The article says media should be 100-200 yen, which is only about $1.00 - $1.85 USD. That should be an attractive price point for music megacorps to be looking at for the next big format. If we don't go the way of downloads, I can see that these postage stamp-sized things should work well for producing new releases on.
Toss in a little compression now that MP3/FLAC/AAC are getting mature and you've got enough to hold a double album of just about any music, and great for portable and car stereos.
Depending on your timeframe, xrms might be a good choice for a CRM package. It's nearing a 1.0 release and eventually will integrate with many of the other apps mentioned here like SQL-Ledger. It's based on PHP running with MySQL or several other databases..
I'm actually in the process of installing xrms as a CRM from a support standpoint, not from a sales one. It has a nice user database, a basic ticketing system, and a fairly polished interface for a new app. It was one of the few that spanned both worlds (support vs. sales) with any finesse.
There are several developers involved that are happy to take suggestions and plan out new features.
Here, you want a better analogy. How about if the original "dimwitted" poster leaves his door unlocked and Bad Guys(tm) come in and start a meth lab while he sleeps. Now, all he did is leave a door unlocked, but still that enabled illegal activity. The gov't has an interest in making sure that door doesn't get left open.
Is that easier to grasp than the strange 'shotgun in a park' one?
I'm not quite sure where the mental images came from, but for whatever reason, I have, from day one (about 20 years ago), pictured Ford Prefect looking like John Cleese and Arthur Dent looking like Terry Jones. Therefore I am completely unable to cope with their current casting choices... I think I shall go have (another) cup of tea.
I did the same thing as you, although not in quite the same time frame. I've been a long-time Linux dabbler dating back to '95 or so. In that time, I've tried out Slack, Redhat, Mandrake, Gentoo, and Debian. I spent the most time in the Redhat and Mandrake phase, dutifly getting each release as an ISO and trying a fresh install to see what I thought of the new version.
When Gentoo came out, I had to try it out to see what all the furor was about. I was really impressed with the concept, but my play boxes were only PII machines and the compile times ended up being waaaay too tiresome, considering I had some conflict somewhere and kept having to rebuild nearly everything with different flags trying to resolve it. I'd make a change, and start a compile, and go to bed. The next night, I'd assess that change, probably make another, and start another compile. I really liked the distro, but I'm in the bandwagon that it still needs just a skosh more stability before it's primetime. I'll happily give it another try later.
So then I tried Debian. I absolutely hated the installer which reminded me of life back in the mid/late 90s. But once I got through that, wow. It *did* just work. Installs are easy, updates are easy, and life isn't painful at 266 Mhz. So like pjack76, it's now my distro of choice. I ran at stable for a long time mostly because I was ready to stop dealing with the various hiccups and snags I had with Gentoo and older distros. But after seeing user after user talk about how stable 'unstable' was, I switched over to it. Took about an hour and the darn thing is still rock solid.
So, wow. For those of us burnt out on "distro roulette", Debian is fresh air. I've been eyeing my main windows machine and wondering if it's time for me to go ahead and switch it over too. Then 75% of my home machines would be running Debian:) (I gotta keep one box on Windows for my wife's use and some of my daughter's games)
I'm no zealot, and I'm not the hair club president, but I'm a believer now.
I've long noticed the same thing. I have rather vivid dreams every night (and I do mean every). It's like having a feature film in my head every night of my life.
When I first wake up (or am woken up, I should say, since something usually triggers it), I have nearly complete recall of the dream. I used to keep a notebook where I would write everything down, but I got tired of the hour or so it would take to fully transcribe them. What I observed was that if I didn't devote time to recalling the dream immediately upon waking, the dream would begin to fade over the next 10 minutes or so. After 10 minutes, I could recall almost nothing of the dream. But if I spent time reviewing it, I was able to "preserve" most of the details. I mentally pictured copying the data from memory banks that were quickly going dim into a different type of memory that could maintain the images for longer.
It isn't often that my dreams relate to specific mental challenges like the story described, but I have often found that new approaches come to me when I revisit the problem later. But I think for me this happens whether there is sleep or just distraction in the intervening time. If actual solutions did occur during the sleep, I'd need to capture them in that first 10 minutes before they faded again... Maybe I'll try to replicate this study informally on my own...
I spent a summer working for duPont in Beaumont Texas. Their facility there actually consists of 7 different factories that the centralized engineering team supports.
Every time I had to visit one of those factories, I had to don steel-toed shoes, ear plugs, safety goggles, hardhat, and a full-body flameproof jumpsuit. No so bad until you take into account that during most of the summer, Beaumont usually runs around 100 deg.F (38C) and 90+ % humidity.
Any trip out outside pretty much ensured you completely soaked your entire outfit (expected to be nice shirts and pants for that position) with sweat.
Miserable F-ing hot. And I quit that job by the end of the summer.
Or Fischer-Technik! I had a complete set of these and found it much more stimulating than Legos. These are high-quality components with all sorts of motors, gear and chain systems, other mechanical tidbits. They might even explain why I ended up getting an engineering degree.;)
Sorry, but global warming has nothing to do with personal comfort. In fact, people overall might not even notice the very moderate temperature differences.
Where the problem lies in the ecosystems and the foodchains. This whole concept is fragile. Yes, it is adapatable, but only at extremely slow time frames. I mean like 1000s of years, not 50. All it takes is a few species (plants and animals) to get out of whack with the current cycles, and then all the creatures that feed on those plants/animals (or are feed on by those plants/animals) are affected, then all the ones that depend on those are affected.. etc, etc..... with who knows what sort of global effects?
The fact that enjoy your winter is more comfortable is irrelevant. It's the rest of the ecosystem we're worried about.
I also did this through the University of Texas. Worked out really well.. I got out in just over 5 years, had job experience from two major companies (duPont and National Instruments) and I found the alternating semester system they use really advantageous: 1. You can usually save up enough money during a work semester to cover (almost) all the expenses of the following school one. (Provided you're sufficiently frugal) 2. Just when you're getting burnt out on a 9-5 work grind, you'll switch back to a class one, when you're burnt out on the books, you'll switch back to a working one.
The drawback is that some of these programs don't want freshmen. They want you to have made it through at least the core courses before you're eligible.
But in a nutshell, I did the co-op thing and have pretty much nothing but good things to say about it.
Actually the 10ish megapixel digitals out now do compete, and rather favorably, against film in terms of resolution, contrast, and color dynamics, at least at some of the ISOs. I can point you to a couple recent articles in some of my photography magazines that have shown exactly this (one of which is cited below).
So the blowups you're describing would have been possible with the clarity you claim they can't, provided we're talking about a level playing field here: similar quality lenses and lighting conditions for the both the film and digital cameras. I wouldn't compare a point n'click to a nice pro SLR, but the editors and researchers claim that the prints from the Kodak DCS 14n exceed shots from a comparable film SLR (I'd have to see which ones they've specifically tested against).
The Kodak mentioned was actually measured (that is, not judged) to have better clarity and resolution than a comparable film camera at 400 ISO. At 200, it was a tossup and at 100 ISO, film beat out the digital in some of the categories. Here's some quotes:
In bright light at relatively normal shutter speeds, the Kodak Pro 14n even outperformed Kodak's own 400 Max Versatility film by delivering slightly higher resolution (in diagonal lines), higher color accuracy, better skin tones, superior image definition, and better overall image quality. In bright light, ISO 100 images showed extremely low noise levels and appeared "grainless" next those shot with ISO 400 film. At ISO 100, color negative film edged out the Pro 14n in terms of overall resolution, but the Pro 14n's image definition (a combination of resolution, sharpening grain, contrast, and color accuracy) did surpass ISO 100 film by a small margin.
and..
...we were surprised at how good they looked all the way up to the 15x22-inch
blowups we made with our Epson Stylus Pro 7600 printer.
and..
This is the first digital SLR to outperform ISO 400 color film, albeit under normal shooting conditions and not when shooting time exposures in low light. That's a remarkable achievement.
So I would assert that your claim of "impossible to do with any digital camera made today" is just untrue. All you need is one the recent digitals, some prime lenses, and you've got something that can clearly compete with, and in some cases beat out, 35mm film.
An AC spaketh: I wonder, though, are you averse to massive government spending in general, or only when it is implemented by Republicans?
No, only when it doesn't directly help the American people.
I'm not inherently opposed to the programs, it's just that *right now* is a bad time to be trying all this stuff. After a recent layoff and several months of unemployment, I'm lucky to have a found a job, despite it being back at about my 1996 salary. Each month I'm continuing to have to tap into more and more of my home equity just to keep the bills paid. There are huge problems with growing poverty in our own country, our education system is slipping through our fingers, healthcare costs are rising at rates triple (or more) than inflation.
I just want to see some of those issues fixed (or at least addressed) before we start more rhetoric about foreign countries to invade and other planets (or satellites) to commandeer.
The sad jest in my original subject line was that it used to be the Democrats with the bad rap for running up big spending tabs and now they are being completely outclassed by this Republican president with a Republican congress. I'm not dissing the Republicans... I'm just afraid of them. I want there to be something left of this country for my daughter to look forward to. Hopefully something worthwhile.
Sorry, I'm sure to get modded as a troll for this, and I'm jazzed about our space programs getting money they need, but I'm also more terrified of the condition this country is going to be in under Dubya's rule.
I mean, if you haven't seen this chart, check out: Bush's Budget Deficit (Google cache, an original is at http://dean-justinspoliticaljournal.cafeprogressiv e.com/4239a600.jpg)
$87 billion for Iraq, tax cuts aplenty, and now he wants space ships too? Oy.
In geek terms, this is like an electrical circuit hitting an upper voltage rail and "clipping". If we have 32 questions that all get +5 scores, then we clearly are "overdriving" the process of selecting the 10 best ones.
So the two solutions, both electrically, and with Slashdot, are to either: 1. Reduce the amplification (cut down how many people can vote [intrinsically undemocratic] or only let them assign 1/2 points at a time.) 2. Raise the rails (make it so the scores can hit +/-10 or something. I doubt all 32 questions would have. For that matter, why set any limit, and just pick the top 10 that received votes.)
I'm just pointing out via metaphor that we apparently have a flawed system but there are some pretty common ways to fix it...
Internet2 is a research network for developing and testing new protocols/applications/technologies related to networking. It consists primarily of universities and other research facilities, but there are several companies (like mine) that are also participating in it.
There are much higher hardware standards for the routing equipment and overall Internet2 is currently operating at around 100x the speed of the "conventional" internet. (My company has a video and audio collaboration package that just rocks with that bandwidth, for instance)
I2 is not intended to replace "the" Internet, but just serve as a proving grounds for many of the technologies that might be part of "the" Internet soon.
For more information, just check out www.internet2.edu and read the "About Us" sections.
Foo is pretty much the canonical metavariable, it predates the "life" symbol by decades, and it's something that any hacker (that really is a hacker) will instantly recognize.
All we'd need is some stylized rendition of it (which in itself would be another challenge on par with herding cats) but I think it captures the hacker membership a little more cleanly...
Not important? 14,000,000,000 human lives aren't important? Because that's how many additional people the planet could support if no one ate beef.
Or, in lieu of more people, we can work toward preserving the natural resources that we currently have and try to trim down our "burn rate" (to coin a dotcom term). Most of the reason I am a vegetarian and an environmentalist actually has little to do about my quality of life. I'm actually doing for my grandchildren, great grandchildren, and so on, and your great grandchildren.
Things aren't too bad now, but most trend charts show we certainly can't sustain the current consumption and destruction rates we're engaged in. All I'm trying to do is my little bit to prolong what we've got. I sold my SUV and got a little 4-banger (but actually take a bus whenever possible), went vegetarian, compost all kitchen scraps, recycle about 80% of what comes into the house, cancelled a lot of unnecessary magazine and catalog subscriptions, and other similar efforts.
My next goal, when I can afford it, is to see if I can make my house "off-grid" and start generating some of the electricity I consume.
Now, I'm no saint, and certainly could be doing a lot more, but if even a very small fraction of the [over-consuming side of the] world's population made a similar effort, we can be just a little closer to ensuring quality of life and environment for generations down the road...
I've heard two statistics about the inefficiency of beef. One is that it takes 20 pounds (9 kg) of grain or soy to make one pound (0.45 kg) of beef. The other is that it takes 12 pounds (5.5 kg) to make that one pound.
I'm not sure which is more accurate, but either way you're talking about 92% to 95% waste compared to consuming the soy directly.
This is in fact the number one reason I became a vegetarian... mostly to reduce the environmental impact of the food I eat. So I opted for a diet that relies mostly on that grain and soy itself... (pastas, rices, tofu, seitan, soy milk, etc.. Pretty much the polar opposite of a low carb one)
Or maybe you're an author working on the next Great American Novel... C'mon, a lot of us buy laptops so we *can* take them outside. Sitting in a cube or at a desk all day may not be our highest priority...
I always vastly prefered the P225 over the P205. The 225 has a rounded barrel, so you don't get the "grooves" in your fingers after prolonged use. It's about a 1/2 inch shorter as well, I believe.
The 225 was the first writing implement that I ever obsessed over. I would scout out stores on a regular basis for this specific model, to ensure I had a ready supply of them. Unfortunately, the P205 proved much more popular and now it appears that the 225 is a model of the past. Oh well, it was a great tool while they made it. I probably still have 2 or 3 of them around that are a decade or older...
On futher poking around, I ran across this site: http://www.little-boxes.net/ Also "hosted" by Underscore hosting. It purports to be Beth McConnell's person website. But it also has telling little clues like:
"The world, as we know it, is guided by a relatively complex set of simple rules. These rules are not only built on logic and order, they establish logic and order. These rules, these physical laws, cannot just be ignored or discounted. Yet here I was looking at page after page of instances that seemed to operate with different rules, ones that disrupt what we know to be true, to be possible."
Well, a sunday-only one. And every sunday morning, I shuffle out to the driveway, drag the behemoth back in, and begin to disect it.
In pile A goes: coupons every single advertising insert the sports section
In pile B goes: Parade "magazine" the TV guide section
In pile C goes everything else.
Pile A is mine. I immediately read all the ads seeing what's on sale this week and what financing deals are being offered. The sports section is only because the Fry's ad is on the back page of it.
Pile B is set aside for my wife. She always reads the Parade insert, and then keeps the TV guide stuff for later in the week (We have no cable, so no onscreen source for this)
Pile C goes directly into paper recycling, followed by piles A and B when they are done being read or cut up.
News? Yeah, i think they print news in there too, but I never notice. It's my weekly dose of local sales flyers and that's about it.
I rarely turn on the TV, usually only to plug in a video of some sort.
The radio plays nice music and gives me the all-important traffic reports and is otherwise ignored.
The net is used for everything else. I check my.yahoo.com throughout the day for any breaking news items, and then refer to other online sources if I need more. I live and die by google for looking up things. Well, that plus my canonical list of places I go directly to for the appropriate subject matter: us.imdb.com - movies www.allmusic.com - music www.epinions.com - consumer reviews www.amazon.com - consumer reviews and book ideas www.addall.com - finding better prices for those books My weekly computer geek dose: www.sharkyextreme.com www.anandtech.com w ww.arstechnica.com
And then slashdot for its impeccible and accurate news reporting for everything else that might interest or entertain me. [insert "you must be new here" joke;)]
The secret to getting dependable info on the net is usually just one of redundency. Find three or more sources that independently corroborate something, and it's likely to be true. The key words there are *independent* and *likely*. Neither of those are automatic assumptions.
But then I've been on the net for about 13 years now and am finally starting tp get the hang of telling when something is rotten...;)
Slashdot Mirror
The article says media should be 100-200 yen, which is only about $1.00 - $1.85 USD. That should be an attractive price point for music megacorps to be looking at for the next big format. If we don't go the way of downloads, I can see that these postage stamp-sized things should work well for producing new releases on.
Toss in a little compression now that MP3/FLAC/AAC are getting mature and you've got enough to hold a double album of just about any music, and great for portable and car stereos.
Depending on your timeframe, xrms might be a good choice for a CRM package. It's nearing a 1.0 release and eventually will integrate with many of the other apps mentioned here like SQL-Ledger. It's based on PHP running with MySQL or several other databases..
I'm actually in the process of installing xrms as a CRM from a support standpoint, not from a sales one. It has a nice user database, a basic ticketing system, and a fairly polished interface for a new app. It was one of the few that spanned both worlds (support vs. sales) with any finesse.
There are several developers involved that are happy to take suggestions and plan out new features.
Here, you want a better analogy. How about if the original "dimwitted" poster leaves his door unlocked and Bad Guys(tm) come in and start a meth lab while he sleeps. Now, all he did is leave a door unlocked, but still that enabled illegal activity. The gov't has an interest in making sure that door doesn't get left open.
Is that easier to grasp than the strange 'shotgun in a park' one?
I'm not quite sure where the mental images came from, but for whatever reason, I have, from day one (about 20 years ago), pictured Ford Prefect looking like John Cleese and Arthur Dent looking like Terry Jones. Therefore I am completely unable to cope with their current casting choices... I think I shall go have (another) cup of tea.
Heh. Maybe this will work in my favor. I'm already a celebrity.
(the real me doesn't even get a mention until page 11 of Google's results...)
I did the same thing as you, although not in quite the same time frame. I've been a long-time Linux dabbler dating back to '95 or so. In that time, I've tried out Slack, Redhat, Mandrake, Gentoo, and Debian. I spent the most time in the Redhat and Mandrake phase, dutifly getting each release as an ISO and trying a fresh install to see what I thought of the new version.
:)
When Gentoo came out, I had to try it out to see what all the furor was about. I was really impressed with the concept, but my play boxes were only PII machines and the compile times ended up being waaaay too tiresome, considering I had some conflict somewhere and kept having to rebuild nearly everything with different flags trying to resolve it. I'd make a change, and start a compile, and go to bed. The next night, I'd assess that change, probably make another, and start another compile. I really liked the distro, but I'm in the bandwagon that it still needs just a skosh more stability before it's primetime. I'll happily give it another try later.
So then I tried Debian. I absolutely hated the installer which reminded me of life back in the mid/late 90s. But once I got through that, wow. It *did* just work. Installs are easy, updates are easy, and life isn't painful at 266 Mhz. So like pjack76, it's now my distro of choice. I ran at stable for a long time mostly because I was ready to stop dealing with the various hiccups and snags I had with Gentoo and older distros. But after seeing user after user talk about how stable 'unstable' was, I switched over to it. Took about an hour and the darn thing is still rock solid.
So, wow. For those of us burnt out on "distro roulette", Debian is fresh air. I've been eyeing my main windows machine and wondering if it's time for me to go ahead and switch it over too. Then 75% of my home machines would be running Debian
(I gotta keep one box on Windows for my wife's use and some of my daughter's games)
I'm no zealot, and I'm not the hair club president, but I'm a believer now.
I've long noticed the same thing. I have rather vivid dreams every night (and I do mean every). It's like having a feature film in my head every night of my life.
When I first wake up (or am woken up, I should say, since something usually triggers it), I have nearly complete recall of the dream. I used to keep a notebook where I would write everything down, but I got tired of the hour or so it would take to fully transcribe them. What I observed was that if I didn't devote time to recalling the dream immediately upon waking, the dream would begin to fade over the next 10 minutes or so. After 10 minutes, I could recall almost nothing of the dream. But if I spent time reviewing it, I was able to "preserve" most of the details. I mentally pictured copying the data from memory banks that were quickly going dim into a different type of memory that could maintain the images for longer.
It isn't often that my dreams relate to specific mental challenges like the story described, but I have often found that new approaches come to me when I revisit the problem later. But I think for me this happens whether there is sleep or just distraction in the intervening time. If actual solutions did occur during the sleep, I'd need to capture them in that first 10 minutes before they faded again... Maybe I'll try to replicate this study informally on my own...
I spent a summer working for duPont in Beaumont Texas. Their facility there actually consists of 7 different factories that the centralized engineering team supports.
Every time I had to visit one of those factories, I had to don steel-toed shoes, ear plugs, safety goggles, hardhat, and a full-body flameproof jumpsuit. No so bad until you take into account that during most of the summer, Beaumont usually runs around 100 deg.F (38C) and 90+ % humidity.
Any trip out outside pretty much ensured you completely soaked your entire outfit (expected to be nice shirts and pants for that position) with sweat.
Miserable F-ing hot. And I quit that job by the end of the summer.
Or Fischer-Technik! I had a complete set of these and found it much more stimulating than Legos. These are high-quality components with all sorts of motors, gear and chain systems, other mechanical tidbits. They might even explain why I ended up getting an engineering degree. ;)
Sorry, but global warming has nothing to do with personal comfort. In fact, people overall might not even notice the very moderate temperature differences.
... with who knows what sort of global effects?
Where the problem lies in the ecosystems and the foodchains. This whole concept is fragile. Yes, it is adapatable, but only at extremely slow time frames. I mean like 1000s of years, not 50. All it takes is a few species (plants and animals) to get out of whack with the current cycles, and then all the creatures that feed on those plants/animals (or are feed on by those plants/animals) are affected, then all the ones that depend on those are affected.. etc, etc..
The fact that enjoy your winter is more comfortable is irrelevant. It's the rest of the ecosystem we're worried about.
I also did this through the University of Texas. Worked out really well.. I got out in just over 5 years, had job experience from two major companies (duPont and National Instruments) and I found the alternating semester system they use really advantageous:
1. You can usually save up enough money during a work semester to cover (almost) all the expenses of the following school one. (Provided you're sufficiently frugal)
2. Just when you're getting burnt out on a 9-5 work grind, you'll switch back to a class one, when you're burnt out on the books, you'll switch back to a working one.
The drawback is that some of these programs don't want freshmen. They want you to have made it through at least the core courses before you're eligible.
But in a nutshell, I did the co-op thing and have pretty much nothing but good things to say about it.
So the blowups you're describing would have been possible with the clarity you claim they can't, provided we're talking about a level playing field here: similar quality lenses and lighting conditions for the both the film and digital cameras. I wouldn't compare a point n'click to a nice pro SLR, but the editors and researchers claim that the prints from the Kodak DCS 14n exceed shots from a comparable film SLR (I'd have to see which ones they've specifically tested against).
The Kodak mentioned was actually measured (that is, not judged) to have better clarity and resolution than a comparable film camera at 400 ISO. At 200, it was a tossup and at 100 ISO, film beat out the digital in some of the categories. Here's some quotes:
and..
and..
(From the may 2003 Popular Photography article)
So I would assert that your claim of "impossible to do with any digital camera made today" is just untrue. All you need is one the recent digitals, some prime lenses, and you've got something that can clearly compete with, and in some cases beat out, 35mm film.
An AC spaketh: I wonder, though, are you averse to massive government spending in general, or only when it is implemented by Republicans?
No, only when it doesn't directly help the American people.
I'm not inherently opposed to the programs, it's just that *right now* is a bad time to be trying all this stuff. After a recent layoff and several months of unemployment, I'm lucky to have a found a job, despite it being back at about my 1996 salary. Each month I'm continuing to have to tap into more and more of my home equity just to keep the bills paid. There are huge problems with growing poverty in our own country, our education system is slipping through our fingers, healthcare costs are rising at rates triple (or more) than inflation.
I just want to see some of those issues fixed (or at least addressed) before we start more rhetoric about foreign countries to invade and other planets (or satellites) to commandeer.
The sad jest in my original subject line was that it used to be the Democrats with the bad rap for running up big spending tabs and now they are being completely outclassed by this Republican president with a Republican congress. I'm not dissing the Republicans... I'm just afraid of them. I want there to be something left of this country for my daughter to look forward to. Hopefully something worthwhile.
Has this guy got a clue about budgets?
v e.com/4239a600.jpg)
Sorry, I'm sure to get modded as a troll for this, and I'm jazzed about our space programs getting money they need, but I'm also more terrified of the condition this country is going to be in under Dubya's rule.
I mean, if you haven't seen this chart, check out:
Bush's Budget Deficit (Google cache, an original is at http://dean-justinspoliticaljournal.cafeprogressi
$87 billion for Iraq, tax cuts aplenty, and now he wants space ships too? Oy.
In geek terms, this is like an electrical circuit hitting an upper voltage rail and "clipping". If we have 32 questions that all get +5 scores, then we clearly are "overdriving" the process of selecting the 10 best ones.
So the two solutions, both electrically, and with Slashdot, are to either:
1. Reduce the amplification (cut down how many people can vote [intrinsically undemocratic] or only let them assign 1/2 points at a time.)
2. Raise the rails (make it so the scores can hit +/-10 or something. I doubt all 32 questions would have. For that matter, why set any limit, and just pick the top 10 that received votes.)
I'm just pointing out via metaphor that we apparently have a flawed system but there are some pretty common ways to fix it...
Internet2 is a research network for developing and testing new protocols/applications/technologies related to networking. It consists primarily of universities and other research facilities, but there are several companies (like mine) that are also participating in it.
There are much higher hardware standards for the routing equipment and overall Internet2 is currently operating at around 100x the speed of the "conventional" internet. (My company has a video and audio collaboration package that just rocks with that bandwidth, for instance)
I2 is not intended to replace "the" Internet, but just serve as a proving grounds for many of the technologies that might be part of "the" Internet soon.
For more information, just check out www.internet2.edu and read the "About Us" sections.
Foo is pretty much the canonical metavariable, it predates the "life" symbol by decades, and it's something that any hacker (that really is a hacker) will instantly recognize.
All we'd need is some stylized rendition of it (which in itself would be another challenge on par with herding cats) but I think it captures the hacker membership a little more cleanly...
Great, are they including a new advertising campaign like:
Wear do ewe won 2 goatee day?
As I recall, voice recognition still ain't quite 100% yet...
Not important? 14,000,000,000 human lives aren't important? Because that's how many additional people the planet could support if no one ate beef.
Or, in lieu of more people, we can work toward preserving the natural resources that we currently have and try to trim down our "burn rate" (to coin a dotcom term). Most of the reason I am a vegetarian and an environmentalist actually has little to do about my quality of life. I'm actually doing for my grandchildren, great grandchildren, and so on, and your great grandchildren.
Things aren't too bad now, but most trend charts show we certainly can't sustain the current consumption and destruction rates we're engaged in. All I'm trying to do is my little bit to prolong what we've got. I sold my SUV and got a little 4-banger (but actually take a bus whenever possible), went vegetarian, compost all kitchen scraps, recycle about 80% of what comes into the house, cancelled a lot of unnecessary magazine and catalog subscriptions, and other similar efforts.
My next goal, when I can afford it, is to see if I can make my house "off-grid" and start generating some of the electricity I consume.
Now, I'm no saint, and certainly could be doing a lot more, but if even a very small fraction of the [over-consuming side of the] world's population made a similar effort, we can be just a little closer to ensuring quality of life and environment for generations down the road...
I've heard two statistics about the inefficiency of beef. One is that it takes 20 pounds (9 kg) of grain or soy to make one pound (0.45 kg) of beef. The other is that it takes 12 pounds (5.5 kg) to make that one pound.
I'm not sure which is more accurate, but either way you're talking about 92% to 95% waste compared to consuming the soy directly.
This is in fact the number one reason I became a vegetarian... mostly to reduce the environmental impact of the food I eat. So I opted for a diet that relies mostly on that grain and soy itself... (pastas, rices, tofu, seitan, soy milk, etc.. Pretty much the polar opposite of a low carb one)
Or maybe you're an author working on the next Great American Novel... C'mon, a lot of us buy laptops so we *can* take them outside. Sitting in a cube or at a desk all day may not be our highest priority...
I always vastly prefered the P225 over the P205. The 225 has a rounded barrel, so you don't get the "grooves" in your fingers after prolonged use. It's about a 1/2 inch shorter as well, I believe.
The 225 was the first writing implement that I ever obsessed over. I would scout out stores on a regular basis for this specific model, to ensure I had a ready supply of them. Unfortunately, the P205 proved much more popular and now it appears that the 225 is a model of the past. Oh well, it was a great tool while they made it. I probably still have 2 or 3 of them around that are a decade or older...
On futher poking around, I ran across this site:
;)
http://www.little-boxes.net/
Also "hosted" by Underscore hosting. It purports to be Beth McConnell's person website. But it also has telling little clues like:
"The world, as we know it, is guided by a relatively complex set of simple rules. These rules are not only built on logic and order, they establish logic and order. These rules, these physical laws, cannot just be ignored or discounted. Yet here I was looking at page after page of instances that seemed to operate with different rules, ones that disrupt what we know to be true, to be possible."
Hmmmm..
Well, a sunday-only one. And every sunday morning, I shuffle out to the driveway, drag the behemoth back in, and begin to disect it.
w ww.arstechnica.com
;)]
;)
In pile A goes:
coupons
every single advertising insert
the sports section
In pile B goes:
Parade "magazine"
the TV guide section
In pile C goes everything else.
Pile A is mine. I immediately read all the ads seeing what's on sale this week and what financing deals are being offered. The sports section is only because the Fry's ad is on the back page of it.
Pile B is set aside for my wife. She always reads the Parade insert, and then keeps the TV guide stuff for later in the week (We have no cable, so no onscreen source for this)
Pile C goes directly into paper recycling, followed by piles A and B when they are done being read or cut up.
News? Yeah, i think they print news in there too, but I never notice. It's my weekly dose of local sales flyers and that's about it.
I rarely turn on the TV, usually only to plug in a video of some sort.
The radio plays nice music and gives me the all-important traffic reports and is otherwise ignored.
The net is used for everything else. I check my.yahoo.com throughout the day for any breaking news items, and then refer to other online sources if I need more. I live and die by google for looking up things. Well, that plus my canonical list of places I go directly to for the appropriate subject matter:
us.imdb.com - movies
www.allmusic.com - music
www.epinions.com - consumer reviews
www.amazon.com - consumer reviews and book ideas
www.addall.com - finding better prices for those books
My weekly computer geek dose:
www.sharkyextreme.com
www.anandtech.com
And then slashdot for its impeccible and accurate news reporting for everything else that might interest or entertain me. [insert "you must be new here" joke
The secret to getting dependable info on the net is usually just one of redundency. Find three or more sources that independently corroborate something, and it's likely to be true. The key words there are *independent* and *likely*. Neither of those are automatic assumptions.
But then I've been on the net for about 13 years now and am finally starting tp get the hang of telling when something is rotten...
Ditto on the kudos. I've taught several JavaScript classes for a consulting company and I *always* make sure the students get told about that site.
irt.org is pretty much my *only* reference for javascript stuff other than my JavaScript Bible...
Thanks again.