Water resistant for accidental dunks in the dishwater, sure.
But waterproof? SNORKLING? What are you doing looking up your addresses while snorkling? It's not like you're going to be making a phone call from down there.
You don't require your cell phone or PDA to be waterproof, so neither should the wristwatch.
We've had a worm composter for a year. It sits in our kitchen in our apartment. It has greatly reduced our garbage from two adults down to just a quarter of a standard black garbage bag a week.
It doesn't smell at all. There is some earthy smell when harvesting it every three months, but that's about it.
The worms only try to escape if it is too wet. They'd much rather stay inside a nice dark warm enviornment surrounded by their favorite tasty foods than be out on the cold bright sterile kitchen floor, where they would soon die.
It's not disease waiting to happen. Red worms are not a vector for disease, unlike rats. If you intend on using the worm casings for indoor plants, you should sterilize the casings by baking them in an oven, as it is possible that either the worms OR, more likely, the food you bought at the grocery store and then peeled, etc, contains some sort of plant disease. Otherwise you can use the worm casings outdoors without a problem. It's the most effective fertilizer that you can get.
If you can't even imagine ever doing it, then I suppose you don't have a very good imagination. It's a piece of cake, really. It's not rocket science. Take some responsibility for the waste you create, for a change!
self-publishing guide
on
Reflecting Fires
·
· Score: 5, Informative
If you're at all considering self-publishing your own book, No Media Kings is a must-read. Jim Munroe describes how to take on the publishing giants, drawing from his experience in self-publishing two comedy/sci-fi novels and a number of zines.
Even if you're not game for that, Munroe has an old-school text adventure game called PunkPoints and some video shorts in his "I like to make tiny movies" section, it's worth a look.
Also, some bricks-and-mortar bookstores won't bother to carry your book unless it's on Amazon, so it's good to know that Amazon.com allows you to sell online by consignment through their Advantage program.
No, 35mm film really has lost to digital. Game over. As a regular reader of the Luminous Landscape site I've followed Michael Reichmann as he switched from traditional output to digital output for his images. I've done the same with my own photos and prints.
Here's why: Scanning film with a drum scanner, sharpening it digitally, with digital output by laser diode or, more recently, super fine inkjet, eliminates an entire lens system from the equation. Lab-quality digital output blows away traditional prints for saturation and sharpness.
Now that we've been able to surpass the recording capability of film, there's no need for film anymore. Of course, there will always be regular old C-41 processing, just as traditional silver black & white is still around as a craft and a learning tool.
That said, I'm still shooting weddings on film, because the professional portrait films are designed for that purpose, and it will still be a couple of years before the cost of entry to these digital SLR cameras will be lower. At least I'll be able to keep my lenses!
"Enter John Leonard, a 21-year-old business student. Upon seeing that commercial and discovering he could purchase individual Pepsi points from the company for 10 each, he set about to get himself a Harrier at an unbelievable bargain rate.
On 28 March 1996, Leonard forked over 15 original points plus a check for $700,008.50 raised from five investors for the remaining 6,999,985 points "plus shipping and handling" and demanded his jet. Pepsi laughed off the claim, pointing out the Harrier had never been offered in the Pepsi Points catalogue and was just in the commercial to provide a humorous completion to the piece."
In August 1999, the New York judge upheld Pepsi's case. "No objective person could reasonably have concluded that the commercial actually offered consumers a Harrier jet," U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood said.
"Genetically modified seeds imposed on farmers in developing countries trigger famine and social devastation" Sowing the Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia by Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
The above article shows exactly what happened when Ethiopia accepted GE grains from the U.S. It's a must-read for anyone involved in this current discussion about Zimbabwe. Self-appointed 'president' Robert Mugabe isn't going to let others have all the fun of ruining the peasant economy; he'd rather do that himself.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Bartlett, as quoted in my 1st year physics textbook
The reflection holograms described in the article require a very bright light source to properly view the image. They are very far removed from the commercial mass-production processes in use today.
No one would own (or lease) a car if the contract said, "You must not sell this car, in the event this car is no longer used, send it to the nearest junkyard.", so why is this true for software?
I have a license to drive a car. I cannot possibly transfer my license to another driver.
At about 6:30 EST this evening, many meteors broke apart and headed south coming from Canada
Why is it that the only thing Americans hear about Canada is the weather?
"Cold front from Canada"
"Southernly winds from Canada"
"Snow from Canada"
and now
"Southward meteors from Canada"
Just you watch. Next you'll be blaming us for continental drift.
Would your space station run on Windows servers?;-)
The NASA control rooms at Johnson space center have been 'upgraded' to use 'commodity' software. They are running Windows NT. At least this is current as of two weeks ago when I took a tour.
I asked the tourdrone why, since stability and reliability were proclaimed to be so important, that they were using Microsoft Windows. He replied, "That's a really good question. I have absolutely no idea."
Definition of Violence
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 1
While we're busy debating about the meaning of
violence you might want to look at the essay Nonviolence and its Violent Consequences. I presume one of the documents by which the Earth Liberation Front justifies its actions.
I've found a chronology of the Earth Liberation Front's actions. It seems as though much of the activities in 2000 were dedicated to torching new oversized houses being built in sprawling neighborhoods.
For other Rogers@Home customers, here's a few resources that you can use to take them to small claims court:
a book on how to use the Ontario Small Claims Court system
a link to some useful information, including a PDF document on the Small Claims system
Is that enough?:)
Of course, if there are enough people that have been pissed off by Rogers, we could go for a huge class-action lawsuit, but I have a feeling that a grassroots small-claims onslaught will be much more effective, and put more cash back into your pocket if you've been affected.
Plastic and others illustrate slashcode's strength
on
Suck Stops Sucking
·
· Score: 1
Canucks would do well to check out buzz.ca, which is also based on slashcode. Well, at least it is place for all of those Canadian interest stories that were rejected by other sites. Buzz.ca is a tad more balanced than Naomi Klein's slash-based nologo.org, which is so left-leaning that it's about to fall over, bless her heart.
Kuro5hin.org, another fine community site, has a completely different tone. Ditto for smokedot.org, metamuscle.org, and countless other sites based on the same model.
The fact that Plastic has survived out of the group of three reinforces the strength of the slash-like model.
With the price of publication at near zero dollars, is it any wonder why conventional sites aren't working? The dot-bomb era has reduced commercial interest in web sites that rely on intellectual property for revenue. The pendulum has swung the other way, back towards a volunteer-run website model. The truth of the matter is that intellectual property is essentially free to distribute, but very expensive to produce.
One problem remains: What are Plastic, Slashdot and others going to link to once quality content producers such as Feed, Suck, and Salon dry up and become scarce?
On RocketGuy's website, he writes (in third person, no less) that his goal is "to set the altitude record for a private citizen".
I don't want to shatter his dream, but Dennis Tito became the first space tourist this past week. He paid $20 million to Russia to loft him into orbit.
Another civilian who attempted to go into space, Christa McAuliffe, died aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.
Finally, death didn't stop Timothy Leary, Gene Roddenberry, and 22 other space enthuasists. Their ashes were launched into space on April 1997 aboard a Pegaus missile.
Alive or dead, for free or for a fee, civilians have already gone into space.
Just not from their own backyard. Gotta give him credit for that.
The facts are a little different. He only spent 2 hours aloft, not 14. He soon felt numb from the cold, sent out a Mayday over citizens band radio. After shooting a few balloons, he lost his pistol overboard. Finally, he crashed into a power line, briefly blacking out a small area in Long Beach. (source: The New York Times 3 July 1982)
He was fined by the FAA. A decade later, he killed himself.
From The Los Angeles Times, 24 November 1993 (by Myrna Oliver, Times Staff Writer)
Larry Walters, who achieved dubious fame in 1982 when he piloted a lawn chair attached to helium balloons 16,000 feet above Long Beach, has committed suicide at the age of 44.
Walters died Oct. 6 after hiking to a remote spot in Angeles National Forest and shooting himself in the heart, his mother, Hazel Dunham, revealed Monday. She said relatives knew of no motive for the suicide. "It was something I had to do," Walters told The Times after his flight from San Pedro to Long Beach on July 2, 1982. "I had this dream for 20 years, and if I hadn't done it, I would have ended up in the funny farm."
Walters rigged 42 weather balloons to an aluminum lawn chair, pumped them full of helium and had two friends untether the craft, which he had dubbed "Inspiration I."
He took along a large bottle of soda, a parachute and a portable CB radio to alert air traffic to his presence. He also took a camera but later admitted, "I was so amazed by the view I didn't even take one picture."
Walters, a North Hollywood truck driver with no pilot or ballon training, spent about two hours aloft and soared up to 16,000 feet -- three miles -- startling at least two airline pilots and causing one to radio the Federal Aviation Administration.
Shivering in the high altitude, he used a pellet gun to pop balloons to come back to earth. On the way down, his balloons draped over power lines, blacking out a Long Beach neighborhood for 20 minutes.
The stunt earned Walters a $1,500 fine from the FAA, the top prize from the Bonehead Club of Dallas, the altitude record for gas-filled clustered balloons (which could not be officially recorded because he was unlicensed and unsanctioned) and international admiration. He appeared on "The Tonight Show" and was flown to New York to be on "Late Night With David Letterman," which he later described as "the most fun I've ever had."
"I didn't think that by fulfilling my goal in life -- my dream -- that would create such a stir," he later told The Times, "and make people laugh."
Walters abandoned his truck-driving job and went on the lecture circuit, remaining sporadically in demand at motivational seminars. But he said he never made much money from his innovative flight and was glad to keep his simple lifestyle.
He gave his "aircraft" -- the aluminum lawn chair -- to admiring neighborhood children after he landed, later regretting it.
In recent years, Walters hiked the San Gabriel Mountains and did volunteer work for the U.S. Forest Service.
"I love the peace and quiet," he told The Times in 1988. "Nature and I get along real well."
An Army vetern who served in Vietnam, Walters never married and had no children. He is survived by his mother and two sisters.
If something can go wrong, it will. That is why I think RocketGuy won't have a smooth ride, either. I wonder what safety factor he's building into his system?
TradeServer and TradeSuite are a possible alternative, not only to Openmail, but to Exchange:
"If you take a Linux box and add Bynari's TradeServer at $US599 you wind up with a money making machine. First, TradeServer provides messaging and collaboration services to Outlook clients. With Windows owning approximately 90% of the desktops in corporate America, this solution does two things: First, it completely cuts the cost of Microsoft Exchange server seats (about $80 per seat). Secondly, it provides a robust, stable and inexpensive alternative to Exchange."
Now we know why Lucasarts spent all that time and effort to remove the 'THX' startup sound.WAV file from websites over the past few years. They wanted to charge you for it.
By the way, here are a few recent locations of the THX startup sound that haven't been taken down by LucasLaws, Inc:
It's not the combination of lazy perl code and more importantly it doesn't do it to markup.
Uhhh, slashcode DOES add spaces in the markup - at least in the main story. It's annoying, but I've learned to check each URL after previewing and saving because slashcode tends to mangle it.
It looks like they're cutting out the naughty bits for the U.S. audience:
What viewers will see in the United States on the Sci Fi Channel is some 30 minutes shorter than a European version that screens some nudity as the Fremen get into and out of their stillsuits. Harrison says he trimmed about 10 minutes off each night's installment both for reasons of that nudity and for the time restrictions of U.S. commercial television.
There's no comment from Harrison about his particular choice of the 'trims', other than the nudity. Do you think this is a stab at the Americans?
If slashhosting.com is too expensive for you, then I suggest that slashcode may not be the right program for your needs. Slashcode is perfect for scaling up to a huge community. It's more complicated, so it costs more to administer slash-based accounts.
If you need to be able to grow to form a huge community, then you'll need slashcode.
But if you are talking about a few thousand visitors per day, you should look into any of the following slash-alikes:
I am reading this discussion with a great deal of interest, because I'm in the process of starting up a Canadian news/discussion site at Buzz.CA, based on the Slashcode software.
I've done a lot of thinking about how to present the stories, and the result is that we're more likely to present our own views instead of pointing to existing stories from The Globe or The National Post. There will be times when we'll link to them, of course. However, content will be more along the lines of the entertainment weekly rags found in the big cities, such as Eye and Now in Toronto. Those papers tend to uncover interesting stories that the mainstream press doesn't cover. Also, there won't be any banner ads! (at least, not as long as I can afford to continue funding it from my own pocket).
Still, there will only be at most five or six stories posted a day. I want to unearth the controversial topics and let the site visitors add in their own tidbits.
A number of those helping to run the site are either writers or journalists, or are taking journalism classes. Accountability is important. The discussion that follows each article provides an natural incentive for the person writing the article to get things right. Otherwise, they'll be publically slammed and will receive many e-mails - something that doesn't happen on traditional news media sites.
Slashdot Mirror
Water resistant for accidental dunks in the dishwater, sure.
But waterproof? SNORKLING? What are you doing looking up your addresses while snorkling? It's not like you're going to be making a phone call from down there.
You don't require your cell phone or PDA to be waterproof, so neither should the wristwatch.
We've had a worm composter for a year. It sits in our kitchen in our apartment. It has greatly reduced our garbage from two adults down to just a quarter of a standard black garbage bag a week.
If you're at all considering self-publishing your own book, No Media Kings is a must-read. Jim Munroe describes how to take on the publishing giants, drawing from his experience in self-publishing two comedy/sci-fi novels and a number of zines.
Even if you're not game for that, Munroe has an old-school text adventure game called PunkPoints and some video shorts in his "I like to make tiny movies" section, it's worth a look.
Also, some bricks-and-mortar bookstores won't bother to carry your book unless it's on Amazon, so it's good to know that Amazon.com allows you to sell online by consignment through their Advantage program.
No, 35mm film really has lost to digital. Game over. As a regular reader of the Luminous Landscape site I've followed Michael Reichmann as he switched from traditional output to digital output for his images. I've done the same with my own photos and prints.
Here's why:
Scanning film with a drum scanner, sharpening it digitally, with digital output by laser diode or, more recently, super fine inkjet, eliminates an entire lens system from the equation. Lab-quality digital output blows away traditional prints for saturation and sharpness.
Now that we've been able to surpass the recording capability of film, there's no need for film anymore. Of course, there will always be regular old C-41 processing, just as traditional silver black & white is still around as a craft and a learning tool.
That said, I'm still shooting weddings on film, because the professional portrait films are designed for that purpose, and it will still be a couple of years before the cost of entry to these digital SLR cameras will be lower. At least I'll be able to keep my lenses!
Woah! You must have missed out on the greatest nerd debate in the history of Usenet: Woah! Win95 boots in only 3 seconds!
"Genetically modified seeds imposed on farmers in developing countries trigger famine and social devastation"
Sowing the Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia by Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
The above article shows exactly what happened when Ethiopia accepted GE grains from the U.S. It's a must-read for anyone involved in this current discussion about Zimbabwe. Self-appointed 'president' Robert Mugabe isn't going to let others have all the fun of ruining the peasant economy; he'd rather do that himself.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
-- Bartlett, as quoted in my 1st year physics textbook
The reflection holograms described in the article require a very bright light source to properly view the image. They are very far removed from the commercial mass-production processes in use today.
I have a license to drive a car. I cannot possibly transfer my license to another driver.
Why is it that the only thing Americans hear about Canada is the weather?
"Cold front from Canada"
"Southernly winds from Canada"
"Snow from Canada"
and now
"Southward meteors from Canada"
Just you watch. Next you'll be blaming us for continental drift.
The NASA control rooms at Johnson space center have been 'upgraded' to use 'commodity' software. They are running Windows NT. At least this is current as of two weeks ago when I took a tour.
I asked the tourdrone why, since stability and reliability were proclaimed to be so important, that they were using Microsoft Windows. He replied, "That's a really good question. I have absolutely no idea."
I've found a chronology of the Earth Liberation Front's actions. It seems as though much of the activities in 2000 were dedicated to torching new oversized houses being built in sprawling neighborhoods.
- a book on how to use the Ontario Small Claims Court system
- a link to some useful information, including a PDF document on the Small Claims system
Is that enough?Of course, if there are enough people that have been pissed off by Rogers, we could go for a huge class-action lawsuit, but I have a feeling that a grassroots small-claims onslaught will be much more effective, and put more cash back into your pocket if you've been affected.
Kuro5hin.org, another fine community site, has a completely different tone. Ditto for smokedot.org, metamuscle.org, and countless other sites based on the same model.
The fact that Plastic has survived out of the group of three reinforces the strength of the slash-like model.
With the price of publication at near zero dollars, is it any wonder why conventional sites aren't working? The dot-bomb era has reduced commercial interest in web sites that rely on intellectual property for revenue. The pendulum has swung the other way, back towards a volunteer-run website model. The truth of the matter is that intellectual property is essentially free to distribute, but very expensive to produce.
One problem remains: What are Plastic, Slashdot and others going to link to once quality content producers such as Feed, Suck, and Salon dry up and become scarce?
[additional shameless self-promotion follows in .sig]
I don't want to shatter his dream, but Dennis Tito became the first space tourist this past week. He paid $20 million to Russia to loft him into orbit.
Another civilian who attempted to go into space, Christa McAuliffe, died aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.
Finally, death didn't stop Timothy Leary, Gene Roddenberry, and 22 other space enthuasists. Their ashes were launched into space on April 1997 aboard a Pegaus missile.
Alive or dead, for free or for a fee, civilians have already gone into space.
Just not from their own backyard. Gotta give him credit for that.
He was fined by the FAA. A decade later, he killed himself.
From The Los Angeles Times, 24 November 1993 (by Myrna Oliver, Times Staff Writer)
If something can go wrong, it will. That is why I think RocketGuy won't have a smooth ride, either. I wonder what safety factor he's building into his system?
TradeServer and TradeSuite are a possible alternative, not only to Openmail, but to Exchange:
There's an FAQ and then some, at http://www.teledyn.com/products/TradeSuite/. No, I haven't used it or deployed it. But I thought it would be worth mentioning.By the way, here are a few recent locations of the THX startup sound that haven't been taken down by LucasLaws, Inc:
Now how come you didn't list this on your online C.V.? :)
Uhhh, slashcode DOES add spaces in the markup - at least in the main story. It's annoying, but I've learned to check each URL after previewing and saving because slashcode tends to mangle it.
Quantumdot.org: News for nodes. Size matters.
If you need to be able to grow to form a huge community, then you'll need slashcode.
But if you are talking about a few thousand visitors per day, you should look into any of the following slash-alikes:
- PHPslash
- Squishdot
- ThatPHPware
- scoop
- SlashJ
- sips
- localecho
- twig
- ASPslash
- phpweblog
(the above was taken from the Slashalikes page on Slashcode.org)Methinks this would have been a better question to ask on Slashcode.org instead of here on Slashdot itself.
I've done a lot of thinking about how to present the stories, and the result is that we're more likely to present our own views instead of pointing to existing stories from The Globe or The National Post. There will be times when we'll link to them, of course. However, content will be more along the lines of the entertainment weekly rags found in the big cities, such as Eye and Now in Toronto. Those papers tend to uncover interesting stories that the mainstream press doesn't cover. Also, there won't be any banner ads! (at least, not as long as I can afford to continue funding it from my own pocket).
Still, there will only be at most five or six stories posted a day. I want to unearth the controversial topics and let the site visitors add in their own tidbits.
A number of those helping to run the site are either writers or journalists, or are taking journalism classes. Accountability is important. The discussion that follows each article provides an natural incentive for the person writing the article to get things right. Otherwise, they'll be publically slammed and will receive many e-mails - something that doesn't happen on traditional news media sites.
David