Cranezilla --Mark Crane's collection of rarely annotated links

Mr. Root also found that he had to make the best of the short breaks, usually just five or 10 minutes, that contestants get each hour. He perfected power naps and ate his fruits and nuts. Early on, he hit on a signature gimmick: sunglasses that he kept on day and night. That so spooked one contestant that she ran from the car screaming that Mr. Root was an alien.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

"I absolutely love this place. As exciting as this job in Nevada will be, I can't imagine ever working at a place as professionally rewarding as this," he said.
Since taking the helm in July 1988, Romesburg has transformed UVSC from a two-year technical school to a state college that offers about 23 bachelor's degrees. Enrollment has more than tripled and the campus has doubled in size under his watch.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

It's goodbye Happy Valley, hello Sin City for Utah's most senior college president, Kerry Romesburg.
Romesburg announced late Tuesday that he is stepping down after 14 years at Utah Valley State College in Orem to accept the top post at Nevada State College, a new school opening this fall in Henderson just outside Las Vegas.
News of the 57-year-old's departure may shock some in Utah's higher education ranks. Romesburg, too, was surprised when late Tuesday he was offered the position a day after interviewing for it and weeks before finalists were supposed to be announced.
"I'm usually not at a loss for words, but I don't know what to say. This is completely unexpected and very flattering," Romesburg told The Salt Lake Tribune after learning he was picked as "top choice" from a pool of five semi-finalists.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

Utah has been singled out by the Sierra Club. In a good way.
The national environmental organization named the Utah Transit Authority's TRAX light-rail system and planned commuter rail line as examples of smart transportation projects in an anti-sprawl report released Tuesday.
The annual report, titled "Smart Choices, Less Traffic," notes that with a daily ridership of about 22,000 -- 9,000 above original projections -- TRAX is already playing a significant role in easing congestion and improving air quality along the Wasatch Front.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

AT&T Corp. wanted to get rid of The Salt Lake Tribune by selling it to the LDS Church-owned Deseret News because of "serious threats to AT&T's political interests in the state," according to court documents unsealed Tuesday.
The "great outcome" of such a sale, wrote AT&T Broadband President Leo J. Hindery Jr. to AT&T board member John C. Malone, would be "the good will we will have preserved with the Mormon church and the political leadership of the state."
The July 1999 memo to Malone was an effort to win his support of the Deseret News' planned purchase of The Tribune for $175 million. Two years earlier, Malone had promised the family that owned The Tribune he would support their bid to buy the newspaper back Aug. 1, 2002. The McCarthey family intends to exercise that contested bid, the subject of a federal lawsuit, at one minute past midnight tonight.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

The adjustable seat makes a huge difference in my ability to completely become one with the computer. Considering adding accessories to enhance my digital experience such as a tube to supply a continuous stream of Mountain Dew and maybe a urnal. Next I'll be working on submerging my entire body in a vat of hot salsa along with an automatic chip dispenser.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

The U.S. military has been one of the earliest institutions to both fear and see the possibilities in swarming. John Arquilla co-authored "Swarming and the Future of Conflict" two years ago for the think tank Rand Corp. and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He sees swarming -- "a deliberately structured, coordinated, strategic way to strike from all directions" -- as spearheading a revolution in military affairs.
"The military has much to learn from Critical Mass," he writes in an e-mail. "I used to go up to San Francisco regularly to see this leaderless swarm of bicyclists bring traffic to a complete halt for two hours. Once I asked a police sergeant, as he stood observing by the Ferry Building, what he was going to do about this. He shrugged his shoulders and asked back, 'What would you have me do?' "

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

The difference was the amazing speed with which people could swarm. It created not only a new kind of protest, but a new kind of protester. "It's a great way to get people who are in offices involved," Christina Bautisto, who works in Manila's financial district, said of her fellow professionals. "They don't have to spend all day protesting. They just get a message telling them when it's starting, and then they take the elevator down to the street. They can be seen, scream a little and then go back to work."

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

ev assumed that blogger had become something bigger than the sum of its parts (or the sum of its creators) and in that, he was right. where he was wrong was when he convinced the congregation that his own motivations for keeping blogger alive were out of divine goodwill. the way he handled things is not the way someone handles a work of charity, it was like someone snatching a baton and then running on past all his teammates all the way to the finish line. as much as he may sincerely thank them later on for their help, it's hard to find it very sincere given the circumstances.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

in the last month of "the old pyra," the group of five people who worked for the company had mutually agreed that we would continue working, even without pay, in the hopes that some funding would come through. when that didn't happen, people began to trickle off (either leaving voluntarily or being let go), yet the CEO stayed on. in my opinion (and in the opinion of some others, if i recall correctly) blogger should have been kept alive, but abandoned as far as it being considered a money-making project or a focus of a company's resources. while ev and meg had always made the real decisions for the company, everyone had always had some kind of say in things, and when it came to a question like, "who gets to keep the baby?" one would think that a democratic ideal should have been of more importance than ever before.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

Oh wait, perhaps the "old boss" you're referring to is someone else? The one whom, two months ago, Pyra paid a sum of cash multiple times what it owes you, in order to end a year-long legal dispute that was the number one drain on this struggling company of cash (many, many times what we owe you was paid in legal fees), as well as time and energy (which could have went to producing a better service and becoming more sustainable) since you guys left -- despite this person having far more to gain than almost anyone should the company succeed? A legal dispute, by the way, based on claims which, unlike yours, we believe were not legitimate -- but, which, nonetheless, we had to settle because the company simply couldn't afford the cost of fighting it. If you care about the money (and I know you don't), you might wonder how long ago we could have paid you if not for that nightmare.

For some reason, I have a feeling that's probably not the breach of ethics you're talking about, though.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

Scholars like Tyler Cowen, Grant McCracken, and James Twitchell have begun laying the foundations of a libertarian cultural theory, and Chris Sciabarra has shown magnificent disregard for the taboo against deploying the ideas of leftist thinkers in libertarian arguments. But there's still a lot of work to be done. As Robert Nozick realized, it is not enough for us to show that a free society is just, or efficient. We must make it inspiring as well. We have at hand all the intellectual resources needed to develop a program of cultural analysis which eschews both the bromides of the postmarxists and the curmudgeonly jeremiads of the conservative right. All that remains is to deploy them.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |

Unlike "Sixth Sense," you're much too aware of the manipulation: the painstaking color palette, the religious iconography built into the production design and, most of all, the Hindu notion of "no coincidences" -- everything that happens plotwise is a sign, and these signs will resonate in later scenes.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 30, 2002 |

The industry has scalped along by repackaging baby boomer hits in CD format, while an underground which it never understood and couldn't control thrived. Closing down alternative promotion channels such as microbroadcasting - which actually helps record sales - ensures that the RIAA's shell game can continue a little longer.

But it's only when there's enough support for the notion that popular culture belongs to us, - and that to us as a society it really, really matters and that constitutional protection from the pigopolists, isn't just an option, but a necessity - that we'll be safe

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 29, 2002 |

"I am mining people," he said. "Never give up. Never give up."

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 29, 2002 |

"What took you guys so long?" the miners said when they spoke to rescuers for the first time. They reportedly asked for chewing tobacco and beer — which doctors wouldn't allow. And they were ravenously hungry.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 29, 2002 |

I plugged in the digital video camera (editing be damned!) and it Just Worked. I built wget and it Just Worked. I downloaded VM and it Just Worked. I plugged in a three-button mouse and it Just Worked.
I came to realize something: I'd been with Microsoft for so long, who are complacent and hoard their customers, that I'd forgotten what it's like to use an operating system built by people who want it to cooperate with the rest of the world. It's good.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, July 27, 2002 |

Enter the iBook. One sleek and sexy 700MHz iBook with a combo drive arrived on Wednesday. I resolved not to lose time by diddling around installing and configuring and learning how to drive it. I would put that off until the evening. I had chapters to edit!
That lasted fifteen minutes. It was just beckoning to me, full of milky white goodness. I couldn't resist.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, July 27, 2002 |

Police described Johnson as a local transient who sometimes slept in the factory. Ernie Williamson said he had only known Johnson a few days and that his roommate and Johnson were up late drinking the night before. He said Johnson was sleeping on the couch Friday morning.
Authorities said Cassandra was in the kitchen around 7:30 a.m. with her father. Williamson said he was about to pour his daughter a bowl of cereal and left the room briefly to go the bathroom. When he returned, the girl, barefoot and dressed in a white nightgown, had disappeared.
The father said he also noticed that Johnson was gone. About a half-hour later, Williamson said, Johnson returned to the house, wet and muddy, and said he had been swimming in the nearby river. Police began questioning him soon after he returned.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, July 27, 2002 |

The final driver of all this is low risk. What do you have to lose by putting your old ice skates up for sale on eBay? Almost nothing. The buyer pays for shipping, controlling the most powerful variable. Take everything you own but no longer need and put it up for sale on some auction site RIGHT NOW. We'll end the recession tomorrow

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 26, 2002 |

What they don't get, and what real Internet enthusiasts have been saying since AOL took off in the early 90's, is that a company like AOL never had a future. AOL was a training ground. An introduction to the Internet for people who didn't know how to deal with ftp protocols. None of us thought it could last, because once the technological barriers to entry for the Internet had been lowered, no one would need AOL's simplistic interface or it's child-safe, digital content wading pools. People would want to get on the *real* Internet, using real browsers and email programs.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 26, 2002 |

What I wrote was that AOL's purchase of Time/Warner heralded the end of the dot.com bubble. AOL was cashing in its casino chips. And just like the gambler who trades in his colored plastic disks for real cash, AOL's Steve Case understood that his run was over and that it was time to trade in his stock certificates for those of a company that had genuine assets.

The New York Times refused to run the piece. (I did get the "kill" fee.) They told me I was misreading the landscape to such an extent that for them to publish such a view would be irresponsible. See, all the experts - at least all the experts who the Times was listening to - believed that the AOL purchase of Time/Warner indicated "new" media's domination of of "old" media. Interactivity would take over. Time/Warner's only hope of getting in the game was to be absorbed by a new media company.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 26, 2002 |

so i didn't lose my job because i was a bad employee, but because the business never caught on and then eventually failed. i accepted it, recognizing that these things happen, but what happened in the last days was what really soured me: the CEO decided to stay on, to take care of the website and nurse it back to health. and that certainly seems noble in and of itself, but he was totally neglecting the fact that he had already laid off or let go all the colleagues who had helped him to build that very website. (the co-founder actually resigned because the CEO wouldn't agree to step down from his throne and help to restructure the direction of the company on a more equal level.)
it was mainly an empathic experience for me.. after all, i hadn't been around since the beginning; the company had been around for a little bit less than a year when i arrived in the city to take a job there. it just bothered me seeing my former co-workers so tossed out and neglected in that way. he was actually going to go on with the company alone, forcing himself (whether intentional or not) into the role of the martyr. all the while, he owed the exiled team a bunch of money in unpaid wages and accrued vacation time. i've yet to be paid, in fact, and apparently he's got four or five new employees with plans to hire more. somebody's getting paid, it's just not me.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 26, 2002 |

"You can go down an alley that's not paved, and where women are selling rice on the corner, and there's an Internet cafe," said Anthony Swezey, the brother of William Swezey and manager of the Accra office. He said the company chose Ghana because it is safe and the government is democratic and has been stable for 20 years. And, of course, because labor in Ghana is far cheaper than in the United States.
Data Management workers said they were surprised — but grateful — for New Yorkers' apparent willingness to break the law.
"They know the rules and they still are always violating them," Ms. Mensah said. "Maybe they don't understand simple instructions. But they have to keep doing it, because it's how we make our money."

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 26, 2002 |

Report: Gen X Irony, Cynicism May Be Permanently Obsolete
AUSTIN, TX— According to Generation X sources, the recent attack on America may have rendered cynicism and irony permanently obsolete. "Remember the day after the attack, when all the senators were singing 'God Bless America,' arm-in-arm?" asked Dave Holt, 29. "Normally, I'd make some sarcastic wisecrack about something like that. But this time, I was deeply moved." Added Holt: "This earnestness can't last forever. Can it?"

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, July 25, 2002 |

VOLUME 31 ISSUE 23 — 8 JULY 1997
Stock Market 'Best Since 1928,' Say Investors
NEW YORK—Wall Street insiders are hailing the current bull market as the best since 1928, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. "The Dow is on an unstoppable rocket-ship ride into the outer stratosphere of fiscal health and prosperity," H&R Block broker Phillip Guyer said. "I see no reason why this upward trend shouldn't continue forever. To celebrate, I think I'll buy myself one of those newfangled horseless automobiles—on credit!"

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, July 25, 2002 |

Family Upgrades To Shells & Cheese
MOBILE, AL— After years of eating regular Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, the Conroy family upgraded Monday to the higher-end Velveeta Shells & Cheese. "We've finally arrived," said wife Beverly Conroy while serving up a heaping bowl of the delicacy, made possible by husband Corey's 35-cent raise at the local tile factory. "It's nothing but the finest processed instant foods for us from now on." Pending sensible budgeting, the family hopes to move up from Hydrox cookies to Oreos by Augus

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, July 25, 2002 |

"We say people act this way because the brain is hard-wired to cooperate -- it associates cooperation with reward," said Gregory Berns, a professor at the Emory University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
During their experiments, Berns and the Emory team discovered that when pairs of volunteers cooperated with one another, the regions of the brain known as reward circuits were activated.
"These are the same regions of the brain that are activated when certain drugs are taken, or when you receive an unexpected sum of money," Berns said.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 24, 2002 |

If you are going to go the IRC rout then you should probably look on EFNet for MP3 channels. Just do a "/list mp3" in your IRC client and you'll get a list of every non-hidden channel that has MP3 in the name or subject. Enter the channels that you think might be of the genre you're looking for and watch for site ads and even ask the other users if they know where to find the song that you are looking for.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 23, 2002 |

To be fair (if only for a moment), back in the early 1990s, Saudi Arabia was known as our unsavory but solid longtime ally against communism, not as the gang of rich fascists who spawned Al Qaeda and are now obstructing our war against it. But until the identity of the Harken purchaser is revealed, probing the issue will be a no-lose situation for the Democrats. They can ask whether George Bush’s fortune has its roots in Arab oil money. They can ask whether the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International was involved. They can ask why it was that the entire bin Laden clan was allowed to be flown out of the country in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. They won’t accuse Bush of intentionally bungling the war on terror to please the Saudis. But they may note that it was tragic that, at a time when thousands of Americans were murdered by extremists whose only ultimate means of support was oil, we had an oil man in the White House.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 23, 2002 |

not even bad prose can obscure that the corporate scandals are hatching a catastrophe for Republicans. They will probably destroy this administration. Let’s dispose of the red herrings first. The President’s sale of $850,000 in Harken Energy stock, just days before it tanked in 1990, is not going to get him in trouble for insider trading. Yes, his sale came just eight days before Harken announced a weak quarter–but for an insider-trading rap to be proved, it must be shown that President Bush had "material information." He is not criminally culpable for having known, as a board member, that his company was spiraling down the toilet. And, yes, the stock’s value fell from $4 a share when he sold it to a dollar and change just weeks later. But it also later rose to $8. Harken see-sawed enough that it will never be certain whether Bush bailed out or "sold into good news," as his spokeswoman Karen Hughes has always insisted.
What kills the President is that every time Harken comes up, Democrats get to retell the story of how he made his money. And this, basically, is the story of the spectacular unfairness with which moneymaking opportunities are lavished on the politically connected. It is the story of a man who has been rewarded for repeated failures by having money shot at him through a fire hose. It is the story of a man who talks with a straight face about having "earned" a fortune of tens of millions of dollars, without

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 23, 2002 |

One of my favorite concepts in anthropology is that of the polite fiction. It's something nobody believes, but we all pretend to because it makes life so much easier. My favorite example was of a Pygmy couple. Pygmy divorce involves quite literally breaking up the home: the couple tears apart their house (it's easy - the houses are made of leaves) and once it's down, the union is dissolved. One anthropologist was watching a long-married couple have a fight. It escalated until the wife threatened to leave, and the husband yelled something along the lines of "Fine!" and there was nothing the wife could do but start tearing down the house. She began tearing the roof off, clearly miserable. The husband looked wretched too, but at this point neither could back down without losing face and by now the whole village was watching.

Finally, the husband called out the Pygmy equivalent of "You're right, honey! The roof is dirty! It'll look much better once we get those leaves washed!" The two of them started carrying leaves down to the river, soon with the help of the whole village, and then washed and rebuilt the whole roof. When the anthropologist later discreetly asked how often one washes the roof, everyone looked at him like he was a complete doofus.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 23, 2002 |

XML Web services technologies, specifically XML, SOAP and WSDL, are the W3C approved heirs to HTML and HTTP, the technologies that made the Web go boom. The salient point for non-programmers about XML Web services is that such systems are typically "loosely-coupled." For example, on the loosely-coupled World Wide Web, any Web browser can be pointed at any Web site. XML Web service systems including Muse.Net don't require calling ahead for reservations, but rather encourage spontaneous rendezvous and exchanges.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 23, 2002 |

Damn, you're freaks, but I like it.
Shucks, thanks. That somewhat compensates for loved ones gazing askant with pity when we blearily explain, "We're building a loosely-coupled, XML Web service derived Internet digital media supply chain for the people. It's inevitable you know."

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 23, 2002 |

If successful, it could help speed the death of the RIAA. If enough people could stream non-RIAA music, and enough listeners could buy self-published music, there wouldn't be a need for the RIAA control freaks to touch music. We could route around the damage they cause fairly easily and promote a new way of conducting online music business on our collective terms instead of theirs.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 23, 2002 |

In an alarming episode that would leave Allen uninjured but badly shaken, the three robbers surrounded Allen at his apartment door, sprayed his jacket with gasoline and threatened to set him on fire unless he parted with his belongings, including the keys to his Mercedes Benz. No one has yet been arrested. Allen said the value of the stolen jewelry was closer to $75,000.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 23, 2002 |

$8 Million in Diamonds Stolen in Microwave
In the Netherlands, a 25-year-old man calmly walked out of the offices of Amsterdam's Gassan Diamonds carrying a box stuffed with uninsured diamonds. He had arrived at the office with the box at the start of the working day, saying it contained a microwave oven. Benno Leeser, director of the 56-year-old family-run firm said, "He came with a microwave in the box, but he left with the diamonds." The suspect, said to be a former army cook who had worked for the firm since April, has vanished without a trace.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 23, 2002 |

This is a circuit that I've build a few years ago for a friend, who used it in combination with the BLY88 amplifier to obtain 20 W output power. From the notes that I made at the original schematic, it worked fine with a SWR of 1 : 1.05 (quite normal at my place with my antenna).

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 22, 2002 |

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said the man, identified as Cho, sent a form letter reading: "I am working with a pornography business, and I have secured evidence that you committed adultery. Unless you send 1 million won to me, I will publicize it." He sent the letter to over 250 business executives, police said.
According to the police, the suspect acquired profiles of executives from the Korea Stock Exchange's Internet Web site and mailed the letter to randomly selected recipients. After being cabled 9 million won ($7,500) from nine executives, Cho spent the money on entertainment and drinking.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 22, 2002 |

The families of the three men were devastated and baffled by their deaths - Waterhouse and Marten in 1993 and Botts in 1999 - all before chronic wasting disease was known to exist in Wisconsin's deer herd.
"Did hunting kill my dad? Did deer kill him?" asked Waterhouse's son, Gary. "If you'd have taken deer hunting away from him, that would have been the end of him. . . . Maybe the deer killed him. I don't know."
Raising more suspicion, however, is the fact that some of the meat served at the wild game feasts was elk and deer from Western states - including Colorado, where chronic wasting disease has been endemic for decades.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 22, 2002 |

And yet Mark Borchardt is the embodiment of a lonely, rejected, dedicated artist. No poet in a Paris garret has ever been more determined to succeed. To find privacy while writing his screenplays, he drives his old beater to the parking lot of the local commuter airport and composes on a yellow legal pad. To support himself, he delivers the Wall Street Journal before dawn and vacuums the carpets in a mausoleum. He has inspired the loyalty of his friends and crew members, and his girlfriend observes that if he accomplishes 25 percent of what he hopes to do, "that'll be more than most people do."

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 19, 2002 |

After a few hours of bumper gazing, I came across my favorite. It was a cartoon drawing of a monkey that read, "I fling poo."

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 19, 2002 |

"The integrity of the grading system has to be protected," he said. "Otherwise, ultimately you could undermine the value of a degree from the university."

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 19, 2002 |

This morning, unfortunately, was a little less wonderful. Last week I spilled a little bit of spaghetti sauce on my new khaki pants. I pulled out Scott's spray and wash (which was a stick, incidentally), rubbed it over the stain as the directions indicated, and washed them. Well, this morning, while ironing my pants I noticed that yes, indeed, the stain had been removed, but so had a large portion of the fabric. The Spray and Wash seems to have eaten through the fabric of my khakis. So, this evening Michael and I will head to Lazarus to find a replacement pair.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 19, 2002 |

In any case, some educators, technology experts and community organizers say the challenge is more complex than providing equipment, Internet connections and basic training. What young people need, they say, is help in developing fluency with advanced computer hardware and software.
"Access is not enough," said Mitchel Resnick, associate professor of learning research at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology's Media Laboratory. "Access is just a starting point."
In 1993, with money from the Intel Corporation, Professor Resnick helped establish the first site of what is today an international network of 50 Computer Clubhouses, including the New Mexico center that Dennis visits at least three times a week. The clubhouses are places where boys and girls, 8 to 18, can "really feel in charge of the technology," Professor Resnick said.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 19, 2002 |

Our focus is rumsrpinga casualty Faron Yoder. When we meet him he is trying to quit using "crank" - aka crystal methamphetamine - to become a preacher like his father. But his addiction spirals and leads to dealing, until he's busted and must choose whether to accept his punishment and go to jail for life, or to turn police informant and join the church for life. Scarcely surviving that, he falls in love with an Amish girl - beautiful Emma Miller, age 16. But she decides to move to Florida, and once more he faces the dilemma of which life to choose. To be American or to be Amish. To be a free individual without a community, or to be a part of a strong community without an individual identity.

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, July 18, 2002 |

They are even vegetarians. After all, meat requires an animal's death. They will eat seafood. Morgan's rationale is that if she were hungry, she could kill a fish, or a shrimp, but she would starve to death before she could kill a cow, a pig or a chicken.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 17, 2002 |

'Scrubs' -- Official Soundtrack

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 17, 2002 |

The Search and Replace Regular Expression Wizard is an application we made to help you create, understand, and debug Regular Expressions used by our Search and Replace windows egrep utility. The wizard allows you to construct new expressions, or modify existing ones, using a term-by-term approach. You can visualize the effect of each term in a sample text you can paste into the program from the windows clipboard or retrieve from a file on disk. The effect of specific terms is presented in-context, using colors to distinguish the current term from other parts of the overall expression. 'Search' and 'Replace' Expressions are constructed/ examined in separate screens of the Wizard so you can work on each part semi-independent of the other. You can move back & forth between the Wizard screens to make adjustments or experiment. The sample text can also be changed at any point by returning to the starting screen. When you are satisfied, the final expressions can be inserted automatically in the respective fields in the Search and Replace main program dialog (if Search and Replace is running).

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 17, 2002 |

I stared at the graph of my performance, which Carmichael and his colleagues had printed out for me. I had managed to generate 470 watts for just 10 seconds. That's about the average for Armstrong over the course of a 4-hour ride.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 17, 2002 |

I was seriously winded within 2 minutes. My legs were burning within 5. I remember watching four men and women climbing a steep rock face and rappelling down. They waved at me, but I was far too light-headed to risk lifting an arm from the handlebars. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. (I managed to continue for 8 minutes and 32 seconds. Naively, I had asked Carmichael what I should do when I reached the top. "You won't be seeing the top," he had said.) I turned the bike around and met up with Carmichael, and we coasted most of the way back to the office. Then we looked at my data: I had generated an average of 200 watts on the test, and had climbed exactly one mile. Carmichael told me that a decent pro cyclist would have put out at least 400 watts, and that the stragglers at the end of the peloton (known as the gruppetto) would clock in at perhaps 350. Armstrong — in top Tour shape — would have come close to 500.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 17, 2002 |

Monday's deal signaled an end to the weeklong takeover, which featured a typical tactic with a new twist: Young men frequently resort to kidnapping in the oil-rich Niger Delta, but the peaceful, all-women protest was unprecedented.
The unarmed women, some with babies bound to their backs, sang and danced on the docks at the ChevronTexaco facility when they learned the company had offered to hire at least 25 villagers and to build schools and other amenities. But they said they would wait until the verbal agreement was put in writing and signed before leaving the Escravos facility.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 16, 2002 |

That's the way hacking is. It isn't like with physics, where you might find the philosopher's stone, the secret, the little equation. With computer science, it's technical, physical. It's worldly.
If you tell people you're a mathematician they say, "I don't like math." And then there's nothing more to say. If you say you're a computer scientist, they're always full of questions: "What computer should I buy? What stocks should I get?" I like that.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 16, 2002 |

We had a great liberty to basically be about technoculture, and at the same time we could run stuff that had nothing to do with the main theme of our magazine, which Wired could never do. When we started Mondo, Eric Gullichsen brought around these Japanese magazines and pointed out that Japanese magazines included everything. They’d have serious political articles, children’s stories, pornography, anything you could possibly imagine... It was every magazine in America and every theme they’d have packed into one magazine and they wouldn’t differentiate. Which to me is sort of ideal.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 16, 2002 |

RU: Actually, I say that all the time in public interviews, "We made it all up." Which in a sense is true -- some of it we made up and some of it we didn’t. Mondo 2000 clearly wasn’t journalism in the conventional sense. It was mostly composed of interviews, very subjective, really dedicated to people speaking in their own voice. It was very playful and very surrealistic. I never really wanted to do journalism -- I do now because I have to to make a living. And we do it at Thresher, I guess because it’s become a habit now. To say we made it all up is kind of flippant, but we weren’t concerned with responsibility or credibility. We were more concerned with creating a sense of excitement and energy and a sense of belonging to the next wave of culture. And we were concerned with making people laugh.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 16, 2002 |

Releasing OSX for x86 would most certainly kill Apple's hardware business. However, if they could convince Dell to sell Dell branded Apple machines, they'd gain a ton of marketshare.

Dell's acheived the holy grail of advertising. When most hear the words "new computer", they think Dell. If Dell offered a choice of OSX or Windows when buying a machine, it most certainly would be good for Apple. Dell's advertising campaigns are hugely successful, despite my overwhelming hatred for that "Dude, you're getting a Dell" guy.

By doing something like this, Apple maintains their hardware business, AND gets a major pc manufacturer to sell products that run OSX.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 15, 2002 |

Oh yeah, the hacker crowd has fully embraced Mac OS X. I saw many Titanium Powerbooks, all running OS X.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 15, 2002 |

Closer examination revealed the visitors were using the electricity socket used to light up the Madonna to charge their mobile phone.

However, parish priest Don Antonio Colombo says there is no question of the pair being barred entry in future.

"They come here because they don't have a house," he said.

"The church is their house and letting them charge their mobile phone is a bit like giving them a glass of water."

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 15, 2002 |

He would not say how much money is required.
“Investors see risk in investing in a new product like this,” Manohar said. “Nobody has built a computer for the rural and poor people. Also, there is no license for the hardware or software. That is probably the reason for their hesitation.”

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 15, 2002 |

Went to Texas, and now work in the IT department of the largest law firm in the state (and wouldn't be surprised if we're soon the largest in the nation). And make a helluva lot more than that for a little coding and a lot of goofing off. And they still think that I get things done amazingly fast.

Life is good.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, July 13, 2002 |

Funny thing is that I actually dig driving a forklift. Also dig the folks I work with. Also like the Company. Never been treated so well by a firm. Would feel truly sad to leave. Kinda trapped at $60K. Wierd, huh...? Wonder how many folks out there feel trapped in their jobs because they simply like where they are, enjoy the people, --even though they could leave and make a substantially higher wage. I'd lay odds that it's more than a few.)

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, July 13, 2002 |

I'm a wage slave in Silicon Valley. I make 38k as a lab tech plus tuition reimbursement for my undergrad degree.

Oh, all that and thousands and thousands of completely worthless stock options...

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, July 13, 2002 |

“You will, in effect, turn the school system over to Katie Sierra and other students,” Gary Pullin said. “Our educators must be allowed to provide a thorough and efficient education to every student, in a safe and orderly environment.”

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, July 13, 2002 |

MAIN GENRES
These are the main styles of electronic music. They're almost like "root genres". You'll see what i mean in a minute.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, July 13, 2002 |

Spitzer lives in Brooklyn, New York, and manages her business completely from her 12-inch iBook.
The products are designed in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and Quark's QuarkXPress layout tool. Spitzer designed her e-commerce site on a Mac and operates it from the iBook. All the accounting is done in Myob's AccountEdge.
She dreamed up the "no time" phrase while working on a bus-shelter art installation in a busy business district and studying at the Rhode Island School of Design.

# posted by craniac @ Saturday, July 13, 2002 |

The painting is then rescanned into the computer. Greenfield-Sanders chooses the area she is interested in, enlarges it and prints it out as a giant mosaic of tiles.
The tiles are stitched to canvas, which can be up to five or six feet wide. Greenfield-Sanders paints over the image in oil paint, highlighting features like a boy's shirt or a beach ball.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 12, 2002 |

best thing i ever saw was a brand new truck that had been painted all over with the garden of eden. on the back panel was jesus tenderly holding the owner's previous pickup in his arms. things like that make the world a wonderful place.

the world would be really boring with plain shoes and plain vehicles. kooky people are fun.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 12, 2002 |

I normally handle a digicam like an automatic weapon: just spray and trust that one of the bullets hit someone naughty in the gut

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 12, 2002 |

The WorkPad z50 is my third CE device, and each one keeps getting larger. Now, most of what I want in a CE device is instant on and the ability to edit MS Word documents (which you get after converting the documents to Pocket Word format). For this, CE devices work great.

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, July 11, 2002 |

"Man-bunting is disgraceful," Szatmary said. "It's legal, but you're going to hear it from the crowd. It's an honor thing."

# posted by craniac @ Thursday, July 11, 2002 |

GM took a radically different approach. Realizing that a fuel cell system could allow for an utterly new shape, the designers tossed out the design requirements of a conventional engine and devised a car from scratch. Once GM walked through that door, a universe of possibilities opened up; except for the familiar four wheels, the AUTOnomy bears almost no resemblance to a traditional auto. The implications go way beyond design and deep into the economics of manufacturing. By replacing most of the hardware in today's cars with wires and circuits that will be standard across multiple models, the AUTOnomy will allow GM to streamline its production system and drastically cut costs. That's the trick that might make the fuel cell car a reality in eight years instead of 30. Moreover, GM sees this as a way to extend car ownership to the 88 percent of the world's population that can't afford one today, opening the door to exponential increases in profits. It turns out that concentrating on the car, instead of just on the fuel cell, makes all the difference. And nobody is more surprised than General Motors.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 10, 2002 |

Tested with certain phones

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 09, 2002 |

AT&T won't be able to use that phone. The 5160 is what AT&T uses, the
5160 & 5120 are both TDMA but AT&T uses 1900 MHz in most of there
digital areas where the carriers using 5120s use 800 MHz. The 5160 has
1900 & 800 MHz digital and 800 MHz analog capabilities. The 5120 only
has 800 digital & 800 analog. Call AT&T and find out from them which
area you are in if you are in 800 MHZ AT&T area it may work.
To check to see which system the phone is picking up simply dial 611
call, and listen there should be a message form the provider.
Programing code is *#639# enter the system ID which here in MD is 00047
(it's different in every region) then hit OK, it will ask for the
cellular phone #, enter it and hit OK.
Good Luck
Christina
All 4 CEll


In article ,
"Sascha Salzbrenner" wrote:
> Hi I just bought a nokia 5120 for about $50.00, but there is one minor
> problem, no one can get into it to program it. I was told that the only way
> I could use it was if I called AT&T and got them to activate it for me.
> It's a good phone....or at least I think so, and if anyone out ther knows
> how to get into it please let me know. Thanks!
>
> PS: I have allready tried the *#3001#12345# and it doesnt work, I know it's
> going to be some whacky code of some

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 09, 2002 |

The phone needs to be unlocked so that any network sim card can be put in
there, to do this you need a data cable (MBUS) and unlocking software or
just get someone else with these to do it for you. Bear in mind that the new
versions of some nokias cannot be unlocked yet or are very difficult to
unlock.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 09, 2002 |

New experiments by NIMH grantee Alan Hobson, M.D., Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., and colleagues at Harvard University show that a midday snooze reverses information overload and that a 20 percent overnight improvement in learning a motor skill is largely traceable to a late stage of sleep that some early risers might be missing.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 08, 2002 |

Look. If a cantankerous old cuss is on our political side, we love him to death as a colorful character, a trove of folksy wisdom, a true bit of Americana. If he isn't, we revile him as a senile old fool who ought to be retired. That's partisan politics. That's socially constructed reality. That's my MeFi!

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 08, 2002 |

The gist of the glycemic-index idea is that the longer it takes the carbohydrates to be digested, the lesser the impact on blood sugar and insulin and the healthier the food. Those foods with the highest rating on the glycemic index are some simple sugars, starches and anything made from flour. Green vegetables, beans and whole grains cause a much slower rise in blood sugar because they have fiber, a nondigestible carbohydrate, which slows down digestion and lowers the glycemic index. Protein and fat serve the same purpose, which implies that eating fat can be beneficial, a notion that is still unacceptable. And the glycemic-index concept implies that a primary cause of Syndrome X, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity is the long-term damage caused by the repeated surges of insulin that come from eating starches and refined carbohydrates. This suggests a kind of unified field theory for these chronic diseases, but not one that coexists easily with the low-fat doctrine.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 08, 2002 |

An economist pulled him aside, he said, and gave him a lesson on market disincentives to healthy eating: ''He said if you create a new market with a brand-new manufactured food, give it a brand-new fancy name, put a big advertising budget behind it, you can have a market all to yourself and force your competitors to catch up. You can't do that with fruits and vegetables. It's harder to differentiate an apple from an apple.''

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 08, 2002 |

In the intervening years, the N.I.H. spent several hundred million dollars trying to demonstrate a connection between eating fat and getting heart disease and, despite what we might think, it failed. Five major studies revealed no such link. A sixth, however, costing well over $100 million alone, concluded that reducing cholesterol by drug therapy could prevent heart disease. The N.I.H. administrators then made a leap of faith. Basil Rifkind, who oversaw the relevant trials for the N.I.H., described their logic this way: they had failed to demonstrate at great expense that eating less fat had any health benefits. But if a cholesterol-lowering drug could prevent heart attacks, then a low-fat, cholesterol-lowering diet should do the same. ''It's an imperfect world,'' Rifkind told me. ''The data that would be definitive is ungettable, so you do your best with what is available.''

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 08, 2002 |

Endocrinology 101 requires an understanding of how carbohydrates affect insulin and blood sugar and in turn fat metabolism and appetite. This is basic endocrinology, Ludwig says, which is the study of hormones, and it is still considered radical because the low-fat dietary wisdom emerged in the 1960's from researchers almost exclusively concerned with the effect of fat on cholesterol and heart disease. At the time, Endocrinology 101 was still underdeveloped, and so it was ignored. Now that this science is becoming clear, it has to fight a quarter century of anti-fat prejudice.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 08, 2002 |

The perversity of this alternative hypothesis is that it identifies the cause of obesity as precisely those refined carbohydrates at the base of the famous Food Guide Pyramid -- the pasta, rice and bread -- that we are told should be the staple of our healthy low-fat diet, and then on the sugar or corn syrup in the soft drinks, fruit juices and sports drinks that we have taken to consuming in quantity if for no other reason than that they are fat free and so appear intrinsically healthy. While the low-fat-is-good-health dogma represents reality as we have come to know it, and the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research trying to prove its worth, the low-carbohydrate message has been relegated to the realm of unscientific fantasy

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 08, 2002 |

"There is a legitimate need for body parts, for academic facilities that conduct research. I hate to use the word 'market,' but there is a market for it," Doguim said.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 05, 2002 |

These guidelines are designed to help you, the engineering or science student, perform writing assignments in your laboratory, design, and technical communication classes. In these guidelines, you will find discussions of several common documents in engineering writing and scientific writing. For these types of documents, you will find models written by other students.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 05, 2002 |

This is not a movie about episodes but about the remorseless bookkeeping of life, which sends such large payments so early, and collects so much interest at the end.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 05, 2002 |

Fire officials believe Popovic was lighting a 2-inch mortar, which are legal to buy but illegal to use in the State of Florida. The loophole enables people to sign a waiver at the time of purchase that gives the person the right to use the fireworks for agricultural purposes.
This is the second injury caused by fireworks in as many weeks. Just last week, a Cape Coral teen almost lost his eye when he was hit in the face with a bottle rocket. 18-year old Joe Bachelor was having a bottle rocket war with his friends but he held one too long and it exploded in his face.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 05, 2002 |

A static spark ignited the makeshift bombs, sending the windshield of the 1990 Honda Prelude over the roof of a one-story house. The sunroof landed in the house's gutter and the building's front windows shattered.

# posted by craniac @ Friday, July 05, 2002 |

""In London today a gang war broke out over a territorial dispute. However, the territory was not physical space, but a wireless cloud of bandwidth. The dispute erupted when a Wi-fi user of a local free network connection accused another of dropping in on his wave. "Not only did this newbie drop in, he launched a p2p flood.", said one of the local Wibos.

Several laptops were broken in the fight, and one Wibo was taken to hospital for the removal of a PCMCIA Card. Residents of the casual cafe strip expressed some distress at the increase chalk markings that have appeared, and the rise of threatening looking white bespeckled males."

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 03, 2002 |

Most warning lamps won't come on until pressure is dangerously low (less than four or five pounds). So don't assume the absence of a warning lamp means pressure is okay, especially if the engine is making any valve or bearing noise (knock).

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 03, 2002 |

Oil pressure - or rather the lack of it - in certain parts of your engine can become a major repair nightmare. All engines lose a certain amount of oil pressure over time as normal wear increases bearing clearances. But unusually low oil pressure in an engine, regardless of mileage, is often an indication that something is seriously wrong and requires immediate attention.

That "tappet" noise may be only one sticking lifter but it may also indicate an oil flow problem that will eventually cause damage to at least one valve.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 03, 2002 |

Click on this banner for a whimsical attempt at truth in advertising.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 03, 2002 |

Third, if you think blogs are about a handful of people like Glenn Reynolds, etc etc, you have completely missed the point, and need to go back for re-education on the very concept you're writing about. All of the A-Team bloggers could quit tomorrow, and the thing would keep going.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 03, 2002 |

Six weeks at Clarion can change you forever. It took five years for me to overcome the writers' block that resulted from the amount of information I needed to assimilate after my year; Octavia Butler reports the same experience.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 03, 2002 |

Even companies hired to help find translators struggled to locate people fluent in Dari, Pashto and Urdu. Titan Systems Corp. spent fruitless weeks poring over resumes on Internet job sites until a 29-year-old manager at the company posted a message on several Yahoo message boards frequented by expatriate Afghans.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 03, 2002 |

They also become experts at reading body language and facial expression--tics so hard-wired into human nature that they tend to transcend culture, whether Afghan, Arab or American. Looking up and to the left while answering a question, for instance, is a sign of "visual construction," Chris said, an evasive gesture that usually means the speaker is about to fabricate a scene from whole cloth.

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 03, 2002 |

Though sometimes derided by their combat peers as "intel weenies," the interrogation unit at Bagram recently commissioned T-shirts with a message of uncharacteristic bravado.

"The greatest battle," the shirts read, "is the battle of wits."

# posted by craniac @ Wednesday, July 03, 2002 |

I also had similar problems with my 84 GTI. However in my case
the culprit was a poor ground connection from the battery to the body.
The grounding circuits were good enough that the starter could turn over
the engine, but vibrations (usually at higer rpm) caused the ground to
the body to get 'poor' and made the hi rpm light/buzzer come on.
It took a while to find, but my first step, too, was to put a mechanical
gauge in tandem with the idiot lights so I could verify I wasnt frying
my engine.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 02, 2002 |

on mine, when that warning came on, revving the engine made the buzzer go off.
seemed just like a circulation or pump issue. maybe a pressure issue.

a non-visible coolant leak, probably means its being burned somehow. internal
leak?

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 02, 2002 |

If light goes off and YOU KNOW the oil pressures good (check with
mechanical gauge)
you have a bad sensor.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 02, 2002 |

The factory oil pump in 1.8ltr motors has 26-28-30mm gears and many produce
insufficient volume/pressure after X miles. X varies, we can't curse any one pump manufacturer and have even sent LASO and FEBI/Bilstein of Germany and Shadek of Mexico, OE suppliers several samples and all claim NO PROBLEM FOUND. The 36mm replacement used as OEM on the 2.0 ltr motors, starting with Audi 80/90 and all the new Golf III/Jetta III often eliminate this problem on older motors as per European Car magazine article "Inside the 2.0" of 2/95.

We stock these pumps and they are available through your local dealer as 027 115 105E retailing for $185.--a lot cheaper than a new car or motor.

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 02, 2002 |

Today, I still own the Notchback, and now also have a 1982 Diesel-powered Westfalia Vanagon. This is a vehicle I have lusted over for several years. The main reason that I wanted this specific model was the engine conversion possibilities. You see, the Vanagon diesel engine is basically the same engine as the Rabbit diesel, just tilted over on its side. And since the VW diesel engine is similar to a VW gas engine, I have always wanted to install a Rabbit/Golf GTI engine in a Vanagon.

Well, that project is now underway!

# posted by craniac @ Tuesday, July 02, 2002 |

The district also threw away about 20 broken LC580s, which I was able to cannibalize and make about a dozen well-equipped machines. And I had ethernet cards left over so I could get some teachers on the Internet finally.

I got in a bit of trouble for this, of course. They wanted me to come up with a value for all that I rescued: they could count it as money spent upgrading our site's technology. Instead, I sent them a time card claiming 20 hours of work reclaiming it. They left me alone after that.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 01, 2002 |

I am told that if you have enough money for enough cocaine you can hold out like that for quite a while, which is not good, because you are building up a deficit in your mind and body that eventually cannot be repaid.

# posted by craniac @ Monday, July 01, 2002 |