It'll be great when the day comes that we can grow up around this subject.

Truly ironic that the leaders of the "morally wrong" crowd condemning the world's oldest profession are continually, decade after decade, regular customers.

Probably this ongoing tragedy is maintained largely by the giggly, adolescent, gossip-rag mentality it seems to inspire in us. What up with that?

@ Airshowfan:

Aight! When I'm about to be reborn, I'm going to hunt you down!

So many parents are so worried about their kids being "safe", there's no life in their lives ... and no education either.

Yeah, it was sad when Jim's rocket came back down and his mouse was dead - and we all learned something very important about technology that day.

Democratic technocultures and ignorants don't mix. Bravo to the author.

Watch out once Wikipedia is done (except for the talk pages). I've had a close eye on the music scene for the past ten years, and it's my firm conviction that there are now more bands than there are cars. Here comes the 10,000 Salieris!

Form is emptiness.
Emptiness is form.

Best Web Zen ever!

I can't help but think of one of those little finger-noose traps.

Strange, screwing the only people who actually trusted them in the first place. It's like they *want* to implode.

Human intelligence hasn't evolved in 25,000 years either. That's why we're all squatting in our furs scratching these messages in the sand.

Nothing ever changes unless some powerful wizard waves a big stick.

Things weren't much better here, actually. Doesn't look all that different from early IBM PC's, really. As for the green screen, they were still widely in use in college labs across the US at the time.

Google "1983 personal computer" and see the beauty.

The US University I attended in those times (10,000 students) gave me 25K of disk storage - on their mainframe - for my thesis. Grudgingly upgraded to 50K. They had no decent printer (apart from golfball teletypes) to print it on. (There was a Diablo 6xx golfball with broken linespacing in a 3rd floor hallway.) Pioneering times, those.

Ran across this in a favorite hi-cred reference a while back:

"To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a non-narcotic coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey. In the United States, Stepan Company is the only manufacturing plant authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant."

Shirelles "Baby It's You" - Beatles "Good Morning" - The Platters "Only You" - Beatles "Michelle" - Smokey Robinson "I Second That Emotion" - Left Banke "Walk Away Renee" - Del Vikings "Come Go With Me" - all 2:42

Too bad for The Byrds that "8 Miles High" was 3:35 !!!

Back around the turn of the century, there was something like 100,000 homeless kids running around New York.

Good thing? No. Did some suffer? No doubt. But I'm guessing that 99.9% survived without ever being tied up in a basement.

Kids are SMART. If given a chance. Will you be there to protect them when they're 19? 25? 32? Please, let them get started. My father jumped a train (1920s) and ran away from home when he was 15. Kids used to do that. After a couple months he got back safely. And reminisced about it his whole life. Real life is *memorable*.

Oh please. Ya wanna tear up? See the Oscar-nominated film Katyn.

PROPORTIONAL RESPONSE! Laika got a stamp, several times over.

"I would be SO ANGRY if I got home from a long days work, sat down to a freshly baked cow head"

Man! I'm sure glad I didn't marry Cow Pie Patty after all!

Hmmmm. And here I thought the distinct shortage of poltergeists in my experience was due to the fact that there aren't any.

It will be interesting to learn what parts of these scientists experiments are repeatable. Apart from the close scrutiny of adolescent girls.

Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest for your consideration, the Gordian Knot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot

I'll also drag in Zeno's paradox, from which we may conclude: if we let someone frame the argument, then we who thrash therein are willing victims.

Which applies to our current political dilemma. Any fine tool can also be used as a weapon by the village idiot.

I can hardly wait for the discussion when some general slaps a shell-shocked blogger with his glove.

Hmmm! Let's try .LT.HYPE.GT. tag.

Fun!

The tag in Trivia#3 is invisible!

Damn!

Well, Jane, it just goes to show you, it's always something.

Well, now. Branding will lead to self-fulfilling prophecy, tending to turn the 5-year-olds into future (non-political leader) terrorists; thus helping to insure a generous supply of terrorists for the future.

'Cuz when you're spending a half-trillion a year on defense, you need a constant supply of enemies to keep the ball rolling.

"Yes, Prime Minister!"

Pretty soon, you've got a population of shop owners who pay the pizzo so nobody knows they pay the pizzo.

Here we go again, from the "do as I say not as I do" church.

* "'Morally dubious' experiments" such as ignoring pederasty, wiping out entire competing religious sects, destroying artifacts and history of competitors...

* "Drug abuse ... Polluting the environment ... Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor" -- such as claims about guardian angels, eternal damnation, et al that cause people to accept oppressive living conditions and fear authority in return for reward in an imaginary afterlife - for millenia.

* "Excessive wealth" - see: St. Francis; how many crowns *does* a Pope need?

* "Creating poverty" -- see: South America

Oops (sure wish there was some way to edit posted posts): that was supposed to be "sure -glad- there's someone.

I hate it when one skipped word flips the compliment.

"DON’T TRUST ANYONE OVER 25"

Man, I'm so far past 30 I don't know if I trust myself to laugh at that one.

Seriously, I wish I could write a story on that subject ... and since I can't, I'm sure there's someone who can that'll do it right.

I'll be buying the paperback - and passing it along.

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part."

Welcome to the future; we're glad you made it.

Not to put down MySong (got nice scores against hand-written harmony), but:

The algorithms to do this have been around a looooooong time. There were BASIC algorithms in the mid-1960s, floating around college campuses, that could do a *very* nice job of harmonizing user-entered melodies using Bach's rules. {There were no VDT's; the scores were printed.)

So, while it's no doubt spiffy, technically this isn't quite the "research coup" it's presented as. Better than "Band-in-a-Box" is no coup either. OK, enough poo-pooing.

This is *Hawaii*. I'm going with the mile-high club explanation.

"it might be convenient to add little bit of chemical stuff in your brain when you are on your way to the moon just to make you a little less rebellious."

It's the likelihood of hijinks like this that make it necessary for ECCO to limit juvenile civilizations' understanding of galaxy-class physics.

Let's assume that this vehicle wasn't actually launched as a target and actually cost $1billion.

A $billion, roughly, equals the entire lifetime income of 1000 average Americans.

Forty years of space sophistication, and the best we can do for this errant sat is to smash it? As we learned over and over throughout the 20th century: so much easier to destroy than to create.

Where's the remote-controlled towing vehicle? This OUGHT to be seen as a pathetic, inadequate, and embarrassing response.

When will mature leadership finally arrive in cowboy-land?

Moral of story: pretend you're buddies with someone so that you can get enough on them to hang them?

Wow. Frat ethics. (Sorry Fratters, what I *really* meant was ...)

The question is so broad that it's metaphysical.

"To get to the best we need some top down intelligence, too." Is really, really bad leadership worse than anarchy? Did the universe need a Designer? Does Dilbert answer this question?

There are no problems, only solutions.

We're never going to get to the future until the dinosaurs are done dying.

"you don't need to actually push air to make this squeezebox squawk"

One of the reasons you may have thought it was dying is that this very expressive instrument is often played by people who never learned what bellows are for ... playing on the cheapest set of reeds they could buy.

Fantastic movie. Naysayers, if you can't take the heat, geeeeeeeet outta the kitchen!

Large collections of cylinder-type recordings can still be had for next-to-nothing. Probably, apart from condition, because most of what's on them is awfully cornball by today's standard. (Most of the US was rural at the time.)

Playing them might be a little more difficult. While they were made to be played without electricity, a simple tonearm with the proper needle can easily track them. After the dust and droppings are cleared out of the grooves.

"Adult Humans are motivated by four things: Money, Power, Fame and Sex."

Has the definition of "adult" really gotten that grim? Or is that just a recording of Rust Limberger's testicles descending?

Canada/US border-crossings have always (ok, in my lifetime) been potentially 'intrusive'. Long before computers, trunks had to be opened (on request) to allow searches for contraband (or stuff that required paying duty). No warrant required.

Customs people (my observations, I've known a couple) in the past tended to use their experience and intuition to decide how much scrutiny was called for. No doubt they always had an (invisible) set of guidelines. Generally, the less stuff you brought and the shorter your stay, the less trouble getting through. But then, in the past they didn't have to worry much about people transporting trunkloads of chemicals.

Bravo to EFF for seeking some transparency in these practices which can lead to (apparent) excesses at the border. I don't doubt that border-folk hear many scary stories that are unlikely to unfold at their outposts. The propagation of FUD isn't limited to "civilians".

Wow, nice superficial question. Howsa 'bout "what brands of clothes do old people wear?"

I wonder if any of the "representatives" of the nursing-home were normal, healthy, active, intelligent, sparkling old-timers that gave great story?

(Don't ask how I feel about links that require you to log in.)

You'll need this PEEKs, POKEs, and CALLs List to go with that.

http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/USA2WUG/FOUNDING.MEMBERS/HOME.PAGES/EDHEL/texts/pokes.html

Poke 82,128 Cassette program will automatically RUN when loaded
POKE 44505,234:POKE 44506,234 Reveals DELETEd files in your CATALOG
Poke 43364,255 Allows you to save a binary file 65535 bytes long

*sigh* I'm jealous

JUST the kind of utter gullibility I'd expect from an Electromagentic Lab. Big purple SHAME on MIT.

"Hallucination" seems like an unnecessarily pejorative word for this experience ... which may very well involve the same visualizing faculties involved in dreaming ... or, for that matter, in visualizing the "real" outside world (all of which our brains create from sense data!)

Since there's no danger involved (apart from possible superstitious abreactions), why not enjoy such experiences rather than get all uptight about them?

Fur lining optional??

@license farm: Right on.

Everbody came gunnin for Billy the Kid.

The tree breaks, the reed bends.

Too bad Mr. McGuinness never got even a short course in "hippie values".

The fact that U2 is managed by someone with his head so far up the Lindbaugh School of Distortion says everything needed about the "music industry".

I'll go even farther: such demonizations are at the root of the corruption and outright usury that are making the US into a third-world nation.

Standards appeal to the logical mind... at first. But in the real world, standardization is so difficult and so fraught with politics and complexity that it is rarely economical.

It's seldom about the end-user anyway.

Ford started with "standardized parts", but over the decades most auto manufacturers found that wasn't the ideal way to maximize profits. Eventually they made cars so complex that very few end-users could repair them.

Standards are most valuable when an industry is just starting up. It's almost an accident that MIDI (which lets musical instruments talk) emerged when it did. People complain about how it hasn't been updated -- but the odds that it could even be created were quite low. Someone had to work very hard selling the idea to get competing manufacturers to agree.

I remember when HTML was a standard. Then Netscape and Microsoft worked hard to "fix" that.

Sorry Matt, but ... it was just a wonderful dream.

Depends on whether you throw it tied to a roc?

Back in Cold War days, most cities had dozens of "bomb shelters" (YMMV) equipped with "food" -- like crackers -- and a nice yellow *radiation detector* with a supply of batteries. Presumably so that you could open the door and see if it was safe out there.

After the threat of nuclear war ended (*mmmph mmmph*), many of these expensive detectors (your tax dollars at work maintaining the illusion of rationality) were "recycled" by sending them to schools for science classes.

By the mid-1980s, one had to look very hard indeed to find a radiation detector. Possibly because it had been discovered that the main threat was not from bombs after all ... and mere citizens were threateninig to use them to gather intelligence on SNAFUs (your tax dollars at work, etc.)

Hey! I remember that little old lady! She used to drag the main strip in Pasadena in her super-stock 426 Dodge!

Thanks for brightening my day for however many years I've been tune in.

hpe y njy mny mr yrs f fn, xctmnt nd ll rtr rch s Crss.

P.S. I know what the dictionary says, I'm just saying. Cuz the "e" is silent ... until there's an "an" after it?

Good old English ... a puzzle a day. For life.

Lockean. Shouldn't that be Lockeian?

Apple: "We don't have problems. We just have problem customers."

@MLENNOX: If it helps any, most of our broadband offerings in the US are in the stone age as well.

A fine example of making a mockery, but IMHO not *quite* up to the standard set with the death-tasering of the hapless immigrant in Vancouver. Now *that* was mockery.

I'm sure Seattle can try *harder* at mockery and get back on top. Maybe fish-slapping the 5-year-old next time. Don't you think? And perhaps the mother doing 5 laps of the airport shrieking "I'm sorry" the whole time.

* prompts landowners to discourage trespassing
* rewards people who use their land
* doing something to maintain the property

Well now, isn't that a prim, I daresay even tidy little list of prescriptions. Why, it's almost Victorian. I swell with civic pride at such an efficient demonstration of proper comportment. Bully, I say, bully.

Oh, if only I could once again live in a place with access to CBC broadcasting. Unlike the Beeb (high drone factor), the CBC was often lively and engaging. A fine example of the far-too-excessive evils of government ventures that could be better handled by the private sector (*snicker*).

Trivia question: what was the name of the show with the theme song that included the sound of someone typing?

Wow. How happy it must have be to live in a time when the future has no hitches. Let ME have a hit off of that!

(Actually, as a former hitchhiker, I kind of miss hitches.)

Farmer's "Riverworld" series, starting in 1971, sure sounds like a sim (probably predating the term, but c'mon punk prove me wrong).

"The story of Riverworld begins when almost the whole of humanity, from the time of the first homo sapiens through to the early 21st century, is simultaneously resurrected along the banks of the river."

Well worth reading just for all the different ways Richard Burton uses trying to "get out".

@Newslet: Thanks for the historiography update. I'm still a little fuzzy on "before WW2". I remember reading about the Hoyle model at some point, but am blanking on the early history of Big Bang (prior to Penzias/Wilson).

Up until just 200 years ago, meteors falling from the sky were considered to be just a superstition.

Of course, that's not one of things you learn about astronomy in school. Before they were accepted, the idea was ridiculed. After acceptance: don't talk about it. Harrumph.

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/504/cosmic_debris.html

Of course there are charlatans and pretenders and true believers. But it behooves me (a physical science major) to remember that it's a good thing that there are many unexplained phenomena, else nobody'd have a shot at getting their name immortalized. Had Randi (like Seti) actually *uncovered* something, it would have been well worth $2 mil.

"generation after generation leaving no mark more permanent than a mouldering knucklebone lost in the soil."

Ask any genealogist trying to get past great-grandma's "important dates."

But then: when did "data about our lives" get to be all that important? Exactly who's out there clamoring to know what kind of toilet paper Beethoven used? Do we all *really* want to be dissected on Entertainment Tonight?

It's a good thing diamonds are rare, or they'd be really cheap. Then we'd all have to pony up for Magna Cartas, or, at least, Butcher Block covers.

To push on the origin question a little: "The notion that our reality is a simulation or "control system" of some kind" was certainly at the center of the later work of Phil Dick.

Interestingly, since our experience of "the world" is created inside our individual heads from (relatively objective we believe) sense data, our experience tends to be colored by whatever paradigms have seized our imagination. "The Big Bang" originated at a time when nuclear weapons were what our nightmares were about. Now they're about games, and about "the machines are in control", so the universe looks like a game machine.

Jeff,

A counter-argument to your proposition here:
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/958

Creators certainly do contribute and deserve compensation for their contributions. But they don't operate in a vacuum: they use a common language which they did not invent, they rely on public-domain processes and inventions (printing, paper, internet), transportation, distribution, advertising, media ... all of which are a part of society at large ... sometimes called "the commons." It is reasoned that their compensation should end at some point and their creative work goes into the public domain as a payback for social services rendered.

How many benefit from the performances of ballets that are in the public domain (most of them)? Too, if a ballet cost $50,000 per performance, ballet would be dead. Older works have cultural value that is greater than their commercial value ... and which keeps them alive... as well as their authors' memories.

I especially appreciate Howard's use of triangles and circles (and even non-linear!) containers in his screen sketches.

I've long awaited the mass appearance of relatively free-form containers on webpages, which 13 years later are still dominated by rigid boxen.

Following on Zum Zamim's note:

One of the "first" "personal computers" appeared on the cover of Popular Electronics in January, 1975 ... over six years earlier. (Though early on they were known as "microcomputers.")
IBM at first resisted going into the market, allowing hobbyists (and Apple -- the Apple II appeared in 1977) years to "mature" the market. It might deserve credit for capitalizing "PC".

"The Commodore PET, the TRS 80, and the Apple II, also known as the 1977 Trinity by Byte magazine, are often cited as the first personal computers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer

Life+50, Life+70 copyrights endanger "dangerous" non-mainstream works more as they're less likely to be re-published. No doubt a happy "side-effect" to some.

Since it's possible to "opt-out" of copyright protection, it'd be great to see a website that promotes and certifies lit that's been released to PD, so that we can all benefit. Once it's established, those who retain "control" they wish to relinquish won't have to wonder what to do.

This sort of short-sightedness is not limited to business. Many school districts save money by harassing or otherwise driving out the $35K teachers with decades of experience and replacing them with $20K teachers.

Teacher experience, quality or popularity are seldom stoppers for the kind of administrators who stoop to such tactics. There's no "bottom line" to let parents know their children are victims of these "cost cuts".

So long as the dollar is the "objective" measure of so much in our lives, humanity continues to pay in quality and quantity of life.

M2KEY makes an excellent point. Listening to MP3s hardly marks "the decline of civilization."

A 128K on an iPod was far better than what most people were listening to regularly before then. The hits of the 50s and 60s all became hits for people listening to AM RADIO! Limited by regulations to 5KHz high-end.

Ever heard a collection of vinyl 45-rpm records? Most people played them on machines that quickly chewed the tracks into vinyl dust. And kept listening for years.

128K MP3s aren't that far off the mark. In the typical listening environment, you're not hearing the highs ... and not caring. Most speakers for apartment dwellers these days -- including the expensive ones -- are bass-retarded. Seen many 12-inch woofers? And the audio at most concerts is still far from high-fi.

The best way to get money to the artists ... and empty the pockets of shits like the RIAA and Warner and Apple ... is to buy the music from the artists.

With all that money, the artists can buy production and buy promotion. Viola ... no more fkcing "music industry".

What a sad, sad
sad, sad, sad,
sad, sad, sad idea.

"Especially when their jobs involve unexpected potentially lethal situations, daily."

Huh. What's to be expected when you sell assault weapons to the population? When you encourage divisiveness at every turn? When you brag about freedom, and then let slip the dogs of truth?

Violence breeds violence. As people wake up from their illusions to realize that they're in chains, you have to expect some to become "unsettled". Part of the cost of doing business as usual these days.

They didn't taser her? Huh. Must be Xmas.

Loonie? Michelson–Morley was a first attempt at measuring a theoretical feature predicted by classical physics. The failure to detect an aether was surprising to most physicists, hence the interest in refining the measurement when technology allowed.

A similar process of refinements can be seen in periodic measurements of the equivalence between inertial and gravitational mass, which started with Lorand Eotvos.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loránd_Eötvös
http://www.kfki.hu/~tudtor/eotvos1/onehund.html

"I look forward to not having to pay for their subsidies any more."

Subsidies? Welfare? Nonsense. Those payments were negotiated in perpetuity for land ceded to the US -- which made similar deals across the country (that it apparently never intended to keep). Millions of Americans live on stolen land.

To the north and east of the Lakota, Red Lake Nation has long been sovereign and has its own license plates and passports.

a horde of nameless, faceless amateurs

Yes! damn those little people and their ignorant hides!
If you'd listened to them, you'd think they've been responsible for most of history!

Earlier today I read this saying from the movie "Gorky Park":

Arkady Renko: Too many people in our society disappear. They fall into a gulf.
Professor Andreev: What sort of gulf?
Arkady Renko: The gulf between what is said and what is done.

The Hindus have another saying:

What you hate, you become.

Earlier today I read this saying from the movie "Gorky Park":

Arkady Renko: Too many people in our society disappear. They fall into a gulf.
Professor Andreev: What sort of gulf?
Arkady Renko: The gulf between what is said and what is done.

The Hindus have another saying:

What you hate, you become.

Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Tick ... you're all in trouble now.

In my (US) state, there's a BURGER DUMP chain store that pays a man to sit in a car in the parking lot, and issue private "tickets" to people who park too long.

I used to eat twice a week at BD; as soon they gave me a "ticket" (when I finished eating, I ran across the street for 5 minutes), I quit buying there. I also told the "ticket" people to stuff it.

Three years later, that one BD has lost $3000 of business from me. In 17 more years, that one store will have lost $20,000 in business ... not counting any of their other stores.

That a meme mota skoota.

Gee, and here I thought "Disneyfied" was a pejorative.

Times Square was even worse than that? Wow, I guess Giuliana WAS a hero!

Gee, and here I thought "Disneyfied" was a pejorative.

Times Square was even worse than that? Wow, I guess Giuliana WAS a hero!

It's been a long time ... but "we.spell.glendale" stumped the google.

Back to the good ol' akashic record!

Civilians will not know that QSL cards from USA-licensed amateur radio stations (whose operators passed a morse code + theory test) have callsigns on them that have a single digit in the call. In the US, the digit is preceded by one or two letters of the alphabet (the first is usually W, K or N); succeeded by two to three letters of the alphabet. E.g., W6FFC, KN0ABC, W3YZ.

At one time in the US, the single digit referred to the region of the country the station was in. "6" meant California, "7" the Northwest, "0" the midwest, etc.

Not only hams and CBers (who were at one time required to get a license - without a test) exchange QSL's: SWLers (shortwave listeners) do too. Ham QSLs often include a "brag list" of the station gear that often includes high-power transmitting equipment, as well as a list of awards unique to ham radio.

Poor Zren, a wee bit knackered?

"free market"

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

ha ha ha

ha

"Each broadcaster had its own model of radio that it sold to the public, one that could only receive its programmes, and this was how the stations made money."

Wow. And history repeats itself, in the Clearwire wireless modem, which uses a proprietary frequency band.

Maybe Woz should appear in Frontierland?

Sorry, couldn't help it.

Looks good! Where's the PDF?

Change "Music you like" to "Music 'rents like", and you have the #1 thing that fuels revolutions in pop music.

Or, at least, *did* fuel ... before video games, facebook ... oh, which reminds me, I liked this post before you commented on it.

A 50-nanosecond microwave that kills a CPU thru a plastic hood I might buy.

But "overload wires"? Nah. Through a metal grill, a radiator, a firewall, a metal hood? Double Nah.

Even a deathstar laser would have a tough time piercing metal in 50 ns.

"the red-ink-fest that is every DRM music store except, perhaps, iTunes)"

"Perhaps" iTunes?? Does BB know something it isn't sharing?

This is a win for the community of classical music lovers. Digital distribution benefits it more than other genres. Classical has always been difficult and expensive for record companies to produce and distribute. Most brick-and-mortar stores never could or would stock a good selection. 10 minutes (or an hour) beats 10-day (or 10-week!) special orders anyday.

How many newcomers to classical can afford $50-75 seats for a single performance in today's risk-free concert halls? DG's catalog of major quality performances goes way back. If this works, other companies will follow. Bravo to DG for this big, if belated, move.

My ma always SMACKED me when I did that at the dinner table.

Hey! By the look of that quilt, she was one of the animators of "Waking Life".

I don't give a damn about a greenback dollar, spend it as fast as I can. For a wailin' song and a good guitar, the only things that I understand, poor boy, the only things that I understand.

These guys need a vacation.

I remember hearing the supposedly true story of a famous physicist who starting wearing a very large shoe size: according to his calculations there was a slight probability that he could just sink into the ground.

Sirs: what must I do to shorten the life of the Bush administration?

Some people don't like to live like yuppies, fashion-chasers, social climbers. Some people get their jollies out of skiing, helping others, doing art rather than shopping.

Is that any reason to refer to them as "cheapskates"?

Whoa! Shades of Animatrix!

Most of the RTTY pix traded by "hams" were work-friendly. Pinup girls were all over (calendars in restaurants, garages, farm-implement dealerships, for example) long before Playboy. Not to mention Betty Grable.

I'm amused that anyone, in this day-and-age, could "pity" people who enjoy erotic images.

Most of the RTTY pix traded by "hams" were work-friendly. Pinup girls were all over (calendars in restaurants, garages, farm-implement dealerships, for example) long before Playboy. Not to mention Betty Grable.

I'm amused that anyone, in this day-and-age, could "pity" people who enjoy erotic images.

"good lord, the person responsible for interior decorating at that place ought to be shot."

I agree, but it would fit right in with the US tourist mecca known as the Black Hills ... and is *way* prettier than the (in)famous "Wall Drug" ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Drug ... visited by thousands of culture-starved midwesterners for decades.

What used to be called "RTTY art" (RTTY is short for "radioteletype") was long popular with amateur radio operators who got their hands on retired teletype equipment. RTTY used 45-baud (45 *bits* per second!) "baudot" code to send messages. (Baudot was an ASCII precursor.)

Back in the day, this involved taping a piece of artwork to a piece of (continuous roll) teletype paper, and then carefully choosing and typing one character at a time while punching a paper tape. One mistake meant starting all over again! Some amazing efforts were part of the Christmas tradition for news services operators (UPI for example).

An example archive for "RTTY art" (Google "rtty.art" for more):
http://artscene.textfiles.com/rtty/

"Because when it comes to these topics, Klein is well beyond stupid. He's dangerous"

Republican presidential material!

"may have two brains, as one face can go to sleep while the other remains awake"

I knew a girl like that, once.

Something smells like back-bacon.

Finally! I waited my whole life! For the first time, the people have access to the laws that govern them.

Well ... except for the ones that are *secret* of course.

seatec astronomy

Ask any audiophile, valves are Warm. I'd go there just to be in the same room with 1500 valves.

Like the Funk Brothers, it's good to see, at long last, these erstwhile chappies getting their nod. Pip pip chappies!

Now THAT's Entertainment!

Next week on the B!B! network: ...

"Try reading LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy and then switch real quick to the Harry Potter books. See if there isn't a certain familiarity of theme."

Immaterial and irrelevant. C'mon. I read Earthsea twice. When I saw the Potter stories (on film), I never once had the "hey that's too familiar" reaction.

How many stories are there to be told? How many times has each been retold in a different way? You can *always* point to a predecessor. "Why, how *dare* Rimsky-Korsakov write Scheherazade!"

Before books people travelled from city to city reciting stories, adding their own interpretations and embroderies as time went by. They became famous in their own right. ALL art is dependent on the past.

OMG, no! How could they?

OK, I'm a lifelong fan of some Disney movies. But desecration of WallyWorld (oh the humanity) strikes me as 1. bizarre, 2. funny (ha ha). C'mon we're talking spastic plastic land here. Push aside the spilled cokes and popcorn and condoms and flip-flop dust and suburbanite noir and there's some superheated dust particles underneath? (Probably the cleanest dust on site!) What a world! What a world!

(Image of world's smallest violin removed)

Oh yeah. I had a KUM car when I was a teen, they're tons of fun!

What in the **** is a "multi-phase FM channel" ?????? Is it Terminology-Invention Day in .... ??

(No electricity in the bathroom? Transylvania?)

Is it too late to ask if we really want to go down this path?

Does the existence of this device convey our tacit acceptance that RFIDification is already a done deal?

I'd feel a lot better about an RFID fryer. Because I don't think we've done the dialog yet. And I'm dismayed by the world we're heading for.

Note that Logic 8 (some call a "great pro app") still does not support VST. But Reaper OSX does. Thanks, Paul, for the Pagesoft tip.

Sequestration is an tterly futile response in a high-tech society. You can make it harder, but not too difficult if the potential perp is determined. Without making a list of the obvious -- let alone the rest -- there are simply too many universally available options. Are they going to ban dung, wax, sugar, alcohol?

Really draconian measures would require a spree through libraries and used bookstores to remove technical resources and various cookbooks dating back to the mid-1800s. Technical magazines would need to become extinct. All circuit components would need to locked in inscrutible packages. Undergrad classes would need to be dumbed down. All software would need to be heavily abstracted - no more assembly access to hardware.

What are the consequences of limiting such technical means and knowledge to an elite few? Much of that has already happened to an extent ... mostly unnoticed and unremarked on. (Today, how many can build an FM transmitter from scratch?) But it can't stop those who really need to know, or can afford to hire the right talent. Or those who simply resort to materials that are as old as technology. Or those who are clever enough to repurpose apparently innocuous surplus tech. Who guards the guardians?

Much of the US's inventiveness -- that eventuated the generation that went to the moon -- is due to the "model-rocket" or "ham-radio" or "chemistry-set" type of experimenting. Would Tesla be branded a terrorist today? Goddard? Asimov?

Draconian lockdown may be strangling our technical future. Perhaps the US will spend the last years of its existence selling the world paintings, videos and diet books. But I very much doubt that hiding technology will bring an end to violence ... so long as it is widely used to anger and motivate those who've lived without it. They will find the unforeseen ways.

The Man and AT&T have always been *like this*.

Like any good housewife who knows her place, Ma Bell does what she's told, with docility and meek satisfaction.

She also knows why she's far better than you, which is why she was losing customers ... until the living operators were replaced by cheerful recordings. As commemorated by Lily Tomlin's "Ernestine", more reportage than comedy.

attacking straw-men ... without addressing the really meaty questions.

What a surprise ... just like most of the Beeb's programming.

Actually, being American, I only really understood how the Beeb managed it after seeing "Brazil". All stood revealed.

For years I was so scared by the monster in my bedroom that I slept in the living room.

I heard that the technical term for this operation is "spocking".

This is the second taser-death story I've read today.

It's perfectly clear by now that tasers are unsafe in the hands of many law-enforcement officers. Trigger-happy, taser-happy, the results are the same: completely avoidable human tragedies.

Cruel and unusual tragedies.

Hickory dickory dock
Three mice ran up the clock
The clock struck one
The rest escaped with minor injuries

Many of us feel iffy about the question of mouse-killing.

In rural areas I've lived in, many different kinds of animals are referred to as "vermin". This kind of thinking allows the endless slaughter of some species, sometimes to extinction.

This dangerous capacity of the human mind allows it to wall-off feelings from certain kinds of action. No doubt it was this capacity that made possible the kind of WW2 smiling-family-group picnic pictures of concentration-camp personnel we saw a while back.

As a result, I've a lot of respect for people who go out of their way to respect the right of all species to live on the Earth -- because we are one of those species. At the same time, enough is enough. Killing caught mice can be done humanely with a glass jar and a liquid to displace the air.

I feel better knowing that people who can afford $1200 bags aren't feeling any better about their Chinese crap than I am.

s n sd: tkng ll th vwls t f ppl's psts s TRD nt WRD.

A perfect example of: Don't damn -- embrace.

I'm not from Iowa, but inherited a 78 record bearing this song:

Our land is full of ripe-ning corn,
Yo-Ho, yo-ho, yo-ho
We've watched it grow both night and morn,
Yo-Ho, yo-ho, yo-ho
But now we rest, we've stood the test.
All that's good we have the best
I-O-way has reached the crest,
Yo-Ho, yo-ho, yo-ho

We're from I-O-way, I-O-way.
State of all the land,
Joy on ev-'ry hand.
We're from I-O-way, I-O-way.
That's where the tall corn grows.

It's not that there's so much good stuff online to read. The web often seems to be 90% noise.

And if it's something *long*, I'd much prefer to read it in printed form. But, short of a subscription, I have to walk/ride to the news venue or the library. Like the Dollar Store, I can get online without dressing up.

The magazines, like the newspapers, may have gotten into a "groove" and then just kept doing the same thing for decades. Now there's an evolutionary force. The NYT is struggling; why shouldn't everyone else? Now that they have to survive in a democratized publishing environment, they need to focus on giving readers an experience soooo good that it's worth paying for.

I'm not going to cry too hard for the publishers; they were few and far between before the web came along -- and often didn't treat readers, or writers, with much courtesy. Ever read Ellison's "Glass Teat"? Television became what it deserved to ... a wasteland.

That Minsky is such a meat machine.

Poor Pinchbeck, born 20 years too late. But hey, somebody had to repackage the 60s for the video-game age.

No more provenance than 4 cinder blocks and 2 planks ... and a lot less useful.
I'd be glad to make dozens of them, however, for anyone willing to pay $65 each ... even throw in a bundle of colorful tarp straps with each 10-pack to lash them together.

Nice new trailer. Looks like someone figured out how to step out of the 40-hour rat race.

With the dollar falling and the debt rising, this trailblazer may be showing us our own futures. Remember: location, location, and the brown acid isn't specifically good.

When I was a kid we invented special time-delay firecrackers to take out ordinance like this. That stupid red-eye robot would be diversioned and catastrophied. "Squirt this, bitch."

Kids playing on dirt. *His* dirt. Oh the horror. So, instead of interacting in an adult hum way, he resorts to automation. I see sickness in this fable. In miniature, the same sickness that pervades our foreign and domestic policies.

it often turns out that the older version of something is better.

It's true ... I'm way better than I was when I was younger.

Al-Qaeda online communications channels have gone dark -- thanks to a ham-handed move by the Bush administration, it seems.

It seems. Gorbachev, at the end of the Cold War, told a reporter "I'm going to do a terrible thing to you. I'm going to take your enemy from you."

Our government, on the other hand, is working to make sure we always have an enemy.

By the time they arrange a CD contract (early next year, I've heard), the album will be cold

Maybe one year soon, someone will make an album that won't be cold after six months. It's been a while.

I'm glad to offer you the compressed, complete catalog of REO Speedwagon, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Kansas, Journey and Toto in one millisecond of sound.

There! Wanna hear it again?

Our local smoke shop has one of these too. I encourage people to hold onto these: our current government is working hard to see to it that, before long, they'll actually be worth one million $US.

Ironically, our oligarchs aren't getting the war they're paying for either.

the audio in the moderation parts is quite noisy.

Pfffft. Look at old magazine ads, or punk posters ... the grime is part of the charm. You want BBTV to sound like "this is not your father's Oldsmobile"??

Geez, Albini, I suppose next it'll be "shrink the room size in the verb plug"??

Klein didn't have an "answer"? I do: quit using disaster and debt to steal our money and our future, assholes.

Gotta give these guys credit: the cows don't realize they're being milked.

Ww. Hy, knw -- lt's trn ths ppl ls n "Hcklbrry Fnn". Tht'd prvd mtrl fr trm pprs fr *gnrtns* f ftr nglsh lt sphmrs.

Hy? nyn knw wht hppnd t Ll' Blck Smb? Hvn't sn tht ltly. Dd Prkns by t?

Since the law is deliberately vague, to wit:

"useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs"

a different tack might be stimulating: items that are not useful *primarily* as stimulators.

They might be "farm implements", components of "plastic fruit baskets", or "lovely lawn flamingos" -- appropriately enhanced to have secondary potential -- while honoring the deep sense of tradition and obliquity that Alabaman statesmen clearly treasure.

Marketing styles of the Victorian era were viscerally clever in that way.

Super. Now: about all those publicly-funded space photos NASA holds so close to its chest ....

"This is the industry's worst nightmare."

Hmmmm ... that might be Prince. Or Reznor. Selling your CD online is ... what, 5 years old? Putting tracks online to remix -- with prizes for the peer-elected winners -- now *that* was rad.

The "industry" was always great at marketing. Alas, they were also in the position of deciding what was "good enough" to market. They became the status quo, and their choices defended that. The more consolidation, the more drivel. But then hey, that's History.

And the bigger they got (sort of like Apple), the more they cozied up with The Man. (Want to sell censored tracks? No problem. Hey, c'mon to the barbecue this weekend.)

That period is over. How sweet it is.

FUD was always a Church forte.

The year without a summer was 1816.

It'll be interesting to see how results correlate with volcanic dust layers. If some of the money goes toward restoration then it's not a total lark.

What a world!

"I hear the same thing out of countless republicans. 'if you don't like it, move to canada.'"

To which the proper response is "If you don't like it, move to Argentina."

Love it or leave it?

I once saw a phone truck with the words "Ma Bell is a stingy bitch," painted on it.

AT&T has always been a snotty bitch on the telephone too (at least until the robots move in and the snotty bitches are fired). Go figure. Anyone who has to deal with the public on a daily basis knows just how charming some people can be.

IANAL but this smacks of prior restraint -- something we're likely to see more of as Corporatocracy cancels our liberty stamp. Love it or lick it.

Underground millionaire raves. The next thing.

Central WA: that's near the big bottomless pit with all the cows innit. Or wait: maybe this is it?

'03's lucky Patty didn't carve up his sorry ass.

If that's a sign of Wain's "deterioration", then I guess Picasso "detiorated" too? And Warhol was an OCD victim?

Farking psychobabble.

Unless he gets [REDACTED] in the [REDACTED] until he begs for mercy.

I hate the Gold Medal flouride the worst.

Learn this here style close and tries to do like that:

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured."

Roll-your-owners:
This is all the javascript it takes to generate your days left.
Replace "2012,11,21" with your preferred End date.
Remember: on an HTML page this needs to be inside SCRIPT tags.
If you drink a LOT of coffee, you can choose to remove the "/(1000*60*60*24))" part, then replace "days" with "milliseconds".
-------
// days left
today=new Date()
var theEnd=new Date(2012,11,21) //Month is 0-11 in JavaScript
document.write("Days left: " +Math.ceil((theEnd.getTime()-today.getTime())/(1000*60*60*24)) +"days")

Unlike Apple: Terms of service:

"All Sales Final; Downloading and Risk of Loss; Availability of Digital Content. All sales of Digital Content are final. We do not accept returns of Digital Content. Once you have purchased Digital Content, we encourage you to download it promptly and to make back-up copies of it.... You bear all risk of loss after purchase."

Keep the cakebox handy.

We have rights of assembly, and rights to seek redress of grievances. But groups working for laudable social progress are naturally viewed as pressure on the status quo. It's unfortunate that, in tense times, such groups sometimes attract intimidating surveillance. American history is chock full of examples worth studying.

Scrutiny by authorities has to be anticipated. Non-violent, legal, transparent organizations should have much less to worry about. Being tailed isn't always negative; social progress groups sometimes attract violent reprisals -- there are, after all, people who think HIV is a good thing.

While the average newcomer may get the shakes because they've never been exposed to this old, old game, it's par for the course. No social progress has ever been achieved without playing it.

CORY, according to WP's "XO-1" article the hand/foot-crank is now "optional". The power-source is a "NiMH or LiFePO4 battery removable pack."

"Several current presidential candidates have insisted that they oppose the scientific account of earth's natural history as a matter of principle."

The retro trend in US politicians (19th-century style robber-baron mentality) may be politically expedient at this juncture, but it is simply more crap leadership. Just as leading us into the dark valley of the no-tax but spend, deep-credit economy is crap leadership.

There's a special kind of schizo irony in a people bathed in the luxurious products of technology -- all made possible by the scientific mindset and reasoned approach to life -- who use their computers, phones, televisions and medical health to push for old-time religious dogma.

"Empowering" others is a nice idea. But how much do replacement batteries cost? Are they going to be available in far-flung places? Or will the "free" computers just be tossed away when the batteries fail?

I'm not certain that first-world countries exporting the bootstrap of surveillance culture to third-world countries is all that altruistic. Are these the modern equivalent of smallpox blankets?

Much-less-technologically sophisticated peoples might quickly become prey for spam, scam and spy mentalities. Computers the strengthen oppression are no gift. Consideration of the ramifications of these gifts seems apropos.

Some people don't like to share with the other children.

"chance of redemption for the all-too-plausible authoritarian alternate history that is such a sharp mirror of our sad present world."

Those who profit from the developments in our world

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/books/chapters/0923-1st-chait.html?ex=1348113600&en=4c81c1f85d3b90be&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
do so at the pleasure of the people. A cancer cannot spread if it is not fed.

However the Big Ugly package arrived six years ago, it's more productive to understand how that was used to turn on the big milking-machine that is busy bankrupting a nation.

We've been pwned.

Counterculture? What counterculture? Don't make me laugh. The Reagan and Bush years made sure that can't happen again. The "counterculture" spent those years shopping.

The American revolution is finally over. King George won.

"Media loves to create a big sensation with misleading information and it's always much less interesting when we actually dig down and find the real story."

Actually, that's what it is to be human, innit?

"If I wanted to see the worst of humanity, I'd turn on the news."

Un uh. Youtube comments.

Killed the paywall? I typed in "Savio" and got a pageful of PDFs for sale. WTF?

"But Kerouac was also tortured, death obsessed, an alcoholic who withdrew, during his last decade, into a bitter, self-contained universe...."

If you want to understand that, study the period CLOSE to understand what happened to Kerouac. Skip the art pictures and TV shows. Anybody who tries to understand him, or Burroughs or Ginsberg, without knowing what those times were like, will fail.

The 50s were a steaming pile. The rancid, bored, desperate 50s "smelled terrible: boozy, tinged with sweat and urine." Why the fuck you think they wrote what they did? Bukowski wasn't inventing, he was *describing*.

"Hey! ssst! listen!"

"What's that?"

"Shut up and pass me the 20-gauge."

What? You thought it ended with the cigarette smokers?

Didn't you learn anything in seven years?

Self-aggrandizement? Similar charges were constantly leveled against Abbie Hoffman -- a man recognized as a major 60s figure. Like Meyer, Hoffman was also arrested for "inciting to riot". Eeeeeeya, right.

40 years later, media self-policing, chain link "protest compounds", and pepper spray make it somewhat harder to get heard. Notability IS one way to get heard.

As for getting beat up on, Mario Savio (a 60s Free Speech figure) once tried to talk into a mike, but wasn't allowed to before he was literally dragged away by police (IIRC that was after his famous "odious machine" speech). The odious machine ... is back.

They need to add a definition to my dictionary, where ignorance is defined only as a noun.

Because for some people, it's a verb: they actively choose to ignore the facts. And for other people, it's even more active: they invent new "facts" to maintain their ignorance. As: the pictures of the Earth from space must be faked.

The bigger question: what encourages people to actively ignore mountains of evidence? To openly defy centuries of study? To huddle together in ignorant defiance?

Police response: what a fucking disgrace. Yet another sad day for America.

Response of hard-asses: this man came to a public forum to ask a question. He had no weapons, threatened no one. His concern, though excitedly expressed, seems genuine, supported by the facts. Your support for the uncalled-for gestapo tactics says mountains about you.

Methinks the protesting is too much. Like the Reich, punk (which even adopted some nazi emblems) was an ass-slapping for civilization that Civ obviously needed, wanted, and ecstatically enjoyed. All the mock horror, censorship and hair-pulling notwithstanding.

Alas, poor babies: the novelty is gone, and because of drug tolerance, one can never get to the same high again. Like Spinal Tap and the Bush years, this "accident" is clearly part of a subliminal horror nostalgia trip.

Is Civ on the road to recovery? Not if we can find new drugs that amplify the horrors once again. I'm optimistic about the human capacity to do just that.

Yawn. I'm so tired of people whining about what TSA does to them. If you don't like being treated like a sub-human by sub-humans, DON'T FLY!

Once people quit showing up at the airport to be harassed, intimidated, and humiliated, the always-marginal airline industry will quickly insist on an end to the fashionable pretension that anything *real* is being accomplished by passive submission to bureaucratic insanity.

On the other hand, the cro-magnon stupidity of the industry (sorry cro-magnons, what I meant was ...) will continue to drive listeners away from a model based in usury and fashion, toward a new model that's already rewarding artists and listeners.

As a result, pop music-making will move away from mass-market, star-based, promoted insipidity towards the inventive, garage originality which marked many of its finest moments.

Not as quick as an asteroid, but less bloody.

"Winnetou is the quintessential German national hero, a paragon of virtue, a nature freak, a romantic, a pacifist at heart"

We used to have many of those here in America -- where we now *love* wild horses and our own (fictional) indians and feed (real) indians shit. And so, we've proven that you can do worse. Many, many times.

Ever been in a busy indian casino? Great place to find extras for a zombie movie.

For $10, I'll get the 20-cent pencil and press twice as hard.

Might as well get some use out of those gym hours making myself burly. That'll also come in handy when careless spenders force prices so high that I have to jump their fences to feed myself.

Has anyone heard anything about a Life-Ray???

Canada actually did build a flying saucer, the Avrocar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avrocar

As for the radios, Gleason was an avid shortwave-radio listener.
http://geocities.com/w8jyz/Gleason.pdf
maybe trying to hear his dozens of albums being played somewhere.

He was not a ham radio operator like Barry Goldwater or Andy Devine.

Young folks smell like fast food & iPod plastic. But yo, dawgs - ya mamas likes how we smell. Word up.

Gosh. I wonder if that'd work at Starbucks.
"Double" *sob* "tall caramel" *sob* "macchiato"

Worth a try I guess ... the tip I read about the short cappuccino works.

So, then. The self-fulfilling communist prophecies about capitalists are coming true. Liberty is dead. Long live liberty.

That was a very attractive hairstyle for 1966.

Anyway: no keyboards! and ... where are my banana plugs!

You said "recusing", I think you meant "rescuing".

Or maybe that was just your wry way of suggesting Tim isn't fit to practice the law. Although I'm sure he's just as good as many judges.

If I had legs like that, I'd want to share too!

Re Sri Lanka anti-gay article:
As a Buddhist country, we have to think whether these things are suitable for our country.

Notice how they've played a card from the fundy game here in the US. (Just as the nazis learned from our reservation system. Hey, at least they're paying attention.)

Of course, Buddhism has nothing to say about "these things"; there's no "special" 8-fold way; nirvana doesn't discriminate. Too often spiritual authority is used as a wedge. Shit on a stick.

Yeah, hey: there are a bunch of people coming up from the city next week: they want to dig up your great-grandma and put her in a refrigerator case in the local art show.

You won't mind, right?

Well then. I say: go ahead and create your tiered network. This one has always been one-dimensional anyways. So we'll just create another one at a 90-degree angle to this one. Call it The Counternet. It will reject all packets from the Internet. It will have no dotcom whatever. It will have no ISP bottleneck/snoop points.

And then you'll know what happens whn y fck strngr n th ss.

Aha, the old "hey hairy ram" fix.

It's a hoary old thang. Remember using that in the early days of S-100 bus-planes. With hundreds of RAM chips onboard, it was the only way to fix those intermittent glitches. Spose it was inevitable that it worked its way into avionics.

Since water has already been "burned", that direction leads nowhere. (Apart from the unrealized promise of fusion.)

We've been using up the easily combustible energy sources ... and created problems that way. So, inventors and researchers, we don't need more ways to "combust" stored energy, we need more ways to collect and store ambient (solar, wind, etc.) energy. While combustion was good for Ook (except when his body hair caught fire), hopefully we can avoid creating new ways to do that.

No doubt the dumb-ass pinheads that wrote the DMCA get a big chuckle out of all the consternation they've created with their retarded screed.

How many more years of tempests in a bathroom (and other decloseting media) will it take to get some intelligence back in D.C.?

If you don't want to be a guinea pig in the utter and complete submission game -- divorced from all your traditional rights, in the name of freedom -- don't fly.

Airlines have operated on thin margins for decades. If revenues dropped precipitously, attitudes would change. So long as people submit to these procedures, there's no reason to review and change them.

Your choice, your vote.

Wow! I'm proud that we're so much more advanced than the People's Republic ... whatever they do.

Punishment is reward. Torture is love. Kibbles are food.