Grateful Dead Song Lyrics!: "Casey Jones



Driving that train, high on cocaine,

Casey Jones is ready, watch your speed.

Trouble ahead, trouble behind,

And you know that notion just crossed my mind.



This old engine makes it on time,

Leaves Central Station 'bout a quarter to nine,

Hits River Junction at seventeen to,

At a quarter to ten you know it's travlin' again.



Driving that train, high on cocaine,

Casey Jones is ready, watch your speed.

Trouble ahead, trouble behind,

And you know that notion just crossed my mind.



Trouble ahead, Lady in red,

Take my advice you'd be better off dead.

Switchman's sleeping, train hundred and two is

On the wrong track and headed for you.



Driving that train, high on cocaine,

Trouble ahead, trouble behind,

And you know that notion just crossed my mind.



Trouble with you is the trouble with me,

Got two good eyes but you still don't see.

Come round the bend, you know it's the end,

The fireman screams and the engine just gleams..."

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | The final irony: "Germans and irony

Not speaking German, nor watching much German TV, nor having read any German literature apart from Bernard Schlink who, let me tell you, is about as ironic as a dog chasing a squirrel, it's difficult to tell whether or not there's any truth in the rumour that they have no sense of irony. However, since they invented it (well, they invented Schlegel), it's more than likely that they've got plenty. To anyone who thinks I'm insufficiently bigoted, I have serious doubts about the French. "

Wired News: Pulling Up by Their Sandal Straps: "

Success created other problems. Some of the firm's managers misappropriated money, corrupt police shook down Ecosandals' workers, and armed robbers raided the company's offices. Although no one was injured and little was stolen, the robbery scared the workers so much that the company had to move out of the center of Korogocho into a guarded building with locks on the doors.



Even with the revenues flowing in, local realities made it difficult to save and invest.



'The sandal makers are so poor, and their neighbors are so poor. It's very difficult to leave 100,000 or 200,000 shillings (about $1,400 to $2,800) in the bank when you know that people need medicine to survive,' said Meyer. It is not uncommon for Kenyans to die because they cannot afford medications for treatable ailments.

"

Take an existing p2p app like

Gnutella. Add some sort of metadata

to the id3 tag, like "copyrighted: no"

and then use it to distribute and find

uncopyrighted music.



Give users the ability to rate songs or

mark them as illegal copies.



Eventually, people just start sharing

tons of good, free stuff.



Oh, and I want it to have some sort

of collaborative recommendation

engine. And a puppy.

Newsday.com - N.J. man pleads guilty to posting `Hulk' bootleg: "

Gonzalez told U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein that he knew what he was doing was wrong. Asked by reporters afterward whether he liked the movie, Gonzalez said: 'I haven't even watched it.'



'Just don't make him angry,' his attorney, Matthew V. Portella, joked to reporters later. 'You won't like him when he's angry.'

"

Tropism - QuickTopic bulletin board

Well, it's all relative, isn't it? When I was in college (taking a full courseload and working 20 hours a week), writing 5,000 words a day was not even remotely extraordinary. 8 and 10,000 word days were pleasant but far from unheard of. I did 15,000 words one day (and that was after working 4 hours in the morning at an office job).



Now? Now I get a thousand words a day if I'm extraordinarily vigilant. Which I haven't been lately.



And, lest you be tempted to believe that there is some quantity/quality trade-off, I'll note that many of the stories in the collection were written during that period of great productivity. I started to slack off in the year 2000, as near as I can tell... when I moved to California, more or less.



And I'm not just writing less -- I'm writing more *slowly*. I used to have a comfy cruising altitude of 2,000 words per hour. Now it's more like half that. I'm worried the progression will progress. As I get older, I gain weight and write more slowly. It kind of sucks.

Division of State History / Utah Heritage Tourism Toolkit - Forest Service Cabin & Lookout Rentals

Description

The USDA Forest Service allows the public to rent surplus historic properties on the National Forests for overnight use. Over 150 properties are available, mostly in the western USA. Fees collected are used for the maintenance and preservation of the properties. Some properties are managed by local nonprofit organizations or commercial campground concessionaires.



Heritage Resources: Fire lookout towers are perhaps the best-known of the Forest Service's historic structures. They come in a variety of styles from ground cabins to small cabs atop 70-foot steel towers. Some are accessible only by foot or snowmobiles in the winter. All are situated atop mountains where they have a clear view of their surroundings. The majority of rental properties are surplus ranger stations, rustic frame or log buildings located by themselves or in small compounds in wooded settings through the national forests. All are accessible by car. Most lookouts and ranger stations were constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

Curta Handhelds

The Curtas originally came in padded metal cases sealed with gaskets. (Later models came in plastic cases.) The Model I had an 8 column "keyboard" (8 slides), 11 digit results and a 6 digit revolution counter. It was 2.1" in diameter by 3.4" long and weighed 8 oz. The Model II had an 11 column keyboard, 15 digit results and an 8 digit revolution counter. It was 2.6" in diameter by 3.6" long and weighed 12.5 oz. Curtas survived the early electronic desktop calculators due to their portability and lower price, but pocket electronic calculators killed the Curtas in 1972. The samples shown are from the 1950s.

Blogging as a Course Management Tool

Blogging as a Course Management Tool

Street Tech :: hardware beyond the hype This all in one device has changed my life from being a backpack carrying computer gadget man to simple phone carrier, which includes a digital camera, photo album, MP3 player, access to my POP3 email and always on internet access. While the phone is a bit on the bulky side, the fact that it can replace so many devices makes it a device well worth having.

new G5s | Metafilter

While it may be that True Artists Ship, the help knows that Only Steve Unveils.

radio free tivo - QuickTopic bulletin board

Easily Distracted

When all is said and done, I love academia, but still, it hasn?t always been what I sometimes imagined it would be.



I thought I was choosing my dreams and rejecting security, but it turns out I was choosing security at the possible cost of some of my dreams.





What Mostern most accurately identifies is the strange absence of talk between academic professionals about their own work or the larger weave of their intellectual interests. To some extent, this has to do with time, or the lack of it. A professor is also of necessity an administrator and a teacher and a scholar. The work expands to fill any time vacuum: clear a space for some purpose and you quickly find unsought obligations filling it.





As Mostern notes, however, that?s not an adequate explanation of the problem. It?s the alibi that everyone uses to lightly explain away the puzzling vacuum at the heart of academic life.





I had a chance a few years ago to attend a dinner for a guest lecturer. Some of my favorite colleagues from Swarthmore were there. The conversation started with issues that were fairly specific to the speaker?s presentation and work, but very rapidly grew into a fast-paced bull session aimed at the primal question, ?What is a good society?? Afterwards, I talked with one of my colleagues who hadn?t been there about how this had been the best discussion I?d had since I was an undergraduate, and my feeling of melancholy about how rare and odd this conversation actually was. My colleague looked puzzled and said, ?Sounds awfully simplistic".

Why Journals Suck The Everyready Battery Bunny article.



I'm always thrilled to encounter a seminal article which compactly rearranges my thinking about a particular subject. I'm less thrilled when I encounter it in its fourth or fifth incarnation in journals and anthologies, mutated only slightly by cut-and-paste necrophilia.



It's one thing to use journal articles to work on different aspects of a single theme or issue, and another to basically regurgitate the same article repeatedly. This republication isn't usually done with dishonest intent--once a single influential article appears in print, the author often finds himself or herself fending off multiple invitations to publish something very similar to the original. However it happens, this increasingly common kind of publication adds little shelf life to the journals themselves: no need to have six issues of various journals with approximately the same content.



* The Cliff Notes for Scholars Too Busy to Read About the Latest Thing article.



There are scholars--and journals--that specialize in publishing articles which do little more than summarize (and cannibalize) a number of recent arguments on some hot topic without adding much in the way of original analysis to those debates. This kind of synthesis article is typically choked with citations and offers few insights on its subject matter. It therefore has little or no lasting value.

Rock Canyon - Utah Description of hike: This is a good hike through some beautiful country. This hike is good for families with young children. You can stop at any time and turn around. There is a good parking lot with facilities at the trail head. This is a popular canyon for rock climbers so there is oportunity to watch the climbers. In the early spring and summer there is a stream that follows the trail and is very fast and cold. The trail will end at the Rock canyon campground that can be reached by dirt road up the Squaw Peak Road from Provo Canyon



Information:

Uinta National Forest Supervisors Office

88 West 100 North

Provo, Utah 84601

(801)377-5780

FAX:(801)377-0821

Digital SARS folk art: BoingBoing call for entries - QuickTopic bulletin board

Does anyone else think that this is way overboard? Xeni's SARS coverage is considered to be highly distasteful among my asian friends -- they liken it to a Chinese web site calling for cartoons of September 11th.



I'll bet Xeni's media-whoring hasn't mentioned that a lot of the posts on BoingBoing have called for this to stop or have been against SARS art on grounds of taste and quantity.

HBS Working Knowledge: Innovation: Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos meet "Ginger"

When the study hall ended, Bezos held up Brian's handout. "I think this plan is dead on arrival," he said. "The U.S.A. is too hostile." The "car guys" were going to lobby against Ginger and they were going to win.



"No they're not," said Brian, smiling.



Bezos suggested starting slow, using one city or country as an experimental station. Once Ginger's benefits were clear, the company would have a wedge to pound into U.S. regulations. The perfect place to begin, thought Bezos, was Singapore. "You only have to convince one guy, the philosopher king, and then you have four million people to test it."

Did You Hear the One About the Suicide Bomber?

But the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks changed everything. Initially, she ceased performing on the logic that this might not be the time for gags about Ramadan or, for that matter, anything funny a Muslim had to offer. Three weeks later, though, she took the stage in a Soho club called Amused Moose and, with a single joke, found the very, very thin line between acceptable comedy and abominable taste: ''My name is Shazia Mirza,'' she said. ''At least that's what it says on my pilot's license.''

The Tard Blog #16: Joe's Assignment

In the front of my class I have a bin for submitted assignments. At the end of the day I'll go through it. Occasionally someone submits some work that's worth grading, usually however I just find spit balls, used tissues, chewed pencils, sheets of paper with curse words all over them, or someone's book. Today I was particularly bad, and I was basically dumping the bin into the garbage, when I came across Joe's submission.

Joe had taken a piece of paper, folded it in eight, as we usually do for math problems. Then instead of just using the eight rectangles for the problems, he cut each one out and made a stack of papers. He stapled the stack together, and submitted his work that way. This amazes me for several reasons:
?
-First of all the papers were cut, not ripped, this means he had to have access to a pair of scissors.
-Second the cuts were actually straight, very unlike Joe.
-Third, he had access to a stapler to put it together.

Despite this amazing effort, he didn't actually do any of the problems. Apparently after all that hard work making the booklet he didn't feel like putting anything in it.

There is a lesson to be learned here about making websites in first year composition classes.

Complexity Digest

Kick Their Ass and Take Their Gas: Democracy Comes to Iraq

Yet if history is any guide, the people of Iraq will not submit meekly to this latest form of tyranny. Resistance will escalate, and so will repression.



Bremer, arriving in Baghdad with a mandate to restore order and security, is a counterterrorism specialist who favors hardline measures, including "targeted killings." So the near future isn't hard to guess: dissenters will be jailed, "disappeared," assassinated, or simply mowed down with automatic weapons.



They will of course be branded as recalcitrant Saddamists, Iranian spies, and al-Qaeda terrorists. Given what we know about the goals and nature of the occupation government, it might be more accurate to call them freedom fighters.

Salam Pax Is Real - How do I know Baghdad's famous blogger exists? He worked for me. By Peter Maass

In early May, I agreed to hand over a fantastic interpreter I had been working with to a colleague who could offer him long-term employment, as I would be leaving the country at the end of the month. I needed a new interpreter to fill the gap for two weeks or so, and the colleague mentioned that he had just met a smart and friendly guy named Salam. I quickly traced Salam to the Sheraton Hotel. Salam—this is his real first name—was sitting in a chair in the lobby, reading Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. I knew, at that moment, that I would hire him.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Salam's story

Screens cover the windows to keep the midday sun away from his three computers, each of which has been opened up into a sprawling tangle of wires and circuit boards. A poster from the film The Matrix hangs on the wall, looking down on a jumble of computer books and CDs strewn over the floor. Pages of website addresses and computer commands are tacked to the wall above his screen. It was here that Salam would sit and talk endlessly about the impending war with Raed, who returned to Baghdad before the war, and the friend he describes only as G - Ghaith, another young, intelligent, eloquent architectural graduate who spent much of his adult life dodging military service. They talked eagerly about the demise of Saddam, but they were scared too. Scared of being called up for military service because all young men were reservists, and scared of being obliterated by an American bomb.

Digital SARS folk art: BoingBoing call for entries - QuickTopic bulletin board

The single most Blade Runner moment of my life was seeing an elderly asian man, on a bicycle with a red LED flasher, pinned to a giligan hat and with a "phone bag" old-school mobile phone and a modern laptop strapped to the bike rack, with a clear plastic garbage bag full of recyclables over one shoulder.



This was in '97, in Allston, MA. He was wearing a surgical mask. It was not a unique sight on the streets of Boston all throughout the '90s, mostly worn by older individuals and recent immigrants. The thinking was that they were protection against air pollution, and an American fashionista came up with a series of "designer smog masks" to join in the fun.

Reducing AFS Spring Tension

To reduce the spring tension, first remove the black plastic cover on the air flow sensor by cutting up through the silicone sealer with a sharp blade. You will see, among other things, a black gear-wheel on top of what looks like a clock spring. A wire clip engages a tooth on the gear-wheel and is held in place by a 7 mm screw.

Scribe a permanent mark on the gear-wheel at the tooth where the wire clip engages (This is so you can go back to the stock setting if need be).

This is the tricky bit: Get a good grip on the gear wheel with your fingers. Loosen the 7 mm screw and wire clip assembly. Don't drop anything, and whatever you do, don't let go of that spring, or you may never get the car to run correctly again!

Now, carefully unwind the gear-wheel 3 teeth counter-clockwise. This is no more than 8 or 9 mm, so be careful. Reset the wire clip three teeth to the loose side of stock. Tighten down the 7 mm screw, replace the black cover with a thin bead of silicone sealer and you're done.

I tried one, three, and five teeth... one didn't seem to do much, five actually reduced power. Three was just right. Stay with three teeth because the down side of too rich a mixture will be increased emissions, and possible damage to the O2 sensor and/or catalytic converter. YMMV.

I can report that this tweak helps solves some perceived Digifant driveability problems (assuming all else is in

Digifant Performance Mods Removing the Intake Snorkel

A less permanent intake modification involves removing the resonator snorkel from the airbox. You have to take the airbox out of the car and then pry out the snorkel. This greatly increases the size of the air intake and can actually improve throttle response on your Digifant car if it is otherwise in good condition.

Digifant Performance Mods Engine Swaps



It is possible to swap the 1.8 liter short block out from under your Digifant head and replace it with a 2.0 liter short block either from a 1988 - 1992 Audi 80 (engine code 3A) or a 1993 - 1999 VW A3 (engine code ABA). Such a swap should be good for at least 15 extra horsepower and a real seat-of-the-pants torque boost even if you do nothing else. This swap plus other mods could push you towards 150 horsepower.

Over the last couple of months, their have been threads about running their AJ in the car. Some people have been satisfied with the sound and other have not been. I bought my iRock about three months ago and have mainly been dis-satisfied with the sound. Their would be times when it sounded okay, other times their would be radio noise that would drive me crazy. Since I only use the iRock on long road trips in rental cars, I just assumed that the problems where related to the location I was in at the time. Unfortunately I spend a lot of time on the road sometimes driving 10 hours with breaks only for gas.

About a week ago I was testing my iRock before I started another trip and it sounded awful. I put in some new batteries, and it sounded good. Then I said to myself could that be the problem is the drifting and sound quality susceptible to the batteries I was using. I went to Radio Shack and bought their Lighter Socket 3VDC Power Adapter rated at up to 1000mA (part number 273-1855). I wired it into my iRock. The sound quality was immediately apparent. I can say after driving to Las Vegas and back that their was no drift or radio noise.

I did have to lower the volume to 75% and the bass and treble to 0dbs. The sound is just great. I have been using a cassette adapter in my truck, and I have to tell you the comparison in sound between the iRock and the cassette adapter is like night and day. The only thing that you have to be c

L.E.D. Headlamp



Made from an altoids tin or something similar.

Google Search: Having used a digicam for 1-1/2 years, I think the most important thing you

need to be able to do is meter off of darker areas of the picture so that

you get a good exposure. This is even more important than with film, which

can also have the same problem. In short, you need an accurate spot

metering, then the ability to lock that metering for use on the whole

picture. If you have a camera which will record in RAW mode, and you use

that mode and post-process the picture, this is not so much an issue.

Ari Fleischer, public face of Bush White House,is leaving

He said he walked into the Oval Office to tell President Bush on Friday and did something he'd never done before -- close the door behind him. Fleischer, who said he wants to leave before the re-election campaign gears up, said his meeting ended with the president kissing him

Google Search: biting group:rec.pets.ferrets group:rec.pets.ferrets

I to keep down now have my first two ferrets -twelve weeks old - poleys - identical sisters - excepts that one seems to regard me as food and the other as a friend. How do I discourage biting? The blood is spoiling my carpet.

hi.

Mattel Camera

Mattel Camera

Mattel makes several digital cameras, among them the BarbieCam and the Nick Click. Both are identical from a hardware/software standpoint and both are relatively inexpensive. With a resolution of only 160x120, they are by no means high-res, but they do present some fun experimenting opportunities.



The cameras use a 56K 8/N/1 serial protocol, and thus can be adapted for use with most any computer. The command protocols are detailed here and are easy to use. Note that the camera has little native intelligence, running from a variant of the Intel 8051. As a consequence, the image data from the camera is almost completely raw, requiring the host PC to demosaic the Bayer RGB data. While fundamentally simple, this process can be done in many ways. Here are just a few links to more information on this:

Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge - 6/26/00

Guide's Comments:

The reason this place is not overcrowded like many of Utah's other natural wonders is because of the necessary long, desolate, sometimes arduous journey to get there. Arriving from the east, much of the journey is over the road that served as Pony Express and Overland Stage routes in the 1860s. This road is 75 miles of rocky, rutted, wash-boarded and sometimes washed out driving pleasure. It takes me about 3 1/2 hours to get there from the southern part of Salt Lake County, but I tend to drive pretty slow over the bad roads. I am just not comfortable with going 50 mph on wash-board roads, and still have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from ending up in a ditch when the driver was doing just that. But I digress...



The long ride in to Fish Springs is well worth the effort. Along the way, the ruins and interpretive markers of several Pony Express stations can be visited. And there is a place where the road climbs over a pass affording wonderfully scenic views.

Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge - 6/26/00

About the Refuge:

Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge is located on the south edge of the Great Salt Lake Desert, 104 miles southwest of Tooele, and 78 miles northwest of Delta, Utah. The Refuge is extremely isolated and can be reached only by gravel roads across uninhabited desert. Local inquiry into road conditions is advised.



The Refuge was established in 1959, and encompasses 17,992 acres between two small mountain ranges. The refuge hosts about 3,000 visitors a year. Although duck and coot hunting is allowed during the season, visitors for wildlife observation outnumber hunters by six to one.



Five major springs and several lesser springs and seeps flow from a faultline at the base of the eastern front of the craggy Fish Springs Mountain Range. These mineral-laden, saline springs provide virtually all of the water for the Refuge's 10,000-acre marsh system. Since they maintain a year-round temperature of between 70 and 80 degrees, they provide a home for 5000 - 6000 wintering birds. The lush habitat, in the midst of miles of Great Basin Desert, is a true oasis for wildlife.



The marsh is divided into 9 sections by a gravel road, which makes viewing all areas very easy by car. The water is so clear that the sandy bottom is always visible, as are the schools of native Utah chub and introduced mosquito fish darting around in the shallows. You can also hear the song of the bull frog, and if you're lucky, maybe spot one.

iLeech

Ileech

Google Search: jb weld

Many years ago, I broke a pot metal post off inside a 4 throat motorcycle carburetor. What to do - $500 for a new carb? Naw. I wondered about JB Weld and called the factory. I had the pleasure of talking to the then chief engineer and founder of JB Weld. He is now deceased. The gentleman, sez "Boy, the stuff will cure in liquid if you need, it'll even cure under gasoline". Good news, since I wanted to use it in a carburetor. I rode that bike for 7 years afterwards and finally sold it -- with carburetor repair still intact. Bob Swinney

superglider records

mp3s

Doomsday Book (Connie Willis)

Despite the weaknesses in the science and the implausible 2054 Oxford, I enjoyed Doomsday Book a lot. I much prefer well-written books with lousy science to engineering manuals dressed up as novels. I'm not sure it deserved its Hugo and Nebula award double, but Doomsday Book is definitely worth a read, especially if you are interested in epidemiology (used to produce a rather clever detective problem) or medieval English history.

Slashdot | Warren Ellis Answers

3) I'm friends with Patrick and his wife Wendy, and I know Patrick could nail Spider. So does Wendy, who just cringes in those moments when Patrick begins to channel Spider, standing on tables and proclaiming Spider to be his role model and personal god...

Case Western SWAT foiled by Frank Gehry building - QuickTopic bulletin board

The shooter was someone I knew. When I was working in the Smith Computer Lab, he would frequently be borderline verbally abusive to the staff. He would take over clusters of macs and spread out his stuff so that others could not get to the computers. He was also banned from other labs on campus for his behavior. He blamed the erasure of all his files on a local ISP account on another lab admin and took them to court over it. Time after time, they ruled against him, I am pretty sure he was going after that admin when he started shooting.

also I remember when that building was a frisbee field where I used to play. bastards ruined a perfectly good field.

Slashdot | The Debate about Social Software

eBay item 2321491443 (Ends May-12-03 11:55:38 PDT ) - Lafuma RSX Recliner Lounge 4 Pak-FREE S&H*

You are bidding on a set of 4 green Lafuma RSX Batyline recliner lounge chairs.



Lafuma's RSX Batyline recliner lounge chair is quite possibly one of the most comfortable folding recliners ever made. This ergonomically designed, multiposition recliner adjusts to any position so it's comfortable for reading, sleeping, or just relaxing. Ideal for camping trips or in the backyard, the Lafuma recliner folds and unfolds very easily. This chair's design is the result of Lafuma's more than 50 years of experience in making the world's finest quality camping furniture. This chair features a sturdy, powder-coated steel frame and a combination polyester/cotton cushioned fabric. It also features a padded armrest and an adjustable pillow for added comfort. Lafuma chairs and camping furniture are made in France.

The ultimate relaxing machine and quite possibly the most comfortable folding recliner ever made. The ergonomically designed multi-position recliner adjusts to any position you choose so you will always feel comfortable whether you read, sleep or just relax. Perfect for camping trips or your little cabin in the woods, the Lafuma recliner folds and unfolds very easily. This chair is the result of the experience acquired by Lafuma since 1954 in making the world's finest quality camping furniture. Powder coated steel frame. Polyester/Cotton mesh fabric. Made in France.

Get that "Zero Gravity" effect in an outdoor recliner. Lafuma outdoor furniture combines ergonomic comfort with sleek continental style. The Lafuma RSX zero gravity recliner is widely used not only as camping, patio and pool furniture, but can be found in beauty salons and reflexology offices as well. La Fuma of France makes their outdoor patio recliners from the finest of canvases and lightweight frames. Whichever fabric you choose, you can be sure that your zero gravity recliner is UV and water resistant, as well as soft and flexible. Made to be easy to clean, easy to fold, and difficult to break, the La Fuma recliner is a wonderful addition to any patio or deck. Winner of the 1997 European Grand Prix of Design award. Ergonomically correct, breathable mesh material and very well made. Comfortable and classic, the La Fuma RSX recliner is a great chair at a great value. MSRP $756.00

Suspect seized in university shooting

KEEPING TRACK BY COMPUTER

It appeared that modern technology may have saved a lot of lives.

Paul Stork, a professor of information systems who was barricaded in his office with some of his doctoral students, told NBC affiliate WKYC-TV by telephone that building security almost immediately sent a building-wide broadcast e-mail alerting faculty and staff to collect students and hide.







Crime & Punishment



Complete coverage

from MSNBC.com

Environmental Psychology

COGNITIVE MAPPING OF PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS. METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS BASED ON THEORIES OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MIND.

TSOUKALA, Kyriaki; University of Thessaloniki,

Cognitive maps as produced from the interaction of the individual with the physical environment have become an important research topic over the last decades. The systems that have been created for the interpretation of the function, form and contents of cognitive maps are directed by either (a) the excessive reinforcement of the role of one of the members of the above rel ation and, in consequence, the loss or weakening of the other member, or, (b) the abolition of this difference and inequality, which entails a well-balanced role of equal weight for the members of this relation. In this case the system of interactions is formed by mediating elements, such as the cultural, social and financial elements, and the individual 's sex, knowl edge, experience and activity. Through these elements the buily environment is re-constructed. In certain theories, these elements make their appearance within the logic of causality in the form of determinants, while in others, within the functionalistic rather than interactive logic. This paper deals with tne interpretation system associated with the social interactionalism. This is the epistimological approach moving around the concepts of Vygotsky's historical -cultural theory and other approaches from the area of Activity Theory. The activity and signs of the built space function as mediating instances in the interaction between the subject and the physical environment and result in an interior product, the representation or subjective image of the built space, and an exterior one, the recoded space through its subjectivisation. This approach and the concepts and the methods entailed in it have never been applied in environmental psychology. This paper aims at raising various issues as regards the function of concepts and methodological tools of this approach when applied on the analysis of phenomena observed in the individual's spatial behaviour in a built environment

Buy our FO32/865/XP/ECO by Sylvania at GoodMart.com

-1982-

n On Saturday, February 20, Mr. Ken Chevalier, 16, scores 12,900,000 points on BATTLEZONE by Atari Inc. after playing the game for 12 hours at the Star Station 101 arcade in Atascadero, California.

My record is 24,000, and I'm taking it off my laptop for fear of destroying the keyboard.

TiVo Upgrade Kits from the TiVo Upgrade Leader | WeaKnees.com

Adobe, Cob and Earth Building

Burbophobia cure . . . build it yourself

Technology Item 390 "About Face 2.0: The Book" 36 Total Responses

I've just finished chapter four and I am excited by this chapter on Qualitative analysis. I have been looking for a means to identify and understand users in a clear, concise summary and this is it. The book recommends:

1. Stakeholder Research - Establish Goals
2. Subject Matter Expert Interviews - Identify the domain.
3. User and customer interviews - To guide design.
4. User Observation/Ethnographic field studies - To guide formation of the product
5. Literature Review - To evaluate product effectiveness
6. Product and Competitive Audits - To evaluate the integrity of the product.

Emerging Technology: Clay Shirky

Communatree, an early BBS, founded on the principles of open access and free dialup. Throw off structure and new beautiful patterns arise. This does happen when you institute a new mode of communication to a group. Teenage boys subsumed the BBS (overrun) with sex talk. Site shut down.

'The Tyranny of Structurelessness' by Jo Freeman

Formal and Informal Structures

Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a 'structureless' group. Any group of people of whatever nature coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible, it may vary over time, it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities and intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals with different talents, predisposition's and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate 'structurelessness' and that is not the nature of a human group.

IBM Almaden - News - WBI

The bowtie theory of web connectivity.

Wi-Fi Networking News

Although Dave noted repeatedly that he was 75, I would have pegged him at 52, and only because of his white hair. Decorated veteran of two wars who graduated at the bottom of his West Point Class, Dave is a shining example of how generosity, intense obsession, and the Internet's worldwide reach can transform pockets of humanity.



Dave's greatest moment -- at least recently -- was when he picked up his voice-over-IP (VOIP) Vonage phone and dialed Mt. Everest. Tsering Gyaltsen answered on the second ring.

Get it out of your hands!

if you REALLY REALLY have to at the last possible date, but don't do it now! I had to change my projected defense date (just yesterday!), but when you've already drafted almost the whole thing, the hard part is over and the procrastination isn't such a problem. I know that I, for one, procrastinate most when I'm afraid of it, and I'm not afraid like I was before I had anything drafted.

Stanford Online

Customers Tire of Excuses for Rebates That Never Arrive

Some shoppers have found a way to transform one retailer's offer of a mail-in rebate into an instant rebate at a competitor's store. Rather than lose a sale, retailers will sometimes match a competitor's price, including a discount equivalent to any rebate offered. "This is not a new strategy,'' Mr. Kay said. "Merchants have matched competitors' prices on the fly for decades, maybe centuries."

Business 2.0 - Web Article - Printable Version - Interview with Sci-Fi Writer Bruce Sterling

Pew Internet & American Life Project

A new sense of the shifting Internet population
The online population is fluid and shifting. While 42% of Americans say they don

MAMEFANS - ROM's List

Google Search:

It's not the CCD that's the problem, it's the on-board, built-in flash. A straight-on flash shot (not flash fill) using a built-in flash is never going to be that great, no matter what camera is used. What you need, if you're going to use flash successfully for anything more than snapshots or fill flash pictures, is the ability to bounce flash off the ceiling, or use an outboard flash, preferably one with more power than any built-in flash. For this, you need a camera with either a hot shoe for an external flash or a flash connection (or an arrangement where you can trigger external strobes with the built-in flash, and most small digicams can't really do that). For best results, the digicam also has to have the electronics necessary for automatic TTL flash control. Pierre

David Galbraith

Genealogists using DNA samples



One of the potential by-products from online genealogy, which has created a dramatic rise in the popularity of family history research, is rich family tree databases which will be invaluable for medical research.



The combination of DNA tests and traditional research will help to fill in the gaps that have made the goal of a global family tree impossible.



Online Genealogy may be the online application that is about to come out of stealth mode. It is the second most popular hobby in the US, is one of the most successful e-commerce areas and now the connection to life-sciences promises to make it much more lucrative.

David Galbraith

The last complete specimen of the extinct Dodo rotted in a cupboard at the Oxford University Mueum of Natural History and had to be burned in the 19th century. Only part of its beak and a foot were salvaged, retrieved from the flames by a thoughtful curator.

I Wanna Be Famous! I wanna be a famous Technical Writer!

Empirical Analysis of Google SafeSearch

Empirical Analysis of Google SafeSearch

SuperDeluxo4 wgets and curls: wget usage tips Archives

NEWS.scotsman.com - Latest News - Knife-Thrower Hits Assistant – on Live TV

But with just nine seconds to go she was hurt as the blade caught the top of her head.



Rodianova was visibly shaken, cowering as further knives were launched and losing her previously fixed grin.

Carol Berkenkotter's web page

"Settings and the Institutional Organization of Language"(in progress), in Towards a Rhetoric of Everyday Life (M. Nystrand & T. Duffy, Eds.), Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

CNN.com - Symbol of Saddam's rule toppled - Apr. 9, 2003

CNN Correspondent Martin Savidge, embedded with the 1st Marines, 7th Battalion, said the university campus was a battlefield, with black smoke rising from several buildings and machine-gun fire ripping around the fighting vehicles.



"This was not the exact reception ... anticipated," Savidge reported while under fire. "There's a lot of smoke and dust now and fire. ... [It's] a far cry from the jubilant crowds ... just hard to imagine two blocks away."

Free Coupons and Discounts from Deal Dude

Since at least 1986, the FBI has been tracking down U.S.-based terrorists who fraudulently redeem Sunday newspaper grocery coupons to fund attacks. During the trial of the men who bombed the World Trade Center in 1992, investigators claimed that U.S.-based cells had raised $100 million by processing coupons through stores they owned in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia. About 340 billion food coupons are distributed each year, and 3.8 billion are redeemed. According to one report, about $500 million worth of those coupons are redeemed fraudulently.

gladwell dot com / connecting the dots

He just didn't think the Agency was going to be of any help in finding Ramzi Yousef. 'Back then, I don't think the C.I.A. could have found a person in a bathroom,'" Herman says. "'Hell, I don't think they could have found the bathroom.'" The assumption of the reformers is always that the rivalry between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. is essentially marital, that it is the dysfunction of people who ought to work together but can't. But it could equally be seen as a version of the marketplace rivalry that leads to companies working harder and making better products.

Google Search: Making an Index

This FAQ began as a response to a user question asking "Can you

automatically generate an index in Word?"

The short answer is No!

Sorry, generating an index is depressingly manual! An experienced technical

writer wrote this FAQ. As a technical writer, I produce long documents

running to thousands of pages of technical material. Indexes are part of my

game. I can't tell you how to produce one automatically, but I can tell you

how to produce one easily!

Create Diagrams in Word 2002, Excel 2002, and PowerPoint 2002

Microsoft Office Assistance Center



Some great "how-to" articles on Word in here, including multiple formatting of graphic boxes, etc.

Discussion of generating an index

Technical publishing tips for Word

Technical Publishing with Microsoft Word

Some technical publishing tips.

U.S. bombs convoy of Kurdish leaders / Friendly fire incident described as 'scene from hell'

BBC correspondent John Simpson, who suffered minor shrapnel wounds in the incident, reported: "This is just a scene from hell here. All the vehicles are on fire, there are bodies burning all around me, bits of bodies all around. . .



. The Americans saw this convoy and they bombed it. They hit their own people.



"I saw people burning to death in front of me," he added.



Simpson said that BBC translator Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed died in the bombing from blood loss after losing his legs.



Among the injured was Wajy Barzani, a top KDP commander and brother of Massoud Barzani, leader of one of the two main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq. Barzani, in critical condition, was airlifted to a U.S. military hospital in Germany.

HOUSE OF GAMES

I met a woman once who was divorced from a professional magician. She hated this man with a passion. She used to appear with him in a baffling trick where they exchanged places, handcuffed and manacled, in a locked cabinet. I asked her how it was done. The divorce and her feelings meant nothing compared to her loyalty to the magical profession. She looked at me coldly and said, "The trick is told when the trick is sold."

Booklet printing

To access your "h:" drive, or "my documents" folder from on campus, past the following URL into Internet Explorer:



ftp://.4cranema.stu.uvsc@ftp.uvsc.edu



Please replace "4cranema" with your english lab login id, rather than hacking into my account.

worshop 4 word layout workshop.





worshop 5 word layout workshop.

What Should I Do With My Life?

IRAQ-O-METER



Is this technical writing?

Microsoft Word and layout

Undecided Draft

Reviews of Manuel Castells' Trilogy

review blurbs of Castells

IPE: may98 : Giddens on Castells

> In the 1990s, Silicon Valley is a microcosm of the
> generalisation it helped promote. A dazzling variety of
> non-American companies have an active presence. Like other
> nodes of the network society, its regionality is now
> symbolic rather than real: it supplies one cluster of
> connections in a global system of parallel developments.
> The clusters of scientific and technical institutions found
> in areas such as Paris-Sud, the M4 corridor, Hsinchu-Taiwan
> and many others become tied into the global network. They
> are, Castells says, the blast furnaces of the information
> age.

www.theory.org.uk Resources: Anthony Giddens

Gauntlett, David (2002), Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction, Routledge, London and New York. (Extracts available at www.theory.org.uk).

NATIONAL POST

The doctor who first raised the alarm about a mysterious new disease has become one of the most famous casualties of the deadly respiratory illness.



Dr. Carlo Urbani, an Italian communicable-disease expert known for his tireless dedication to his patients, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work with Doctors Without Borders, died in Thailand this weekend, where he was being treated for the severe acute respiratory syndrome he was the first to diagnose.

Usability Myths Need Reality Checks

Two papers, published by Robert Virzi in 1992 and Jakob Nielsen and Thomas Landauer in 1993, made a pretty good case that five users would uncover 70% of major usability problems and the next three would get most of the rest - for certain types of software. The usability community took the idea and ran with it.

Arguments advanced in the articles justified five to eight users as a significant number. It was also an affordable number. All sides were satisfied. Let the testing begin!

The two papers gave five to eight users a scientific basis for the testing of small software applications. However, extending the "five user theory" to larger software applications and the world-wide web turned a useful rule into a myth with no scientific basis.

Good myths are plausible explanations that serve a purpose. Feel free to chuckle, but at one time more people believed that a big guy in the sky with a hammer caused thunder and lightning than ever believed five users was enough to test anything, even though praying to Thor never did stop the rain. The myth served its purpose, which was not to control the weather, but to keep the Nordic priesthood in power.

Social Software panel at PC Forum 2003

Clay Shirky: Social software is everything from chat to group email to games. Three key things:

It's native to the Internet in ways that other technologies are not. Prior to the Web we had other tools for publication. IM was preceded by phones. Social communication -- how groups gather -- has no analog except the table.

It has an inverse relationship of value to scale. Websites are better with more users. But inviting 10,000,000 to dinner or putting 10,000,000 in your Rolodex sucks. The smaller the pool, the more valuable the relationships. The unit of social software is small groups.

War Desk | canada.com

There is something surreal about an intense gun battle in such intimate circumstances.



As one of the young gunners told me just after the fight, "It was like the best video game I have ever played."

Bibliography and style guides for writing and teaching English

Citing sources from the World Wide Web

Jon Udell: The universal canvas

Yahoo! News - Brody Surprises Berry With Kiss at Oscars

Brody Surprises Berry With Kiss at Oscars

2 hours, 57 minutes ago



LOS ANGELES - Best-actor winner Adrien Brody created an amorous Oscar moment to remember when he grabbed presenter Halle Berry and planted a long kiss on the mouth of last year's best actress.







A stunned Berry was left openmouthed and gasping Sunday, although she appeared amused by Brody's enthusiasm after he won an Oscar for his role in "The Pianist." Looking on from the audience at the Kodak Theatre was Berry's husband, singer Eric Benet.



"Whoa, I bet they didn't tell you that was in the gift bag," Brody cracked.



Backstage, the 26-year-old Brody was asked about the smooch.



"Well, if you ever have an excuse to do something like that, that's it," he said. "I took my shot."



Did Berry kiss him back?



"Oh yeah," Brody said, grinning.

Online Technical Writing: Strategies for Peer-Reviewing and Team-Writing

Online Technical Writing: Power-Revision Techniques

'Sick Feeling' for a Pilot's Family

"I want President Bush to get a good look at this, really good look here," his father, Michael, said, holding up a picture of the dead marine. "This is the only son I had, only son."

The Memory Hole > Thomas Pynchon's Unseen Writings for Boeing May Get Published



Thomas Pynchon was once a technical writer. Wheee!

Word Styles

Al Qaeda Training Manual

Al Qaeda Training Manual

The attached manual was located by the Manchester (England) Metropolitan Police during a search of an Al Qaeda member's home. The manual was found in a computer file described as "the military series" related to the "Declaration of Jihad." The manual was translated into English and was introduced earlier this year at the embassy bombing trial in New York. The Department is only providing the following selected text from the manual because it does not want to aid in educating terrorists or encourage further acts of terrorism.

Jernej Simoncic's homepage - GimpWin installer page



This is actually the best place to download Gimp, a free graphics program for windows.

Tor Lillqvist--GTK and GIMP for Windows

Mr. Bush's War

This war belongs to Richard Perle, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Dick Cheney and all the fellows from the Project for a New American Century. Again, if you have not yet clicked the links above, go ahead. I'll wait.



Welcome to the American Empire. Don't be surprised that your rights and privileges have changed all of a sudden. We used to be a constitutional democracy. That's pretty much done now. You're a citizen of an empire today, one that attacks sovereign nations without cause, with the backing of such international heavyweights as Spain and Eritrea. You're not a citizen. You're a customer. Take a number and get in line.



Above all, and amusingly enough, this war belongs first and foremost to George W. Bush. Mr. Bush ran a number of oil companies straight into the ground before becoming the constitutionally castrated governor of Texas. From thence to our current greatness, it seems. This has been his party since July, but few were truly interested in attending. 160 nations want nothing to do with this attack, and eleven of the fifteen United Nations Security Council vote-counters told him to go pound sand, despite a month-long bribery campaign that would have made John Gotti blush with envy.

Mozilla document

Recommendations

RECOMMENDATIONS

In spite of these positive gains and improvements in training teachers, more still needs to be accomplished. Adams and Fuchs assert,

When you bring a computer into the classroom, things naturally change. Some changes can be anticipated; others cannot. Some changes are desirable; others are not. Of one thing we can be certain, whatever our field of work, we must be aware of the influence of technology or be beached by this sea of change. (5)

I recognize that technology brings with it inequities and injustices of its own, and I am not arguing that technology will solve these problems; nor am I arguing that a teacher's knowledge about technology will necessarily produce better literacy within the students. What I am arguing, however, is that teachers need to be trained to use technology so that they are better prepared to combat, recognize, and fend off the inequalities that will appear in computer- equipped classrooms. Teachers need the knowledge so they can have the agency to make decisions about technology and so they can be contributors to the developing of technology. In sum, we need to train teachers so that they will not just see themselves as people who are having technology shape and define them, but as people who have the power, the authority, and the agency to be developers of technology and to be, in Haas and Neuwirth's words, "shapers" of technology (326). We, as a field, cannot afford to be washed away; we cannot allow the rug to be swept out from under us while we remain content in our teaching . . . or our training.

In the section below, I will address the concerns that a computer-rich environment evokes and give recommendations regarding how we might better prepare teachers to utilize and facilitate

technology in their teaching.

Recommendations

RECOMMENDATIONS
In spite of these positive gains and improvements in training teachers, more still needs to be accomplished. Adams and Fuchs assert,
When you bring a computer into the classroom, things naturally change. Some changes can be anticipated; others cannot. Some changes are desirable; others are not. Of one thing we can be certain, whatever our field of work, we must be aware of the influence of technology or be beached by this sea of change. (5)
I recognize that technology brings with it inequities and injustices of its own, and I am not arguing that technology will solve these problems; nor am I arguing that a teacher's knowledge about technology will necessarily produce better literacy within the students. What I am arguing, however, is that teachers need to be trained to use technology so that they are better prepared to combat, recognize, and fend off the inequalities that will appear in computer- equipped classrooms. Teachers need the knowledge so they can have the agency to make decisions about technology and so they can be contributors to the developing of technology. In sum, we need to train teachers so that they will not just see themselves as people who are having technology shape and define them, but as people who have the power, the authority, and the agency to be developers of technology and to be, in Haas and Neuwirth's words, "shapers" of technology (326). We, as a field, cannot afford to be washed away; we cannot allow the rug to be swept out from under us while we remain content in our teaching . . . or our training.
In the section below, I will address the concerns that a computer-rich environment evokes and give recommendations regarding how we might better prepare teachers to utilize and facilitate
technology in their teaching.

raelity bytes: blosxom: plug-in registry

I, Cringely | The Pulpit

But the trick here is not to do this by passing a law because laws can't generally be enforced over national borders. The only behavior any of us can reliably alter is our own, so WE -- not the spammers -- have to do something different. My proposed solution is a new class of e-mail application that combines many of the attributes we see on eBay, the Internet's one great commercial success. In fact, this solution could well be OFFERED by eBay, and I recently suggested it in an e-mail to Max Levchin of eBay's PayPal subsidiary.



What I am coming down to is essentially an economic argument. I think that passing laws is the wrong way to handle this problem and the right way is by making the spammers pay -- literally pay -- to reach me. I find preferable the idea that spammers pay me directly rather than have them pay the equivalent of postage that doesn't benefit me at all except by reducing the volume of spam. Of course, doing this requires a micropayment system, which made me think of PayPal, which can efficiently handle tiny transactions and already has 17 million customers.

Another factor in this choice is that writing fiction every day seems to be an essential component in my sustaining good mental health. If I get blocked from writing fiction, I rapidly become depressed, and extremely unpleasant to be around. As long as I keep writing it, though, I am fit to be around other people. So all of the incentives point in the direction of devoting all available hours to fiction writing.

raelity bytes

email - sends newly aggreagated stories to the email address of your choosing.



Be sure to set the $mail_cmd configuration variable in the email.pl plugin source to the email command Blagg should use to send email; defaults to "/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t".



Usage requires additional command-line switches:



* -plugin=email (activates the Email plug-in)

* -email={destination email address}

* -subject={email subject line} [optional; default is "You've got Blagg!"

raelity bytes

blogger - speaks to any Blogger API-enabled application.



Take a gander at Blagg w/ Blogger Blaggplug in action at blagg.blogspot.com .



Usage requires additional command-line switches:



* -plugin=blogger (activates the Blogger API plug-in)

* -username={your blogger username}

* -password={your blogger password}

* -blogid={your blogger blog id}

* -url={URL of the XML-RPC server at the remote end; defaults to Blogger's}

* -app_key={the app_key for a particular Blogger API URL} (optional)

raelity bytes

email - sends newly aggreagated stories to the email address of your choosing.



Be sure to set the $mail_cmd configuration variable in the email.pl plugin source to the email command Blagg should use to send email; defaults to "/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t".



Usage requires additional command-line switches:



* -plugin=email (activates the Email plug-in)

* -email={destination email address}

* -subject={email subject line} [optional; default is "You've got Blagg!"

KCRW Music: Morning Becomes Eclectic

Flaming lips. Capture this stream.

Yahoo! News - U.N. Orders Inspectors From Iraq

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) ordered U.N. employees on Monday to leave Iraq (news - web sites), after the United States, Britain and Spain abandoned efforts to win U.N. backing for military action.

Sounds like we're ready to start killing people.

Poynter Online - Thursday Edition: Kidnapping Facts

Only 100 or so abductions by strangers each year fit into more serious categories -- cases in which the child is held for an extended period of time or is killed, she said. But the longer the abduction lasts, the more bleak the prospects become of finding the child alive.

Poynter Online - Thursday Edition: Kidnapping Facts

In 2001, 840,279 people (adults and children) were reported missing to the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC). The FBI estimates that 85 to 90 percent of those (roughly 750,000 people or 2,000 per day) reported missing were children. The vast majority of these cases are resolved within hours.



Based on the identity of the perpetrator, there are three distinct types of kidnapping: kidnapping by a relative of the victim or "family kidnapping" (49 percent); kidnapping by an acquaintance of the victim or "acquaintance kidnapping" (27 percent); and kidnapping by a stranger to the victim or "stranger kidnapping" (24 percent).

William Gibson While I'm on the topic of mediated personae, something that came up during that CBC taping, last night (for me, anyway) was the idea that blogging (or even posting to fora) represents the democratization of the mediated persona. Literally anyone can have one, now, or several. I am an exception to this, because I have mine via the printed word, the oldest mass medium on the planet, and this website is maintained by a publishing company that belongs to an even larger corporation owned in turn by shapeshifting reptiles from Beta Reticuli, but the rest of you, today, are free to mass-mediate your own personae. Which was formerly, hugely, not the case. Choose a handle, post: you're mediating a persona.

William Gibson SOMEONE EXPRESSES SURPRISE
At my having remarked yesterday (with an evident sense of discovery) on something (the mediated persona) that I dealt with, extensively, as far back as IDORU.
Keep in mind that anyone who's read a novel of mine has read it much more recently than I have. I can't recall ever having reread anything of my own, in its entirety, after publication.
But, also, now I think about it, IDORU was the last of my full-on I-don't-do-the-Internet freestyle extrapolations. When I wrote IDORU, I was still faxing my daily pages to friends for comment, and probably wasn't at all sure what websites *were*. ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES was the first book I wrote as an email-using, web-searching, spam-accreting human. So I suspect that my unlikely-seeming wonderment at the democratization of mediated personae is about that awareness arriving, for me (as opposed to my Man Behind The Curtain) only just now.

Googlism :

mark crane is trying to get a phd in composition and rhetoric at the university of louisville

mark crane is an assurance and advisory business services partner in the west michigan practice and has been with ernst & young

mark crane is an aquatic toxicologist expert in many ecotoxicological techniques

mark crane is working on a phd

mark crane is our troop leader

mark crane is available to assist with your technology procurement needs

mark crane is maintaining the pages under the direction of dr

mark crane is most probably right

mark crane is a partner in the chicago office of segal mccambridge singer & mahoney

mark crane is a senior editor at medical economics magazine

mark crane is doing a lot with them

Covering the Chaos (Randy Bass)

Covering the Chaos (Randy Bass)

Heath Row's Media Diet

Bubble Money

Bubble Money

Sterling: Let's talk about the business side. That’s Topic No. 2: Where's the bubble money? Where's the economic activity? Where's the business model? So much glass was put in the ground and so much human energy was expended for something that doesn’t have a business model. The death of portals is a problem. The death of ISP's is a problem. If something like Canopy takes off, there go the ISP's. Its interesting to me that the biggest thing going right now is Google. Google isn't a portal. It's all about getting right into the database. Get me right into the database.



Who is this poor guy from Red Herring? I saw him on CNN this morning. He says, "I was googling it. I was bloggering it." I was blog dancing him. He says, "Yeah, the enthusiasts usually start it and then someone like me comes in to finance it." I was, like, "Where's your magazine dude?" How many times do these guys need to be punished? How much money do they need to lose? When will they learn that the Internet is a product of the sciences and the military. Those aren't profit-motive ventures.



CNN doesn't have any money to send anyone to Baghdad this time around. Fox lost heaps of money, enough money to build entire cities from the ground up. There's no money. There's no money in Blogger. There's no money in the corporate media. Money has to come from somewhere. Unless information wants to be worthless. Unless we just want to be worse informed from machines that work worse and worse. That’s the trend I'm looking at, and it's bugging me.

Elizabeth smart has been found alive, in the company of some drifter street prophet who calls himself "Emmanuel." Completely unbelievable. I wonder if she's brainwashed. They found her in Sandy, my hometown. Thank heavens for the random pullover policy. Oddly, I was pulled over for no reason a few days ago in Orem, and I sorta look like the guy. Hmmm...

test.

"Orchid Fever" by Susan Orlean

John Laroche is a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouch-shouldered, and sharply handsome, in spite of the fact that he is missing all his front teeth. He has the posture of al dente spaghetti and the nervous intensity of someone who plays a lot of video games. He is thirty-four years old, and works for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, setting up a plant nursery on the tribal reservation near Miami. The Seminole nicknames for Laroche are Crazy White Man and Troublemaker. My introduction to Laroche took place last summer, in the new Collier County Courthouse, in Naples, Florida. The occasion was a hearing following Laroche's arrest for illegally taking endangered wild orchids, which he is passionate about, from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, which is a place he adores. Laroche did not dress for the occasion. He was wearing wraparound Mylar sunglasses, a cotton-blend shirt printed with some sort of scenic design, and trousers that bagged around his rear. At the hearing, he was called forward and asked to state his name and address and to describe his experience in working with plants. Laroche sauntered to the center of the courtroom. He jutted out his chin. He spoke in a rasping, draggy voice. He stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and said, "I've been a professional horticulturist for approximately twelve years. I've owned a plant nursery of my own. . . . I have extensive experience with orchids, and the asexual micropropagation of orchids under aseptic cultures." Then he grinned and said to the court, "I'm probably the smartest person I know."

"Orchid Fever" by Susan Orlean

John Laroche is a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouch-shouldered, and sharply handsome, in spite of the fact that he is missing all his front teeth. He has the posture of al dente spaghetti and the nervous intensity of someone who plays a lot of video games. He is thirty-four years old, and works for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, setting up a plant nursery on the tribal reservation near Miami. The Seminole nicknames for Laroche are Crazy White Man and Troublemaker. My introduction to Laroche took place last summer, in the new Collier County Courthouse, in Naples, Florida. The occasion was a hearing following Laroche's arrest for illegally taking endangered wild orchids, which he is passionate about, from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, which is a place he adores. Laroche did not dress for the occasion. He was wearing wraparound Mylar sunglasses, a cotton-blend shirt printed with some sort of scenic design, and trousers that bagged around his rear. At the hearing, he was called forward and asked to state his name and address and to describe his experience in working with plants. Laroche sauntered to the center of the courtroom. He jutted out his chin. He spoke in a rasping, draggy voice. He stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and said, "I've been a professional horticulturist for approximately twelve years. I've owned a plant nursery of my own. . . . I have extensive experience with orchids, and the asexual micropropagation of orchids under aseptic cultures." Then he grinned and said to the court, "I'm probably the smartest person I know."

Clique of Instant Messagers Expands Into the Workplace

Clique of Instant Messagers Expands Into the Workplace
By AMY HARMON

Instant messaging, long associated with teenagers staying up late to chat online with friends, is moving into the workplace with an impact that has started to rival e-mail and the cellphone.

Less intrusive than a phone call and more immediate than e-mail, instant messaging is finding users far more quickly than e-mail did when it was first introduced, according to Forrester Research, a technology research firm in Cambridge, Mass. In the last year alone, Forrester said, the number of instant messages has grown by more than 50 percent, so that nearly one-third of American adults are now IM-ing, as it is called, with their children, clients, colleagues and each other.

"It really is instant," said Nancy Elieff, a realtor in South Pasadena, Calif., who recently began using instant messaging to stay in touch with her children in college. "You don't have to wonder if they're going to get your message, when they're going to get your message, if they're going to write you back. It's really now."

The growth is driven in part by the availability of free IM software on the Internet, as companies like Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo use it to lure customers to their other services.

Software Pioneer Quits Board of Groove

Sample chapters

Must have gadgets - QuickTopic bulletin board

I'm also in the military (National Guard, not currently activated), and when the situation calls for bringing anti-boredom items, I will always bring a book. Printouts of classics are also great to always bring along. God bless Project Gutenberg. It doesn't matter if they're ruined, so I can fold them up, put them in my pocket, and take them into the woods or sand without worry. The last thing I read that way was Milton's Areopagitica. Photocopies work too, as well as torn up, 50 cent used books. Similarly, cassette dubs are the best for music in the woods, because it doesn't matter if they're ruined, they're cheaper, more durable (somewhat), and hold more than a CD-R. And you play them on a $5 portable radio.

DECONFERENCE

March 22 - 31, 2003
DECONsciousness: Building as Blog

Ever had cause to wonder what a house or building is thinking? In an age of networked consciousness, that thought is an echo that slips frictionlessly past the soapy surface of time's constraints. Agile, flexible, and invasively curious, the spaces of this exhibition are collaboratively curated and designed by Steve Mann and architectural designer Stewart Morgan.

Joi Ito's Web: An email from Dee Hock about the emergent democracy paper

I wonder if you realize that a dozen or two people like yourself with the right combination of communication, technological and organizational skills could design and implement a global government without the consent of any present form of organization and provide it with the neural network to insure its success. A government that could continually evolve to ensure that no matter affecting the public good or the health of the planet fails to be disclosed, examined and understood. Or that any existing organization could escape being confronted with synthesized opinions and alternatives that would swiftly emerge. Such an organization based on rights of participation and withdrawal and consent of the participants could be something entirely new in this tired world. Now that would be something truly worthy of the best within us and the best among us. And a great deal of fun in the bargain! It would, in the fullest sense, be far from democratic since the Internet remains largely a tool of the privileged and technologically savvy. That, we can hope, will change in time. One must always begin somewhere, remembering that the sages tell us our responsibility is to succeed in the world as we find it if it is ever to become the world we wish it to be.

Joi Ito's Web: An email from Dee Hock about the emergent democracy paper

Joichi:

How nice to hear from you and how kind of you to take time to send your paper on Blogging, a singularly uncharming term, but none the less interesting. I have read it several times with considerable interest, for it deals with a number of subjects in which I am deeply interested, such as democracy, scaling, the failure of the Internet to fulfill its promise, and the ability to perceive and honor differences without losing perspective of the parts as inseparable from one another and from the whole. To distinguish without dividing is a state of mind badly needed in the world today.

As you may know, I have been arguing for a decade that the Internet was fatally flawed and would go the way of the telegraph, telephone, radio and television as far as its promise of elevating ideas and discourse, advancing democracy, enhancing liberty or facilitating economic and political justice. I have lived long enough to remember the claims that were made at the advent of radio and television, and read enough of the history of the telegraph and telephone to realize that the claims made by the messiahs of those forms of communication were not dissimilar from the claims made by aficionados of the Internet. The reason, from my perspective, is not complicated.

Untapped Networks

Watts: Absolutely. Corporations could benefit a great deal by thinking about their problems not just as technology or engineering problems but as network problems.

Look at Microsoft. I find it ironic that Microsoft is fighting so hard to not have its software packages segregated. What the company doesn

O'Reilly Network: Cory Doctorow's Bitchun' World: P2P Gone Wild [Feb. 27, 2003]

Koman: There's a scene in the book, where they ask the Imagineers, "How long to build?" And the guy says, "Five years." And they say, "No, without reviews, and approvals, and sign-offs." And the answer is eight weeks. You've had this experience of pulling together some entrepreneurial programmers but being completely stymied in being able to release your code ...

Google Search: comp.risks

Interesting archive of computer-related risks, per our discussion of the shuttle disaster on Wednesday. Also John Dvorak has a very interesting article on email and the shuttle:

Email and the Shuttle

Kicking back as a career / Life of tester not all fun, but it is all games

Developers is a catch-all word for the programmers, artists, sound technicians, managers and other people who get together to make a single game. A sampling of the brainy topics developers will take on in San Jose this week: "Geometric Modeling for Sound Propagation," "34 Ways to Create Emotions in Games" and "Revenue Models for Massively Multiplayer Games."

Digital FM Transmitter CC-FMT

Finding the right way to connect your radio, MP3 player, or even a computer, to a stereo system can be time consuming and frustrating. This Digital FM Transmitter lets you send a signal from any audio source to any radio easily, and without wires. Use it to send a satellite radio signal, MP3 audio, and more, to nearby radios around your home or workplace, even in your car.



The FM Transmitter is simple to use. Just plug the Transmitter into the headphone jack or line out of any audio device and set the frequency of choice (88-108 MHz). You

Nemesis Follows Hubris, DIY or Not

What was really going on was hubris, and that deathly fear of damage to public image. Was there some reason that the Columbia went to an orbit from which it couldn't reach the ISS as easily as it could de-orbit, its only real hope (and still not a good one) of a rescue? Would an ISS rendezvous orbit have been ... cowardly? Underconfident?

Columbia was too heavy to reach that orbit.

Nemesis Follows Hubris, DIY or Not

Now factor in that it might take four times longer in a space suit. The Columbia didn't have six weeks -- supplies would've run out long before. Then figure in that far more than a single tile was damaged on the Columbia. Multiply by the number of tiles, and they don't finish until mid-summer, long after their climbers' knapsacks are empty.

Do we know conclusively it was a tile problem?

The Press Gaggle

MR. FLEISCHER: Tonight, the President is going to discuss this. I think you will hear the President tonight talk about the threat of Saddam Hussein and how he poses a danger to the American --



Q. In 12 years he hasn't done anything.



MR. FLEISCHER: We will temporarily suspend the Q&A portion of today's briefing to bring you this advocacy minute. (Laughter.)

Wired News: Net Hacker Tool du Jour: Google

"We've done a lot of work at universities and teaching hospitals, and it's the hardest environment to impose security, because they tend to have an open information-sharing model," Langston said. "It makes it very difficult to impose restrictions on data: In a teaching environment, that's how people learn and extend their knowledge.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL I remember a time years ago when I was as convinced that Dick Cheney was obscenely wrong about something I am now. Subsequent events raised the possibility that he might not have been so wrong after all.

[IP] a pirce very worth reading till the end SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL byJo

Veteran Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory accompanied me on one of my futile visits to his office, where she spent better than an hour listening to us argue about ³circular errors probable² and ³MIRV decoys² and the other niceties of nuclear nightmare. When we were leaving, she, who had seen a lot of politicians in her long day, turned to me and said, ³I think your guy Cheney is the most dangerous person I¹ve ever seen up here.² At that point, I agreed with her.

[IP] a pirce very worth reading till the end SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL byJo

Here is the problem I think Dick Cheney is trying to address at the moment: How does one assure global stability in a world where there is only one strong power? This is a question that his opposition, myself included, has not asked out loud. It¹s not an easy question to answer, but neither is it a question to ignore. Historically, there have only been two methods by which nations have prevented the catastrophic conflict which seems to be their deepest habit.

Teemings - Extras - The Horror of Blimps

On this occasion I awoke to the sense that there was a large menacing presence approaching me silently out of the gloom, so I opened my eyes, and there it was! A LARGE SILENT MENACING PRESENCE WAS APPROACHING ME OUT OF THE GLOOM, AND IT COULD FLY!!!



Somewhere in the control room of my mind a fat little dwarf in a security outfit was paging through a Penthouse while smoking a cigar with his feet up on the table, watching the security monitors of my brain with his peripheral vision. Suddenly he saw the LARGE SILENT SINSITER MENACING FLOATING PRESENCE coming at me, and he pulled every panic switch and hit every alarm that my body has. A full decade's allotment of adrenaline was dumped into my bloodstream all at once. My metabolism went from "restful sleep mode" to HOLY SHIT! FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE!!!! mode" in a nanosecond. My heart went from twenty something beats per minute to about 240 even faster.

Virtual March - QuickTopic bulletin board

it took me a bunch of tries, but i did finally get through to the white house. after i made my comments, the woman on the other end said, "i'm hand writing all this... i think i'm getting a lump on my finger."

To the generally nice janitor who cleans my cubicle each evening:

COULD YOU PLEASE SHUT THE **** UP AND QUIT CUTTING DEALS ON YOUR CELL PHONE SO I CAN GET SOME WORK DONE NOW THAT THIS NOISY ARMPIT IS FINALLY EMPTY?

Thanks pal.

CNN.com - Diamond heist police arrest four - Feb. 25, 2003

Thieves forced open 120 safes in a number of vaults in a building in Antwerp's diamond centre over the weekend of February 15-16.



They reportedly changed the video tapes of the security cameras in the building to avoid being identified.

Deal May Freshen Up Google's Links

So how will the chattering of Blogger's 200,000 active users help Google improve its news judgment? The deal may be less about chatter than about links, said Meg Hourihan, who founded Pyra with Mr. Williams in 1999 and left in 2001 after a dispute over its direction, keeping a stake in the company. Ms. Hourihan said she was not familiar with Google's plans, but she said that it made sense for Google to be interested in gaining faster access to the links in Weblogs.

I thought they left because they weren't getting paid.

Do Scripters Suffer Discrimination?

Hey, if all those art majors and wanna-be fashion designers hadn't decided to become "web developers", maybe someone who can write an actual program in Perl might get some respect.

Seriously, scripting languages have been "tainted" by the Web. "If it's a script, it can't possibly be worth anything" is a pretty common mind-set these days.

While I've seen some pretty awful C and C code out there, it's nothing compared to the horror of amateur Perl or (shudder) Shell scripts.

It's interesting to consider that scripting languages have been able to ride Moore's Law to the extent that you can reasonably implement things in a scripting language hat would have really needed to be compiled a short time ago.

-Mark

Z Partners - Weblog

Our ever-increasing dependence on the microchip is enabled, in no small part, by a near-universally held idea about computers: no matter how complex and powerful microprocessors might become, in principle they are always rational, predictable, and 'debug-able' by the engineers who design them. As opposed to the messiness, ambiguity and complexity of the natural world, computers are structured, transparent and orderly - features that also make them trustworthy. We admit them into our lives because we believe (or assume) that we know what they

KRT Wire | 02/22/2003 | Inexperience hurt shuttle analysis, engineers say

Several engineers here began conducting their own analysis after the crash - using the same data and procedures that were used in Houston during the flight. Their results are not only different, but they indicate that NASA had an emergency on its hands.



"We're redoing the analysis because we think it needs to be done differently," said another longtime shuttle engineer, an expert at calculating debris impact. "The re-analysis is finding things to be more harsh than the original."

Wired News: Why Did Google Want Blogger?

Cleveland said Google will likely use Blogger to develop sophisticated searches that utilize the rich metadata inherent in the RSS feeds from weblogs: who wrote what and when, what it linked to, what linked to it and its level of popularity with Web surfers.



Cleveland said the search tool his company built for Blogger did exactly this kind of indexing on individual posts, in real time.



"By doing this we were taking a couple of baby steps down the road of what some have called the semantic Web -- a Web ... where computers can understand, at some level, the meaning and context of a Web page or blog post," he explained in an e-mail.

Salon.com Technology | Use the blog, Luke

The true revolution promised by the rise of bloggerdom is not about journalism. It's about information management. The bloggers have the potential to do something far more original than offer up packaged opinions on the news of the day; they can actually help organize the Web in ways tailored to your minute-by-minute needs. Often dismissed as self-obsessed "vanity sites," the bloggers actually have an important collective role to play on the Web. But they're not challengers to the throne of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. They're challengers to the throne of Google.

Written 10 months before the acquistion of blogger by google. Hmmm..