Lottery revenue in some states is earmarked for education...Unfortunately, in practice this tends to make the legeslatures allocate correspondingly less from the general fund to education.
Yep, that's exactly what happened with the California Lottery. This despite repeated pledges by the people that pushed the ballot initiative creating the Lottery that that wouldn't happen.
Of course, the schools in CA have been fscked for decades now, ever since Proposition 13 passed, which made it damn near impossible to get more property tax revenue for anything.
In Colorado, Lottery revenues (including, since last summer, Powerball) go towards parks, and actually seem to have done some good. Guess the state wasn't funding parks very much for awhile...
The TC's computer book selection is actually fairly good. Of course, if there's a computer book I need that I can't find there, I can always go to Softpro Books, which sells nothing but computer books (and Linux distros, and the like). They also have 2 stores in the Denver metro area, in Englewood and Boulder.
But for overall selection, no bookstore beats TC, in my experience. (I'm still boycotting Amazon.com.) Plus I get the warm fuzzies of supporting an independent bookseller, and one which isn't afraid to stand up for its rights or the rights of its customers.
An advocacy group is promoting the idea of building high-speed monorails in Colorado. The first leg would be from Denver International Airport to Vail, following I-70 for much of the way. The trains would be mag-lift powered, not totally levitating, but reducing rolling resistance on the wheels, and would run at a top speed of 125 mph. Unfortunately, a study project was voted down last November, mostly because everyone was still skittish after the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax scares; the advocacy group looks like it's still persevering. Their Web site has more details, including some artist's conceptions of what the system might look like.
CBDTPA = Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act. That's an Orwellian doublespeak name for this proposal if I ever heard one, as the law itself has nothing to do with either broadband access or digital television.
And I don't need to have broadband access "promoted" to me, thank you very much. I'm a technojunkie at heart; I can think of a bunch of things that a broadband connection would be useful for, none of which involve music or movies. ("apt-get upgrade" that doesn't take all day, for instance.) But I can't afford it right now. Not long ago, I was out of work for 5 months; I'm damn lucky my family and I aren't homeless right now. We don't have money to spare for anything more than a modem dialup. And I'm not the only one in this fix; did Senator Hollings forget that we're suffering from the effects of recession right now? (Besides, even if I could afford it, I still can't get it; our home is too far from the switch for DSL to work, and we have an oddball cable company (not AT&T Digital, like most of Denver) that doesn't offer cable modem service. Satellite isn't really an option because we'd have to carry something like $500K in liability insurance to put up a dish at our apartment complex, and we don't really have a good sky angle for a dish anyway.)
As for digital television, I have yet to see a good reason to drop $1000+ (which I don't have anyway; see above) on a digital-capable set. They say it's going to be required by 2006, but I'm not so sure they'll be ready for that switchover in time.
A better term for the CBDTPA that I've seen recently is the "Anti-Mammal Dinosaur Protection Act." Sums it up nicely, I think.
Eric
Re:Easy to scoff until you remember...
on
Soviet Moon Rocket
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· Score: 2
Sure, build ships in orbit. In orbit around the Moon, that is. At only one-sixth gravity, it's easier to get materials up than from the Earth...and you might even be able to use a cheap way of doing so, such as mass drivers, that wouldn't necessarily work on Earth, or wouldn't work well.
Supplies that just had to be hauled from Earth wouldn't have to go all the way down to the lunar surface, either. It's easier to get into orbit around the Moon than to land on it...
Finally, if your construction site is in circumlunar orbit, it's not taking up space in an Earth orbit that could be used for a space station, communications satellites, or what have you.
Eric
Re:Easy to scoff until you remember...
on
Soviet Moon Rocket
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· Score: 3, Interesting
"From now on we're living in a world where men have walked on the moon. But it wasn't a miracle; we just decided to go."
-- Tom Hanks, Apollo 13
I remain hopeful that one day we will "decide to go" yet again. Among other things, the Moon is an important waystation on the road to the rest of the Solar System. If the reports of ice deposits on the Moon are accurate, that's a very valuable resource; ice can be electrolyzed, using readily available solar power, into hydrogen and oxygen, which can then be burned as rocket fuel, or run through fuel cells to produce water, electricity, and heat, three essential commodities for any spacecraft. In addition, the Moon could become an important construction base for ships designed to fly further out, as well as for space stations...and the back side of the Moon would be an excellent place for radio astronomy, as the antennas there would be shielded from terrestrial interference.
There's nothing stopping us. We've just gotta decide to go.
"I look up at the Moon, and I wonder: When will we be going back? And who will that be?"
-- Ibid.
Exactly. Scott Adams pointed it out best: "Cable companies are staffed with people who couldn't get jobs at telephone companies." (The Dilbert Future, p. 45) He pointed this out in the midst of a discussion about ISDN, which the telephone companies managed to muck up, despite the fact that they already know how to provide two-way communications. (The book was written in 1997, so DSL wasn't mentioned.) The cable companies are starting from further back in the "stupidity" race.
Not to mention that cable companies tend to be an anal-retentive bunch in the first place, and are bound to slap lots of restrictions on the way you can use that fat pipe. (Comcast, anyone?)
And the "cable games" idea goes back even further...to the PlayCable peripheral for the Mattel Intellivision console, 1981-83. It was a natural fit; General Instruments, the supplier of the Intellivision's chipset, also makes cable boxes. (To Mattel's chagrin, a couple of programmers hacked the PlayCable and were able to use it as a crude Intellivision development system; to keep them quiet, Mattel hired them to do the "Bump'n'Jump" arcade conversion.)
Sorry, I remembered his party affiliation wrong then. That was a goof on my part, not any anti-Republican bias.
In the end, it doesn't really matter though, since the movie and record companies will buy off Democrats and Republicans alike to try and get this passed.
Big Brother Inside: The SSSCA and Digital Rights Management
What is it? A new mandate being legislated as we speak, pushed by the record companies and movie companies (disclosure: CNN is owned by AOL Time Warner, which is also a record company and movie company, which is why they didn't say anything about this) to keep users from copying copyrighted material without "permission." What's cool? Depends on whether you work for a movie company or record company--if you don't, there's very little "cool" about this. The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (to be introdued by Senator Hollings, R-SC) will mandate that all digital devices contain copyright protection systems to keep people from copying "copyrighted material." What this means is unknown as of yet, but it's for certain that the days of Napster and Gnutella wll be long gone if this comes to pass...and perhaps the days of Linux as well, since it would be impossible to put secure copyright protections into an open-source operating system. The bill also mandates penalties for tampering with digital rights management systems, and for connecting an unprotected digital device to any computer network. If you want to enjoy music or movies on your computer, the movie and record companies will tell you "It's my way or the highway"--and you'll probably have to pay. And pay. And pay. And pay. And pay. When's it coming? The SSSCA will likely be on Congressional committee agendas early next year. Expect its sponsors (mostly Disney) to try and get it rammed through Congress as fast as they can, with as little review as they can. Then, the "industry" has a certain amount of time to come up with the copyright protection standards that will be mandatory from then on...and if they can't come to an agreement, the government will do it for them. What's the catch? This will basically be The End Of The World As We Know It for the computer industry. The only beneficiaries of a law like this will be the record, movie, and other "intellectual property" companies, who will expect to see more cash flowing into their already-bloated coffers. Meanwhile, a lot of people are going to get harassed for the crime of using computer systems of their choice...and the average consumer, as always, will get screwed. Repeatedly. Forever. On the other hand, it may still be possible to stop this from happening...write your Congressional representatives and tell them why this law would be a Bad Thing for the consumer, for the computer industry, and for the American economy as a whole. Of course, bear in mind that the record companies and movie companies have more money than you do, and so they're likely to get listened to first. Impact Meter: 10...no, make that 10,000,000.
This is just a poor and feeble first draft...anybody else out there, feel free to rewrite it.
I remember hearing the technical names for these logos are DOG.
That may be true, but the usual industry term I've heard for them is "bug." Whether they call it that because it looks as garish as a squashed bug on the corner of the screen, or whether the logo bugs them, or whether they think it's a flaw in the television system that they have to put those things on screen (hence "bug"), I dunno.
Local stations frequently slap a "bug" on the screen, too. Sometimes they cover up the network one; during Jay Leno, (on Channel 9, KUSA) I've seen the NBC bug in the lower right corner covered up by a big blue block saying "9NEWS," but only for short periods of time, thank God. And the "bug" on Channel 6 (KRMA) is the mountains-and-head logo of Rocky Mountain PBS. And the local UPN affiliate (Channel 20, KTVD) has its own "UPN20" bug that it uses on syndicated programs.
For Jabber, the main developer is Jeremie Miller, jer.jabber@org (address anti-spammed in an obvious way). The development mailing list is at jdev.jabber@org. You can get information on other communications channels through the Jabber web site at http://jabber.org.
(Or you could send your RFP to me. I'm not kidding.)
The operation was just too well-planned and well-executed to be the work of some loner, or even some band of loners. To pull this off, four planes had to be hijacked at precise times, and strike their targets in sequence. (They knew that, after the first WTC tower was hit, virtually every TV camera in NYC would be pointed that direction to see the second one get hit.) This had to have been planned very much in advance, and without anyone figuring out what was up. Even the selection of which planes to hijack is telling; they were all transcontinental flights, meaning big planes with lots of jet fuel on board. This is miles beyond just parking a Ryder truck full of fertilizer and diesel fuel in front of a building, setting a timer, and running.
You know what's a scary possibility? What if they brought along a couple of carryon bags full of anthrax or botulism spores, or some other nasty germ? True, many germs would have perished in the fireball, but many would survive, too, to be sprayed like a fine aerosol all over Lower Manhattan. Don't roll your eyes yet; they could have, and we wouldn't necessarily know it for a couple of days yet. By then, thousands more could be dead or dying.
Food for thought...
Eric
P.S.: Electric Minds is tracking the reports of the disaster. I have also temporarily closed down our "Playground" conference out of respect for the dead and injured.
For that matter, what about Penguin Mints? Or Coke? Or all that other caffeinated stuff?
I'm wondering if the study's confusing the effects of caffeine with the effects of all the other alkaloids and stuff present in coffee. If they're not, boy, am I screwed:-).
Harlan Ellison always maintained that the correct all-encompassing term was "speculative fiction." That covers "science fiction," "fantasy," and a wide range of things. The word "speculative" implies "speculation," that is, it asks the question, "What if...?"
The Harry Potter books ask that question quite clearly: "What if there are real magicians walking among us?" They certainly qualify, although I think most people would classify them as "fantasy."
Still, as has been pointed out elsewhere on this thread, the Hugo rules do allow the selection of works of fantasy. And Hugos are voted on by the fans, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire has certainly been very popular. Does that put it in the same class with The Dispossessed, or The Forever War, or The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, or Neuromancer (to name four previous Hugo winners with which I'm familiar)? Not necessarily, but does it necessarily have to be in the same class?
For the record, I've read all four of the Harry Potter series to date, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Rowling's writing reminds me a lot of Roald Dahl's, in particular. And I know I'm not alone among adult geeks in liking them; I note that the Jargon File now contains the word "muggle." In retrospect, Goblet of Fire (the longest and most complex Harry Potter to date) winning the Hugo seems not only likely, but almost inevitable.
Eric
Re:I don't know why you guys hate "spam" so much
on
Spammers Stoop To New Low
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· Score: 3, Informative
I don't get it.. what's so difficult in deleting a few messages that you might not want to read?
Because it's not just "a few messages." Just now, I checked my mailbox, and it had about 30 messages in it since the last time I checked it (last night). Of those, maybe one or two were legitimate e-mails (routine messages that I could delete right away). Of the rest, about half were spam, and the other half were double-bounce error messages from the Electric Minds mail server--spam that someone tried to send to minds.com email addresses, that the server tried to bounce but failed for one reason or another (usually because the return address does not exist, or the machine would not handle the incoming SMTP connection properly), and hence that get passed to me.
When I get double-bounces back, I usually "blackhole" the address that the spam was sent to (i.e. set up that address as an alias to/dev/null). Occasionally, though, some companies will "carpet-bomb" the minds.com server with spam for random numerical addresses (like "00000001@minds.com"), and I have to blackhole an entire "from" domain (or range of "from" domains, as with the fscking bastards at edirectnetwork.net and opt-in-net.net). This is a royal pain to deal with on a daily basis, despite the fact that I use qmail as my mail server, which makes it easier to perform these operations.
That's why, whenever I hear someone say "I don't know why you guys hate 'spam' so much," I want to reach for my LART.
If Qwest wants to "transition" me and my Linux box to MSN, I'm gonna "transition" straight to another ISP.
Any recommendations for a good, independent dialup ISP in the Denver metro area that's reliable, doesn't limit your hours, is about $20/month, and doesn't give a rat's ass what OS you choose to run? Basically, I'd like to find the Denver equivalent of Santa Barbara's Silicon Beach.
(I wish we could do DSL or cable modem, but we're too far from the switch for DSL, and, as for cable modems, our apartment complex uses this company called Optel (not AT&T like most of the metro area), and they don't offer that service. Sprint's Broadband Direct service would also be cool, I just don't think we'd get permission from the apartment managers to put up the antenna.)
This morning, David Coursey on ZDNet AnchorDesk is recommending that we guard against future "threats" like Code Red by setting up "national firewalls" and an Internet "border patrol" to ensure that THe Net will "become a real civil society in which rules matter and violators are punished."
I know that virtually everyone who reads this site will agree that this is a load of crap, so let me just summarize my reaction: "To save the Internet, it was necessary to destroy the Internet."
I had one of those, too...and I had the big aluminum peripheral box with the disk drive and the memory expansion card, too. Sadly, I think my parents sold it or gave it away or something.
I still have a TI-74 BASIC-programmable calculator...which, I think, evolved from a prototype of a "portable computer" that TI showed around 1985, the Compact Computer 40. The CC-40 was never sold, but a lot of its design work seems to have filtered into the TI-74. (Mostly, my TI-74 gets used to balance my checkbook these days.:-). )
It's not surprising that NASA is having fiscal problems when space travel has become not something of marvel, but of everyday import.
If you recall Apollo 13, that was kind of the prevailing attitude among the American public before the oxygen tank explosion that aborted the mission and placed the astronauts' lives in jeopardy. (NASA guy's line: "The networks say we make going to the moon seem about as exciting as a trip to Pittsburgh.")
I don't care what anyone says, though, there's nothing "routine" about going into space. Not yet, anyway. Some of us would love to see the day it does become routine...that day will come, maybe not in our lifetimes, but one day, because the human race needs to get off this rock!
Yes, I'm a fan of space travel. I've got a signed picture of Buzz Aldrin hanging on the wall of my computer room. These days, I generally pay attention to the exploits of one astronaut in particular, the one I and some of my relatives refer to as "Cousin Kenny," Kenneth Bowersox. (No, he's not a close relative, but he's probably related somehow.) He's flown four missions (including the Hubble repair missions, the first of which was a "must win" for NASA; that speaks volumes about his capabilities), and is due to command an ISS expedition at some point. (He was backup commander for the first ISS crew.) He's also noted for his appearances on Home Improvement, where Tim Allen made fun of his last name (which I didn't take too personally:-) ).
God knows, if I had the kind of money Dennis Tito gave the Russians, I couldn't think of anything better to spend it on than going up myself. My only problem is that, at 6'3", I'm too tall to fit in a Soyuz...
That's what I did with Venice...set it up so that it automatically sends the appropriate META tag unless an option is enabled in the config file. (That option is called "ms-copyright-violations" because that's what I believe Smart Tags are.)
Don't count them out, though...we may have won this round, but I'm under no illusion that this is a permanent victory. As I posted last night to the Smart Tags mailing list at Yahoo! Groups, "'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.'"
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, the schools in CA have been fscked for decades now, ever since Proposition 13 passed, which made it damn near impossible to get more property tax revenue for anything.
In Colorado, Lottery revenues (including, since last summer, Powerball) go towards parks, and actually seem to have done some good. Guess the state wasn't funding parks very much for awhile...
Eric
But for overall selection, no bookstore beats TC, in my experience. (I'm still boycotting Amazon.com.) Plus I get the warm fuzzies of supporting an independent bookseller, and one which isn't afraid to stand up for its rights or the rights of its customers.
Eric
Eric
And I don't need to have broadband access "promoted" to me, thank you very much. I'm a technojunkie at heart; I can think of a bunch of things that a broadband connection would be useful for, none of which involve music or movies. ("apt-get upgrade" that doesn't take all day, for instance.) But I can't afford it right now. Not long ago, I was out of work for 5 months; I'm damn lucky my family and I aren't homeless right now. We don't have money to spare for anything more than a modem dialup. And I'm not the only one in this fix; did Senator Hollings forget that we're suffering from the effects of recession right now? (Besides, even if I could afford it, I still can't get it; our home is too far from the switch for DSL to work, and we have an oddball cable company (not AT&T Digital, like most of Denver) that doesn't offer cable modem service. Satellite isn't really an option because we'd have to carry something like $500K in liability insurance to put up a dish at our apartment complex, and we don't really have a good sky angle for a dish anyway.)
As for digital television, I have yet to see a good reason to drop $1000+ (which I don't have anyway; see above) on a digital-capable set. They say it's going to be required by 2006, but I'm not so sure they'll be ready for that switchover in time.
A better term for the CBDTPA that I've seen recently is the "Anti-Mammal Dinosaur Protection Act." Sums it up nicely, I think.
Eric
Supplies that just had to be hauled from Earth wouldn't have to go all the way down to the lunar surface, either. It's easier to get into orbit around the Moon than to land on it...
Finally, if your construction site is in circumlunar orbit, it's not taking up space in an Earth orbit that could be used for a space station, communications satellites, or what have you.
Eric
-- Tom Hanks, Apollo 13
I remain hopeful that one day we will "decide to go" yet again. Among other things, the Moon is an important waystation on the road to the rest of the Solar System. If the reports of ice deposits on the Moon are accurate, that's a very valuable resource; ice can be electrolyzed, using readily available solar power, into hydrogen and oxygen, which can then be burned as rocket fuel, or run through fuel cells to produce water, electricity, and heat, three essential commodities for any spacecraft. In addition, the Moon could become an important construction base for ships designed to fly further out, as well as for space stations...and the back side of the Moon would be an excellent place for radio astronomy, as the antennas there would be shielded from terrestrial interference.
There's nothing stopping us. We've just gotta decide to go.
"I look up at the Moon, and I wonder: When will we be going back? And who will that be?"
-- Ibid.
Eric
On behalf of the Electric Minds community, congratulations, Rob. Long life and much happiness to you both.
Eric
Not to mention that cable companies tend to be an anal-retentive bunch in the first place, and are bound to slap lots of restrictions on the way you can use that fat pipe. (Comcast, anyone?)
Eric
Eric
In the end, it doesn't really matter though, since the movie and record companies will buy off Democrats and Republicans alike to try and get this passed.
Eric
Big Brother Inside: The SSSCA and Digital Rights Management
What is it? A new mandate being legislated as we speak, pushed by the record companies and movie companies (disclosure: CNN is owned by AOL Time Warner, which is also a record company and movie company, which is why they didn't say anything about this) to keep users from copying copyrighted material without "permission."
What's cool? Depends on whether you work for a movie company or record company--if you don't, there's very little "cool" about this. The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (to be introdued by Senator Hollings, R-SC) will mandate that all digital devices contain copyright protection systems to keep people from copying "copyrighted material." What this means is unknown as of yet, but it's for certain that the days of Napster and Gnutella wll be long gone if this comes to pass...and perhaps the days of Linux as well, since it would be impossible to put secure copyright protections into an open-source operating system. The bill also mandates penalties for tampering with digital rights management systems, and for connecting an unprotected digital device to any computer network. If you want to enjoy music or movies on your computer, the movie and record companies will tell you "It's my way or the highway"--and you'll probably have to pay. And pay. And pay. And pay. And pay.
When's it coming? The SSSCA will likely be on Congressional committee agendas early next year. Expect its sponsors (mostly Disney) to try and get it rammed through Congress as fast as they can, with as little review as they can. Then, the "industry" has a certain amount of time to come up with the copyright protection standards that will be mandatory from then on...and if they can't come to an agreement, the government will do it for them.
What's the catch? This will basically be The End Of The World As We Know It for the computer industry. The only beneficiaries of a law like this will be the record, movie, and other "intellectual property" companies, who will expect to see more cash flowing into their already-bloated coffers. Meanwhile, a lot of people are going to get harassed for the crime of using computer systems of their choice...and the average consumer, as always, will get screwed. Repeatedly. Forever. On the other hand, it may still be possible to stop this from happening...write your Congressional representatives and tell them why this law would be a Bad Thing for the consumer, for the computer industry, and for the American economy as a whole. Of course, bear in mind that the record companies and movie companies have more money than you do, and so they're likely to get listened to first.
Impact Meter: 10...no, make that 10,000,000.
This is just a poor and feeble first draft...anybody else out there, feel free to rewrite it.
Eric
THE WEAKEST LINK - STAR TREK EDITION - 11/26/2001
The Team: 1. Wil Wheaton
2. LeVar Burton
3. Robert Picardo
4. Denise Crosby
5. Roxann Dawson
6. John DeLancie
7. William Shatner
8. Armin Shimerman
Round 1: $17,000 banked
Strongest: Crosby - Weakest: DeLancie
Votes: Dawson 2 (Wheaton, Shatner), DeLancie 2 (Burton, Crosby), Shatner 2 (Picardo, Shimerman), Wheaton 1 (Dawson), Picardo 1 (DeLancie)
Crosby elects to remove DeLancie
Round 2: $13,500 banked (total $30,500)
Strongest: Picardo - Weakest: Shatner
Votes: Shatner 3 (Burton, Picardo, Shimerman), Crosby 2 (Wheaton, Shatner), Wheaton 1 (Dawson), Dawson 1 (Crosby)
Shatner removed
Round 3: $2,500 banked (total $33,000)
Strongest: Burton - Weakest: Crosby
Votes: Dawson 4 (Wheaton, Burton, Picardo, Shimerman), Wheaton 1 (Crosby), Shimerman 1 (Dawson)
Dawson removed
Round 4: $14,500 banked (total $47,500)
Strongest: Picardo - Weakest: Shimerman
Votes: Crosby 4 (Wheaton, Burton, Picardo, Shimerman), Shimerman 1 (Crosby)
Crosby removed
Round 5: $25,000 banked (total $72,500)
Strongest: Picardo - Weakest: Shimerman
Votes: Shimerman 3 (Wheaton, Burton, Picardo), Wheaton 1 (Shimerman)
Shimerman removed
Round 6: $25,000 banked (total $97,500)
Strongest: Burton - Weakest: Wheaton
Votes: Wheaton 2 (Burton, Picardo), Picardo 1 (Wheaton)
Wheaton removed
Round 7: $35,000 X2 banked (total $167,500*)
Strongest: Picardo
Final: Picardo starts, Burton wins 4-3
* - According to comments made by Burton, "They say it's a record."
Eric
Everybody's got a brand to plug...
Eric
(Or you could send your RFP to me. I'm not kidding.)
Eric
(Colorado residents will get this joke instantly)
Eric
You know what's a scary possibility? What if they brought along a couple of carryon bags full of anthrax or botulism spores, or some other nasty germ? True, many germs would have perished in the fireball, but many would survive, too, to be sprayed like a fine aerosol all over Lower Manhattan. Don't roll your eyes yet; they could have, and we wouldn't necessarily know it for a couple of days yet. By then, thousands more could be dead or dying.
Food for thought...
Eric
P.S.: Electric Minds is tracking the reports of the disaster. I have also temporarily closed down our "Playground" conference out of respect for the dead and injured.
I'm wondering if the study's confusing the effects of caffeine with the effects of all the other alkaloids and stuff present in coffee. If they're not, boy, am I screwed :-).
Eric
The Harry Potter books ask that question quite clearly: "What if there are real magicians walking among us?" They certainly qualify, although I think most people would classify them as "fantasy."
Still, as has been pointed out elsewhere on this thread, the Hugo rules do allow the selection of works of fantasy. And Hugos are voted on by the fans, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire has certainly been very popular. Does that put it in the same class with The Dispossessed, or The Forever War, or The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, or Neuromancer (to name four previous Hugo winners with which I'm familiar)? Not necessarily, but does it necessarily have to be in the same class?
For the record, I've read all four of the Harry Potter series to date, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Rowling's writing reminds me a lot of Roald Dahl's, in particular. And I know I'm not alone among adult geeks in liking them; I note that the Jargon File now contains the word "muggle." In retrospect, Goblet of Fire (the longest and most complex Harry Potter to date) winning the Hugo seems not only likely, but almost inevitable.
Eric
Because it's not just "a few messages." Just now, I checked my mailbox, and it had about 30 messages in it since the last time I checked it (last night). Of those, maybe one or two were legitimate e-mails (routine messages that I could delete right away). Of the rest, about half were spam, and the other half were double-bounce error messages from the Electric Minds mail server--spam that someone tried to send to minds.com email addresses, that the server tried to bounce but failed for one reason or another (usually because the return address does not exist, or the machine would not handle the incoming SMTP connection properly), and hence that get passed to me.
When I get double-bounces back, I usually "blackhole" the address that the spam was sent to (i.e. set up that address as an alias to /dev/null). Occasionally, though, some companies will "carpet-bomb" the minds.com server with spam for random numerical addresses (like "00000001@minds.com"), and I have to blackhole an entire "from" domain (or range of "from" domains, as with the fscking bastards at edirectnetwork.net and opt-in-net.net). This is a royal pain to deal with on a daily basis, despite the fact that I use qmail as my mail server, which makes it easier to perform these operations.
That's why, whenever I hear someone say "I don't know why you guys hate 'spam' so much," I want to reach for my LART.
Eric
Any recommendations for a good, independent dialup ISP in the Denver metro area that's reliable, doesn't limit your hours, is about $20/month, and doesn't give a rat's ass what OS you choose to run? Basically, I'd like to find the Denver equivalent of Santa Barbara's Silicon Beach.
(I wish we could do DSL or cable modem, but we're too far from the switch for DSL, and, as for cable modems, our apartment complex uses this company called Optel (not AT&T like most of the metro area), and they don't offer that service. Sprint's Broadband Direct service would also be cool, I just don't think we'd get permission from the apartment managers to put up the antenna.)
Eric
I know that virtually everyone who reads this site will agree that this is a load of crap, so let me just summarize my reaction: "To save the Internet, it was necessary to destroy the Internet."
Eric
I still have a TI-74 BASIC-programmable calculator...which, I think, evolved from a prototype of a "portable computer" that TI showed around 1985, the Compact Computer 40. The CC-40 was never sold, but a lot of its design work seems to have filtered into the TI-74. (Mostly, my TI-74 gets used to balance my checkbook these days. :-). )
Eric
--
If you recall Apollo 13, that was kind of the prevailing attitude among the American public before the oxygen tank explosion that aborted the mission and placed the astronauts' lives in jeopardy. (NASA guy's line: "The networks say we make going to the moon seem about as exciting as a trip to Pittsburgh.")
I don't care what anyone says, though, there's nothing "routine" about going into space. Not yet, anyway. Some of us would love to see the day it does become routine...that day will come, maybe not in our lifetimes, but one day, because the human race needs to get off this rock!
Yes, I'm a fan of space travel. I've got a signed picture of Buzz Aldrin hanging on the wall of my computer room. These days, I generally pay attention to the exploits of one astronaut in particular, the one I and some of my relatives refer to as "Cousin Kenny," Kenneth Bowersox. (No, he's not a close relative, but he's probably related somehow.) He's flown four missions (including the Hubble repair missions, the first of which was a "must win" for NASA; that speaks volumes about his capabilities), and is due to command an ISS expedition at some point. (He was backup commander for the first ISS crew.) He's also noted for his appearances on Home Improvement, where Tim Allen made fun of his last name (which I didn't take too personally :-) ).
God knows, if I had the kind of money Dennis Tito gave the Russians, I couldn't think of anything better to spend it on than going up myself. My only problem is that, at 6'3", I'm too tall to fit in a Soyuz...
Eric
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Don't count them out, though...we may have won this round, but I'm under no illusion that this is a permanent victory. As I posted last night to the Smart Tags mailing list at Yahoo! Groups, "'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.'"
Eric
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