at the time that's the only option the physics department offered undergrads. I'm rather proud of it actually - I think I got a better education at "Uncle Charlie's Summer Camp" than I did during my first two years at Caltech; for example I took classes in painting and drawing.
At the time, they didn't give grades. Instead, instructors wrote a short "narrative evaluation" about their students' performance.
However, I understand that they've given into economic pressures, so that now both grades and BS degrees are offered.
You'd think I could get some kind of fiber service, but no, and when I googled for it I found this huge long thread on Usenet that was all about how Silicon Valley doesn't have good Internet because the phone company won't invest in upgrading their infrastructure.
Not that I was looking for warez: no, I operate a legal BitTorrent tracker and dedicated seed to offer downloads of my own music (see sig). I need free access to BitTorrent just to monitor them, as sometimes the BitTorrent seed software (btdownloadmany.py) falls over.
Just my luck that I live beyond the range for DSL. After a lot of research I came across Stephouse, which offers something called "ISDL", or DSL over ISDN, which can go somewhat farther than regular DSL.
It works, but I pay $99 a month for 144kbps. At least I'm able to monitor my torrents, but I'm not able to watch videos on Youtube.
I'm very happy with Stephouse as a provider though, they have a remarkably permissive TOS, and their support people have been great.
I understand that Hanford has a problem with the chemicals in some of their liquid radioactive waste tanks. They've basically mixed together all manner of radioactive chemicals without much regard for how they would react with each other. There is some danger that some of the chemicals might react violently, with dangerous amounts of radiation being released into the environment.
That's about ten US dollars, and is far more than they would have received had they sold me a CD in the traditional way.
I wanted to encourage them, and to send a message to other musicians that offerring music for direct download will definitely benefit them.
I compose for and play the piano, and offer my recordings for free download from my website - see my sig. I get a couple thousand downloads a month. My aim in offerring my music for free is to build up a fan base, so that in a few years, when I start playing professionally, there will be lots of people who know my music and will be tickets to my concerts.
A while back, when I was looking for work, I took out some Google AdWords Select ads pointing at my resume. One of my ads said that I was an experienced Mac programmer. Google's trademark police disabled that ad, and told me I was forbidden to use the word "Mac" because it was Apple's trademark.
However, my understanding of trademark law tells me that I was in the right. I wouldn't be if I was using the word "Mac" in a way that was misleading, for example by claiming that Macs were my own product, or sold by a company other than Apple.
What is really ironic is that by running that ad, I was actually doing Apple a favor, by making it easier for prospective Mac software publishers to find an experienced programmer.
All my pages are static HTML. Not a web application in site, not even PHP. Yes, it's a drag when I need to do some kind of sitewide update, like adding a navigation item.
I also have less to worry about security, as long as my hosting service keeps their patches up to date, I know I haven't introduced any holes myself.
Also, for the most part, my pages are very light on graphics, with most of the graphics present being repeated on every page such as my site's logo, which gets cached.
Finally, all my pages are XHTML 1.0 Strict with CSS, with the CSS being provided by a single sitewide stylesheet. This means less HTML text to transfer compared to formatting with HTML tags.
Why? Because if you publish on your own website, you get to keep the rights to your work. Most dead-tree book publishers and magazines require copyright assignments from writers. New writers get the same raw deal from publishers as musicians get from the record labels - they get shafted, and the publishers keep all the money.
And how is one to make money on the Internet? Rather than being paid by the word or royalties from book sales, one can earn money through advertising - Google AdSense, affiliate ads and so on.
At one time it was my ambition to be a dead-tree author, but no more. I'm happier publishing on the web. Read, for example, my essays on mental illness and recovery.
The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block and the Creative Brain by neurologist Alice Flaherty.
She describes a symptom called "hypergraphia", which is commonly found in temporal lobe epilepsy as well as bipolar mania. It is an uncontrollable urge to write.
Hypergraphic people, in fact creative people of all sorts report being visited by "The Muse", and often have the subjective experience that their creations are not of their own doing, rather, they are channelling for The Muse.
I was hypergraphic for several years. Not continously, but episodically: when I'd get the urge to write a new essay or article, I would drop everything, quite without regard to common sense, for example I would abandon paying work for clients until I had published whatever I was inspired to write on my website, or at community sites like Kuro5hin.
This all stopped when I was hospitalized for mania about a year ago, and put on the antipsychotic Zyprexa. While I'm a lot better off than I used to be, in that I don't experience symptoms of mental illness anymore, I seem to find it impossible to write at much length about anything.
here it is fourteen years after the web appeared, and the heart of American high-tech doesn't have fiber service to its residents.
I know this because I was trying to get fiber, then found a huge long thread on Usenet as to why there's no fiber in Sunnyvale, where I live and work: basically the telcos are trying to squeeze all the money they can out of old infrastructure, without investing in new.
This left me with cable and DSL. I don't want Comcast cable internet because they filter BitTorrent. I operate a torrent tracker for legal music downloads, so I need to use BitTorrent just to check that my tracker and seed are up.
DSL seemed to out as well because I'm over three miles from the phone office. I was very surprised that something hadn't already been done to make DSL available to silicon valley residents. I'm sure there are ways they could extend the range of DSL in an affordable way.
Finally I found Stephouse which, through COVAD, offers IDSL. That's DSL over ISDN, and I'm just within range. It's what I have now.
I bought a good-quality bluetooth headset a few months ago, intending to use it for Skype VOIP on my first-gen MacBook Pro. The reason I didn't get a USB headset is that I wanted to be able to move around while talking. Bluetooth is advertised to have a thirty-foot range, so I should have been able to connect from anywhere in my apartment.
Well the real range is about two feet, and only if I keep the laptop and the headset in a precise orientation with respect to each other. Otherwise I get a loud crackling sound that is defeaning to the person on the other end.
I finally did buy a USB headset, and it worked perfectly.
Digital audio is pretty low-bandwidth. Shouldn't this work better?
They US Navy has lots of reactors in nuclear submaries and aircraft carriers. The submarine shipyards need civilian engineers to work on reactor maintenance. That was the last job my father had before he retired, at Mare Island Naval Shipyard.
The half-life of plutonium is about twenty-thousand years. Only a tiny speck of will start a fatal cancer if inhaled or ingested. By "half-life" I mean the time required for the plutonium to decay to half of its original amount; to decay to the point it is safe to be around will take millions of years.
How are we going to store the nuclear waste in such a way that no one is hurt by it? Who will guard this facility for a million years? How much will that cost?
I think that before any new nuclear facility is licensed, its operators should be required to pay in advance for the disposal of its spent fuel. I don't think it's right that the cost should be borne by the taxpayer.
The EC has quite stringent privacy laws, particularly regarding storage of personal info in databases, and has a record of filing anti-corporate lawsuits.
Slashdot Mirror
They also established a recording studio at the University of Cape Breton to record and preserve the local music.
At the time, they didn't give grades. Instead, instructors wrote a short "narrative evaluation" about their students' performance.
However, I understand that they've given into economic pressures, so that now both grades and BS degrees are offered.
His real last name isn't Dolby, it's Robertson.
When he spoke at the BDC, it was about his high-tech startup, which developed a new audio format.
He got sued by the Dolby corporation; according to Wikipedia, the settlement allows him to use their trademark only when in the context of "Thomas ".
Unfortunately for me, I'm paid in US dollars, but I have significant Canadian dollar expenses.
XE says the US dollar is worth about 96.6 Canadian cents.
We have Comcast cable, but I didn't opt for a cable modem because I found Comcast in a list of ISPs that block BitTorrent.
Not that I was looking for warez: no, I operate a legal BitTorrent tracker and dedicated seed to offer downloads of my own music (see sig). I need free access to BitTorrent just to monitor them, as sometimes the BitTorrent seed software (btdownloadmany.py) falls over.
Just my luck that I live beyond the range for DSL. After a lot of research I came across Stephouse, which offers something called "ISDL", or DSL over ISDN, which can go somewhat farther than regular DSL.
It works, but I pay $99 a month for 144kbps. At least I'm able to monitor my torrents, but I'm not able to watch videos on Youtube.
I'm very happy with Stephouse as a provider though, they have a remarkably permissive TOS, and their support people have been great.
I'll try again in a few days.
I doubt many record labels would have permitted them to do this.
I wanted to encourage them, and to send a message to other musicians that offerring music for direct download will definitely benefit them.
I compose for and play the piano, and offer my recordings for free download from my website - see my sig. I get a couple thousand downloads a month. My aim in offerring my music for free is to build up a fan base, so that in a few years, when I start playing professionally, there will be lots of people who know my music and will be tickets to my concerts.
However, my understanding of trademark law tells me that I was in the right. I wouldn't be if I was using the word "Mac" in a way that was misleading, for example by claiming that Macs were my own product, or sold by a company other than Apple.
What is really ironic is that by running that ad, I was actually doing Apple a favor, by making it easier for prospective Mac software publishers to find an experienced programmer.
I've been adding it to my pages as I work on them, but I haven't worked on that page for a while.
And yeah, such requirements for sitewide updates is the best argument against my method.
All my pages are static HTML. Not a web application in site, not even PHP. Yes, it's a drag when I need to do some kind of sitewide update, like adding a navigation item.
I also have less to worry about security, as long as my hosting service keeps their patches up to date, I know I haven't introduced any holes myself.
Also, for the most part, my pages are very light on graphics, with most of the graphics present being repeated on every page such as my site's logo, which gets cached.
Finally, all my pages are XHTML 1.0 Strict with CSS, with the CSS being provided by a single sitewide stylesheet. This means less HTML text to transfer compared to formatting with HTML tags.
And how is one to make money on the Internet? Rather than being paid by the word or royalties from book sales, one can earn money through advertising - Google AdSense, affiliate ads and so on.
I have earned as much as five thousand dollars per month from Google AdSense on my articles. Quite a few people in the Webmasterworld AdSense forum report earning ten thousand per month or more.
At one time it was my ambition to be a dead-tree author, but no more. I'm happier publishing on the web. Read, for example, my essays on mental illness and recovery.
She describes a symptom called "hypergraphia", which is commonly found in temporal lobe epilepsy as well as bipolar mania. It is an uncontrollable urge to write.
Hypergraphic people, in fact creative people of all sorts report being visited by "The Muse", and often have the subjective experience that their creations are not of their own doing, rather, they are channelling for The Muse.
I was hypergraphic for several years. Not continously, but episodically: when I'd get the urge to write a new essay or article, I would drop everything, quite without regard to common sense, for example I would abandon paying work for clients until I had published whatever I was inspired to write on my website, or at community sites like Kuro5hin.
This all stopped when I was hospitalized for mania about a year ago, and put on the antipsychotic Zyprexa. While I'm a lot better off than I used to be, in that I don't experience symptoms of mental illness anymore, I seem to find it impossible to write at much length about anything.
Their name was inspired by the yellow bicycles in Amsterdam, which I understand are freely available for anyone to take and ride around on.
I know this because I was trying to get fiber, then found a huge long thread on Usenet as to why there's no fiber in Sunnyvale, where I live and work: basically the telcos are trying to squeeze all the money they can out of old infrastructure, without investing in new.
This left me with cable and DSL. I don't want Comcast cable internet because they filter BitTorrent. I operate a torrent tracker for legal music downloads, so I need to use BitTorrent just to check that my tracker and seed are up.
DSL seemed to out as well because I'm over three miles from the phone office. I was very surprised that something hadn't already been done to make DSL available to silicon valley residents. I'm sure there are ways they could extend the range of DSL in an affordable way.
Finally I found Stephouse which, through COVAD, offers IDSL. That's DSL over ISDN, and I'm just within range. It's what I have now.
Well the real range is about two feet, and only if I keep the laptop and the headset in a precise orientation with respect to each other. Otherwise I get a loud crackling sound that is defeaning to the person on the other end.
I finally did buy a USB headset, and it worked perfectly.
Digital audio is pretty low-bandwidth. Shouldn't this work better?
How are we going to store the nuclear waste in such a way that no one is hurt by it? Who will guard this facility for a million years? How much will that cost?
I think that before any new nuclear facility is licensed, its operators should be required to pay in advance for the disposal of its spent fuel. I don't think it's right that the cost should be borne by the taxpayer.
- RFC 1149 - Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers
- RFC 2549 - IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service
I'll send you my bill in the mail.And don't try to protest that homing pigeons are impractical! They have been tested in a real implementation and has actually been demonstrated to be faster than ADSL.