Try having yourself duct-taped to a wheelchair which you can only navigate with your tongue and have to rely on another person for each and every interaction with your immediate environment, now matter how tiny or insignificant it may seem. See if you don't blow your top once and a while when your paid assistant wanders off. I'm not saying it's right, but it's understandable. I've seen similarly afflicted folks handle such situations with more grace, but I've also seen 'tantrums' over things that seem very unreasonable, until you look at exactly how much you and I take for granted. Chances are his assistant at the time was new and had to learn in no uncertain terms to ask/inform him before going off about her own business, however briefly.
I'd like to see him act more gracefully, but I won't condemn him for doing otherwise. Same goes for the bridge. He may have waited in the past and found that traffic never slows enough to let him pass unhindered, so better to just be rude and jump right in.
As for the papers and stealing, I have no idea of the veracity of this. I suppose, after he dies and biographies are written, the truth will come out one way or the other.
His cleverness, intellect and ability to manipulate people and circumstances to his benifit show that he is clearly extremely 'fit' to survive. Survival doesn't neccessarily mean caving in the skull of the person next to you and stealing his food, although I can attest that, with a full charge, his wheelchair is more than capable of such a feat! Here is a man who, despite all physical odds, has managed to survive, reproduce and acquire and maintain social status. People, like all other forms of life, adapt to their environment in all sorts of successful ways, regardless of our expectations or assumptions.
Having worked fairly extensively with folks in a similar physical situation as Dr. Hawking, I can say it does take getting used to, and is very disconcerting at first. Once you do get a feel for the change in pacing and lack of standard physical expression, you wonder how you ever could have felt otherwise. I agree, though, that the author's wording could have been better chosen, but I appreciate the honesty and was glad to see a change of sorts by the end of the article.
You are correct, in my opinion, that a significant (but unknown) part of his celebrity is due to his illness. He said so much himself when he said that his illness was an inseparable part of himself. The curiosity aroused by his illness attracts the attention that then brings his genius to light. The coupling of the two make for a fascinating human being. The fact that people ask him questions about et's and whatnot is simply due to the everpresent hope on the part of young interviewers that Someone Significant will reassure us in our dreams that what we see on Star Trek will soon become a reality. ANY time ANYONE interviews a popular scientist, these questions are asked. Par for the course and fine with me. The responses are always enlightening and/or entertaining if you are willing to read into them and the interviewer's reactions.
You sound a little bitter about his success, and I'm sure you have your own personal reasons for that, largely boiling down to jealousy and/or disappointment in your own achievements and the recognition you feel they do or don't deserve. Get over it, I say, and get on with your own work, whatever that is. No one ever achieved greatness OR celebrity by muttering bitterly about the success of another.
I don't mean to downplay the emotional impact of the 'raid' you suffered, but when the truth of the situation came out, the feds backed off and the school apologized. What more can you ask? They HAVE to investigate, and for all intents and purposes, YOU appeared the most likely perpetrator.
Besides, think of the geek chic status you've attained!
The raid sounded pretty reasonable to me, in the sense that there is really no reasonable way in which to conduct one. The very nature of a raid is a rude and sudden imposition. There is a place for this, just like there is a place for private gun ownership in America and there is a place monitoring and control of private gun ownership.
Contradictions. I love 'em.
The comparison to Jews in Nazi Germany is definately lame, however. Quit whining and throw in another deer hunting video.
Pot-smoking morons who think disposable products are wasteful are idiots who should be beaten like the dusty couches they crowch upon. Still driving that Gremlin? Still glued to that 2600? Still caressing the cold steel casing on that old 8086? Sure, your hanging on to that record collection, as am I, but you don't really use it that much now do you? You'd like to think you do, and you tell all your hip, pot-smoking friends you do, but secretly, you know you don't. I bet you could really use that space too, but no, that reserved for Yes, Rush, The Villiage People and Ted Nugent, not to mention your Vixen special pirate editions. You really listen to cd's (disposable), mp3's (disposable) and the radio (throw it away now!). Don't worry, I won't tell. We all know your a connoiseur of Vinyl, and that you really can tell the difference!
it does. engineering is mechanism, philosophy is policy. policy is dictated by the people using the mechanism.
Right. So when the mechanism becomes Everyman's disposable domain, then policy is dictated by Everyman. Seeing as Every Man is very unlikely to agree on a given, cohesive policy, policy is trumped.
actually, we need a philosophy that doesn't mandate overpopulating the world to death
Meanwhile, someone else thinks we do need a philosophy mandating overpopulating the world to death while yet another fellah thinks both philosophies are bunk because you can't intentionally under or over populate the world because diseases and libidos keep screwing things up.
What we are gravitating towards is a kind of world culture (or lack thereof) in which most folks are happy to work, eat and watch tv or party with the neighbors. Those firey-minded souls who wish to change the world with their Passionate Insights will have a LOT of competition, but will be able to occasionally tilt things this way or that, without ever taking over the whole shebang.
No we don't. That's just as bad, if not worse, than an ivory tower. In an ivory tower you at least get a suspicion that everyone else might be doing something different, but on an ivory network you are surrounded by like-minded individuals who constantly remind you that what your group is doing is good and right and all that, and you whole ivory networked group ends up being just as useless, if not moreso, as an cityscape of individual ivory towers. We need need to have nothing ivory.
In the Ivory Network you have 'like-minded individuals' and mealy-mouthed detractors alike in highly unpredictable amounts. Ideas offered (like Bruces essay) are put to the test in a wonderfully public manner. Have you read a Slashdot forum recently?
"...we will find ourselves confronted,...with real-world avatars of those Faustian visions of power and ability that have previously existed only in myth.... Thats when our *real* trouble starts."
I'm not too sure what Bruce is getting at here either, but I choose not to brush it off as blithely as you do. It hints at some interesting possibilities.
You mean I'll no longer be able to consider the consequences of my actions? To worry about right and wrong? That I will, like an animal, react upon my instincts alone? Somehow, I doubt that. Unless you're talking about a different human condition.
In referring to 'the Human Condition', I think he means things like war and starvation. I'm not sure what you're referring to. It's a very bold statement on his part, and seems unlikely to me, but that's good. Writers need to make bold statements.
So we can't print this out (we have to save paper), but you want a society of disposable gizmos?
ALL gizmos are disposable, whether we wish them to be or not. For every geek that still has a 386 still chugging away in his closet, there are a hundred corporations that have made landfill out of thousands more.
Disposable? Hell yes, disposable. Todays gizmo should be as biodegradable/recyclable as possible, because it *WILL* be made useless in short order. When everyone internalizes this, there will be less tolerance for big, heavy, evironmentally-hostile kludges, regardless of how miraculous they seem.
Screw you, I will be awestruck by whatever I please. You want our society to be based on this crap, but you don't want us to like it?
Like it a lot, but don't cling to it expecting it to last, or buy into some manufacturer's drivel that it will last you a lifetime. It won't. How's that 40 lb 286 you paid $2000 for in 1987 doing? Maybe you put a new motherboard in yours, which is great, but what's the use, when a Palm Pilot is more powerful, poratable and (very soon) practically disposable?
Also, he's not saying that he wants our society to be based on this crap. He's saying it will be. Perhaps it already is.
World starvation is still unacceptable, but lower than ever before in the 20th century. Wars are local instead of world-wide. White-trash hate crimes are *laughably* insignificant compared to the institutionalized hatred of South Africa, Nazi Germany, and Maoist China. Violence in schools appears *much* more threatening than it really is because of the sensation it creates in the media. People throughout history have suffered in ways *inconcievable* to you or I. The shivers you get from the Evening (or Weekly World) News are a luxury.
Most of all, we must never, ever again feel awestruck wonder about any manufactured device. They dont last, and are not worthy of that form of respect.
I just can't applaud this enough. People might see this as a plea for wastefulness or a lack of craftsmanship, but I see it as a healthy cynicism and a conscious unwillingness to be seduced by a technology in the knowledge that it will be trumped in due time by another. This could lead (is leading) to the 'disposable' idea he talks about. People will grow irate and speak of environmental damage, but I'd feel a lot better chucking an outdated Palm Pilot on the sidewalk trash pile than a 40 lb bomb-proof 386sx.
We're already getting to the point where one no longer needs a large, heavy, dedicated desk-top PC to transact with the Internet. This will lead to massively interesting and unexpected outcomes which he hints at in his paper.
It's funny, I'm not a fan of his SF, but I really like this essay.
I don't think he's saying we need many social and technological and temporary paradigms so much as he is saying that, thanks to technology, that is where we are heading, however much some Literati's philosophie-du-jour insists we should go elsewhere.
Technology has come to a point where Philosophy is powerless to reign it in. While the modern day Karl Marx tries to 'reign in' the Internet to service his own philosophy, the White Supremacists are doing their bit as are the Boy Scouts and AT&T. It's too slippery for any ONE to get an exclusive grip on it. Not to say that philosophy is dead; it just has a dancing partner it's own size and with a will of its own.
The 20th Century WAS full of 'isms that reigned in technology in the 'interest' of philosophy. Now, for better or worse, technology has squirmed out of its grasp.
I agree. UF is a skillfully humorous strip in that it relieves us of the need to feel pity for the plight of the caller through either having the caller relentlessly persist in their folly, despite all advice to the contrary, or by having the tech support person suffer to a similar if not larger degree in response to the callers situation.
The kid who wrote the article probably didn't expect a write-up on/., but I must say he is woefully clueless about the ways of the world. Good-natured but insightful humor is extremely difficult to write. The closer you get to being openly antagonistic, without actually doing so, the harder the laugh you'll get. UF is getting better at this all the time, and I salute them. This is why I like the South Park tv show better than the film, because the tv show forces the writers to work within certain limits, which in turn forces them to be more clever, thoughtful and downright devious in getting laughs. ('Uncle Fscker' takes the cake tho', I must say!)
Peanuts, in its hey-day (1970's) did this all the time. There was a LOT of mean-spirited ranting at the foibles Charlie Brown, which was the most common 'plot' in the strips. Remember those little books we used to order from Scholastic Book Service? Read 'em again! We didn't really feel sorry for him though, because he would almost always have some cheerfully apologetic excuse for what had happened the irony of which would cause Lucy or whomever was confronting him to flip over and go "AAAAGH!" The 'meanie' suffered more than Charlie Brown.
Is it *nice* for Lucy to rant and call Charlie Brown a Block Head? No. In real life it would be upsetting. In the context of a skillfully written and drawn comic strip, it *is* funny, and gives us all a good chance to blow off a little steam and/or laugh at ourselves.
UF is more of the 'blowing off steam' variety, and is hence *more* funny to 'insiders' than it ever will be to 'outsiders'. Some sensitive souls will feel 'bruised'. Some sensitive souls have a strange (I think perverse) *need* to feel 'bruised' by others on a regular basis. These people annoy the hell out of me with their righteous posturing and soapbox whining. Such is life.
There is indeed a *lot* of information. The most valuable skills a Linux gnubi can have is the ability to frame usefull questions/queries and the ability to filter through large amount of info to find what they need *without* reading sequentially, line-by-line. For example, I want to connect to my isp via ppp. Fine. I need to know about networking, but I don't have the time or desire to learn it all. I need to be able to mine the mountain of 'Linux Networking' info to get what I need and go. This doesn't even touch upon the fact, tho', that I also need to get my modem configured and detected, which involves forays into kernels, modules, and all that those things entail.
That's the toughest thing about Linux, the way one question inevitably branches into another, and another, and another. I think that's why a lot of folks lose patience.
Most gnubis aren't accustomed to thinking and/or working this way, whereas most unix/linux devotees were drawn to Linux in the first place by virtue of these strengths, fueled by indefatigable curiosity...
Try searching on Usenet via any of its web-based gateways. Troll through your logs (/var/logs) to try and see what's going on when your connection drops.
Also, in keeping with your stated desire to have your linux box be a gateway and whatnot, try forgetting about X and Netscape for a while and just focus on dialup access, basic lan-networking, and ip masquerade or some such to share among several machines. Go to Goodwill and grab an old 486 for $20. When you can access your Linux box via telnet from your windows machine(s) (check www.download.com for some great free telnet clients for Windows), rip off the monitor and just use that sucker as a gateway and UNIX fiddling/programming machine.
In any base 10 numerical system, you have to account for zero. Are you trying to tell us that the ten digits of the decimal system are 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10? Are calendar systems exempt from the basic rules of math? Exactly what planet are you from?
11 eggs do not make a dozen
Thanks for the tip! And remember - an empty carton contains zero eggs. (That's not a dozen either, in case you're wondering;)
there was no year zero
Sure there was. It was the one before the year 1. Some call it '1 BC', but what's a little relativity among friends?
Slashdot Mirror
Try having yourself duct-taped to a wheelchair which you can only navigate with your tongue and have to rely on another person for each and every interaction with your immediate environment, now matter how tiny or insignificant it may seem. See if you don't blow your top once and a while when your paid assistant wanders off. I'm not saying it's right, but it's understandable. I've seen similarly afflicted folks handle such situations with more grace, but I've also seen 'tantrums' over things that seem very unreasonable, until you look at exactly how much you and I take for granted. Chances are his assistant at the time was new and had to learn in no uncertain terms to ask/inform him before going off about her own business, however briefly.
I'd like to see him act more gracefully, but I won't condemn him for doing otherwise. Same goes for the bridge. He may have waited in the past and found that traffic never slows enough to let him pass unhindered, so better to just be rude and jump right in.
As for the papers and stealing, I have no idea of the veracity of this. I suppose, after he dies and biographies are written, the truth will come out one way or the other.
I love him for his imagery and wordlplay most of all. Almost fairy-tale-ish at times. Timeless stuff.
Hawking's predicament, with his multiple wives and staff of sassy nurses also brings to mind Heinlein. I almost envy the man!
His cleverness, intellect and ability to manipulate people and circumstances to his benifit show that he is clearly extremely 'fit' to survive. Survival doesn't neccessarily mean caving in the skull of the person next to you and stealing his food, although I can attest that, with a full charge, his wheelchair is more than capable of such a feat! Here is a man who, despite all physical odds, has managed to survive, reproduce and acquire and maintain social status. People, like all other forms of life, adapt to their environment in all sorts of successful ways, regardless of our expectations or assumptions.
I think he's singing along to Kraftwerk's 'Computerworld'...
To factor in Disease, Famine, and War, all of which increase in likelihood and virulence as the population rises.
Having worked fairly extensively with folks in a similar physical situation as Dr. Hawking, I can say it does take getting used to, and is very disconcerting at first. Once you do get a feel for the change in pacing and lack of standard physical expression, you wonder how you ever could have felt otherwise. I agree, though, that the author's wording could have been better chosen, but I appreciate the honesty and was glad to see a change of sorts by the end of the article.
You are correct, in my opinion, that a significant (but unknown) part of his celebrity is due to his illness. He said so much himself when he said that his illness was an inseparable part of himself. The curiosity aroused by his illness attracts the attention that then brings his genius to light. The coupling of the two make for a fascinating human being. The fact that people ask him questions about et's and whatnot is simply due to the everpresent hope on the part of young interviewers that Someone Significant will reassure us in our dreams that what we see on Star Trek will soon become a reality. ANY time ANYONE interviews a popular scientist, these questions are asked. Par for the course and fine with me. The responses are always enlightening and/or entertaining if you are willing to read into them and the interviewer's reactions.
You sound a little bitter about his success, and I'm sure you have your own personal reasons for that, largely boiling down to jealousy and/or disappointment in your own achievements and the recognition you feel they do or don't deserve. Get over it, I say, and get on with your own work, whatever that is. No one ever achieved greatness OR celebrity by muttering bitterly about the success of another.
And kudos to his first wife for not pulling the plug at what surely seemed to be 'the final hour'.
So much for his 'rules'.
They should be thanked, for bringing about the greatest fashion breakthrough in Penguin history.
I don't mean to downplay the emotional impact of the 'raid' you suffered, but when the truth of the situation came out, the feds backed off and the school apologized. What more can you ask? They HAVE to investigate, and for all intents and purposes, YOU appeared the most likely perpetrator.
Besides, think of the geek chic status you've attained!
; )
The raid sounded pretty reasonable to me, in the sense that there is really no reasonable way in which to conduct one. The very nature of a raid is a rude and sudden imposition. There is a place for this, just like there is a place for private gun ownership in America and there is a place monitoring and control of private gun ownership.
Contradictions. I love 'em.
The comparison to Jews in Nazi Germany is definately lame, however. Quit whining and throw in another deer hunting video.
This refrain is getting old.
Pot-smoking morons who think disposable products are wasteful are idiots who should be beaten like the dusty couches they crowch upon. Still driving that Gremlin? Still glued to that 2600? Still caressing the cold steel casing on that old 8086? Sure, your hanging on to that record collection, as am I, but you don't really use it that much now do you? You'd like to think you do, and you tell all your hip, pot-smoking friends you do, but secretly, you know you don't. I bet you could really use that space too, but no, that reserved for Yes, Rush, The Villiage People and Ted Nugent, not to mention your Vixen special pirate editions. You really listen to cd's (disposable), mp3's (disposable) and the radio (throw it away now!). Don't worry, I won't tell. We all know your a connoiseur of Vinyl, and that you really can tell the difference!
it does. engineering is mechanism, philosophy is policy. policy is dictated by the people using the mechanism.
Right. So when the mechanism becomes Everyman's disposable domain, then policy is dictated by Everyman. Seeing as Every Man is very unlikely to agree on a given, cohesive policy, policy is trumped.
actually, we need a philosophy that doesn't mandate overpopulating the world to death
Meanwhile, someone else thinks we do need a philosophy mandating overpopulating the world to death while yet another fellah thinks both philosophies are bunk because you can't intentionally under or over populate the world because diseases and libidos keep screwing things up.
What we are gravitating towards is a kind of world culture (or lack thereof) in which most folks are happy to work, eat and watch tv or party with the neighbors. Those firey-minded souls who wish to change the world with their Passionate Insights will have a LOT of competition, but will be able to occasionally tilt things this way or that, without ever taking over the whole shebang.
"We need ivory networks."
...with real-world avatars of those Faustian visions of power and ability that have previously existed only in myth. ... Thats when our *real* trouble starts."
No we don't. That's just as bad, if not worse, than an ivory tower. In an ivory tower you at least get a suspicion that everyone else might be doing something different, but on an ivory network you are surrounded by like-minded individuals who constantly remind you that what your group is doing is good and right and all that, and you whole ivory networked group ends up being just as useless, if not moreso, as an cityscape of individual ivory towers. We need need to have nothing ivory.
In the Ivory Network you have 'like-minded individuals' and mealy-mouthed detractors alike in highly unpredictable amounts. Ideas offered (like Bruces essay) are put to the test in a wonderfully public manner. Have you read a Slashdot forum recently?
"...we will find ourselves confronted,
I'm not too sure what Bruce is getting at here either, but I choose not to brush it off as blithely as you do. It hints at some interesting possibilities.
You mean I'll no longer be able to consider the consequences of my actions? To worry about right and wrong? That I will, like an animal, react upon my instincts alone? Somehow, I doubt that. Unless you're talking about a different human condition.
In referring to 'the Human Condition', I think he means things like war and starvation. I'm not sure what you're referring to. It's a very bold statement on his part, and seems unlikely to me, but that's good. Writers need to make bold statements.
So we can't print this out (we have to save paper), but you want a society of disposable gizmos?
ALL gizmos are disposable, whether we wish them to be or not. For every geek that still has a 386 still chugging away in his closet, there are a hundred corporations that have made landfill out of thousands more.
Disposable? Hell yes, disposable. Todays gizmo should be as biodegradable/recyclable as possible, because it *WILL* be made useless in short order. When everyone internalizes this, there will be less tolerance for big, heavy, evironmentally-hostile kludges, regardless of how miraculous they seem.
Screw you, I will be awestruck by whatever I please. You want our society to be based on this crap, but you don't want us to like it?
Like it a lot, but don't cling to it expecting it to last, or buy into some manufacturer's drivel that it will last you a lifetime. It won't. How's that 40 lb 286 you paid $2000 for in 1987 doing? Maybe you put a new motherboard in yours, which is great, but what's the use, when a Palm Pilot is more powerful, poratable and (very soon) practically disposable?
Also, he's not saying that he wants our society to be based on this crap. He's saying it will be. Perhaps it already is.
World starvation is still unacceptable, but lower than ever before in the 20th century. Wars are local instead of world-wide. White-trash hate crimes are *laughably* insignificant compared to the institutionalized hatred of South Africa, Nazi Germany, and Maoist China. Violence in schools appears *much* more threatening than it really is because of the sensation it creates in the media. People throughout history have suffered in ways *inconcievable* to you or I. The shivers you get from the Evening (or Weekly World) News are a luxury.
Is there still suffering? HELL YES!
But...
We've come a long way, baby.
Most of all, we must never, ever again feel awestruck wonder about any manufactured device. They dont last, and are not worthy of that form of respect.
I just can't applaud this enough. People might see this as a plea for wastefulness or a lack of craftsmanship, but I see it as a healthy cynicism and a conscious unwillingness to be seduced by a technology in the knowledge that it will be trumped in due time by another. This could lead (is leading) to the 'disposable' idea he talks about. People will grow irate and speak of environmental damage, but I'd feel a lot better chucking an outdated Palm Pilot on the sidewalk trash pile than a 40 lb bomb-proof 386sx.
We're already getting to the point where one no longer needs a large, heavy, dedicated desk-top PC to transact with the Internet. This will lead to massively interesting and unexpected outcomes which he hints at in his paper.
It's funny, I'm not a fan of his SF, but I really like this essay.
I don't think he's saying we need many social and technological and temporary paradigms so much as he is saying that, thanks to technology, that is where we are heading, however much some Literati's philosophie-du-jour insists we should go elsewhere.
Technology has come to a point where Philosophy is powerless to reign it in. While the modern day Karl Marx tries to 'reign in' the Internet to service his own philosophy, the White Supremacists are doing their bit as are the Boy Scouts and AT&T. It's too slippery for any ONE to get an exclusive grip on it. Not to say that philosophy is dead; it just has a dancing partner it's own size and with a will of its own.
The 20th Century WAS full of 'isms that reigned in technology in the 'interest' of philosophy. Now, for better or worse, technology has squirmed out of its grasp.
I agree. UF is a skillfully humorous strip in that it relieves us of the need to feel pity for the plight of the caller through either having the caller relentlessly persist in their folly, despite all advice to the contrary, or by having the tech support person suffer to a similar if not larger degree in response to the callers situation.
/., but I must say he is woefully clueless about the ways of the world. Good-natured but insightful humor is extremely difficult to write. The closer you get to being openly antagonistic, without actually doing so, the harder the laugh you'll get. UF is getting better at this all the time, and I salute them. This is why I like the South Park tv show better than the film, because the tv show forces the writers to work within certain limits, which in turn forces them to be more clever, thoughtful and downright devious in getting laughs. ('Uncle Fscker' takes the cake tho', I must say!)
The kid who wrote the article probably didn't expect a write-up on
Peanuts, in its hey-day (1970's) did this all the time. There was a LOT of mean-spirited ranting at the foibles Charlie Brown, which was the most common 'plot' in the strips. Remember those little books we used to order from Scholastic Book Service? Read 'em again! We didn't really feel sorry for him though, because he would almost always have some cheerfully apologetic excuse for what had happened the irony of which would cause Lucy or whomever was confronting him to flip over and go "AAAAGH!" The 'meanie' suffered more than Charlie Brown.
Is it *nice* for Lucy to rant and call Charlie Brown a Block Head? No. In real life it would be upsetting. In the context of a skillfully written and drawn comic strip, it *is* funny, and gives us all a good chance to blow off a little steam and/or laugh at ourselves.
UF is more of the 'blowing off steam' variety, and is hence *more* funny to 'insiders' than it ever will be to 'outsiders'. Some sensitive souls will feel 'bruised'. Some sensitive souls have a strange (I think perverse) *need* to feel 'bruised' by others on a regular basis. These people annoy the hell out of me with their righteous posturing and soapbox whining. Such is life.
Go figure.
There is indeed a *lot* of information. The most valuable skills a Linux gnubi can have is the ability to frame usefull questions/queries and the ability to filter through large amount of info to find what they need *without* reading sequentially, line-by-line. For example, I want to connect to my isp via ppp. Fine. I need to know about networking, but I don't have the time or desire to learn it all. I need to be able to mine the mountain of 'Linux Networking' info to get what I need and go. This doesn't even touch upon the fact, tho', that I also need to get my modem configured and detected, which involves forays into kernels, modules, and all that those things entail.
That's the toughest thing about Linux, the way one question inevitably branches into another, and another, and another. I think that's why a lot of folks lose patience.
Most gnubis aren't accustomed to thinking and/or working this way, whereas most unix/linux devotees were drawn to Linux in the first place by virtue of these strengths, fueled by indefatigable curiosity...
It still does!
; )
Try searching on Usenet via any of its web-based gateways. Troll through your logs (/var/logs) to try and see what's going on when your connection drops.
Also, in keeping with your stated desire to have your linux box be a gateway and whatnot, try forgetting about X and Netscape for a while and just focus on dialup access, basic lan-networking, and ip masquerade or some such to share among several machines. Go to Goodwill and grab an old 486 for $20. When you can access your Linux box via telnet from your windows machine(s) (check www.download.com for some great free telnet clients for Windows), rip off the monitor and just use that sucker as a gateway and UNIX fiddling/programming machine.
1st Millenium: 0-999
;)
2nd Millenium: 1000-1999
3rd Millenium: 2000-2999
In any base 10 numerical system, you have to account for zero. Are you trying to tell us that the ten digits of the decimal system are 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10? Are calendar systems exempt from the basic rules of math? Exactly what planet are you from?
11 eggs do not make a dozen
Thanks for the tip! And remember - an empty carton contains zero eggs. (That's not a dozen either, in case you're wondering
there was no year zero
Sure there was. It was the one before the year 1. Some call it '1 BC', but what's a little relativity among friends?
Fill yer own damn bottles! It's that easy!