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They offer IPv6. It's tunneled as far as I can tell, but it's tunneled within their own network so it works well.

sonic.net is the best, you just can't get fast service from them in most places. Lucky for you one of the places you can get it is downtown San Francisco.

http://sonic.net/features/ipv6/

It'd be better if they supported native IPv6, but then again my home router doesn't support native IPv6 either (but it does support tunneling).

I'm referring to the original theft of CP/M code that went into PC-DOS 1.0.

Ah yes, the sensational claim that there is a hidden command that prints Gary Kildall's name, but nobody will disclose the name of that command. That sounds plausible. Nobody has even attempted to prove that any copying has occured. And there had been, it would have been done by Seattle Computer Products and not Microsoft.

You may be right about stacker...

Don't worry, it is a common myth about code copying. I believed it myself until recently.

The Apple code theft I'm referring to is the Quicktime code that they stole to start Windows Media

It is not exactly a smoking gun that you make it out to be. A third party takes some code that they ported for Apple (or maybe it was new code that they wrote as part of that process) and they used it for another job that they did for Intel. Microsoft joins later on. Who knows if they knew where the code originated? It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a consultant has reused work that they had done previously for another client.

To top it off, the link you provided in another message refers to some analysis where some of this copied code has an Intel copyright on it. It really is a stretch to say that this is code that Microsoft copied.

"OK. So the government order Microsoft to document the protocols. Microsoft then does what the government asks. Now the government acknowledges that Microsoft has done what was asked. Somehow, the comments here make it seem like Microsoft made yet another mistake. Wasn't this what they asked Microsoft to do?

No, they were asked to open the specs not, after much delay, publish a mishmash of source code and API calls and then charge other compamies to connect their computers to their-own customers computers. What's difficult about producing an RFC. No doubt this undocumentation will be as deliveratly obscure as their previous efforts in that department ...

This is more than a bit surreal since SRJC has a long history of being on the net.

For example, Santa Rosa Junior College is one of the very few non-4-year colleges to have a .EDU domain name. In the early 90's they had two junior admins, Dane Jasper and Scott Doty, who went on to become the founders of a Mom-and-Pop Internet company that actually succeeded. It started as Sonoma Interconnect, but is now known as Sonic.net.

It's a shame to add this squirrely episode to that history.

Capitalism tries to externalize (and therefore ignore) all costs.

No, that's corporatism and the Corporate Aristocracy [reddit.com] Thomas Jefferson warned of

That's why I said try.

Maybe but I wanted to make the distinguishment between capitalism and the corporate aristocracy. Too many believe they are the same.

Right now the United States is fairly corporatist

That's why Thomas Jefferson issued his warning. When he ran for president banking corporations ran a negative campaign against him. Then again so did some religious groups.

I'm not against corporations themselves, I believe though that they should be held to the original standards by which they were granted Corporate Charters. The first two corporations to be granted charters were the East India Companies, the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and the British East India Company in 1604. Both owned ships and were shipping businesses, and shipping was a risky business. Ships could be attacked by pirates, as has been in the news lately, or they could sink. One may sink because of a storm. Whenever cargo and lives were lost a ship's owner was financially responsible. If someone had invested in or bought part of a ship they could loose everything. So the Dutch crown, then the British crown, created the idea of corporate charters. Someone could buy shares in a corporation and if something happened the most a person could loose is the amount they had invested. However for a business to be granted a corporate charter the business had to service the public or common good. As now trade was then generally s public good. If at any tyme a corporation did not serve the common good it could have it's corporate charter revoked.

Falcon

Read up on what he thinks of people who have families, you dope.

Every person has a family, you dope. We have ancestors and collaterals, even if we don't all have descendants.

Yes, RMS is not impressed by people's ability to breed, and thinks we need to stop overcrowding the planet. Though he expresses his point with his usual lack of tact or appreciation of ambiguity or compromise, there's nothing in the least "distasteful" about those ideas. (If you think merely having a baby is some sort of miracle, let me recommend Bill Hicks on the subject, though of course he's even less tactful. But funny.)

"The number of bugs in technical documentation for Microsoft communication protocols continues to grow"

Why don't they use the original specs the programmers used to implement the communication protocols on Microsofts' own server product?

"Microsoft officials have also suggested that the number of bugs will rise as the company devotes more resources to identifying and fixing them"

How does documentation get 'bugs', with access to the source and the developers it would be straight forward to get each programmer to write up a high-level description of what each function does, gather that into a spec, and voilà, there's your documentation already.

. If the company had a history of hiding information, I would suspect this as yet more Microsoft undocumentation

It would definately make Blockout more interesting.

Sonic.net also allows DSL subscribers to share their connections: http://www.sonic.net/hotspots/faq.shtml#hosting

Users get their own VPN tunnel, which means that their data is secure and they get their own IP, which means that the DSL subscriber isn't responsible for what they do. The subscriber also gets a share of any fees collected by the ISP.

They've offered IPv6 for years now:
http://www.sonic.net/features/ipv6/

I don't believe any US ISPs have begun providing IPv6 connections yet, have they?

Sonic.net has been offering IPv6 tunneling to DSL subscribers for years at no additional charge.
I like that VPN endpointing is included with dialup and DSL accounts too.

Unregulated capitalism LEADS to corporatism.

No he's not, it's government that gives corporations their power. Without that power corporations couldn't exist as they do today.

If you don't regulate companies so that they can't take advantage of people and things

I would love to see corporations have their Corporate Charter revoked.

Falcon

Don't be ridiculous. Without government regulation, companies naturally grow into monopolies, like they did in the 1900s.

You're the one being ridiculous, it was government that created most of those monopolies during the 1900s. Pretty much the same can be said of those in the 1800s. It was government that gave the railroads the right of way along with the telephone and cable companies for instance. It was also government that gave corporations their corporate charters and then did not revoke those corporate charters when the corporation no longer served the common good. Libertarians on the other hand know what to do about the concentration of power in corporate hands.

Libertarian nuts like you

You're the nut. Bye

Falcon

My ISP is reselling telco DSL, but I've got a static IP address, no bandwidth caps, no Port 25 blocking, and I can share it with whoever I like. Their policy on running servers and file sharing at home is that they're not selling me walled-garden couch-potato service, they're selling me Internet Connectitivity, and it's up to me to do something cool and worthwhile with it if I want. And there are lots of other ISPs like them - Speakeasy's one of the best-known, and there are also other ISPs that resell telco DSL who do offer "features" like bandwidth caps, URL-censorship to protect your kids, and walled-garden content if you want that sort of thing. I do pay a bit more than I would directly from my telco, but it's in the same general range as other ISPs' static-IP prices. When I first signed up with them, they were doing cool stuff with 802.11 roof-top networks as well, but that hasn't gotten to my town yet.

From an ISO Protocol Stack perspective, who's providing what layers in the US (YMMV in other countries)?

• Layer 1 - the telco is providing dry copper wire from the CO to your house
• Layer1/Layer 2 - The DSLAM might be provided by the telco, or might be provided by an ILEC such as Covad, New Edge, Megapath, etc.
• Layer 2 - Usually DSL runs ATM between your home router and the DSLAM, though sometimes it's frame, and sometimes they wrap a PPPoE layer on top of it to annoy the users and make it easier to cut off people who don't pay their bills. There's usually some regional ATM concentrator network between the DSLAMs and the routers, though sometimes the routers will be colocated with the DSLAMs and the concentration will happen over an IP network instead.
• Layer 3 - Usually the router behind the DSLAMs is run by the ISP, so features like DHCP, Static-vs-Dynamic IP addresses, etc. happen here. Sometimes this layer is outsourced - see Layer 8 - or there's some kind of PPPoE tunnel that gets you to the ISP's bigger routers.
• More Layer 3 - Once you're at the router, there's some kind of connectivity that gets you to the Internet Backbone. The ARPAnet/NSFnet are long gone these days, and in the US the "backbone" is really about 25 Tier 1 ISPs that interconnect with each other, plus some exchange points where they and other ISPs connect together, so this may mean either your ISP's backbone if they're big or their upstream provider's backbone. In Europe, the exchange points like LINX and AMSIX drive much more of the connectivity, and there's less backbone dependence.
• Layers 4-7 - Many ISPs provide applications like email, web servers, IM servers, etc.
• Layer 8 - The old IETF T-shirt describes Layer 8 as "Financial" and Layer 9 as "Political". There are some ISPs that provide a layer 4-7 user experience (e.g. email service and login authentication) and do everything else at Layer 8 (outsourcing to a real provider.) That's not as trivial as it sounds - there's a reasonable-sized business market for aggregators who can go out to telcos, cable providers, Wifi Hotspots, etc. around the US or world and sell you one service that works everywhere. And Layer 8 is where issues like bandwidth caps happen.
• Layer 9 - Political - All the Network Neutrality, No-servers-at-Home, SMTP-users-must-be-spammers, etc. really lives here, though it may get implemented by mechanisms at lower layers.

In California, Sonic.net provides IPv6 tunnels for free as part of home or business DSL service.

They also provide shell accounts and VPN termination (useful over public WiFi), even without DSL.

In California, Sonic.net provides IPv6 tunnels for free as part of home or business DSL service.

They also provide shell accounts and VPN termination (useful over public WiFi), even without DSL.

Second, re-design corporations - make directors accountable personally, make ceos accountable personally.

Ah but Corporate charters can be revoked. Corporations were originally granted charters if it served the public good and when a corporation no longer did the charter could be revoked. Unfortunately charters haven't been revoked in a long tyme. I agree though officers and directors of corporations should be held accountable.

ut you want solutions to capitalism? Sure, close the borders with any other country that doesn't implement capitalism the same way we do, so that we can compete under a fair system.

Oh you mean Mexico can and should give Mexican farmers billions of dollars, er pesos, in subsidies like the US gives to US agribusinesses? The US even gives farmers subsidies for NOT growing a crop.

Where do you think uranium comes from? Bubble-gum machines? Plenty of uranium miners have contracted cancer, and you must realize that doesn't always end happily.

That's why they started this program.

Here's a new alternative to the typical commercial city wifi deployment, that just started up in the past few months:

http://sonic.net/wifi/

In short, you dedicate a fixed amount of your bandwidth as a free wifi spot. There's talk about you eventually making some money off it, but currently that's not offered as it's too new.

Disclaimer: I am a very happy sonic.net customer. I have no affiliation with them other than that. However, I have signed up for this, and will be trying it out.

Some providers in the US also try/tried that, starting as early as 2003, and usually hoping that non-customers would pay $$ to access their network through such user-provided "open" wi-fi APs. I don't think this worked overly well so far though...
http://www.sonic.net/hotspots/
http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/learnmore/

look at sonic.net. they do lease lines from SBC but they are very reliable and are starting their own phone company so that they can start to implement vdsl2. At least I think that's what it's called.

I have used them for 3 years and have seen almost no downtime.

http://www.sonic.net/

Zylon Vest

Undocumented API calls in Windows that Office uses not shared with competitors.
Undocumented OS flaw workarounds used in Office and not shared with competitors.
Subtle changes to the OS to make rival applications run slower and with less reliability.
Lots of other stuff too. Here's a nice reference for you.

This raises the question as to whether there are any reasonable alternatives to Speakeasy left?

Are you looking for a net connection, hosting/co-location services, or both?

If you're looking for a net connection, check out DSLreports, which has ISP ratings.

If you're looking for either, and are in California, check out sonic.net -- they provide home/business DSL service, as well as web hosting/co-location services. Check them out in DSLreports. (Disclaimer: I have no connection to sonic.net, aside from being a satisfied customer.)

I'll second the recommendation for sonic.net (I have no connections to them, aside from being a happy customer). They're a regional ISP (California, and Arizona?), and so they don't serve everyone (although dial-up might work, but most people probably don't want that). However, if anyone's looking for a new ISP, and they can serve you, you really should check them out.

Also, don't take my word for it. Check out their DSLreports entry. Also, see how they compare to other regional ISPs (at the bottom of this page).

Please tell me this is an early April Fools.

Please?

I hope they hold it together, but if they don't, there's Sonic.net which is like Speakeasy without the marketing budget.

--Pat

My ISP, sonic.net does:
http://sonic.net/features/ipv6/
Or at least it's an IPv6 tunnel (not sure how that might differ from 'native').

I haven't got around to setting it up, but if/when I get my WRT54GL setup with OpenWRT I'll probably have it run IPv6 as well...

Without going into business grade routers I've found one so far that seems well above any other solutions. I've tried many different brands and models but this is what I finally decided on and have running (and love).

http://games.dlink.com/products/?pid=370 DLink Wireless Gaming router
http://games.dlink.com/products/?pid=371 DLink Gaming router (same but no wireless)

I've never been a fan of DLink at all but these routers make up for it in spades. Firstly, the switch ports are gigabit and the WAN port is 10/100, not just 10. Also, with all the other "home grade" routers I never had enough port forwards (for hosting servers etc.). Those two DLink routers don't have that problem. So far I don't think there is a limit to the number of forwards you can have. My ping times have also been drastically reduced compared to other routers. It also has fairly robust QoS settings (for a home router anyway). The other big thing is that it can handle thousands of sessions at once. No more firing up Bittorrent and having to hard reset the router an hour lately because it's frozen and has stopped routing. The only things so far that I see that could even be improved would be better logging (so I could get bandwidth reports from it with Wallwatcher http://sonic.net/wallwatcher/). Currently it just does plain old syslog logging. My only other complaint is that the Dynamic DNS feature only will keep track and update one name for you. So if you have multiple domains pointing to your dynamic address you'll have to have another solution to update all but one.

I believe they do themselves a disservice by advertising this exclusively as a gaming router. This thing could handle most small (and even some not so small) business without any kinds of problems. It does cost more than the Linksys you can get at Walmart but, at least to me, it has been more than worth it. I personally use the wireless version since I prefer to keep my AP and router as 2 separate pieces of equipment (both for security and if my router breaks I don't wanna be out an AP or vice-versa.) I can tell you that I've put mine through the paces and it has not locked up or had to be reset once thus far.

The other option that I would have chosen would have been M0n0wall http://m0n0.ch/wall/ on a Soekris http://www.soekris.com/ board. In particular I was going to go with one of the bundles found at http://www.soekris.com/bundles.htm. I wanted the Net4801 with the Lan1641 4 port NIC expansion. That would have given a total of 7 ethernet ports. The only reason that I didn't end up going in that direction was because they offer no gigabit options. Otherwise that would have been an awesome setup.

My .02.

Back in the early 90's, I was working on a Windows application for my company. I was unable to implement a feature in the ideal way because the Win16 API on Windows 3.1 did not give me the necessary support.

Not to long afterwards, I was reading Undocumented Windows by Andrew Schulman and lo and behold, I found that Windows 3.1 actually did support the functionality I had needed.

Most of the functionality in Windows 3.1 was found by reverse engineering various applications, mostly from Microsoft itself. Microsoft application developers were able to access APIs that were not publicly documented.

Microsoft has often claimed that people prefer their applications because they are better. But at least one of the reasons they are better is they gave themselves functionality that non-Microsoft application developers did not know about.

No, we did not lose any business because of the feature I was unable to develop. But it proved to me that Microsoft did not play fair.

LightZone for Linux free as in beer, though not free as in speech...

Lightzone for Linux...

The 'war' on drugs best illustrates how the US government works. One group of governmental entities confiscates illegal drugs, and another, the CIA, imports them. At one point in time, the CIA (cocain importing agency) was smuggling 21 tons of cocain into the USA per year. This during the administration of George Bush Sr., who supported/declared 'war' on drugs to the public. Now his kid, not nearly as smart as he is, is making a mess of Iraq the the USA will need to spend the next 15 years cleaning up and all but publicly soiling his shorts to the rest of the world.

Right now, the USA is a good place to live, economically speaking. That's because most people work hard as dogs (most, not all). As the population ages and declines (we're all too busy to reproduce and can't afford it anyway), how exactly can a government turned against itself and run by a bunch of hippie neo-cons help a situation like that? The fall of the roman empire comes to mind.

http://www.sonic.net/ --- static IPs, routable networks, reverse DNS on any static address, configurable ISP-side firewall rules, locally owned ... If you call them, you get a reasonably knowledgeable person on the line. If you don't see something you want on their web site, talk to them. The owner posts in newsgroups and on DSLRreports.

Usually there's only one cable TV company, and usually they're the only ones who sell cable modem service on it, though sometimes they're more open than that, and sometimes RCN or another overbuilder put in a second cable system. (In much of the country, the telco is trying to get into the wired-TV business, as well as reselling satellite TV, and that's what's really driving much of this debate, other than political opportunism by carpetbaggers like MoveOn*.) Most US cable modem service has never been open - they went paranoid about users running servers from home for reasons that weren't very good then and make less sense now. And cable TV service was largely deployed on a town-by-town basis, driven by issues of what town councilman's brother got the installation or repaving contracts rather than by deep understanding of the futures of telecommunication, so the current large aggregators were buying a really random collection of stuff and most of them still understand pay-per-view much better than they understand the Internet.

Usually there's only one wireline telco, but that doesn't mean there's only one source of Internet broadband service using those wires. Most of the telcos will sell service in at least three forms:

• Layer 1 - Dry copper, which a company like Covad or New Edge rents, runs DSLAMs on, and sells connections to multiple ISPs as well as their own internet access.
• Layer 2 - Telco-provided DSLAM with ATM PVC across a concentrator network to an ISP-provider router, potentially to hundreds of different ISPs. Sometimes they insist on selling phone service along with ADSL, sometimes they'll sell naked DSL.
• Layer 3 - Telco provides DSLAM with ATM PVC to a router which they run (either running it directly or farmed out to a single partner ISP.)
• Layer 3.5 - PPoE to an ISP over Layer 3 service instead of over native ATM, or sometimes other router-based aggregation approaches.

* I really like MoveOn, and I think George Bush is a Chaotic Evil threat to America's freedom and traditional values, but this time they were not only wrong, but pretty clueless about the technologies they were ranting about. That's not to say that several telco honchos weren't also either clueless about the technologies or at least unwilling to talk to the public about what they were actually selling rather than about the regulatory environment in which they were selling it, or that usually clueful netheads like Dave Isenberg weren't saying boneheaded things when they should have known better, but MoveOn was way out of their league here.

According to this website on paleoclimatology, there are some long period weather oscillations such as:

the El Niño -Southern Oscillation (ENSO) - 6 to 18 months,

the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) - 20 to 30 years

the Pacific-North American Oscillation (PNA) - 3 to 10 years

the The North Atlantic Oscillation NAO - 5 to 10 years

the Artic Oscillation (AO)- 5 to 10 years

the Antartic Oscillation (AAO) - 5 to 10 years

Paleoclimatologists have the records of weather condifions going back thousands of years using information such as tree rings, snow, lava, and seed deposits.

If the researchers could develop a long timescale atmospheric simulator that could replicate this data, then maybe they could predict general trends 30 years into the
future. Although unpredictable events such as earthquakes and volcanos) make things
bit harder, although they will probably run a large number of possible scenarios
before making any conclusions.

The founding fathers could hardly predict the technological state of today, but the intent and spirit of the constitution is very clear. It hardly takes any great mind to realize how "papers and effects" translates into digital data.
You are absolutely correct. The intent of the founders can not be denied. If in doubt, read Madison's own words:
"The rights of the people to be secured in their persons, their houses, their papers, and their other property from all unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated by warrants issued without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, or not particularly describing the places to be searched, or the persons or things to be seized."
So even though privacy is not listed, I'll grant you an implied right to privacy in your own home.
However, phone records are the property of the phone companies. If you want to right down everyone you call and calls you receive, that would be your personal affects and would be protected. But would a ferry receipt from the 1880's be protected? How about a guest log from the local inn or diner? Would these not be the 1800's equivelant of phone records?

These are examples of abuses of power. It most certainly is not legal, and the fact that he got away with it means nothing except just that. Crimes that someone got away with do not change the constitution. They do not mean we should ignore or accept new crimes.
Abe Lincoln wasn't alone. You could chalk up "abuses" by Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Andrew Jackson as well. (I'm sure there are others, but it's late). These "abuses" are legal by precedent. It is the sworn duty of the Prez to do whatever it takes to defend this country. After reading what Lincoln did, I'd say GWB has been pretty reserved. If the liberty survived Lincoln's and Roosevelt's "abuses", it will survive GWB!
http://www.sonic.net/sentinel/gvcon5.html has a pretty good read-up on what GWB could do, but hasn't. Maybe he's not the drunk-with-power-red-neck-Nazi every keeps calling him.
We are at war (What was that slogan? No *blank* for Oil!") In a time of war, the Prez is given authority to execute that war. Now if the Prez were to use this authority to spy on John Kerry to get election dirt (see Watergate), or use the FBI and IRS to dig up dirt on political opponents (see FileGate), then that would certainly be an illegal, impeachable offence. But that is not the case here. There are certain "high level government officials" who are leaking classified secrets like a drunken teenager. This can be very dangerous to national security and can get soldiers and civilians killed. In any other time in our history, this would be called treason. Men have been hung for less, so please don't tell me how liberty is being trampled more now than any time in our history, because, even though you don't like it, it's simply not true.

Cheaper: Don's bug bucket

You do realize, I hope, that this is exactly how the US balances the budget by calculating the future interest-income obtained through loans?

If the national interest rate were to actually reach 0%, only then is the national debt "in balance". However, money supply increases (printing it or in the form of credits) make sure "inflation" still occurs so we have some measure of looking prosperous.

I personally believe inflation is the result of increased interest rates, which in turn increses the cost of production, carried onto the consumer, who in turn asks their employer for a raise to help pay for rising cost of goods and services....vicious cycle as you can see.

If interest rates lower back down, the pay raise won't impose more costs to production because a new loan won't be needed and production costs start to stabilize. However, interest rates that stay relatively flat or increase cause production costs to invariably rise again and a new loan is established to maintain the current level of production. If the loan is unavailable, the price is increased to substantiate that employee's request for a pay raise. If the loan is available, the new interest costs dictate the rise in price....again, vicious cycle. The alternative, I suppose, would be to not give that person a raise to keep prices down, but now you're spending more on new trainees you didn't expect because that experience worker went somewhere else.

Indeed, here's a link that very much supports your concept of labor/production requirement....the labor of the working, imho:

http://www.sonic.net/sentinel/naij2.html

But you might this one more informative, if not slightly more substantial in facts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_ba nking#Increased_money_supply_and_inflation

I get 6mbps for under $60 a month. (sonic.net)

But here in sonoma country we can get wirless SDSL http://www.sonic.net/sales/wba/ take a look at Cotati, or Petaluma. It may be expensive, but if telecommuting is essential to your job the buisness you work for should be willing to pay for a chunk. If video conferencing is a want and not a need, pay for it yourself.

Basically, these clowns propose what amounts to replacing all taxes with a glorified sales tax (on good and services, no less). That means that your average lower income person, who typically spends 80% of his/her income on good and services, would then pay 100% of his/her income on goods, services, and taxes thereupon. The average fat cat, who spends 3% of his or her income on goods and services would then pay 4%.

This taxation would technically be "fair" insofar as each person would pay an equal amount to the government. However, in reality, the only way such a tax system could be truly fair would be if everyone also made the same amount of money. Unfortunately, the poor and even most of the middle class would lose their homes because they don't make enough money to cover an equal percentage of the burden of the government.

Don't be fooled. The French Revolution started pretty much this way.

Looks like I've got just the thing for you, pal! Hope you've got OpenOffice...

http://sonic.net/~montag/hybrid

My research indicates otherwise.

http://sonic.net/~montag/hybrid

I believe that the time is ripe to publish my own findings on this subject.

My research was specific, so my results are too. The bottom line is that if you purchase a Honda Civic Hybrid you save $5,638.32 and 30 hours of your life in comparison with the purchase of a Honda Civic GX.

I've factored in things that most people don't consider, such as:

Oil changes are slightly more expensive for the hybrid Civic, because synthetic oil should be used. However, oil changes are required every 10,000 miles, unlike the 5,000 of the Civic GX.

At least through the end of this year, in California, purchase of an HEV will get you a $2,000 tax writeoff - which boils down to approximately $600 in actual money.

While the initial cost of owning a Civic Hybrid are higher than a Civic GX; the cost OVER TIME is lower, and my calculations take that into account. In order to save money with a hybrid, you'll have to be in it for the long haul, to the tune of about 80,000 miles. At 80,000, you start saving money over a Civic GX.

The battery replacement issue: Yes, this is the big deal that the oil company shills like to bring up every chance they get, but it's really a non-issue. $2,000 to replace the batteries still leaves you with over $5,000 saved. And, I have in my posession (see the link) maintenance records of a Civic Hybrid logging 129,000 miles and never having an HEV battery replaced.

Miles per gallon: It's common knowlege that the EPA mileage on a Civic Hybrid is a bit on the optimistic side. That's why I took my MPG data from actual Hybrid drivers. Note that my numbers are for people who KNOW HOW TO DRIVE A HYBRID - they won't work for your 16 year old son who's trying to drag race the thing at every green light. (and on a related tangent, Hybrids have great torque because acceleration from a stop is heavily assisted by the electric motor - so in a short race, your hybrid might beat a regular Civic. Don't put any money on it, though... I'm not a racer, so I'm not sure)

The good news here (if you can call it good) is that the higher that gas prices go, the wider a gap there is between hybrids and the "normal" kind of car, (whatever we'd call it in this context).

Please let me know if I've made any mistakes in my reasoning - I don't want to fool myself any more than I want to fool the rest of you - so if I've made a mistake (and I often do), I certainly want to be put straight about it. The beautiful thing about this spreadsheet is that you can easily put in numbers that match your situation and see updated totals. Is the price of gas higher or lower where you live? Change it!

http://sonic.net/~montag/hybrid/

I wish I'd had more time to format my results nicer - maybe add some charts or something. But the OpenOffice Spreadsheet which I'm linking you to was really created for my own personal use. I hope it's useful to somebody!

Actually, I can't say that I've ever seen the clutter that you mention.

What version of KDE are you using? I'm using KDE 3.4.3, as bundled with Kubuntu 5.10. There is no "Systems Settings" submenu. However, the "Systems Settings" utility is by far the cleanest I have seen from them yet. It looks quite similar to the "Systems Preferences" utility of Mac OS X Tiger.

http://www.sonic.net/support/ss/mac/osx/tiger/syst em_prefs.png

At least one ISP offers IPv6 with their standard DSL service: http://www.sonic.net/features/ipv6/

Use a VPN tunnel over the free link and your traffic stays private and secure.

Here's an ISP that includes VPN service (and shell access) with any standard dialup, DSL, or wireless account: http://www.sonic.net/features/vpn/

I pay USD$49.95 per month to Sonic.net (http://sonic.net/ for 6.0mb/s down, 608kbp/s up. No cap, no limitations.

I'm in California though, I think this is probably one of the cheapest places to get 6.0mb down DSL for only $49.95 a month.

You can get 1.5mb down, 384k up for $14.95 a month from SBC Yahoo, but you have shitty service and PPPoE instead of straight Ethernet.

How old is the oldest tree?

However, I fail to see how this is relevant. If you're trying to make a point that there are no living creatures that are older, then you are very wrong.

The point is, however, that your tree argument makes absolutely no sense. You happened to find an old tree that happens to be within 25 or so % of what (some) creationists argue is the age of the earth.

Now, suppose the tree had bee older? Would you have changed your "theory" like a real scientist would do? Most likely not. You'd argue that god created the living tree that way. I'm sure you'll use the same argument when explaining away the 250 million year old living bacteria.