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Go to Ebay, pick up any of the linux supported touchscreen computers. you can usually get them for less than $220.00 and by the time you buy an 802.11b card, an accesspoint and a server you sill have spent less than this webpad will cost for the next 3 years.

Yes, I've picked up two Fujitsu Stylistic 1200's, one is being used as a mobile webcam running Win98, and the other is a "programmable picture frame" running Linux on the wall next to me. These pads rule!

you should pour liquid nitrogen into containers first rather than trying to make ice cream by directly pouring it into a mix of milk and butter.

You can check out my video about making ice cream with liquid nitrogen. I'm a bit afraid about the butter part, generally LN2 ice cream is made with milk and heavy cream, plus sugar and vanilla. I'll have to try the pouring mix into LN2 rather than pour LN2 into mix.

Some video of: Fun with Liquid Nitrogen and Fun with High Voltage Electrical Discharges

It is Eastern. From what I understand, Rob is the only one who hasn't moved yet, and he's up in Holland, MI. If you listen to Geeks in Space you'll hear them talk about where they are and where they went to college a few times. Also, they did a special about the filtering issue in the libraries of Holland.

(/me feels special, as he lives in the state that begot /.)

(/me also insists that he just has an excellent memory and that he is not stalking Rob Malda.)

From TheSync's Geeks In Space Page (http://thesync.com/geeks/):

"Geeks in Space" is a nearly-weekly audio show...

There should be a law against putting that much emphasis on the word "nearly".

See the "subscribe to the newsletter" thing on the sync? It's just an announce list for when an episode is posted. It tends to come a few days before it's posted on /. too (this episode's mail came on Wednesday).

Slashdot and a newly flush with cash Andover.net launch the Beanie Awards. After a mysterious process of nomination and voting, $100,000 is handed out for such awards as "Best Unix Eyecandy"...Video available here.

Hah, that was a hillarious night. Great quotes: "Is everyone drunk yet?" "Drink More" "IPO money needed to be spent" "Who here voted? Who lied?"

Video available here. (See the 200 Beanie Awards links.) Watch to the end for the scene of Cowboy Neal hugging Chris Dibona.

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

The Sync has a streamable version of the original Nosferatu in all its black-and-white glory available on their website. Best of all, its in Real Media, so it will run under Linux.

The Sync has a streamable version of the original Nosferatu in all its black-and-white glory available on their website. Best of all, its in Real Media, so it will run under Linux.

The Sync has a streamable version of the original a href="http://thesync.com/features/">Nosferatu in all its black-and-white glory available on their website. Best of all, its in Real Media, so it will run under Linux.

I know of at least one place to watch Nosferatu online, although the quality is pretty bad. Since this film is in the public domain, I'm sure there must be others.

We can now truely have Geeks in Space, but the production costs just went through the roof.

• technical discussions like Dr. Dobb's Technetcast
• Geeks in Space
• Financial planning programs like MoneyTalk
• Non-computer technical support programs like Car Talk

Dave Aiello

Wait...don't we have the closest thing reasonably feasable right now? Isn't it called Ground Control? And isn't it at thesync?

But when you can only watch karma go down, that gives the impression that you are no longer actually doing anything useful. (Plus it's possible to actually lose karma on a score 4 post!) It takes away the measure of how well you've been contributing.

(To lose karma on a score 4 post, get modded up to 5, then modded down. The +3/4 (depending on the starting score) will be dropped, but that last -1 will strike you!)

Keep in mind that without the karma cap, I tried to actually be meaningful because I could get feedback via moderation. Now the only feedback I get is from watching each post and reading and responding to replies. This is more work, and it means that in order to guage how well I'm doing on Slashdot, I have to go through my user history list and check on all my comments: not fun.

Besides, all karma really does is turn Slashdot into a game. In some Geeks in Space episode, CmdrTaco (I think) was talking about the (then) new experience point/level system in Everything2, and how it turned it basically into a game. Same thing with karma. Cap the max score, and then it becomes pointless to try and be useful. The bottom line is the karma cap has at best pissed a lot of the karma whores off. It has at worst turned some people into trolls .

So yeah, whenever I have something useful to say, I'll say it, but I won't try and be as nice. If you look through my recent comments, I'm starting to become more of a troll simply due to boredom. (And, probably, due to the fact I really don't have anything to say.)

I really don't think the karma gap has done anything useful. What Rob should really do is consider how to make moderating actually worth while for a moderator. The novelty wares off quickly. Honestly, it really isn't worth the hour it would take me to be a Good Moderator. So maybe that's why moderators seem to suck - they really don't have the time to go over every little thing and figure out how best to moderate. That's how things like the DAEHTIHS protocol get moderated up as "insightful" until someone suggests reading DAEHTIHS backwards.

..and they never will. Security is put there to keep the honest people honest. If someone is hell-bend of getting past a super-whizbang scheme, they will; Simple as that. I'm reminded of something 'taco said of DVDs in a past GiS eposide: "..they don't understand; if we can view it, we can rip it."

Well, I don't care much for Geeks in Space, but according to this, The Sync, which hosts Geeks, as well as, some of the most compelling independent film and net shows on the web is broke. They weren't able to find anybody who was willing to merge with them so they have to shut down. Kinda depressing.

Well, I don't care much for Geeks in Space, but according to this, The Sync, which hosts Geeks, as well as, some of the most compelling independent film and net shows on the web is broke. They weren't able to find anybody who was willing to merge with them so they have to shut down. Kinda depressing.

Uh, you probably mistyped it... This should link to the page, check for yourself.

Speaking of GIS. Taco, Hemos, anyone: Get a new episode up ASAP! It's been weeks now, and that ground control crap (a nice an idea actually) is no replacement.

Around 5min 20sec on Geeks in Space Ep29, Rob says he has no sence of smell.

RealAudio
Mp3 Instant Play
Mp3 Download

Looks like CmdrTaco will find this stuff useful after all (maybe).

It's one step closer to being Borg ;)

Around 5min 20sec on Geeks in Space Ep29, Rob says he has no sence of smell.

RealAudio
Mp3 Instant Play
Mp3 Download

Looks like CmdrTaco will find this stuff useful after all (maybe).

It's one step closer to being Borg ;)

Well, it's going to make some people's lives better anyway.... which can never be a bad thing...

Not even close, evidently you haven't been doing your homework. If you listened to "Geeks in Space: Slashdot Radio" you would know that we have a weekly assignment to email kurt@thepope.org about some interesting topic; such as how many a's you can put in the subject or your favorite gin drink.

MAE-East and MAE-West (metropolitan Area Exchange) handle 70-80% of all traffic that goes from one backbone to another., and are paid for by the government.

Although the NSF "designated" several NAPs (Network Access Points) including the MAE-East, I'm not sure any tax money went to support their operations, and very sure that there was no financial support after the end of the NSFNET.

The MAEs are now onwed by MCI/Worldcom, and you have to pay to collocate a router there or run bandwidth into the facility.

I wouldn't say 70-80% of traffic flows through the "public" (i.e. anyone can connect) NAP switches any more. Things are far more complex these days. Every large Tier 1 provider has private peering with several other Tier 1 providers. Besides the MAEs there are all kinds of hosting facilities aimed at attracting routers from various ISPs to exchange traffic in various geographical regions of the world.

For more info on the history of the MAE East, you can watch a "Mysteries of the MAE East" show I did, it is on the bottom of the linked page.

What about people with no smell? That's not a joke, BTW.

You know who ELSE doesn't have a sense of smell? You would if you'd listened to every episode of Geeks in Space. Yes! That's right! Our very own Rob Malda. Err. Yeah. So, don't feel like no one knows what you're talking about. I'm sure he does.

IIRC, Hemos said that it began to suck when they got the domain. CmdrTaco asked them all during one episode of GiS when Slashdot began to suck. I'm not sure which episode as they haven't worked out the written transcripts yet. Perhaps they should get a stenographer like they have in courtrooms with those funky keyboards with phenomes on them? That would be nice. Especially for episodes where we don't know what they said.

Anyway, this means it's been sucking for a long time. Perhaps it's now just intolerably noticeable?

I like the idea of being able to send and receave high quality audio over the Internet.
However I use it for lissening to on-line talk shows like Geeks in space and Leet Radio.

Napster is a great tool for distributing sound. Be it talk radio, Internet artists or CDs you bought from the store.

I'd like to defend Napster but everyone else seems to defend Napster as a tool for piracy.
That dosn't help the case...

The DCMA puts Napster in a bad position. Napster distributes high quality audio. It dosn't have to be made as a tool for piracy..
Under the old copyright laws Napster would have to be designed to devalue intelectual property.

Usenet can devalue IP.. Type a whole book into a computer or better yet scan it it and use an OCR program. Post it to usenet.. or on a website. You just pirated a book. Is Usenet or the web designed for this? No. It dosn't stop anyone from trying.

One usenet newsgroup was named "Gigabites of copyright violations"....
But that dosn't change Usenet into a website for copyright violations.

On the other hand how can I defend Napster and Napster users?
When every argument I see on Slashdot is a defence of IP theft and not of Napster for lagit uses.

This article summarizes all the reasons why I get all my 'net news right here at /. - because of spin, media pressure, sensationalism, etc... Sites like this are no better or different than television news shows. They are after ratings (hits) to please their sponsors (banner ads).

The only groovy thing I can say that ZDNet has had its hands in lately is Computer Stew.

The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

Once it was broken
Then the astronauts fixed it
Put more Geeks In Space

Point a RealPlayer at /etc geek TV archives and check out Episode 5: Fun with High Voltage Electrical Discharges, demonstrates how to produce ball lightening in your microwave with a flaming toothpick.

RealVideo and WMT Video do something that no non-proprietary video codecs can - bring reasonable video at low bitrates. It isn't all just DCT, there are supposedly wavelet elements in Real's video as well. Plus the devil is in the details, motion prediction and coefficient quanitization is a general concept, whether it fits down the pipe or not means spending a large amount of R&D time and money on figuring out the precise details of motion prediction and quantization.

But of course, I'd like to see an open source low-bitrate video codec. If you think you can write one, please do, and let us at The Sync take a look at it, if it works reasonably well, I'll be the first person to help you popularize it.

a few people are prone to "running amok": the drug induces some sort of psychosis causing them to murder anyone they can reach, until subdued.

um, let me see some links. After extensive "field testing", "group research", and just generally knowing a lot of people that smoke, I can guarantee you that the only place you'll see anyone "running amok" on weed/hash or any THC based substance is in the government propaganda film "Reefer Madness" (which you can see here. It is theorized that the stories about people been going crazy on weed have been traced to PCP, which royally fscks with your head and is in another category altogether).

The entire criminalization of reefer is a text book example on using fear tactics/minority demonization as a basis for legislation. ("Who is bringing all this horrible stuff to your clean white kids? The Blacks and Hispanics"). It wouldn't fly today but your grandparents folks sure loved it.

Everybody needs to learn their slashdot history. If you would kindly go to The Archives and listen to the interviews etc, you would know that VA donated the equipment a LONG time ago (before Andover acquired /.)

Tune in next time to learn why Rob Malda chose the name::: CmdrTaco.


Munky_v2
"Warning: you are logged into reality as root..."

You need to put a http:// in front of the address

Or just click here. Good luck getting on.

LocalEmperor

What I meant is that there was no mp3-2.thesync.com:8000 link just in case we have browsers that auto . Not that the URL is not posted.


URL: The "address" of a site


Link: A thing-a-ma-bob you click on to go to a URL


However, I realize that such a link might or might not work, can an http connection spawn a streaming vidio connection? Sorry, I'm not as big in the internet browser (formerly web browser) area of things as I could be.

Here an unfortunately small list of links to independent films. Please email me at perez_enrique@yahoo.com if you know of any other web sites with independent films or legally available video downloads.


ifilm--Streaming Independent Film

The New Venue

The Sync Online Film Festival

Despite the comment made in Geeks in Space episode something or other, this really does prove that Big Brother is watching and yes, he is out to get you if you do anything that The Man dissaproves of.
How many people must the DVD CCA go through to realise that when they do an encryption, it gets broken, the "Cracker" gets arrested, and life is a general cluster *ahem* for everyone else? 3? 30? It doesn't work, the DVD CCA and all its eyes and arms need to back off and let us run our happy little ways.

(joke)

Theoretical situation:
Enter Jon Katz
"Hi, I'm Jon Katz, here to introduce my movie. I'll start by briefly discussing how technology affects the many people in society. Why, just recently I was ...."
Eye's heavy. Can't think.. Sleepy.. fading..
The geeks fall asleep. The marketters in the audience are enthralled.

72 minutes later...

"So that's how I got to work with the cool Slashdot guys. Here's the movie."
Jon Katz steps to the side to watch the responce.
A familiar theme song starts up.

Geeks in audience start to groggily wake.
"WHAT THE HELL!? This is just Geeks In Space playing! Wait, what's that on the screen..."

On the screen, an image that is sometimes a mandelbrot set and sometimes a julia set is jiggling through a tunnel like image. It is not anti-aliased, and looks very pixelated.

"Hey, I recognize that, that's a sonqiue visualisation plugin. That bastard is making money from boring us to tears, and the slashdot crew's own music! And using a pathetic Windows MP3 player with no anti-aliasing.. LET'S GET 'IM!"

The geeks swarm over Jon, leaving nothing behind but a laptop with a pre-release of Windows 2000 Professional on it. On their way out the theatre, they also start mobbing the marketters in the audience, and incite a few riots around Radio Shack.

[fin]

Yeah, so if this movie is just Jon/Mp3 visualisation, we'll be on you like stink on a monkey. We at Echsuh (the Elite Cabal of High School and University Hackers) are not to be toyed with!


(/joke)

At-choo :-)
---

Several sites have already been doing "online film festivals" for 2-3 years now. The Sync's Festival allows viewers to vote for their favorite movies in several categories.

When we first started the festival, we got a lot of concern from filmakers about intellectual property and people ripping off their films. As a result, the films you see online in their entireity are the ones with smaller budgets. Often they, well, are not the highest quality. But then sometimes you do find a gleaming pearl among those oysters...and that's why we still do it.

We stick to under 30-minute films, as statistics show that is the longest 99% of people watch streaming video for. But with broadband there will eventually be a niche for longer films. Some people do watch the full length of the few feature films we've put up (such as Nosferatu and the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)

Several sites have already been doing "online film festivals" for 2-3 years now. The Sync's Festival allows viewers to vote for their favorite movies in several categories.

When we first started the festival, we got a lot of concern from filmakers about intellectual property and people ripping off their films. As a result, the films you see online in their entireity are the ones with smaller budgets. Often they, well, are not the highest quality. But then sometimes you do find a gleaming pearl among those oysters...and that's why we still do it.

We stick to under 30-minute films, as statistics show that is the longest 99% of people watch streaming video for. But with broadband there will eventually be a niche for longer films. Some people do watch the full length of the few feature films we've put up (such as Nosferatu and the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)

You can check out pictures of a "bagable" wearable webcam here here, and also and informative video on turning a laptop into a wearable.

You can check out pictures of a "bagable" wearable webcam here here, and also and informative video on turning a laptop into a wearable.

My girlfriend and co-founder of The Sync acquired gastroparesis from eating tainted food. She has been unresponsive to all prokinetic medicines available in the US by prescription.

One medicine which has not been approved by the FDA is Domperidone. Her gastroenterologist revealed to us recently that despite the drug being available in many countries around the world (Japan, South Africa, UK, etc.) it was not available for prescription in the US. Evdiently the costs of trials to get US FDA approval turned out to be prohibitive.

Severe gastroparesis is a disease that works havoc on your quality of life, limiting your diet, and often making sleep impossible for days on end.

Fortunately, she knew a doctor in El Salvador who was willing to ship the drug into the United States. There, all medicines are over-the-counter. Her US gastroenterologist could not even legally contact the drug company to check on side effects, or give her a prescription for needed blood tests to check how the drug was affecting her liver. Thanks, US government!

I'm certainly a ranting libertarian, but I'm willing to compromise on this issue. Let's say the FDA is an "advisory" body rather than a regulatory body. If you want the FDA "stamp of approval" on your medicine, you run the huge, expensive trials. Perhaps the FDA should also be in charge of purity of ingrediants in medicine. However doctors should be free to prescribe the drugs that people need, regardless of FDA status.

Given the strong tort system of the United States (w.r.t. breast implants and Phen-Fen, both of which got a bum rap in the courts), and the lucrative field of malpractice suits, the FDA is not needed today as the ultimate regulator of drugs.

My girlfriend and co-founder of The Sync acquired gastroparesis from eating tainted food. She has been unresponsive to all prokinetic medicines available in the US by prescription.

One medicine which has not been approved by the FDA is Domperidone. Her gastroenterologist revealed to us recently that despite the drug being available in many countries around the world (Japan, South Africa, UK, etc.) it was not available for prescription in the US. Evdiently the costs of trials to get US FDA approval turned out to be prohibitive.

Severe gastroparesis is a disease that works havoc on your quality of life, limiting your diet, and often making sleep impossible for days on end.

Fortunately, she knew a doctor in El Salvador who was willing to ship the drug into the United States. There, all medicines are over-the-counter. Her US gastroenterologist could not even legally contact the drug company to check on side effects, or give her a prescription for needed blood tests to check how the drug was affecting her liver. Thanks, US government!

I'm certainly a ranting libertarian, but I'm willing to compromise on this issue. Let's say the FDA is an "advisory" body rather than a regulatory body. If you want the FDA "stamp of approval" on your medicine, you run the huge, expensive trials. Perhaps the FDA should also be in charge of purity of ingrediants in medicine. However doctors should be free to prescribe the drugs that people need, regardless of FDA status.

Given the strong tort system of the United States (w.r.t. breast implants and Phen-Fen, both of which got a bum rap in the courts), and the lucrative field of malpractice suits, the FDA is not needed today as the ultimate regulator of drugs.

Send email to me if you are interested in playing Geeks in Space on public access cable or non-profit radio station. We'll look at it on a case-by-case basis.

Hey-yeah. Geeks in Space #15. History will be made. Boobies will be touched.

Episode #15

If you were listening to the first 45 seconds of the last Geeks in Space episode, you would know the ZD is hosting Linux Business Expo to run along with COMDEX. You even get to hear Linus's COMDEX keynote if you go to the Expo.

The Expo will have keynotes from Red Hat, Corel, and Caldera execs, plus a Linux learning center where suits can find out about Linux. VA Linux Systems is even sponsoring an "email garden".

Um, they do have an MP3 version. The link's right next to the RealAudio link on the page, there's a streaming version and a downloadable version (the downloadable version is at http://mp3-2.thesync.com/geeks12.mp3.

Being an Internet video producer, I have a feeling that POP.com will be a flop. We've already seen DEN's attempt to try to figure out what people on the Net want to watch (and "Frat Ratz" isn't it!). Pseudo does a bit better job, but their long-form live shows do not translate well into view-on-demand.

You can't just put anything up and expect an Internet audience to watch it. Net video content has to be relavent to the viewers. We're talking about shows with fierce independence, intellectual and emotional openess, free expression of often strong views, investigatory shows, and it can't be too corporate.

That's why we approached Slashdot to do Geeks in Space, even though we can't afford to make it a video show today, it is something that people want to listen to. People listen to GIS because it is relavent to them, the nerdy/geeky/hacker/open source population.

If you can watch it on TV today, you don't need it on the Net. It looks a hell of a lot better on TV. However there are plenty of opportunities to do cool video shows on the Net, you just have to have some clue about what Net viewers want to watch.

What scares me is that if POP and DEN don't work out, the entire Internet video industry could look really bad. I'm hoping that before that happens some money flows into the people who are making cool Internet video.