is using glorified x86's and MS-DOS with add-ons. (Just funnin'. No flames please.)

The Personal Computer (in general) was Time's Man of the Year (called Machine of the Year since it isn't a man) for 1982. http://www.pathfinder.com/time/special/moy/1982.ht ml

There's some really interesting stuff in that article.

Just as an example -- David Futrelle, currently at Money Magazine, formerly at Upside and Salon. Here's somebody who makes an effort to understand the technologies and economics that he's writing about, has genuine insight, is consistent from one week to the next and doesn't place himself at the center of every issue. And he doesn't say "geek" in every other sentence.

I think his only previous exposure here was when he wrote that Red Hat was more difficult to install than MacOS, and everyone here flamed his inbox to a crisp.

Want to see something even more humorous than Time-Warner reporting on AOL? Turn off your cookies (so it prompts you if you'll accept them) and then go to the article on the lawsuit and watch how many prompts you get. Its sickingly funny. Almost.

Many of the points above are shared with other non-Western languages (lack of a single standard character set, the issue of linguitics, user interface, ...etc.)

Here in the Middle East, we face a strikingly similar set of problems, with some added bonus. People who speak Arabic as a first language were about 181 million in 1997 (according to this Times article), making it the Fifth language in the world after Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish and Hindi.

Arabic is unique in that it needs the peripherals (the VT100 terminal and the printer) to support automatic contextual character shaping on the fly, and Right-to-Left orientation. It shares these qualities with other Semitic language (Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Nabatean). So, a character set and a font is not enough, like the case in most western language.

Several years ago, there were lots of character sets, each in use by a different hardware vendor, and even many vendors had several character sets. A standard (called ASMO-708) emerged, and was adopted by almost all vendors using ASCII (IBM was EBCDIC, so they were different).

In the early 1990s, a company called Al Alamia developed a version of Microsoft Windows 3.x that supports many character sets, including ASMO-708. Microsoft hired (read stole!) the main developer from Al Alamia, there was a law suit.

When Windows 95 came, the battle was won (by MS!) in the Arabic arena.

When the web arrived, things got even worse (from a standard point of view) and a Netscape version (called Sindbad) was developed by Sakhr to navigate the web in Arabic, and lately released it as a plug-in to Navigator 4.x. It is terribly slow though. Microsoft won the browser wars, and virtually all the Arabic users are now using Windows 95/98/NT with MS Internet Explorer. New development of Arabic web pages is almost done entirely for MS Internet Explorer. Not good!

Dynamic fonts are great and are used by a few sites. They work great with MS IE or NS Navigator, but are not widely used.

So, where does this leave Linux? There are:

• No arabized GUI for Linux at all, which makes me still use a dual boot to get Arabic.
• No good arabized browsers under Linux either.
• Microsoft is gaining a virtual monopoly on a whole culture of 22 or so countries!

I have some links on Arabic on the web (scroll to the bottom of the page on what is available for Arabic on the net.

--
Have you checked out Muslim Investor?

Yes. The press release states:

Time Warner will include AOL disks in promotional mailings and product shipments.

I assume (perhaps unwisely) that "product shipments" includes magazines. (Of course, this stuff has been coming with magazines for a long time already.)

Does it really matter who "Time" chooses? Who decides at Time who the person of the century is? It's an editor/owner type of deal. Why should I listen to some guy in a suit telling me that the man of the century is Einstein or whatever?

No, it doesn't matter, but don't get your panties all twisted up about it. It's not THE person of the century, it's TIME's person of the century. Parlor game. Discussion sparker (note surrounding). To some extent, a marketing gimmick, but one that's lasted 75 odd years. Big hairy deal.

I recommend you all stop waisting your time thinking what a single most important person of the century is. Just think about "people" who have influenced particular fields or parts of the every day life.

Just for you, because you're being a snot:
10 webpages on who else mattered.

PS: Why not have a person of the century? Women are people as well.. maybe TIME hasn't figured that one yet.

They've been pressured to change it for some time now, and they decided that 1999/2000 was the perfect moment. THis year, for the first time, Jeff Bezos was the PERSON of the year, and Albert Einstein (for those of us paying attention via the home game) the PERSON of the century.

If you're going to start tossing grenades around, better make sure you know where the pins are.
----

Are there any more reliable sources to confirm Einstein as the person of the century? (I noticed the Drudge Report said it would be "revealed" on Sunday).

I see over at the Time 100 he's the "featured profile", but that doesn't confirm anything.

They already did this six months ago on Denpa Shonen, the original real-life challenge show from Japan.

They based it on a Nostradamus prediction that the world would end on 1999/7/01, so they first got two comedians (both men) and put them in an underground shelter near Tokyo Bay (they had to dig the hole and install the shelter themselves!) They ended up fighting and one of the guys escaped, so they got a woman, hoping for an Adam and Eve, but they didn't fall in love with each other so they gave up on it. I don't think the world was destroyed either.

This show also did the desert island segment, though without the competitive element of the American "Survivor" show. Just two guys on a desert island, equipped with a video camera, who have to escape.

I'm surprised, though, that there still hasn't been an American/European version of the all-time classic Nasubi segment. I'd be the first to volunteer.

Actually, if you'd go to the site and read the article, you'd notice that your gripe has been rendered moot. It's Time's "Person of the Year". Jon Katz posted it as "Man of the Year"...

LouZiffer

Time has a poll at http://www.pathfinder.com/time/poy/
asking whether or not you agree with Time's choice.

Here's a time magazine article,an interview , his bio.



Bad Command Or File Name

...way back in September http:// www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0%2C3266 %2C30492%2C00.html

When without loss of blood he reduced Czechoslovakia to a German puppet state, forced a drastic revision of Europe's defensive alliances, and won a free hand for himself in Eastern Europe by getting a "hands-off" promise from powerful Britain (and later France), Adolf Hitler without doubt became 1938's Man of the Year.
-Time Magazine, Jan 2, 1939.

20% of U.S. population now considered clinically insane. Concentration camps for 'abnormals" are opened in some states; SubGeniuses begin waging open war on non-SubGeniuses.

So "Dateline for Dominance" as printed in my 1987 version of "Book of the SubGenius" is only 8 years behind the times. It just means that we counted the dates wrong and the saucers are 8 years late in coming, and that X-Day won't be until 2005! Woo-hoo!

...and if you're worried about 20% of us being nuts, wait'll 1992, when...

What we would call "lunatic-fringe kooks" account for 43% of U.S. population. Over 2 million separate, active sects. Well over half, however, are basically aligned with the Church of the SubGenius. The rest are violently anti-SubGenius, anti-individual, anti-thought Conspiracy dupes who still cling to a now-useless lifestyle. The United States is divided between these two powerful social forces.

The Fifth Civil War: Abnormals vs. Normals. During this period, the U.S. reverts to medieval barbarism.. Feudal warlord chieftains rule the thousands of mini-states into which the country has splintered. Bands of outlaws roam the countryside and the cities. Law as we know it is non-existent. Only huge corporations provide any stability to the social structure; they have *become* the "government", and jealously guard the remaining pockets of high technology. Most corporations run by "Bob".

AIYEEEEEEEEE YES! LET THERE BE SLACK!

Everything else you wanted to know is available at http://www.subgenius.com. Might I recommend:

some classics

Our Y2K preparedness page

Our effort to skew Time Magazine's Top Fraud of the Century" poll in favor of our spiritual Leader, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, because Time (of all magazines, after publishing The Cult of Greed and Power!) was probably too scared to have L. Ron Hubbard on the list. Unlike Elron's cult, OUR cult isn't afraid of being labelled for the fraud it is! HAH!

They'll never clean my cage! Now give me some more of... (post runs out)

Why wouldn't a large multiple systems operator like Charter Communications want to own a source of programming? You'd be surprised how many cable companies own bits and pieces of cable channels. One of the posters in this thread mentioned Ted Turner and his cable channel empire; Turner actually sold the channels to Time Warner, which also operates as a cable access provider. Time Warner also owns HBO. As for who owns Time Warner, MediaOne Group owns 25% of Time Warner Cable. AT&T is buying MediaOne. AT&T also owns shares in the companies that bring you networks like QVC, USA, and Encore, through their subsidiary Liberty Media Group, which also owns part of Time Warner.

It's much easier to control the media than to pay fees to other media firms. Programming costs are a major part of cable company expenses. Also, owning media maximizes advertising profits and enables a certain spin on what is shown on TV.

I'd post more, but it took me an hour to find all this out (I knew it, but I needed proof because my memory is rather...odd...)

Isn't media consolidation interesting?

Actually, it was 20/20.

Depending on HOW you hold the phone, many phones far exceeded the safety limits.

Their report was based on science that is, at best, dubious. Here are a few URLs you may want to review if you are interested in the topic:

http://www.wow-com.com/respons e/sar/german_intro.cfm
http://iago.lib.mcw .edu/gcrc/cop/cell-phone-health-FAQ/toc.html
http://www.pathfinder. com/time/personal/19991101/health.html

Time had a good article on it October 11, here

You can check out a recent article in TIME magazine. It discusses the pros and cons of laser treatment.

___________

In America, there are 160 million people wearing either glasses or contacts. (TIME, 1999) There are two different forms of laser surgery. One is called "PRK", which stands for "photorefractive keratectomy", and the other is called "LASIK", which stands for "laser in situ Keratomileusis". There are some fundamental differences between these two procedures. Basically, the PRK method is used most often on smaller, less drastic eye corrections. It has virtually no human involvement (there are no cuts made by a doctor because only a machine does any slicing) but it has a longer recovery period. LASIK is used for more drastic changes in vision quality and has a faster recovery period. This procedure depends more on the doctor making cuts, so there is more need to be absolutely sure that the doctor is experienced with this particular treatment. A basic thing to be concerned about is actually, it turns out, the software used for the laser path. Depending who you go to, newer software will be available for better vision. This cost is, of course, passed on to the patient which is something else to consider. If you are interested in seeing a photo essay example of LASIK surgery, that is available here. And for those squeamish folks out there, these are illustrations. No blood, no gore. Check it out.

The TIME article is excellent!! A must read if your considering this surgery. There are certain cases were complications do arise; patients complain of being very sensitive to light and seeing halos. Also in some cases people end up with worse vision than they had. I don't remember the exact statistic but for the most part individuals end up with very close to 20/20 after the surgery. Plan on saving up about $5000 as hardly (if any) insurance companies cover this kind of surgery.

Time magazine did a good article in October:

http://www.pa thfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,31865,0 0.html

I was thinking about doing Lasik. I had three friends who did. 1 did great and loves it. 1 sees halos at night and glare, but loves it anyways. And i never talk to the third guy because he was such a loser.

After reading a lot of stuff, and then the Time article, I decided I'll just stick with my glasses with the tape on the bridge. I think it adds a lot to my overall seductive and erotic image, anyhow.

/will

The U.S. is just so pitifully behind in their digital cell phone services. Anyone ever try travelling around the U.S. with one? Whatever network you choose, it's far from all-encompassing. Now head over to Europe or Asia, and see just how much better their phones work. And how many more things you can do w/ it (pay bills, text-message, etc.).

And the accessories that are available to phone users. Like the bland outer casings for them Nokia phones that are marketed here PALE in comparison to the smorgasbord of designs you can get in - of all places - the Philippines. (You'd be surprised at just how many people in this poly-island country have cell phones. And text-messaging is now part of the youth culture there.)

Also a beef I have w/ the U.S. digital cell phone services is if you wanna switch companies, you have to buy a freakin' new phone for it. Because the phone you'd been using was meant to be used for just that one cell phone company. This explains why there're no longer long-term contracts like they had w/ the analog phones. This is how they getcha!

Check this article out. It's entitled Why your cell phone stinks from TIME. They blame the standards wars (CDMA, PCS, GSM) of years past to why the U.S. is behind.

J.R. "Bob" Dobbs (high epopt of the Industrial Church of the SubGenius) is currently at #1 in Time's poll of the 100 Phonies and Frauds of the Century.

is Fortune's look at what money has done to SV culture, and what SV residents do with their money. Fortune's conclusion is that people are more afraid than happy, and that money has become the only way of keeping score.

I doubt that; the survivors of General Magic are still regarded with respect, even though they didn't make a dime. Nonetheless, the article seems mostly accurate to me.

I'd love to move to SV, but I dread getting trapped there by an underwater mortgage. I've lived through the collapse of a housing bubble (Rte 128 in Boston after the minicomputer collapse in the late 80s). It's no fun making payments on a mortgage that's 120% of the house's value. And you can forget about refinancing, even when the rates drop...

Nerds for News :-)

Here is the link.

Does anybody remember when Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf was almost voted People's most beautiful person? Think about having him for President! Of course, as of May, 1998, Time magazine's man of the century on-line poll had Ric Flair in the lead with nearly 30 kvotes.

--

Does anybody remember when Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf was almost voted People's most beautiful person? Think about having him for President! Of course, as of May, 1998, Time magazine's man of the century on-line poll had Ric Flair in the lead with nearly 30 kvotes.

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If you go to this link you will find a poll for some of the most infuential people of the century, one is for "Builders and Titans." While Linus may not be the most important person of the century, his creation of Linux started a movement that has revolutionized the computer industry. So maybe instead of Man of the Century, we should vote for him as one of the Builders and Titans of the century. He is certainly more admirable than some of their samples.

Where do they get all those hundreds of thousands of votes from? This poll surely got hacked. Also check out this poll. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk got 1305357 votes? Yeah right. Or look at Scientists and Thinkers. As if 769029 people in this world actually know the name of Enrico Fermi (and to be honest, I don't know either Jonas Salk and Viktor Hambardzumian).

The 100 Worst Ideas. I only have two small complaints:

1) You can only pick one choice out of the list.
2) The choices at the top will probably get more votes simply because they're at the top.

Still, it's quite entertaining just to read through the choices.

By the way, I voted for Albert Einstein for the Person of the Century, simply because it's the best thing I could come up with. How Madonna or Linus even got on the list is beyond me. And who is Yitzhak Rabin? Am I missing something?

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http://cgi.pat hfinder.com/time/digital/yourtech/0,2936,26790,00. html

It's from TIME magazine.

Its interesting. This was almost the review I was going to write about the book. I finished it yesterday, in an attempt to get it out of my system. Its one of those books thats so good, as you read it it starts to affect your outlook, and you continually muse over the characters and scenes.

I've been a diehard Stephenson fan for a while. What makes him cool, beyond being an excellent storyteller - action, humor, tech - is that he really does his homework, and he tries to present ideas that he's been working on for a while. This was obvious in snow crash, diamond age, etc.

The most interesting thing about this book, for me, was that it was a nice merger from some of his shorter writings he's done in the last 3 or so years.

Modern Crypto ideas were in Spew. And he clearly knows the underseas cable world, from his lengthy journal ("the hacker tourist"? With GPS signatures?) in Mother Earth Mother Board.

Perhaps his best writing on the points of the modern thread of Cryptonicon (the Crypt and digital currency backed with cash) was in a fictional story in Time (thus, why all of his modern bios give "one of three authors ever to write a fiction piece for Time magazine") of such a bank, called Simoleon. I envision it takes place about 2-3 years after Cryptonomicon I ends... He also has an interest ing non fiction article on the subject in Time.

Anyway, definately worth the time and money. Then read Applied Cryptography and Kahn's Codebreakers. I'm off to track down some Pynchon, as this is now the third book he's been compared to.

Alex Bischoff
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is at http://cgi.pathfi nder.com/time/digital/daily/0,2822,26529,00.html

This one with quotes from Eric Raymond and Emmanuel Goldstein

And another one on TIME Digital here