The chair I've lusted for over the past decade-plus is one like the Relax-the-Back "Perfect Chair" (http://www.livingincomfort.com/ec11130.html for instance), but they start at over $1000 dollars. Cheap compared to doctor bills, I guess, but $1000 for a chair is unlikely for my near-future budget:)
However, a few days ago I picked up from the local Dick's Sporting Goods a similarly reclining chair (mesh, not leather) which folds, weighs probably about 15 pounds, and only cost $60. Since I've had it only a few days, I can't make long-term evaluations yet, but it's comfortable for laptop-typing, and sure beats my usual awful posture in an office chair. For instance, I'm sitting at the moment in a fairly comfy chair from Office Depot (one of the leather "manager's chairs" they have on recurring sales for 80 or 100 bucks), but frankly it's only fairly comfy in comparison to most other chairs I've tried. Aerons are nice, but not all they're cracked up to be. Some Aeron competitors stop at looking vaguely similar (and aren't comfortable), and I suspect some surpass the real Aeron in comfort, but I haven't hit any yet. My position is like this:
- left leg, extended forward onto a metal shelf (resting on a jerry-rigged shelf-pad made of a folded grey fleece sleeping bag)
- right leg folded and tucked under the left one
- back in only moderate agony
I'm not on the newer reclining one only because I'm lazy and in the room where it is not.
I've tried the kneeling chairs, and didn't much like them; the forward creep (and the battle with pants slippage!) made the novelty wear off; they're strictly OK rather than awesome. What I really want is a space couch from the shuttle, and LCD on the ceiling, and a working, intuitive voice-recognition system that's available as a deb and under an OSI-approved license:) As Bill Shatner might once have said, in a strained and melodramatic voice, "Must!... have!... a!... dream!"
Built-in and unobtrusive certainly are nice, but the laptops I hoped to use these on are old, predate minipci. One has a busted PCMCIA slot (the other's may yet work, but it's flakey). And there's a specific usage scenario I got them for, which I'll admit is pretty esoteric: I used to drive around a lot, editing Slashdot from the front seat of my car at (among other places) many locations of the Flying J truckstop chain, and wanted a USB wireless dongle that I could either mount on top of my car's roof or mount in a dish (or both). (See http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/) USB having no appreciable signal loss would make my parking location less important than my antenna placement.
(Frustratingly enough, the reason that PCMCIA slot is busted, though my own fault, was because I thought I'd be clever and get a 200mw PCMCIA card (Engenious I think is the brand name) and external antenna -- which got tangled underneath and then torqued the slot when I stupidly moved the thing without paying attention to the antenna.)
"If they made wireless cards that plugged into your headphone port I'm sure they would work in Windows too... and besides... signal strength is lacking... you can only fit so many antennas on a tiny little stick. Waste of money whether it works or not. "
The proxim devices I have are not those little stick ones; they look about like a RadioShark (perhaps 5 inches high). They're frankly a bit bulky! But they were also only $10 each, and contain an Orionco Gold (or is it Silver?) I forget card inside.
USB is a bus that's perfectly well suited to (current) typical wireless bandwidth, and has (to me) one big advantage, or at least it did when I got these devices, which is that I have two laptops with broken PCMCIA slots, and this seemed a good way to give them wireless network access. (Or network access at all, for the one without integrated ethernet.) Also, can be suction-mounted on the roof of my car, which I like -- USB cables are relatively low loss; pigtail connectors aren't, and they're expensive, and generally take expensive cards to work with...
Maybe SUSE will work 'em, as another poster suggested.
>>Remember the taxpayers? The guys who pay for DARPA?> You're free to give as much of your money to scientific researchers (of your choosing, no less!) as you'd like.> There are lots of ways (infinite, for discussions purposes) that money for "science" could be spent >Giving confiscated money (that is, taxes) "to science" or "to academic institutions" via the government may occasionally make sense, but mostly it seems like supporting eating contests as a means to combat starvation.
"Strangely constrasting from the previous paragraph, this is the anarchist thesis. While I can easily support the idea of reducing government spending and taxation and thereby reducing the amount of government being done, there have been no tax cuts here (although some taxes have been redistributed from some people to other people, total tax revenue hasn't really changed, certainly not by comparison to the spending cuts)."
Your point on the revenue system; as P.J. O'Rourke points out, it's hard for the government's own various accounting offices to even agree how much money the government has, takes in, or owes. Considering there's a substantial national debt, there's no way to look at the current spending pattern and tax system and find much rational about it.
But there's no contrast to my previous graf at all; if you want to call this "anarchist" (fair enough, though I'm not a full-fledged anarchist -- "libertarian" is not perfect, but I think close enough) this graf just extends the ideas of the previous one.
"In general, your post seems irrelevant. Whether or not it is good for a government to be involved in science, the point remains that the current US federal government is anti-science and that is having an effect on the economy."
Pishposh. Every administration has pet projects and peeve projects, and strange instances of Federal money being used for strange purposes or denied for projects that sound beneficial; The Tuskegee Experiment started under Roosevelt and continued into the Nixon administration. Reagan proposed huge budgets for SDI research, some portion of which ended up actually going into that or related projects; was the Congress of that time "anti-science" because particular projects they objected to ended up getting canned instead of funded? Bush gets called "anti-science" for opposing fetal stem-cell research, as if the issue was as simple as a 10-second soundbite; it's not. (It's also been argued at length by people better versed in it than I am, on both sides.) Bush also gets lumped in with those opposed to teaching evolution in public schools, which (so far as I've noticed) isn't true, merits of that whole silly debate notwithstanding. But anti-science? Not as far as I can see -- his administration (and Congress, from whom all blessing flow) have overseen the pig-trough dispensal of hundreds of millions of dollars of tax dollars to science projects of various levels of quality. "Restraint" in spending among any recent administration is when they decide to give away a few less of the tax dollars they collect; when they make cuts, it's not usually even to the sensible level of spending such that we're not accruing new interest on the debt.
I have a few different wireless USB dongles; I have a netgear (model number slips my mind, and it's not handy) that's the size of a USB thumbdrive, and a few Proxim externals that are bigger -- they look a bit like a radio shark, and contain a full-sized PCMCIA card (Lucent, I think).
I know people handier with fooling around with their systems have gotten both of these models to work, but can anyone name a distro that makes USB wireless (within reason, as in "using widely supported devices," which I understand these both to be) truly plug and play? For some devices (old laptops with broken PCMCIA slots, shoebox machine with no free slots) USB's the only hope for getting wireless, but I've never found a distro that said "Hey, you've got a wireless USB dongle -- cool!" (even metaphorically).
"The current US government is pretty much anti-science, not because they order scientists to withhold non-favourable comments about evolution and stem cells, but because they have been systematically eliminating the supply of government money to academic institutions. It is much much harder to get a government grant in the US for research than it was ten years ago. Remember DARPA? The guys who paid for the internet? Well they don't do that any more, and the same thing has been repeated across most branches of the federal government."
Remember the taxpayers? The guys who pay for DARPA?
You're free to give as much of your money to scientific researchers (of your choosing, no less!) as you'd like.
There are lots of ways (infinite, for discussions purposes) that money for "science" could be spent; depending on your bent, you may think that genome research is more important than climate research but less important than experimenting with nuclear containment techniques, or that particular archeological research projects into early civilizations, or Mediterranean shipwrecks, are so interesting that they deserve millions of dollars to continue or expand.
Giving confiscated money (that is, taxes) "to science" or "to academic institutions" via the government may occasionally make sense, but mostly it seems like supporting eating contests as a means to combat starvation.
1) Re: the "megafence" on the southern border of the U.S.: remember, no such fence exists right now. There are fenced portions of the border, but most of it is basically freely passable (though the landscape itself is forbidding across West Texas and Arizona at least). Note, too, that even if there was a "perfect" (impregnable) fortress-fence stretching the whole way, and likewise keeping out those pesky Canadians, it would not contradict the claim that the U.S. allows immigration (and in healthy numbers!). Allowing immigration does not imply a freely permeable border. Mexico (perhaps in reaction to U.S. rules) has fairly stringent rules about Americans (and others) in Mexico, too; for more than border-area excursions (I think 60 miles / 48 hours), Americans are supposed to get paperwork done in advance to clear it. I have seen little complaint about this exercise of Mexican sovereignity. OTOH, at least in El Paso / Juarez, there is abundant foot- and car-traffic across the various official border crossing points, and the hassle is minimal in my limited experience (either direction, for people of American or Mexican citizenship). But you can't carry a gun from dangerous Texas into ultra-safe Juarez.
2) A 5,000-person conference in Austin with no Internet connection, in 2004?! That's hard to believe:) Seems hard to go more than 10 feet in Austin without being in at least *someone's* open wi-fi zone, including the delicatessen chain (Jason's? Katz's?) that has free wifi at all locations.
The trouble is, the current digitals from Minox all seem to be mediocre rebranded cameras -- nothing like the clean, engineered look of the classic slimline Minox B. Even the 35mm cameras from Minox have all been pretty stylish. Leica's blown a good chance to exploit positive feelings toward that brand name by slapping Minox on some pretty bad cameras. Some of these don't even have expandable memory!
OK, OK -- that one I'd forgotten about when I posted:) However, at that price, while Yes, it is What James Bond Would Carry (at least possibly), it's more expensive than the *actual* Minox B, which was developed as a general purpose camera before it was coopted into espionage use by both sides in the Cold War... makes me want to see more stuff from the same designer, whose name escapes me for the moment. Strange, I'd always thought it was Swiss, but turns out the Minox came from Latvia...
I want a Minox B. No, I don't want to pay for an *actual* Minox; don't have enough banks robbed yet. Also, tiny film cassettes, finicky jewel-like mechanisms, etc.
What I want is a modern, digital, Minox-alike that is:
(The size of that thing is OK, though, but it's ugly in colors and shape; I could overlook those things, or cover all the but lens with a paper bag, if the resolution wasn't so poor.)
c) more brick-like than some of Sony's smallest, which otherwise are quite nice; I don't like the roundedness of some of the U-Series, but the the U50 (swivel and all) is close to a digital Minox. http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Sony/sony_ds cu50.asp I like that it uses AAA batteries, too; a single AA would be even better than 2 AAAs, but life isn't perfect. Maybe I'll find a good deal from eBay on a U50...
Well, OK, so Cold War spies killed for plenty of reasons, but what I'm thinking of is the general advances in electronic miniaturization that can put a tiny audio recorder, camera, heat sensor, pressure sensor, etc., in spaces far smaller than the equivalent device of just a few decades ago.
Looking through my copy of The Ultimate Spy Book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0789404435/ref=n osim/102-3417579-5590511?n=283155) -- the affilliate link is for LibraryThing, because that was the easiest way to grab the link - strip as you please;)), some of the "hidden" devices from the early / mid Cold War years seem laughably huge and detectable, especially cameras larger than many current mid-range digital cameras, meant to be strapped behind ties (?!) and or shooting through false buttons in trenchcoats, etc.
I like the key action on Happy Hacking keyboards pretty well, but (and I know this is one of the selling points, so don't shoot me for it) I've never gotten used to using a really small keyboard. Maybe that's because I frequently type the way I'm typing right now, with legs extended onto a shelf or ottoman, and the keyboard resting on my thighs. I'd be happy to give the HH keyboard a chance, but when I've used it at trade shows I was impressed but not enough to spend the $70 or so for the cheapest version, and definitely not enough to spend multi-hundreds on one, blank keys or no! (I've considered spending quite a bit on a Kinesis, Maltronics or other deep-bowl-dish keyboard, which *look* amazingly comfortable, but not until I type on one in person first.)
I don't know if he still uses one, but I remember in the summer of 2000 that Richard Stallman was using a HH rather than the keyboard on his laptop, and seemed to be a happy hacker with it:) On the other hand, I'm sure his hands made it do magic emacs tricks which mine would not.
My bias may be cliche, but it's real: I like a loud, clicky, snappy, breaking-glass-rod feel, and though Model Ms are the obvious source of that feel, I have quite a few no-name or little-known brands that I've picked up in thrift stores which have equivalent (or in some cases arguably better) feel. My Northgate OmniMac was expensive IMO at $100, but well worth it, and only after I got that for my first computer did I experience cheap Model Ms. The OmniMac's chassis feels like steel, and might actually be. The keys though, are utterly responsive. Similarly impressive: a split-layout keyboard (predating the MS Natural) and terminated in an AT plug, which I've connected to an AT PS/2 plug and from that to a PS/2 USB plug. $2.49 in a Florida panhandle Goodwill shop!
timothy
Thanks for pointing out the "nightlies"
on
The CVS Cop-Out
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Though obviously a lot of projects have nightly builds (I remember -- because it's not that long ago -- when Mozilla's crashiness or stability seemed to require grabbing that very day's build quite a lot), I like the way videolan's done that (with a "nightlies" subdomain) and wish this convention was more widespread. (Just like, for certain projects at least, it's nice that there's a "planet.$PROJECTNAME.org" to collect various blog feeds.)
timothy
p.s. "Nightlies" would also be a good name for a line of lingerie.
I ate at Google once, thanks to Chris DiBona: it was indeed excellent. Like a mall food court in paradise; a wide variety of well-prepared food, plus a huge wall cooler of drinks from mundane to interesting, obscure stuff. Venison rounds. Asparagus. Super cake, delicious cookies. Great salad. And a sushi stand near the exit to the building, where the chef said "Sure, have a box! Enjoy!"
If you read through any Slashdot thread involving Microsoft (which seems to end up being about 90% of them in one way or another) you'll find a lot of sentiment (paraphrased) that "Microsoft is evil, eternal, and eternally evil," and, as a corollary, the idea that "Windows has been, is, and will remain FOREVER the dominant operating system for personal computers." Nothing like some worldly, jaded, cynical pronouncements about Everything Forever;)
I won't say there's no reason for Microsoft to cling to its current model of software sales for as long as possible -- it's a public, and therefore (by definition) profit-driven company. Investors like stability, and conventional models of making money.
But I believe Microsoft could become the world's largest vendor of open source software (even if wasn't Free software in the RMS sense*), and that surely some wags and possibly some visionaries within the company have been considering what that could mean. * (That's also *possible* but a bigger stretch.)
Microsoft employs several thousand really bright people (and of course some percentage of other people); it has one of the most recognized brand names in the world; it has a packaging and distribution system that gets software moved around the world in little boxes pretty effectively. Point is, Microsoft could move at its own pace to greater inclusion of open source software (as they've famously been happy to use, by using BSD licensed software) without upsetting the balance of the force.
- The Windows operating systems could remain closed, but certain applications get turned into open source projects. For instance, Microsoft Office could be made open source and free for home users, but not licensed for commercial use except through specific (money-costing) license agreements. That's not so very different from how it works now, in that lots of people have "borrowed from work" copies of applicaton software from MS, Adobe, and others -- much easier to enforce expensive license agreements against companies than individuals, both aesthetically and practically. (If AT&T is ignoring their agreement to pay for something that they're using to make money, a lot of people who don't quite *like* Microsoft could understand their pursuing AT&T's agreed-on money; if Grandma Smith next door is using MS Word to tap in her favorite recipes because her nice nephew installed it for her and doesn't realize it isn't a legit copy, that's a lot harder to swallow.)
- The *core* of Windows could be turned into an open source project, while the polished graphical interface remained exclusive to Microsoft as a branding / copyright playground, so few people (relatively speaking) would be interested in using the underlying system without paying Microsoft for the decoration level as well. ["Nahhh, that's impossible!";)]
- Microsoft could just keep pushing open or semi-open development tools; heck, they could declare Mono the preferred way to develop for Windows, and set up a SourceForge equivalent to encourage new software, proprietary or not, for Windows.
Don't tell anyone! Shhh! VLC 0.8.5 was released recently -- downloads are something close to 1 per second. The list of supported formats is pretty incredible...
Plus, Windows Media Whatever doesn't work on my Linux box:)
"The beatings will continue until morale improves."
I wonder if instead of the "Your contributions" tab that logged in Wikipedia users see, the equivalent here would be "your offenses." Or perhaps "your secret trial dates"?
One of my favorite drinks, year-'round, is tea mixed with orange juice. Lately I have been (or rather had been) drinking a bit too much of this stuff, and finding myself unable to sleep; the solution is decaf tea bags! I sense some hackles raised and boiling-oil pots clanking behind the castle walls, so let me preemptively say:
a) Yes, "tea bags aren't tea." I enjoy high-end tea, but sorry, I grew up happy with Liptons and will likely remain so.
b) "decaf tea" from tea bags *certainly* isn't tea. As plain tea, I certainly prefer the taste of actual (not decaffeinated) tea, at least the last time I tried it. However, when I make tea just to cool and mix with juice.
My usual method is to make the tea the previous evening, brewing it 3-5 minutes in glass jars. When it's cool enough, it goes in the fridge. I mix the ingredients just before drinking, and have it over ice.
I usually mix it about 3 parts tea to 2 parts juice ("60/40" if you prefer), but with other types of juice the ratio is probably better half and half (at least that's what I prefer when it's cranberry or grape).
The upshot is: - either no caffeine, or almsot half the caffeine of full-strength tea - less sugar than the juice, by half or more (or less, I guess, depending on your mixing preference) - tasty drink; I crave sweet drinks (rather than just water), and this is sweet enough to stop me from guzzling a coke, at least most of the time.
Yes; I'm something like a decade older than you, but look young enough to fall in the same category;) You're right about age being a big factor in such queries. On the other hand, I believe (could just be the obvious problem of a limited sample) that I'm asked for directions on the street, in stores, etc, more than average. In a way I like that (it's surely an ego boost to appear knowledgeable), but sometimes it's just awkward. People have worse problems, though;)
I've had some great help from employees at Best Buy, and some really bad experiences from them. Little point in arguing with some of them, who make crazy, unfounded, unsupportable claims about the merchandise, too often speaking strictly from a wrong orifice.
However, even without a blue polo shirt, for some reason people ask me a lot of questions of the "Will this router work with Comcast?" and "Does this one take movies with sound?" -- I try to be helpful, but as I'm not an employee I find this sort of amusing.
Whether a place is a commercial establishment has has less to do with who can be barred entry than do the laws of that jurisdiction (with the exceptions you name).
In New Jersey, for instance, you can't bar people arbitrarily from an open-to-the-public retail establishment without pretty strong reason; in Nevada, you can. (I know those two states in particular from examples in property law class, can't speak to others;))
The 6200 sounds interesting -- cheap and AGP are what I'm looking for, and all my machine is capable of anyhow. Perhaps someone on Philly's craiglist has one for sale, too.
Incidentally, if that doesn't pan out, Amazon's used-goods system is where I might look next. I used it for the first time recently to order several books, and was pretty impressed by the system, especially compared to the last time I used eBay. Nice to be able to place an order with 5 merchants and only pay at one checkout point... my collection of Penn and Teller books is officially started now;)
Thanks for the information. Do you have any idea how well either one of those works straight-out-of-the-box on a typical Linux system? (That is, something like Debian or Red Hat, with no proprietary drivers or modules.) I don't need GREAT performance, but even OK 3D performance would be nice;) The integrated graphics chip on my eMachines sempron machine doesn't even want to play TuxRacer, which is pretty silly considering that my old Matrox card (several years ago) did that fine.
Yes, I can google -- but I should be studying, and so won't google today;)
It seems the submitter considers $300 *not* to be expensive. for a video card. Reminds me of the saying "Good work, if you can get it." Right now I'm typing on the fastest computer I've ever owned,* which was a low-end box-store model about a year and a half ago. It cost $350, including a pretty nice CRT monitor. (Half gig memory, Sempron something-something processor, 60gig hard drive, lousy integrated graphics which are perfectly fine for anything not involving 3D graphics, and basically worthless for anything that is*, DVD/CD-R, big ugly case.)
A $500 video card sounds to me like the "ludicrous speed" setting in Spaceballs. Not that there's anything *wrong* with that! It's neat to see what people do, including concentrating large chunks of money on short-lived computer components, because companies chase those people, and in doing so may end up greatly improving products for cheapskates;)
But $500! For a video card! Still makes my head spin a bit.
What's the best one can do in a 3D video card supported out of the box by Debian or Red Hat that costs something like, oh, I dunno, ONE hundred dollars? I might be tempted at that, especially if there's a card that will let me actually use 2nd life's client, which my built-in card will not.
timothy
*Actually, my Thinkpad (far more expensive) might technically be faster, but it's hard to compare for someone as lazy as me.
** OK, so I gave myself away as not being generally in the $500-video card market;)
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The chair I've lusted for over the past decade-plus is one like the Relax-the-Back "Perfect Chair" (http://www.livingincomfort.com/ec11130.html for instance), but they start at over $1000 dollars. Cheap compared to doctor bills, I guess, but $1000 for a chair is unlikely for my near-future budget :)
:) As Bill Shatner might once have said, in a strained and melodramatic voice, "Must! ... have! ... a! ... dream!"
However, a few days ago I picked up from the local Dick's Sporting Goods a similarly reclining chair (mesh, not leather) which folds, weighs probably about 15 pounds, and only cost $60. Since I've had it only a few days, I can't make long-term evaluations yet, but it's comfortable for laptop-typing, and sure beats my usual awful posture in an office chair. For instance, I'm sitting at the moment in a fairly comfy chair from Office Depot (one of the leather "manager's chairs" they have on recurring sales for 80 or 100 bucks), but frankly it's only fairly comfy in comparison to most other chairs I've tried. Aerons are nice, but not all they're cracked up to be. Some Aeron competitors stop at looking vaguely similar (and aren't comfortable), and I suspect some surpass the real Aeron in comfort, but I haven't hit any yet. My position is like this:
- left leg, extended forward onto a metal shelf (resting on a jerry-rigged shelf-pad made of a folded grey fleece sleeping bag)
- right leg folded and tucked under the left one
- back in only moderate agony
I'm not on the newer reclining one only because I'm lazy and in the room where it is not.
I've tried the kneeling chairs, and didn't much like them; the forward creep (and the battle with pants slippage!) made the novelty wear off; they're strictly OK rather than awesome. What I really want is a space couch from the shuttle, and LCD on the ceiling, and a working, intuitive voice-recognition system that's available as a deb and under an OSI-approved license
timothy
Built-in and unobtrusive certainly are nice, but the laptops I hoped to use these on are old, predate minipci. One has a busted PCMCIA slot (the other's may yet work, but it's flakey). And there's a specific usage scenario I got them for, which I'll admit is pretty esoteric: I used to drive around a lot, editing Slashdot from the front seat of my car at (among other places) many locations of the Flying J truckstop chain, and wanted a USB wireless dongle that I could either mount on top of my car's roof or mount in a dish (or both). (See http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/) USB having no appreciable signal loss would make my parking location less important than my antenna placement.
(Frustratingly enough, the reason that PCMCIA slot is busted, though my own fault, was because I thought I'd be clever and get a 200mw PCMCIA card (Engenious I think is the brand name) and external antenna -- which got tangled underneath and then torqued the slot when I stupidly moved the thing without paying attention to the antenna.)
timothy
"If they made wireless cards that plugged into your headphone port I'm sure they would work in Windows too... and besides... signal strength is lacking... you can only fit so many antennas on a tiny little stick. Waste of money whether it works or not. "
...
The proxim devices I have are not those little stick ones; they look about like a RadioShark (perhaps 5 inches high). They're frankly a bit bulky! But they were also only $10 each, and contain an Orionco Gold (or is it Silver?) I forget card inside.
USB is a bus that's perfectly well suited to (current) typical wireless bandwidth, and has (to me) one big advantage, or at least it did when I got these devices, which is that I have two laptops with broken PCMCIA slots, and this seemed a good way to give them wireless network access. (Or network access at all, for the one without integrated ethernet.) Also, can be suction-mounted on the roof of my car, which I like -- USB cables are relatively low loss; pigtail connectors aren't, and they're expensive, and generally take expensive cards to work with
Maybe SUSE will work 'em, as another poster suggested.
Cheers,
timothy
>>Remember the taxpayers? The guys who pay for DARPA?> You're free to give as much of your money to scientific researchers (of your choosing, no less!) as you'd like.> There are lots of ways (infinite, for discussions purposes) that money for "science" could be spent >Giving confiscated money (that is, taxes) "to science" or "to academic institutions" via the government may occasionally make sense, but mostly it seems like supporting eating contests as a means to combat starvation.
"Strangely constrasting from the previous paragraph, this is the anarchist thesis. While I can easily support the idea of reducing government spending and taxation and thereby reducing the amount of government being done, there have been no tax cuts here (although some taxes have been redistributed from some people to other people, total tax revenue hasn't really changed, certainly not by comparison to the spending cuts)."
Your point on the revenue system; as P.J. O'Rourke points out, it's hard for the government's own various accounting offices to even agree how much money the government has, takes in, or owes. Considering there's a substantial national debt, there's no way to look at the current spending pattern and tax system and find much rational about it.
But there's no contrast to my previous graf at all; if you want to call this "anarchist" (fair enough, though I'm not a full-fledged anarchist -- "libertarian" is not perfect, but I think close enough) this graf just extends the ideas of the previous one.
"In general, your post seems irrelevant. Whether or not it is good for a government to be involved in science, the point remains that the current US federal government is anti-science and that is having an effect on the economy."
Pishposh. Every administration has pet projects and peeve projects, and strange instances of Federal money being used for strange purposes or denied for projects that sound beneficial; The Tuskegee Experiment started under Roosevelt and continued into the Nixon administration. Reagan proposed huge budgets for SDI research, some portion of which ended up actually going into that or related projects; was the Congress of that time "anti-science" because particular projects they objected to ended up getting canned instead of funded? Bush gets called "anti-science" for opposing fetal stem-cell research, as if the issue was as simple as a 10-second soundbite; it's not. (It's also been argued at length by people better versed in it than I am, on both sides.) Bush also gets lumped in with those opposed to teaching evolution in public schools, which (so far as I've noticed) isn't true, merits of that whole silly debate notwithstanding. But anti-science? Not as far as I can see -- his administration (and Congress, from whom all blessing flow) have overseen the pig-trough dispensal of hundreds of millions of dollars of tax dollars to science projects of various levels of quality. "Restraint" in spending among any recent administration is when they decide to give away a few less of the tax dollars they collect; when they make cuts, it's not usually even to the sensible level of spending such that we're not accruing new interest on the debt.
timothy
I have a few different wireless USB dongles; I have a netgear (model number slips my mind, and it's not handy) that's the size of a USB thumbdrive, and a few Proxim externals that are bigger -- they look a bit like a radio shark, and contain a full-sized PCMCIA card (Lucent, I think).
I know people handier with fooling around with their systems have gotten both of these models to work, but can anyone name a distro that makes USB wireless (within reason, as in "using widely supported devices," which I understand these both to be) truly plug and play? For some devices (old laptops with broken PCMCIA slots, shoebox machine with no free slots) USB's the only hope for getting wireless, but I've never found a distro that said "Hey, you've got a wireless USB dongle -- cool!" (even metaphorically).
timothy
"The current US government is pretty much anti-science, not because they order scientists to withhold non-favourable comments about evolution and stem cells, but because they have been systematically eliminating the supply of government money to academic institutions. It is much much harder to get a government grant in the US for research than it was ten years ago. Remember DARPA? The guys who paid for the internet? Well they don't do that any more, and the same thing has been repeated across most branches of the federal government."
Remember the taxpayers? The guys who pay for DARPA?
You're free to give as much of your money to scientific researchers (of your choosing, no less!) as you'd like.
There are lots of ways (infinite, for discussions purposes) that money for "science" could be spent; depending on your bent, you may think that genome research is more important than climate research but less important than experimenting with nuclear containment techniques, or that particular archeological research projects into early civilizations, or Mediterranean shipwrecks, are so interesting that they deserve millions of dollars to continue or expand.
Giving confiscated money (that is, taxes) "to science" or "to academic institutions" via the government may occasionally make sense, but mostly it seems like supporting eating contests as a means to combat starvation.
timothy
Two small comments on your comment :)
:) Seems hard to go more than 10 feet in Austin without being in at least *someone's* open wi-fi zone, including the delicatessen chain (Jason's? Katz's?) that has free wifi at all locations.
1) Re: the "megafence" on the southern border of the U.S.: remember, no such fence exists right now. There are fenced portions of the border, but most of it is basically freely passable (though the landscape itself is forbidding across West Texas and Arizona at least). Note, too, that even if there was a "perfect" (impregnable) fortress-fence stretching the whole way, and likewise keeping out those pesky Canadians, it would not contradict the claim that the U.S. allows immigration (and in healthy numbers!). Allowing immigration does not imply a freely permeable border. Mexico (perhaps in reaction to U.S. rules) has fairly stringent rules about Americans (and others) in Mexico, too; for more than border-area excursions (I think 60 miles / 48 hours), Americans are supposed to get paperwork done in advance to clear it. I have seen little complaint about this exercise of Mexican sovereignity. OTOH, at least in El Paso / Juarez, there is abundant foot- and car-traffic across the various official border crossing points, and the hassle is minimal in my limited experience (either direction, for people of American or Mexican citizenship). But you can't carry a gun from dangerous Texas into ultra-safe Juarez.
2) A 5,000-person conference in Austin with no Internet connection, in 2004?! That's hard to believe
Cheers,
timothy
Sam:
The trouble is, the current digitals from Minox all seem to be mediocre rebranded cameras -- nothing like the clean, engineered look of the classic slimline Minox B. Even the 35mm cameras from Minox have all been pretty stylish. Leica's blown a good chance to exploit positive feelings toward that brand name by slapping Minox on some pretty bad cameras. Some of these don't even have expandable memory!
Ah well, too bad.
timothy
OK, OK -- that one I'd forgotten about when I posted :) However, at that price, while Yes, it is What James Bond Would Carry (at least possibly), it's more expensive than the *actual* Minox B, which was developed as a general purpose camera before it was coopted into espionage use by both sides in the Cold War ... makes me want to see more stuff from the same designer, whose name escapes me for the moment. Strange, I'd always thought it was Swiss, but turns out the Minox came from Latvia ...
timothy
In other words, WW007D?
5 316.htm
s cu50.asp I like that it uses AAA batteries, too; a single AA would be even better than 2 AAAs, but life isn't perfect. Maybe I'll find a good deal from eBay on a U50 ...
I want a Minox B. No, I don't want to pay for an *actual* Minox; don't have enough banks robbed yet. Also, tiny film cassettes, finicky jewel-like mechanisms, etc.
What I want is a modern, digital, Minox-alike that is:
a) The size of a fat thumb or however you'd describe one of these: http://www.kameramuseum.de/1minox/minox-b.html
b) Not notably ugly and lo-res like this: http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2005/1/prweb19
(The size of that thing is OK, though, but it's ugly in colors and shape; I could overlook those things, or cover all the but lens with a paper bag, if the resolution wasn't so poor.)
c) more brick-like than some of Sony's smallest, which otherwise are quite nice; I don't like the roundedness of some of the U-Series, but the the U50 (swivel and all) is close to a digital Minox. http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Sony/sony_d
timothy
Well, OK, so Cold War spies killed for plenty of reasons, but what I'm thinking of is the general advances in electronic miniaturization that can put a tiny audio recorder, camera, heat sensor, pressure sensor, etc., in spaces far smaller than the equivalent device of just a few decades ago.
n osim/102-3417579-5590511?n=283155) -- the affilliate link is for LibraryThing, because that was the easiest way to grab the link - strip as you please ;)), some of the "hidden" devices from the early / mid Cold War years seem laughably huge and detectable, especially cameras larger than many current mid-range digital cameras, meant to be strapped behind ties (?!) and or shooting through false buttons in trenchcoats, etc.
Looking through my copy of The Ultimate Spy Book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0789404435/ref=
timothy
I like the key action on Happy Hacking keyboards pretty well, but (and I know this is one of the selling points, so don't shoot me for it) I've never gotten used to using a really small keyboard. Maybe that's because I frequently type the way I'm typing right now, with legs extended onto a shelf or ottoman, and the keyboard resting on my thighs. I'd be happy to give the HH keyboard a chance, but when I've used it at trade shows I was impressed but not enough to spend the $70 or so for the cheapest version, and definitely not enough to spend multi-hundreds on one, blank keys or no! (I've considered spending quite a bit on a Kinesis, Maltronics or other deep-bowl-dish keyboard, which *look* amazingly comfortable, but not until I type on one in person first.)
:) On the other hand, I'm sure his hands made it do magic emacs tricks which mine would not.
I don't know if he still uses one, but I remember in the summer of 2000 that Richard Stallman was using a HH rather than the keyboard on his laptop, and seemed to be a happy hacker with it
My bias may be cliche, but it's real: I like a loud, clicky, snappy, breaking-glass-rod feel, and though Model Ms are the obvious source of that feel, I have quite a few no-name or little-known brands that I've picked up in thrift stores which have equivalent (or in some cases arguably better) feel. My Northgate OmniMac was expensive IMO at $100, but well worth it, and only after I got that for my first computer did I experience cheap Model Ms. The OmniMac's chassis feels like steel, and might actually be. The keys though, are utterly responsive. Similarly impressive: a split-layout keyboard (predating the MS Natural) and terminated in an AT plug, which I've connected to an AT PS/2 plug and from that to a PS/2 USB plug. $2.49 in a Florida panhandle Goodwill shop!
timothy
Though obviously a lot of projects have nightly builds (I remember -- because it's not that long ago -- when Mozilla's crashiness or stability seemed to require grabbing that very day's build quite a lot), I like the way videolan's done that (with a "nightlies" subdomain) and wish this convention was more widespread. (Just like, for certain projects at least, it's nice that there's a "planet.$PROJECTNAME.org" to collect various blog feeds.)
timothy
p.s. "Nightlies" would also be a good name for a line of lingerie.
I ate at Google once, thanks to Chris DiBona: it was indeed excellent. Like a mall food court in paradise; a wide variety of well-prepared food, plus a huge wall cooler of drinks from mundane to interesting, obscure stuff. Venison rounds. Asparagus. Super cake, delicious cookies. Great salad. And a sushi stand near the exit to the building, where the chef said "Sure, have a box! Enjoy!"
:)
It was dreamlike
Tim
If you read through any Slashdot thread involving Microsoft (which seems to end up being about 90% of them in one way or another) you'll find a lot of sentiment (paraphrased) that "Microsoft is evil, eternal, and eternally evil," and, as a corollary, the idea that "Windows has been, is, and will remain FOREVER the dominant operating system for personal computers." Nothing like some worldly, jaded, cynical pronouncements about Everything Forever ;)
;)]
I won't say there's no reason for Microsoft to cling to its current model of software sales for as long as possible -- it's a public, and therefore (by definition) profit-driven company. Investors like stability, and conventional models of making money.
But I believe Microsoft could become the world's largest vendor of open source software (even if wasn't Free software in the RMS sense*), and that surely some wags and possibly some visionaries within the company have been considering what that could mean. * (That's also *possible* but a bigger stretch.)
Microsoft employs several thousand really bright people (and of course some percentage of other people); it has one of the most recognized brand names in the world; it has a packaging and distribution system that gets software moved around the world in little boxes pretty effectively. Point is, Microsoft could move at its own pace to greater inclusion of open source software (as they've famously been happy to use, by using BSD licensed software) without upsetting the balance of the force.
- The Windows operating systems could remain closed, but certain applications get turned into open source projects. For instance, Microsoft Office could be made open source and free for home users, but not licensed for commercial use except through specific (money-costing) license agreements. That's not so very different from how it works now, in that lots of people have "borrowed from work" copies of applicaton software from MS, Adobe, and others -- much easier to enforce expensive license agreements against companies than individuals, both aesthetically and practically. (If AT&T is ignoring their agreement to pay for something that they're using to make money, a lot of people who don't quite *like* Microsoft could understand their pursuing AT&T's agreed-on money; if Grandma Smith next door is using MS Word to tap in her favorite recipes because her nice nephew installed it for her and doesn't realize it isn't a legit copy, that's a lot harder to swallow.)
- The *core* of Windows could be turned into an open source project, while the polished graphical interface remained exclusive to Microsoft as a branding / copyright playground, so few people (relatively speaking) would be interested in using the underlying system without paying Microsoft for the decoration level as well. ["Nahhh, that's impossible!"
- Microsoft could just keep pushing open or semi-open development tools; heck, they could declare Mono the preferred way to develop for Windows, and set up a SourceForge equivalent to encourage new software, proprietary or not, for Windows.
Keep flirting, Microsoft!
timothy
Don't tell anyone! Shhh! VLC 0.8.5 was released recently -- downloads are something close to 1 per second. The list of supported formats is pretty incredible ...
:)
Plus, Windows Media Whatever doesn't work on my Linux box
timothy
"The beatings will continue until morale improves."
I wonder if instead of the "Your contributions" tab that logged in Wikipedia users see, the equivalent here would be "your offenses." Or perhaps "your secret trial dates"?
timothy
One of my favorite drinks, year-'round, is tea mixed with orange juice. Lately I have been (or rather had been) drinking a bit too much of this stuff, and finding myself unable to sleep; the solution is decaf tea bags! I sense some hackles raised and boiling-oil pots clanking behind the castle walls, so let me preemptively say:
a) Yes, "tea bags aren't tea." I enjoy high-end tea, but sorry, I grew up happy with Liptons and will likely remain so.
b) "decaf tea" from tea bags *certainly* isn't tea. As plain tea, I certainly prefer the taste of actual (not decaffeinated) tea, at least the last time I tried it. However, when I make tea just to cool and mix with juice.
My usual method is to make the tea the previous evening, brewing it 3-5 minutes in glass jars. When it's cool enough, it goes in the fridge. I mix the ingredients just before drinking, and have it over ice.
I usually mix it about 3 parts tea to 2 parts juice ("60/40" if you prefer), but with other types of juice the ratio is probably better half and half (at least that's what I prefer when it's cranberry or grape).
The upshot is:
- either no caffeine, or almsot half the caffeine of full-strength tea
- less sugar than the juice, by half or more (or less, I guess, depending on your mixing preference)
- tasty drink; I crave sweet drinks (rather than just water), and this is sweet enough to stop me from guzzling a coke, at least most of the time.
timothy
Yes; I'm something like a decade older than you, but look young enough to fall in the same category ;) You're right about age being a big factor in such queries. On the other hand, I believe (could just be the obvious problem of a limited sample) that I'm asked for directions on the street, in stores, etc, more than average. In a way I like that (it's surely an ego boost to appear knowledgeable), but sometimes it's just awkward. People have worse problems, though ;)
timothy
I've had some great help from employees at Best Buy, and some really bad experiences from them. Little point in arguing with some of them, who make crazy, unfounded, unsupportable claims about the merchandise, too often speaking strictly from a wrong orifice.
However, even without a blue polo shirt, for some reason people ask me a lot of questions of the "Will this router work with Comcast?" and "Does this one take movies with sound?" -- I try to be helpful, but as I'm not an employee I find this sort of amusing.
timothy
Whether a place is a commercial establishment has has less to do with who can be barred entry than do the laws of that jurisdiction (with the exceptions you name).
;))
In New Jersey, for instance, you can't bar people arbitrarily from an open-to-the-public retail establishment without pretty strong reason; in Nevada, you can. (I know those two states in particular from examples in property law class, can't speak to others
timothy
... since there's no faith involved or anything ;)
timothy
The 6200 sounds interesting -- cheap and AGP are what I'm looking for, and all my machine is capable of anyhow. Perhaps someone on Philly's craiglist has one for sale, too.
... my collection of Penn and Teller books is officially started now ;)
Incidentally, if that doesn't pan out, Amazon's used-goods system is where I might look next. I used it for the first time recently to order several books, and was pretty impressed by the system, especially compared to the last time I used eBay. Nice to be able to place an order with 5 merchants and only pay at one checkout point
timothy
Thanks for the information. Do you have any idea how well either one of those works straight-out-of-the-box on a typical Linux system? (That is, something like Debian or Red Hat, with no proprietary drivers or modules.) I don't need GREAT performance, but even OK 3D performance would be nice ;) The integrated graphics chip on my eMachines sempron machine doesn't even want to play TuxRacer, which is pretty silly considering that my old Matrox card (several years ago) did that fine.
;)
Yes, I can google -- but I should be studying, and so won't google today
Cheers,
timothy
It seems the submitter considers $300 *not* to be expensive. for a video card. Reminds me of the saying "Good work, if you can get it." Right now I'm typing on the fastest computer I've ever owned,* which was a low-end box-store model about a year and a half ago. It cost $350, including a pretty nice CRT monitor. (Half gig memory, Sempron something-something processor, 60gig hard drive, lousy integrated graphics which are perfectly fine for anything not involving 3D graphics, and basically worthless for anything that is*, DVD/CD-R, big ugly case.)
;)
;)
A $500 video card sounds to me like the "ludicrous speed" setting in Spaceballs. Not that there's anything *wrong* with that! It's neat to see what people do, including concentrating large chunks of money on short-lived computer components, because companies chase those people, and in doing so may end up greatly improving products for cheapskates
But $500! For a video card! Still makes my head spin a bit.
What's the best one can do in a 3D video card supported out of the box by Debian or Red Hat that costs something like, oh, I dunno, ONE hundred dollars? I might be tempted at that, especially if there's a card that will let me actually use 2nd life's client, which my built-in card will not.
timothy
*Actually, my Thinkpad (far more expensive) might technically be faster, but it's hard to compare for someone as lazy as me.
** OK, so I gave myself away as not being generally in the $500-video card market