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Robert X Cringely wrote about the IBM/Sequent connection several months ago. See here -> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030619. html

All of the MS products are being rewritten to be based on .Net. ISVs are being pushed towards .Net. In the case of VB developers, they simply don;t have a choice. For C++ developers, MS is constantly selling us the manageed C++ mantra. Even game developers are getting the .NEt pitch.

If Mono works, then Microsofts own products, those of independent system developers and popular games will all be just as good on Linux, OSX, etc. as they will be on Windows. That should make MS very nervous. Go Miguel!

I just watched the "Mind's Big Bang" episode of the PBS series "Evolution," and I was surprised to find out that there is a new sign language created by deaf children in Nicaragua.

What makes this case unique is that it's the first time linguists have actually observed the birth of a new language. It looks like the 'language instinct' is alive and well.

Are you really Sheldon Glashow?

Just like with IE vs. Netscape, M$ doesn't expect a profit. And it needs to do two things with their music service that will provide advantages in the long run.

1. Tie users into their DRM. Plain and simple.
2. Tie users to their media player which will be restricted to their DRM.

Number 2 kills the following companies on the Win platform: Real, MusicMatch, BuyMusic, Napster and even iTunes so long as iPod sales for Windows drop off. iTunes will still exist for the Mac tho.

Cringley's latest article has some excellent points on M$' whole DRM, platform agenda and why they lose money in most of their non-Office and non-OS ventures.

Frankly, this smacks of the same shit that happened a few years back with the browser wars. M$ sees threat, launches their money losing alternative. Then bundles it, forces relevant M$ apps to use it, and then breaks compatibility. And thanks to huge lock on the desktop - along with, really, apathy on the developer and user base - presto, competition eliminated and monopoly suceeded.
With their media player, a similar thing will happen. But instead of breaking standards, M$ will force their propreitary format on everyone who wants to use their player, thusly creating the artifical standard. Deja'vu all over again.

I really hope the EU kicks their ass on this front and them releasing a music (then video, I'm sure) service could potentially add more fuel to the fire. These guys (M$) are due a good ass kickin. We don't need their vision of computing nor their abuses. The real world does not have just one car maker or one company who builds all the houses everywhere, or even one company who makes a variety of cd players. The software world should be no different.

One reason I can deal with Apple's DRM is because I can take the songs, burn them to a cd and then rip them back in. I still have very good quality, but the songs are not restricted and in a more widely usuable format - mp3. And in the end, compatibility with all my machines is the gold standard of which I try to live by. It's hard, long road, but not an impossible one.

I know the old joke about God not thinking he's Larry Ellison seems like an exaggeration, but Ellison's ego is uncontainable. I'd never seen him speak until I saw the segment about him on Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds PBS series. I was immediately repulsed by him. The man is obsessed with not only winning, but showing up his competitors. That's the difference between Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. Gates doesn't (publicly, at least) give a shit about Ellison. Ellison's obsessed with beating Gates.

There are a lot of huge egos in the computer industry, but none are larger than Larry Ellison's.

So it's ok for you to point the finger at us when your own house isn't in order but not ok for me to return the favor because mine isn't? Lest you forget who started this thread with the long list of what is wrong with America and why we didn't have the right to criticize the Chinese.

And, unlike France, the US is responsible for actually destroying democracies and creating dictatorships on a wide scale

No, they just prevented them from emerging as democracies in the first place. That's so much better.

The French invented unilateralism. While the rest of the West was working together to oppose the Russians and protect freedom the French decided that they would pull French forces out of NATO command, ask the allied forces to leave French soil ("Thanks for saving us from the Germans after we collapsed and surrendered... please leave now"), and refuse to let their most important (and as you said in a previous post "bad-mouthing your oldest ally to hell and back") and oldest ally use their airspace to strike a terrorist state (Libya under Quaddfi) who had just killed American servicemen (and a Turkish civilian!) in a terrorist attack on a Berlin disco. Sure hope they wouldn't have expected us to use their airspace if the Russians had defeated NATO forces in Germany and rolled across the Franco-German border on their way to the Bay of Biscay. Hey, what's a World War if Paris doesn't fall? ;)

Oh, and by the way, the French did not threaten the use of a veto with regards to a UN resolution supporting an invasion of Iraq

That's bullshit and you know it. Go read this and tell me otherwise. Let me quote the opening sentence for you: French President Jacques Chirac said Monday that "no matter what the circumstances" France will vote against a new U.S.-backed resolution currently being considered by the United Nations Security Council that would give Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a March 17 deadline to disarm or face possible military consequences.

Thanks for allowing a fair and open debate Mr. Chirac! Ever consider the fact that maybe the inspectors would have gotten more corporation out of the Iraqi regime over the years if it didn't appear like the French were protecting them from the consequences of not cooperating? But then, what should we expect from the French other then appeasement of dictators? How well did the Munich agreement and the betrayal of Czechoslovakia work out for you guys?

So, even if there had been a vote, any French "no" vote wouldn't have been a veto, because the required support was non-existant

Hard to say there wasn't enough support when the French refused to allow a fair and open debate on the subject. And according to the above quote, they would have veto'ed it anyway. So your argument is moot.

At least when we veto your resolutions on Israel we allow you to say your piece first. And BTW, we are supporting a democratic state that is surrounded by millions of enemies that want to see it pushed back into the ocean. Whereas the French were supporting a mass murderer with whom they had oil contracts worth billions. Tell me, which one of us here has the claim to the moral high ground?

No matter how legitimate of a claim that they have, giving into dictators, terrorists and despotic states is a bad idea (see the Munich agreement). Perhaps if the Muslims would stop bl

I meant the Fermat theorem.

That was NPR. PBS still needs your support.

I should have been clearer. I was not talking about communism or the system implemented by any particular government. I never even said that socialism is a good thing. I did write about the specific benefits that we all enjoy because of the actions (and sacrifices) of the American socialists. To deny those benefits is to deny history.

Actually, the ascii version will be available here

When The Elegant Universe aired here locally, PBS followed it by another noteworthy program called Einstein's Wife, which questions wether Einstein was alone in his creation of the Theory of Relativity as well as several other papers, or if he was in fact aided by his first wife Mileva who was as insightful into the universe as Einstein himself.
This program gives an interesting look into the human side of Einstein (never imagined him as a romantic), as well as a lot of issues of the day. While it doesn't delve into the physics, it does serve to illustrate Einstein's life in a much different manner than I've previously seen. It's a fascinating program and well worth a look.
Einstein's Wife

I recommend you spend more time studying history. When Japan attacked us in 1941, they did so without any declaration of hostilities prior. We had not attacked them. Our soldiers and sailors in Pearl Harbor were not in a state of alert. It's one of the biggest cheap shots in the anals of civilization.

In 1945, Japan had been beaten. Their millitary forces were smashed, our air force was dropping incendiary bombs on anything that would burn on the main islands, and yet the warlords that ran the country refused to surrender, electing instead to fight a bloody war of attrition that meant the countless slaughter of their own innocent civillian population.

We saw this happen on Okinawa -- civilians told to fight to the death, or die at the hands of their own government. Civilians who where so scared by official millitary propoganda, they preferred to jump to their deaths from the cliffs overhanging the ocean, rather than surrender to an enemy they'd been told would do unspeakable things to them if they surrendered.

On the Japanese home islands, we were slaughtering civillians from the air already, but still no surrender. Our country was faced with the prospect of having to invade with a force of up to a million men, and casualty rates likely to be in the range of 250,00.

If you read history and understand it, you see how dropping the bomb was the best and most humane way of bringing that bloody war to as quick an end as possible.

I was just surfing the web and came across this Nova article about one of the possible theories over the creation of the moon. Its says that the moon is a result of a asteroid crashing into the earth and was formed by the pieces that were blasted off the earth. Here is a video animation they have on it.

I was just surfing the web and came across this Nova article about one of the possible theories over the creation of the moon. Its says that the moon is a result of a asteroid crashing into the earth and was formed by the pieces that were blasted off the earth. Here is a video animation they have on it.

I was just surfing the web and came across this Nova article about one of the possible theories over the creation of the moon. Its says that the moon is a result of a asteroid crashing into the earth and was formed by the pieces that were blasted off the earth. Here is a video animation they have on it.

So what? Time pulled it, thememoryhole posted it, PBS has Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser in the George H. W. Bush administration, interviewed in October 2001, Libertarian Thought and many others have the text.

Once it hits the net, it is around for a looong time.

The solution to me seems to be large groups supporting the system by agreement and pledges.

This has been tried before. Can you imagine: you're running Linux, and once a year, for a week, Linux stops running ten minutes an hour and bombards you with messages in which Betty White asks you to send money to support this quality program. Send in $30 and get a mug, send in $100 and get a lovely coffee-table book.

Software supported by ... users like you.

No big wars, only small ones, and everyone lives happily together. A real land of peace...

Good thing it's safe to live in Europe! Maybe if we don't speak up about terrorists, they'll leave us alone...

This helps back my (otherwise unfounded) theory that too many of these anti-bacterial cleaning supplies will doom the human race. Of course, I was looking at it from the point of view that if we raise children unexposed to filth they'll be far more susceptible once they are exposed. This study gives the possibility that there may be more naturally occuring aids that we are destroying through our ignorance.

Consider: if Alexander Fleming had been more conscientious about cleaning his petri dishes, he may never have found penicillin. (Reference - I'd heard it was an accident, but never knew it was on a dish in a sink waiting to be cleaned.) Reading this article, it also occurs to me that while no one can (probably) patent a naturally occuring virus, they probably can patent an effective growing/harvesting process.

Tom Green: wildly successful, with shows on MTV
Bam Margera & friends: MTV's Jackass, ultimately leading up to a Jackass big screen release.

Both of these have been heavily promoted by Viacom because they're enormously profitable. Yes, both of them started independently and were to some degree successful on their own, but don't think that being 'bought up' by MTV is a sign of individual success. Neither would be where they are today if not for the overwhelming promotion by Viacom.

See also : Merchants of Cool

Maybe not. But, I have an idea of how good it should be, and we're not there. Don't take offense if it seems to me that you have no idea how bad we have it from just a few short years ago.

Until you've seen the face of a person terrified at the idea of meeting any police, or a person shaking after getting a ticket, or a person afraid to talk to anyone in government, then you should talk.

I can guess by your lack of experience that you're without a permanent tan and haven't been pulled out of line by airport security for having one. Not through any fault of yours, as we are all birthed in our skin by chance. I would submit that freedom isn't a state of being, but a continuous struggle against those who hypocritically only value their own rights while disregarding yours. Freedom isn't very anything. It simply is or isn't happening. It can start or it can stop. The freedom to access a lawyer when your arrest has been categorized as a "terrorist action" has stopped.

We are free. We are very free. You can walk up to the White House and picket it. You can drive your truck with a rifle in the back. You can say what you want on the Internet. You can read the books you want.

Anyone can do any of the things you've mentioned and more. It is simply a matter of the consequences that becomes the deterence to those activities. Even expressing yourself on the internet can be a dangerous proposition. To keep this reply short and educational, I'll simply point you to a source you can learn from.

Even if another terrorist attack occurs, do you think they're going to take these liberties away? No. The government won't. In fact, they can't. Because people like myself speak up and let people like you know what is going on.

You're statement has a naivete that is almost charming. On the other hand, it is also a sad indictment of our public schools' failure to teach history in any meaningful manner. This failure is one the reasons why historical events repeat themselves in such tight, short cycles in the U.S., which is reflected so heavily in our foreign policies.

Our founding fathers knew what they were doing a hell of a lot better than you give them credit for.

I give them all the credit. Many of them are my heroes. Unfortunately, they are dead. The dead cannot defend their dreams. Its up to you and me to defend them at home, so that bad things don't happen to other people.

= 9J =

Errrumm - doesn't really matter *who* does it eh? A good program on pbs recently made an excellent point: the danger in researching stuff like this is we (U.S./Russia) forge the way for the nuts (Osama) to steal the technology and use it. So the point is, it's a little _stupid_ to be providing all sorts of research money on how to weaponize things like Anthrax, or how to make small nuclear bombs, which could easily be used by terrorists.

To summarize, why provide a "springboard", i.e. all the money, scientists, and research for a dubious technology, that could easily be turned against us?

Consider, for example, gunpowder. Invented in China, but they only ever used it for fireworks to amuse the aristocrats.

" In my own research, I have been able to refute the common notion that the Chinese invented gunpowder but only used it for fireworks. I'm sure that they discovered military uses for it. I have found the earliest illustration of a cannon in the world, which dates from the change-over from the Northern Song to the Southern Song around 1127, which was 150 years before the development of the cannon in the West. The Song also used gunpowder to make fire lances - actually flame throwers - and many other gunpowder weapons, such as anti-personnel mines, which are thankfully now being taken out of general use."

since the volume approached 0.) I don't know how long it lasted

Very small fractions of a second.

Then there's Linux/BSD/QNX + GNU. All of which have Wintel clobbered for ease of maintenance (including stability and security) and at least tied for ease of use.

More interestingly, cities like Turku and Munich got large discounts for even mentioning that they were considering investigating Linux. The mention that Microsoft cannot give discounts anymore implies that they've run out of money to do so. Shrinking revenues as well as accumulated fines and penalties could easily account for this, even when cancelled products and services are acconuted for.

Does anyone else get the feeling that SCO is trying to get the Linux Kernel into the public domain so Microsoft can use it as a base for Longhorn? Robert X Cringley had an article about this a few months back.

Actually, PBS is allowing you to view the program on the website after both airings. (this week and next week)

From the site:
"Immediately following the broadcast of "The Elegant Universe" on October 28th and November 4, watch the entire three-hour special here. Each episode will be divided into chapters and can be viewed with the QuickTime or RealPlayer plug-ins. "

And the link:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

Check out NOVA tonight and next Tuesday night. Explains how one would take ship up to such high speeds (among other things). Warning, serious geek stuff inside:

Elegant Universe

Cringely's takeon the same subject. Different words but some of the same thoughts. Revenue (corporate lust for profit) vs. Glory (personal lust for fame).

Cringely Quote:

When Ballmer talks about rears being on the line, what really counts at Microsoft is meeting shipping targets -- meeting business goals -- not quality targets. It is all about revenue. And there is nothing wrong with that if we all just say it out loud and admit the truth. But we don't.

The lack of a roadmap for Open Source means that there can be dozens of similar projects, some being born, some dying, and others forking into new identities. Since there is no single architect for Open Source, these projects all have to compete for manpower and user interest. Most Open Source projects die, but when they do, it is a death Darwin would understand. Every death improves the software bloodline.

JoAnn

Your media are broken.

According to the PBS TV show NOW, your Air Force was supposed to check on aircraft off of their flight paths, and that in 2000 they had in fact escorted several planes back to where they belong. (See here.

BREITWEISER: On the morning of September 11th we had four planes drastically off their flight path transponders disconnected and the FAA procedure and protocol to notify NORAD and for NORAD to scramble fighter jets were not followed. And it wasn't like they all happened in the course of an hour. What I think is very frustrating is looking back when I speak to people they say, "Well it happened in such a short span of time."

It did not happen. It happened over the course of two hours. You're telling me over the course of two hours Andrews Air Force Base in the Washington, DC area which houses F-16s which fly cover for Air Force One could not get a plane up in the air to cover the Pentagon?

Why hasn't this hit your mass media? It's incomprehensible.

Your media are broken.

According to the PBS TV show NOW, your Air Force was supposed to check on aircraft off of their flight paths, and that in 2000 they had in fact escorted several planes back to where they belong. (See here.

BREITWEISER: On the morning of September 11th we had four planes drastically off their flight path transponders disconnected and the FAA procedure and protocol to notify NORAD and for NORAD to scramble fighter jets were not followed. And it wasn't like they all happened in the course of an hour. What I think is very frustrating is looking back when I speak to people they say, "Well it happened in such a short span of time."

It did not happen. It happened over the course of two hours. You're telling me over the course of two hours Andrews Air Force Base in the Washington, DC area which houses F-16s which fly cover for Air Force One could not get a plane up in the air to cover the Pentagon?

Why hasn't this hit your mass media? It's incomprehensible.

Back in April, Scientific American Frontiers had part of an episode (video here, transcript here) that talked about this same thing - including face recognition, with a blip of 1/3 of a video frame... I forget whether video frames are 24 or 30 frames per second, but if it's 30, than it would be consistent with the article above.

Back in April, Scientific American Frontiers had part of an episode (video here, transcript here) that talked about this same thing - including face recognition, with a blip of 1/3 of a video frame... I forget whether video frames are 24 or 30 frames per second, but if it's 30, than it would be consistent with the article above.

Back in April, Scientific American Frontiers had part of an episode (video here, transcript here) that talked about this same thing - including face recognition, with a blip of 1/3 of a video frame... I forget whether video frames are 24 or 30 frames per second, but if it's 30, than it would be consistent with the article above.

Back in April, Scientific American Frontiers had part of an episode (video here, transcript here) that talked about this same thing - including face recognition, with a blip of 1/3 of a video frame... I forget whether video frames are 24 or 30 frames per second, but if it's 30, than it would be consistent with the article above.

Two kickass reports about the whole 90's boom - one specifically going into some good detail on Quattrone - are viewable via Frontline.

Dot Con

Wall Street Fix

and even Bigger than Enron

Dot Con is much more specific as far as the whole Quattrone thing goes. It's amazing cuz I went thru that with a company that I help found (like many others I'm sure) and it's just phenominal the greed that ensued and how investment bankers and investors just took most of the public for a ride.

I'm actually glad that I never invested during this time, however, I had many friends and family that did and just got sacked. If the majority of the public really knew what went on during this period of time, I doubt they'd look to invest again. Of course, nothing like this in tech will probably happen again any time soon, if ever.

Two kickass reports about the whole 90's boom - one specifically going into some good detail on Quattrone - are viewable via Frontline.

Dot Con

Wall Street Fix

and even Bigger than Enron

Dot Con is much more specific as far as the whole Quattrone thing goes. It's amazing cuz I went thru that with a company that I help found (like many others I'm sure) and it's just phenominal the greed that ensued and how investment bankers and investors just took most of the public for a ride.

I'm actually glad that I never invested during this time, however, I had many friends and family that did and just got sacked. If the majority of the public really knew what went on during this period of time, I doubt they'd look to invest again. Of course, nothing like this in tech will probably happen again any time soon, if ever.

Two kickass reports about the whole 90's boom - one specifically going into some good detail on Quattrone - are viewable via Frontline.

Dot Con

Wall Street Fix

and even Bigger than Enron

Dot Con is much more specific as far as the whole Quattrone thing goes. It's amazing cuz I went thru that with a company that I help found (like many others I'm sure) and it's just phenominal the greed that ensued and how investment bankers and investors just took most of the public for a ride.

I'm actually glad that I never invested during this time, however, I had many friends and family that did and just got sacked. If the majority of the public really knew what went on during this period of time, I doubt they'd look to invest again. Of course, nothing like this in tech will probably happen again any time soon, if ever.

Oh, where to start on this one... let's see. Best estimates talk about oil lasting another 40-80 years at most. Given how basic oil is to our economy, and how long it takes to replace the oil infrastructure, it's necessary to start well in advance of when we actually run out. It takes TIME to develop fuel cells, fusion, hydrogen, or pig-shit based energy sources. The fact of the matter is that current market mechanisms do not do a good job of accounting for the future. They do not accurately price things ten, twenty or 40 years into the future. There is simply too much uncertainty for small companies to accurately gauge the value of investment in the very long term. That's one point.

A related point: people say "leave it to the market". Some invisible hand will reach out and save things and we don't have to do anything. I got news for ya folks. The markets are not ideal or perfect. They fail to account for costs, they do not predict future events, they can be manipulated. So don't put your future in blind trust of the market.

Next point. Global warming. It is real. Half the scientists in my department work on that area, and they all pretty much say "don't buy seafront property". I'll take the word of the National Academy of Sciences over your say-so any day.

Final point, in response to both your post and the parent posts. Don't belive the ultra-libertarian crap. There is a time and place for government intervention. It's when you have a chicken-and-egg problem: private investment won't happen until there is a reliable demand. Demand won't happen until there has been private investement. There are plenty of examples where government intervention and subsidies have worked very well. The interstate highway system. Rural electrification. Nuclear power. The airline industry (how it got started). The Internet.

A guy came around, saw I had a TV, signed his form and left.

Thanks for the reminder of why this was necessary. We USians are bad about taking what few freedoms we have left for granted, and reminders like this TV-tax weirdness are always appropriate.

check the about page.

He has no regular shows, but has done several specials for PBS.

Triumph of the Nerds was very good. Haven't seen Electric Money or Plane Crazy.

Actually, according to this frontline piece, the french still have a problem with NIMBY for waste containment (they have a solution, but the jury is still out on whether the solution will gain acceptance). Of course, that's a lot better than here in the US, where we have NIMBYism for even the power generation.

Goddamn, I wish the greens would grow up and learn to accept nuclear as less polluting than conventional alternatives... then we might be able to stop the fossil fuel lobby.

General thoughts, in no specific order...

A) the "dirty bomb" (a current favorite among hte fear mongering media) made out of radioactive materials is generally NOTHING like the multiple-megaton weapons that make the big fancy mushroom clouda. These are bombs that expode conventionally, and through said explosion, scatter radioactive materials around an area, creating a hot zone that will possibly kill, probably sicken, some people right near the area, but mainly just go to scare the millions of people into knee-jerk reactions though non-understanding.

B) Making a cheap and nasty little dirty bomb can be easily done by stealing the Cesium 137 out of a few hospitals (canisters of it are used in x-ray machines - i think its an xray machine). The added benefit of this is that the material is a very fine powder that can get spread widely by the wind.

One of these canisters got loose in Brazil once. Resulted in killing four and made a few people sick. THe cleanup was a tad nasty. People heard about it, and thousands of them showed up at hospitals to get checked out for possible contamination. This was after local officials told them "Look, you were in the immediate area, youre going to be fine." People still stood on line at hospitals, choking hospital resources and generally fucking up their ability to take care of those that were really hurt.

[If you get a chance, find that Dirty Bomb special NOVA did a while back. This is the ref for that cesium info above]

Stealing a fat hunk of reactor core would involve about a million times work, and unless they wannt rub the thing against a cheese grater for a while, they're left with one solid hunk of radioactive material, which is fairly easy to handle, contain, and bury somewhere.

[again, go read that NOVA site.]

C) Your average goober (read: 98% of the population) is completely unaware of that fact that we're constantly being bombarded with "background radiation" every second of every day. They're also unaware that our skin does a pretty good job of fending that low-level shit off.

D) Imagine if mass media existed at today's level in Edison's time. Getting people to accept the fact that electricity was not going to jump out of an unused outlet (or a wire) and kill you [in everyday non-dubmass use] would be next to impossible, and /. would have to be implemented using little peices of paper, fine point pens, and hundreds of thousands of really, really tired carrier pigeons.

E) People Die. Its something we all do, and ya can't avoid it, so stop fucking scaring yourselves into non-action. You can only hope its not going to be horrible. Generally, not being a stupidass - and keeping yourself aware of (AWARE, not SCARED) the other stupidasses around you - will go a long way in accomplishing this.

General thoughts, in no specific order...

A) the "dirty bomb" (a current favorite among hte fear mongering media) made out of radioactive materials is generally NOTHING like the multiple-megaton weapons that make the big fancy mushroom clouda. These are bombs that expode conventionally, and through said explosion, scatter radioactive materials around an area, creating a hot zone that will possibly kill, probably sicken, some people right near the area, but mainly just go to scare the millions of people into knee-jerk reactions though non-understanding.

B) Making a cheap and nasty little dirty bomb can be easily done by stealing the Cesium 137 out of a few hospitals (canisters of it are used in x-ray machines - i think its an xray machine). The added benefit of this is that the material is a very fine powder that can get spread widely by the wind.

One of these canisters got loose in Brazil once. Resulted in killing four and made a few people sick. THe cleanup was a tad nasty. People heard about it, and thousands of them showed up at hospitals to get checked out for possible contamination. This was after local officials told them "Look, you were in the immediate area, youre going to be fine." People still stood on line at hospitals, choking hospital resources and generally fucking up their ability to take care of those that were really hurt.

[If you get a chance, find that Dirty Bomb special NOVA did a while back. This is the ref for that cesium info above]

Stealing a fat hunk of reactor core would involve about a million times work, and unless they wannt rub the thing against a cheese grater for a while, they're left with one solid hunk of radioactive material, which is fairly easy to handle, contain, and bury somewhere.

[again, go read that NOVA site.]

C) Your average goober (read: 98% of the population) is completely unaware of that fact that we're constantly being bombarded with "background radiation" every second of every day. They're also unaware that our skin does a pretty good job of fending that low-level shit off.

D) Imagine if mass media existed at today's level in Edison's time. Getting people to accept the fact that electricity was not going to jump out of an unused outlet (or a wire) and kill you [in everyday non-dubmass use] would be next to impossible, and /. would have to be implemented using little peices of paper, fine point pens, and hundreds of thousands of really, really tired carrier pigeons.

E) People Die. Its something we all do, and ya can't avoid it, so stop fucking scaring yourselves into non-action. You can only hope its not going to be horrible. Generally, not being a stupidass - and keeping yourself aware of (AWARE, not SCARED) the other stupidasses around you - will go a long way in accomplishing this.

If you have a TiVo, get a season pass for Frontline. They often replay old shows.

Frontline, a great PBS documentary series, had a show on this, called Nuclear Reaction. Highly recommended.

Frontline, a great PBS documentary series, had a show on this, called Nuclear Reaction. Highly recommended.

You may find the various columns that Robert Cringely has written about getting a wireless DSL link to his house useful, or at least entertaining. His constraints sound similar to the ones here: it seems he lives in a valley with no local DSL service, and the nearest wired neighborhood is over ten miles away.

His first solution was to climb up a tree with a telescope, figure out the addresses of any homes he could get a clear line of sight to, and then go knocking on doors with the proposition that "I will buy you a high speed internet connection if you let me stick a directional antenna on your roof so that I can share it. This seems to work pretty well for him.

His next attempt played off the same idea, but instead used a pair of bidirectional Pringles can yagi antennae strapped to the top of a tree on the top of a nearby mountain. One end of each antenna points at his house, while the other points at a free wireless zone in a nearby downtown area. This gets him a full 2mbps channel, and he suggests that 5mbps or 11mbps might be feasible, and the parts were built for only $100 at Home Depot. He sounds a little iffy on the ethics of this scheme though, and claims not to be using it as his main connection until that gets sorted out, but in any event the connection technique has been demonstrated.

Maybe something like this could work in your area, with one of these bidirectional yagis strapped to one of the tall trees around your house, and the other end pointing to an uplink somewhere on the horizon. Got a telescope?

You may find the various columns that Robert Cringely has written about getting a wireless DSL link to his house useful, or at least entertaining. His constraints sound similar to the ones here: it seems he lives in a valley with no local DSL service, and the nearest wired neighborhood is over ten miles away.

His first solution was to climb up a tree with a telescope, figure out the addresses of any homes he could get a clear line of sight to, and then go knocking on doors with the proposition that "I will buy you a high speed internet connection if you let me stick a directional antenna on your roof so that I can share it. This seems to work pretty well for him.

His next attempt played off the same idea, but instead used a pair of bidirectional Pringles can yagi antennae strapped to the top of a tree on the top of a nearby mountain. One end of each antenna points at his house, while the other points at a free wireless zone in a nearby downtown area. This gets him a full 2mbps channel, and he suggests that 5mbps or 11mbps might be feasible, and the parts were built for only $100 at Home Depot. He sounds a little iffy on the ethics of this scheme though, and claims not to be using it as his main connection until that gets sorted out, but in any event the connection technique has been demonstrated.

Maybe something like this could work in your area, with one of these bidirectional yagis strapped to one of the tall trees around your house, and the other end pointing to an uplink somewhere on the horizon. Got a telescope?