Slashdot Mirror

Where you mount an antenna on your roof pointed at a particular location. You can get multiple megabits from this, and cheaper than from a cell-phone provider. Here's an example. http://www.sonic.net/sales/broadband/broadlink/ind ex.shtml You can't use them unless you're in Santa Rosa, but there may be companies in your area. Basically go to dslreports.com and check for wireless DSL. http://www.broadbandreports.com/search

I was half-way tempted to recreate beowoof with my own stack of pizza boxes, but alas, I'm giving them all away. It will be nice to use the 2nd garage stall for a vehicle again, though.

Also, most DSL systems are fairly oversubscribed, in terms of number of users per megabit of upstream bandwidth. So to do a rooftop network, you put more real bandwidth in the wired sites and do the oversubscription out on the radio side instead of in the DSL router side, and it works fine.

No, though I looked at Speakeasy as well. I'm using sonic.net. Their policies and prices are fairly similar, and were a slightly better match for my needs. They're a smaller operation, which I've found is usually a good thing (smaller service providers are usually more responsive, unless they get overwhelmed or run out of money, in which case they often fail badly.) The other interesting thing about Sonic.net at the time was that they were working on 802.11 rooftop mesh radio applications up in Santa Rosa area, where they're based, which had the potential to be really cool if it worked out.

I bought DSL for some friends as a present for a year for $25 per month from Sonic.net. From what my friends have told me they have been very happy with the service. If you look somewhere like DSLReports.com you might find that DSL in your area costs less than you think.

My (favorite) ISP, Sonic.net, on December 20th, filed comments at the FCC in response to BellSouth's request to exclude independent ISPs from access to DSL. The concern is that if BellSouth gets it's way, SBC may do the same. This would leave all California with just two choices for DSL: SBC or Comcast. Sonic.net is well worth the extra money I pay each month. I don't want to lose that choice.

Here's the PDF of their comments.

And what should be done with these traitorous bliss-ninnies? I propose that, [...] Only then will this great Republic be safe for democracy. - birdman

The opinions expressed on this site do not represent those of the author or of any person living or dead. This is a political parody site intended as satire. Anyone finding themselves in agreement with the opinions expressed on this site is encouraged to immediately seek professional help.

It would seem strange for an American agency to get a warrant to seize information relating to Swiss undefcover police from a French website, but it's the most solid theory I've heard so far.

Sounds more like they're throwing you a sop. Something to distract from the real issues.

1. If the US can send FBI overseas - e.g. to Norway to arrest the DeCSS kid on behalf of Sony, or the Afghanistan, or Iraq (all of which they have done) - there's no reason to believe that they won't act as agents for foreign governments or private parties while they're within the US.

B. Remember that the Bush-ites have a history of trying to close down various internet sites that they consider unsupportive of their regime going all the way back to the 1999/2000 campaign when they convinced the FEC to intervene on their behalf over the ... what was it, gwbush.com ?

No, I'd say that the RNC wanting to reserve those "journalists" that are supporting the coup and kowtowing to the regime the "right" to publish the names and home addresses of their "enemies" is a far more plausible explanation than any imaged Swiss agents.

Some one should cruise the RNC databases and see how many Right-wing militias are holding maps the homes of the protest organizers....

This is just another nail in the coffin of Speech in the US. It's not coincidence what the FCC is doing with indy radio while all this is going on, either.

Where are those data havens when you need them, gentlemen?

Here's a quote from a page I ran across while looking for references to back up my bullshit - stlightly OT, perhaps, but interesting, nonetheless:

And what should be done with these traitorous bliss-ninnies? I propose that, since the prison system is already full of liberals we've already caught, they be sent to special camps for processing on a priority basis. Trial lawyers should receive mandatory prison sentences, with special circumstances for anyone who represented O.J. In cases where it can be determined, these rifraf should be deported and repatriated to the country (or continent) of their original ancestral origin. The rest should be shipped off to Canada. Their drowning in liberals up there anyway so what's a few more. Only then will this great Republic be safe for democracy. - birdman

I think he's talking about those people that the FBI are no accusing of "intimidating" the RNC.

If the RNC and their cops and their "agents" didn't notice the fact that they were out-numbered something like 1000 to 1 by people who were there at their own expense for no reason other than to show that they disagreed with the RNC - tiny minority of right-wingers who are ruling/running the country ... they must be on some seriously good shit, anyway (is that why Rush likes Oxycotin?). The kind of shit that lets them continue to believe that they are have some kind of a divine mandate to rule...

> > Do the AnswersInGenesis people know that you're trying to defend their point of view?
Indeed, how dare I? In fact, let me show you a worse outrage!: where I quote 3 peer-reviewed secular journals..

> >But we're no closer to robots with synthetic intelligence
> >than we were in the glory days of AI research. (i.e. we're
> >not close at all).
>
> And you know this exactly how?
I studied AI while working toward an MS in Computer science a few years ago.

> There is no evidence these projects that you say are
> "going on now to create life at a molecular level" are
> likely to succeed. ...
> Isn't acting clairvoyant a violation of Christian ethics?
Correct: if the "medium" (to put it crudely) is not God's spirit.

> > How you propose to know what technological or innovative
> > breakthroughs will or won't occur in AI is beyond my understanding.
Advances in "AI" (a badly named field) are very interesting to me - I hope to see them continue to occur for some time. I said synthetic intelligence (as in "pass the Turing test" intelligence) is unlikely. That belief is based on the current state of AI research and my understanding of the Bible.

> ...no trees have been found with more than 5800 rings because no
> tree has ever lived that long.
I agree. Now why haven't they lived that long? Nothing is stopping them living further - no global ice age, no built in logic bomb -- if (my_age == 5000) {wither(); die();}, no corporations pillaging timber...

> I'd thank you to point me to evidence that a tree with 5800
> rings has even been found, since I couldn't find a single
> mention of one even approaching that age ever found live.
How about one - a 4844-ring pine cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

> Notwithstanding that, though, this is proof of nothing but your
> willingness to go very far out on a limb to try to support your point.

Its sad to see you angry without just cause. :( Here are my reasons for the apparently arbitrary 5800 ring count: the Bible says that the existing world was destroyed in a deluge that occured about 5000 years ago. Now most trees add one tree ring a year. In extremely rare cases, trees have been known to grow more than a single ring a year. Hence, I chose the 5800 ring count (to sufficiently account for ring aberrations). Now, I probably should not have stated 5800 -- 5100-5200 rings should be sufficient. :)

Here is another one: a 4700 ring bristlecone pine -- still-living.

And here is is a thread where this was discussed... threadbare.

> >You must have considered the apparently unique earth we have:
> I'm familiar with this argument, but it's not valid because it's two-sided. ...
> I argue that humans developed specifically to survive Earth conditions

Please back that up with suitable observations of an evolutionary process adding information to the genome.

And also consider (again)...
> > ...the mysteries of an apparent Cambrian explosion in the fossil record?

> > Consider how the continents were one supercontinent to begin with
> >(as the Bible describes in Genesis) or how the Bible,
> >rather off-handedly, describes the earth as a sphere (Book of Job).

> In a book the size and scope of the Bible, you will find plenty
> of references to stuff that turns out to be true.
It is important since men didn't have geography atlases handy back then.

> However, you must counter mentions in the Bible of stuff
> that

> > Do the AnswersInGenesis people know that you're trying to defend their point of view?
Indeed, how dare I? In fact, let me show you a worse outrage!: where I quote 3 peer-reviewed secular journals..

> >But we're no closer to robots with synthetic intelligence
> >than we were in the glory days of AI research. (i.e. we're
> >not close at all).
>
> And you know this exactly how?
I studied AI while working toward an MS in Computer science a few years ago.

> There is no evidence these projects that you say are
> "going on now to create life at a molecular level" are
> likely to succeed. ...
> Isn't acting clairvoyant a violation of Christian ethics?
Correct: if the "medium" (to put it crudely) is not God's spirit.

> > How you propose to know what technological or innovative
> > breakthroughs will or won't occur in AI is beyond my understanding.
Advances in "AI" (a badly named field) are very interesting to me - I hope to see them continue to occur for some time. I said synthetic intelligence (as in "pass the Turing test" intelligence) is unlikely. That belief is based on the current state of AI research and my understanding of the Bible.

> ...no trees have been found with more than 5800 rings because no
> tree has ever lived that long.
I agree. Now why haven't they lived that long? Nothing is stopping them living further - no global ice age, no built in logic bomb -- if (my_age == 5000) {wither(); die();}, no corporations pillaging timber...

> I'd thank you to point me to evidence that a tree with 5800
> rings has even been found, since I couldn't find a single
> mention of one even approaching that age ever found live.
How about one - a 4844-ring pine cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

> Notwithstanding that, though, this is proof of nothing but your
> willingness to go very far out on a limb to try to support your point.

Its sad to see you angry without just cause. :( Here are my reasons for the apparently arbitrary 5800 ring count: the Bible says that the existing world was destroyed in a deluge that occured about 5000 years ago. Now most trees add one tree ring a year. In extremely rare cases, trees have been known to grow more than a single ring a year. Hence, I chose the 5800 ring count (to sufficiently account for ring aberrations). Now, I probably should not have stated 5800 -- 5100-5200 rings should be sufficient. :)

Here is another one: a 4700 ring bristlecone pine -- still-living.

And here is is a thread where this was discussed... threadbare.

> >You must have considered the apparently unique earth we have:
> I'm familiar with this argument, but it's not valid because it's two-sided. ...
> I argue that humans developed specifically to survive Earth conditions

Please back that up with suitable observations of an evolutionary process adding information to the genome.

And also consider (again)...
> > ...the mysteries of an apparent Cambrian explosion in the fossil record?

> > Consider how the continents were one supercontinent to begin with
> >(as the Bible describes in Genesis) or how the Bible,
> >rather off-handedly, describes the earth as a sphere (Book of Job).

> In a book the size and scope of the Bible, you will find plenty
> of references to stuff that turns out to be true.
It is important since men didn't have geography atlases handy back then.

> However, you must counter mentions in the Bible of stuff
> that

my ISP, sonic.net, used to provide this, (10 years ago, when i signed up for non-AOL internet) but i just checked their sales page and it appears that service is no longer available. (ssh shell access is still available though their dial-up internet service though)

my ISP, sonic.net, used to provide this, (10 years ago, when i signed up for non-AOL internet) but i just checked their sales page and it appears that service is no longer available. (ssh shell access is still available though their dial-up internet service though)

I think he has been reading too many D&D sites .. the ONLY link I found on Google containing soliocentric was to a D&D site

Back in February I switched my DSL service from SBC to Sonic.net. SBC was charging way too much for a static connection ($65/month) that was too slow (128k upload cap) while at the same time dramatically dropping the cost of the dynamic service and increasing the bandwidth.

Sonic had a special. Up to 6meg download and 600k upload for $45/month. I signed up immediately. I'm getting about 5Meg/500k and the service is great. During the signup process they asked what OS I was using. Gritting my teeth I said "Linux". Instead of the usual "we don't support that", the guy said, "cool, which distro?".

When I saw some funny stuff (IIS targeting viral infection) from sonic netspace in my apache log I emailed sonic's abuse department. The next morning I had this reply, "We tried to call the customer but were unable to contact him, so we disconnected his service until he resolves this problem." Yep, they actually disconnected a customer because his system was infected with a virus that was attempting to infect other systems.

The only problem I have remaining is with SBC. They still insist I have DSL service with them and keep billing me. I even received a nasty payment demand from them on the same day their marketing department called to sell me DSL service. I've contacted the CPUC to get this resolved since SBC refuses to fix the problem.

(On windows,) I run WallWatcher to monitor my Linksys router log, with MyNetWatchman reporting the intrusions (all incoming traffic is firewalled here). Over the last few months, the Linksys has rejected over 1,000 incoming attempts each day, mostly the typical popular target ports 135/137/139/445/1026/1680/5000 (etc. etc.), and mostly from dynamic cable IPs. Now, in just the last day or two, I am seeing maybe 1/3 to 1/2 less incoming zombie-like traffic on these ports.

Hopefully other large residential broadband providers will become as belatedly proactive.

How quaint. I say we go sporking instead. That's where future is.

It's a girl

Can't believe I spent time finding this.

With Sonic Hotspots, you get a special IP number routed to their VPN aggregator. None of the riffraff get on your network.

Easy. its a server for anything in any combination. with a kvm and the pxe boot setup decently you can test things accross any number of operating systems from half the stack while the other half proxies, downloads, archives, tracks logs, serves media etc. Mine runs Gentoo and a few flavors of windows from 4 160 + 4 80 gig drives. its been the perfect playground to learn linux system administration with. In the box as shown here i'm generating less heat than with a high power box doing the same, get total reliability and all with virtually no noise. (yes, thats a UPS in the case)

here you will find pictures of the LoneWoulf. It has been in service for over a year.

Burt who runs the site has had specs and the same lousy pictures I'm sharing with you now since february of last year.. yet when Burt shared the idea with Glenn they somehow forgot to attribute the original designer who probably does have a copyright on the powerbus and skewers.

Please mod me up and thanks for giving these guys a good slashdotting!

It does seem like a step in the right direction. It's mind-boggling to me how America, being as "enlightened" as it is, seems hesitant to respect privacy rights. In Europe employee monitoring laws are being tightened while in America this report says the trend is increasing. Even in California when a protective bill was passed it was vetoed by the (formed) Gov. Grey Davis. And I think that the argument is frivolous that if you have nothing to hide then it shouldn't be a problem. Then, surely, you wouldn't object to a full body search every morning coming into work?

It just demonstrates how strongly America loves its businesses and corporations (and subsequently, its money). These corporate/business-friendly policies that put so much pressure on American employees are just like outsourcing in that they alienate the apparently "not-worthwhile" American employee. While America may keep their corporations and their corporate revenue, they might lose a comparable amount in salaries and income taxes. Perhaps.

I like these progressive-non-Big-Brother (i.e. not China, Saudi Arabia, evidently) countries that respect the people and their lives rather than corporations.

You do raise a good point about govenment monitoring and the like. It does seem like small consolation to have your privacy rights from your employer, but still allow the government to monitor every aspect of your existence.

Still, this is a good thing.

Well, the reason I stayed with my ISP when I moved house is because when I call support a human answers the phone and says "Hello, Sonic dot net! How can I help you?". I could save a few dollars a month by buying internet from SBC (the local telephone monopoly), but their customer service strategy is analogous to .. hmm.. something real bad that I can't think of right now. But it's real bad!

here's another mirror :)

posted anonymously cause i don't need to whore.

- Hes Nikke /me hopes his ISP closes access before billing for excess bandwidth...

DSL is great... As long as you don't mind paying more for less. Seriously, does any DSL provider offer 3MBps max for $50 a month? And without PPoE or some crap like that?

yes. my ISP is starting a promo next week - up to 6mbps down, and up to 608kbps up, with 8 static IP's. all for only $45/month. the caveat is that you have to sign up for a 1 year contract (an SBC requirement anyway) and after the 1st year it goes up to $70/month. they are working on pulling strings so that you can renew at the $45/month rate for an other year commitment indefinitely :)

for another 4 days, i pay $70/month for 1.5mbps down and 384kbps up. (with the same ISP, and same 8 IPs) sounds like a good deal to me :)

Chaucer's astrolabe manual, translated into modern english, can be found here.

Here in Northern (Bay Area) California, I pay $39.00 to Sonic.net for a 1.5mps down / 128k up with 4 static IPs, 5 email accounts (with SpamAssassin), and 80gb server space. They're extremely reliable (near-zero downtime of any kind since I joined in 1996 as a dialup member, and none since I got their DSL in 2002) and their customer support is amazing.

Here's details: http://www.sonic.net/hotspots/hosting/

Here's text from that page:

Summary

Host a WiFi Hotspot using your existing Sonic.net DSL connection and WiFi hardware, and get money from Sonic.net every time someone uses it.

Details

WiFi wireless Internet access is growing at an amazing pace. Last year, for the first time, laptop sales out-paced sales of desktop PCs, and many new laptops include integrated WiFi. Hand-held and even desktop systems can use WiFi for Internet access.

WiFi access equipment is selling at an amazing pace, as home users leverage WiFi to unwire their households, making high speed Internet access available throughout the home.

Meanwhile, thousands of people are using DSL from Sonic.net - and, in many cases, also deploying WiFi on their DSL connections. Hundreds more are coming online with Sonic.net every month.

Notably though, the average DSL connection is utilized to just 1% of it's total bandwidth capacity!

Sonic.net has now made it possible to combine these two rapidly growing Internet access areas, allowing DSL customers to share a small amount of their total bandwidth by using WiFi, and letting all Sonic.net utilize each other's WiFi Hotspots in a secure and managed fashion.

Sonic.net DSL customers can share their connection over WiFi, and will be compensated with a pro-rated daily share of 50% of the Sonic.net basic Internet service fee for any others who use it. The end user pool is huge, as Sonic.net has over 30,000 end users currently, and any of them could utilize your link if they happened to be nearby.

End-users who utilize your link will be required to use a VPN (virtual private networking) tunnel and authentication, so they won't be on your IP address space. They'll each get a dynamic IP of their own for their session. This protects you from any potential liability should they do something improper on the Internet. Also, the pool of users are known Sonic.net members, so they're not likely to be doing bad things.

The VPN tunnel also assures the WiFi end-user that they've got a secure connection, all the way to the core of Sonic.net's network. They don't have to trust the host not to sniff their traffic, it's all secure as part of the model. The host also benefits from VPN, as their own use of their WiFi is also encrypted - no more hassles with exchange of inherently insecure WEP keys, MAC addresses, etc.

There's a bit of a financial incentive for sharing this abundant and unused Internet access.

For each day that a neighbor or passing Sonic.net customer uses your link, you'll get 50% of their pro-rated daily basic Sonic.net fees - so, that would be about $0.31 per day, or $9.47 per month. If a non Sonic.net customer wants to make day use, they can pay $3.50 with a credit card, of which you'll receive 50%, or $1.75. All of these credits will be posted to your account, and will offset your own DSL costs, leaving you with a lower monthly bill. If you had some dedication and enough WiFi users, you could even turn your DSL line into a profit center!

If a Sonic.net customer makes use of more than one Hotspot in a day, the hosts of each of the Hotspots split that customer's share of fees. If Sonic.net enters into roaming agreements with other Internet or wireless providers in the future, you may receive additional settlement funds of different amounts.

Sonic.net pays for all credit card transaction processing costs, costs for support and marketing, etc.

Basically, we're taking open community WiFi sharing of DSL and making it totally integrated by offering "Sales, Security, Settlement and Support".

There's also another benefit

Here's details: http://www.sonic.net/hotspots/hosting/

Here's text from that page:

Summary

Host a WiFi Hotspot using your existing Sonic.net DSL connection and WiFi hardware, and get money from Sonic.net every time someone uses it.

Details

WiFi wireless Internet access is growing at an amazing pace. Last year, for the first time, laptop sales out-paced sales of desktop PCs, and many new laptops include integrated WiFi. Hand-held and even desktop systems can use WiFi for Internet access.

WiFi access equipment is selling at an amazing pace, as home users leverage WiFi to unwire their households, making high speed Internet access available throughout the home.

Meanwhile, thousands of people are using DSL from Sonic.net - and, in many cases, also deploying WiFi on their DSL connections. Hundreds more are coming online with Sonic.net every month.

Notably though, the average DSL connection is utilized to just 1% of it's total bandwidth capacity!

Sonic.net has now made it possible to combine these two rapidly growing Internet access areas, allowing DSL customers to share a small amount of their total bandwidth by using WiFi, and letting all Sonic.net utilize each other's WiFi Hotspots in a secure and managed fashion.

Sonic.net DSL customers can share their connection over WiFi, and will be compensated with a pro-rated daily share of 50% of the Sonic.net basic Internet service fee for any others who use it. The end user pool is huge, as Sonic.net has over 30,000 end users currently, and any of them could utilize your link if they happened to be nearby.

End-users who utilize your link will be required to use a VPN (virtual private networking) tunnel and authentication, so they won't be on your IP address space. They'll each get a dynamic IP of their own for their session. This protects you from any potential liability should they do something improper on the Internet. Also, the pool of users are known Sonic.net members, so they're not likely to be doing bad things.

The VPN tunnel also assures the WiFi end-user that they've got a secure connection, all the way to the core of Sonic.net's network. They don't have to trust the host not to sniff their traffic, it's all secure as part of the model. The host also benefits from VPN, as their own use of their WiFi is also encrypted - no more hassles with exchange of inherently insecure WEP keys, MAC addresses, etc.

There's a bit of a financial incentive for sharing this abundant and unused Internet access.

For each day that a neighbor or passing Sonic.net customer uses your link, you'll get 50% of their pro-rated daily basic Sonic.net fees - so, that would be about $0.31 per day, or $9.47 per month. If a non Sonic.net customer wants to make day use, they can pay $3.50 with a credit card, of which you'll receive 50%, or $1.75. All of these credits will be posted to your account, and will offset your own DSL costs, leaving you with a lower monthly bill. If you had some dedication and enough WiFi users, you could even turn your DSL line into a profit center!

If a Sonic.net customer makes use of more than one Hotspot in a day, the hosts of each of the Hotspots split that customer's share of fees. If Sonic.net enters into roaming agreements with other Internet or wireless providers in the future, you may receive additional settlement funds of different amounts.

Sonic.net pays for all credit card transaction processing costs, costs for support and marketing, etc.

Basically, we're taking open community WiFi sharing of DSL and making it totally integrated by offering "Sales, Security, Settlement and Support".

There's also another benefit

Sonic.net provides DSL and dial ISP services. They have a hotspot bribe service, which lets their DSL customers set up a hotspot and receive 50% of the daily charges for anyone sharing their DSL. So Sonic.net customers can roam, or share DSL with their neighbors, and non-customers can pay a $3.50 per day hotspot usage fee. They don't provide hardware, but just about anybody who runs DSL is geeky enough to buy WiFi, and it's under $100 for access points anyway.

Sonic.net provides DSL and dial ISP services. They have a hotspot bribe service, which lets their DSL customers set up a hotspot and receive 50% of the daily charges for anyone sharing their DSL. So Sonic.net customers can roam, or share DSL with their neighbors, and non-customers can pay a $3.50 per day hotspot usage fee. They don't provide hardware, but just about anybody who runs DSL is geeky enough to buy WiFi, and it's under $100 for access points anyway.

[I have no affiliation with this company but it has a good reputation among local users.]

they were actually designed as a gimmick by immigrants cooking in American mining communities in the 1800s

No you are thinking about the mighty spork.

I saw a CA license plate with "LINUX" on it a few months ago. It was on some kind of red sports car IIRC

That "red sports car" is a 996 Porsche Carrera owned by Dane Jasper, founder of Sonic.net. An isp that is based in Santa Rosa (about 1 hour north of San Francisco) and is the home of O'Reily and Associates web server.

Why vote for the lesser evil?

This is especially important for those ants who now regret the indiscretions of their teenage years.

Be sure to tell your colo or file hosting provider what your projected usage is, and how many megabits you may want access to, to assure that they can handle it. You may also want to make a courtesy call a day or so prior to each launch to let them know what to expect.

Remember when Eddy Van Halen got tounge cancer a couple years ago? THAT was a busy weekend for their website, which we host. Of course, they didn't have any warning, but boy-o, that was bigger than any slashdot effect that I've ever seen. We also host O'Reilly (the computer book folks), so we certainly see plenty of slashdotting.

We're at: http://www.sonic.net/sales/colo/

Shop around - but keep in mind that buying from someone near your intended downloader may help you with both latency and costs. The SF Bay Area has the best pricing for bandwidth, and the lowest latency connections to the highest number of users - that said, if your target market is on the east coast, you should be in Hearndon, VA or NY or Boston.

-Dane Jasper (Sonic.net)

Fortunately for Ballmer, customers will see the "value of innovation" and "need" to buy Longhorn because that will be the only way to "upgrade IE" :)

The tightly connected orbits of Windows, Office and Internet Explorer (Outlook&Exchange) are reminescent of the bola; they will be used to trip up any attempt to escape from "innovation and integration".

Ebay, distrbutes everything from pickels..to parts of discovery....and now subways.....only in america.

That's right. If you were talking Japan, they'd be in vending machines.

Everybody here is saying "just fix the NAT code to not decrement the TTL and we're cool", but it's not that easy. At the end of the article (you did read the article, right?) it refers to an AT&T research paper (PDF) on counting the number of hosts behind a NAT box. This is done by looking at packet sequence numbers, using the fact that each host generates its own sequence. This chart shows what happens. If you see one set of packets starting at 20,000 and another at 50,000, all overlapping in time, it's a good bet there are two hosts. It also points out that the default high port numbers NAT uses are another good clue to the presence of NAT.

Port numbers are easy to change, but if your ISP wants to do traffic analysis on your IP address, there's not a lot you can do to hide. I'm just very, very glad that I have an ISP that doesn't suck. In fact, they're pretty damn cool.

Here's a completely web-based 'turtle graphics' programming language I wrote quite a while back.

Non-Java, no special plugins needed. Just type code, hit SUBMIT, and out comes the picture.

http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/webturtle/

Enjoy!

Another one I wrote instead of a paper for one of my GE biology classes in college.

http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/projects/bio115l/

Enjoy!

-bill!

A long time ago, at a university far, far away...
Rather than writing a real printed paper for one of my GE biology classes, I decided to whip something up on that newfangled Interweb.

http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/projects/anthro201/

Enjoy!

That being said, forks are dangerous...

Agreed. Perhaps they should look at a spork of some kind?

Apart from hacking a search interface on top of the IRC protocol, Shawn Fanning was famous for being able to consume a dozen at a time.

Other than that, have a great trip, and like others here have said, don't let the tech get in the way of enjoying it.

> Really that easy?
> Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you won't be convinced that easily.

I'm not convinced because I asked for (see emphasis):...

Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine [sonic.net], or this one: a 4844-ring pine [sonic.net] cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

But you gave me this: (see emphasis)

Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence ...

I asked you for 5,500+ rings in the same trunk since there are many problems with ring-matching across different trees. From this article:

Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings. ...

The extended tree ring chronologies are far from absolute, in spite of the popular hype. To illustrate this we only have to consider the publication and subsequent withdrawal of two European tree-ring chronologies. According to David Rohl,3 the Sweet Track chronology from Southwest England was 're-measured' when it did not agree with the published dendrochronology from Northern Ireland (Belfast). Also, the construction of a detailed sequence from southern Germany was abandoned ...

The author of this article should know... he's a tree physiologist. I think multiple rings in a year for some trees and not others, would throw a spanner into ring matching, no?

So, due to the fact multiple rings *can* occur in one year (but it's rare) I asked for 5,500+ rings rather than 5,000. But hey... 5,500+ rings, even with multiple rings, in a single trunk shouldn't be a probem, eh? I mean there really isn't a "reason" for a 5,000 year limit is there? For one thing, the last ice-age supposedly ended 10,000 years ago. For another, we're already upto at 4,700 rings ... no 4,800! ... almost there... just 700 rings left to go.


> > ...consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.
> Do you really think those crackpots have any idea what they're talking about?

Actually, they do. For the article quoted above, you could always take this up with the people who awarded the author his Ph.D.

> Really that easy?
> Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you won't be convinced that easily.

I'm not convinced because I asked for (see emphasis):...

Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine [sonic.net], or this one: a 4844-ring pine [sonic.net] cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

But you gave me this: (see emphasis)

Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence ...

I asked you for 5,500+ rings in the same trunk since there are many problems with ring-matching across different trees. From this article:

Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings. ...

The extended tree ring chronologies are far from absolute, in spite of the popular hype. To illustrate this we only have to consider the publication and subsequent withdrawal of two European tree-ring chronologies. According to David Rohl,3 the Sweet Track chronology from Southwest England was 're-measured' when it did not agree with the published dendrochronology from Northern Ireland (Belfast). Also, the construction of a detailed sequence from southern Germany was abandoned ...

The author of this article should know... he's a tree physiologist. I think multiple rings in a year for some trees and not others, would throw a spanner into ring matching, no?

So, due to the fact multiple rings *can* occur in one year (but it's rare) I asked for 5,500+ rings rather than 5,000. But hey... 5,500+ rings, even with multiple rings, in a single trunk shouldn't be a probem, eh? I mean there really isn't a "reason" for a 5,000 year limit is there? For one thing, the last ice-age supposedly ended 10,000 years ago. For another, we're already upto at 4,700 rings ... no 4,800! ... almost there... just 700 rings left to go.


> > ...consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.
> Do you really think those crackpots have any idea what they're talking about?

Actually, they do. For the article quoted above, you could always take this up with the people who awarded the author his Ph.D.

> The oldest records of my family
> The oldest living dog I know...

But we're not talking about you. Science says that, *globally*(!) speaking, :
1. The earliest reliable human memories and records of events
2. The oldest living trees

...both date to about 5000 years ago - as the Biblical record implies they should.

Trees are especially interesting since tree rings provide a direct way to measure age (a sort of eyewitness account across the ages).

Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine, or this one: a 4844-ring pine cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

As mentioned here, there is no reason that trees *can't* live for longer (consider the two trees above). Yet the oldest trees mystically stop short of the 5000 mark. Unless some strange 'tree-timebomb' effect kills all trees of all tree species just before their 5000 year-mark (to believe this, one really need blind faith!), there *should* be hundreds of trees with trunks having 5000, 7000, 10,000+ rings. Yet none have been found (even after decades of searching).

> > Flood stories exist in many (most?) world cultures
> Stories about demons, elves, pixies,...

Stories are just stories and should not carry as much credence as corroborated records or hard science. But, unlike the various flood legends, most legends about elves, demons, lizards, fire, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc, don't have them causing the near-extinction of the human species.

> Punctuated equilibrium accounts for problems seen with traditional natural selection
Agreed - my point was that a modifiction to traditional darwinian evolution was required to account for its inability to account for the fossil record.

See also my other post.
For other problems with Carbon dating and current evolutionary theory, consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.

> The oldest records of my family
> The oldest living dog I know...

But we're not talking about you. Science says that, *globally*(!) speaking, :
1. The earliest reliable human memories and records of events
2. The oldest living trees

...both date to about 5000 years ago - as the Biblical record implies they should.

Trees are especially interesting since tree rings provide a direct way to measure age (a sort of eyewitness account across the ages).

Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine, or this one: a 4844-ring pine cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

As mentioned here, there is no reason that trees *can't* live for longer (consider the two trees above). Yet the oldest trees mystically stop short of the 5000 mark. Unless some strange 'tree-timebomb' effect kills all trees of all tree species just before their 5000 year-mark (to believe this, one really need blind faith!), there *should* be hundreds of trees with trunks having 5000, 7000, 10,000+ rings. Yet none have been found (even after decades of searching).

> > Flood stories exist in many (most?) world cultures
> Stories about demons, elves, pixies,...

Stories are just stories and should not carry as much credence as corroborated records or hard science. But, unlike the various flood legends, most legends about elves, demons, lizards, fire, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc, don't have them causing the near-extinction of the human species.

> Punctuated equilibrium accounts for problems seen with traditional natural selection
Agreed - my point was that a modifiction to traditional darwinian evolution was required to account for its inability to account for the fossil record.

See also my other post.
For other problems with Carbon dating and current evolutionary theory, consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.

Qwest doesn't have to let other DSL providing ISPs use the high-frequency portion of the copper loops.

Other DSL-providing ISPs don't necessarily need to use the high-frequency portion themselves. They merely need to be able to purchase access to the ATM cells going over that portion - my ISP doesn't have their own DSLAMs blah blah blah at the CO, they let SBC provide that portion, and they run bridged Ethernet over it.

Now, perhaps allowing other ATM-cell-stream providers use the high-frequency portion of the copper loops makes it more likely that ISPs other than the Baby Bell's own ISP or the Baby Bell's official partner ISP will be able to get access to an ATM cell stream over the local loop, but that's another matter.