Digital Analogue

That sounds really cool, I can't wait for pictures. I have to ask about "idyllic Palestine of the past." When was that supposed to be? I read the bible and it seems more concerned about war than actual sheep herding. The land of milk and honey come off as not so idyllic to me, only better than being a slave in Egypt. --lee

All these posts concerning the death of Mike Blaheta need to be removed. When some of these people are searched, all this crap comes up. --Erich Raeder

There is some great info here. Maybe the cupcake one is hard to use, my cupcakes just break in half when I try and pop them out. This would be grand for making muffin tops, since it is the top that we all love anyhow. --Lorraine

One of the main things that Microsoft has done that is evil and still going on is use their monopoly to put inferior products into a market dominant position and then don't even bother to make them approach the capabilities of what they replaced.

With Office 2007, they did at least make a bold step of redoing the user interface, and abandoned the process of randomly making menu items in the standard menu not show up seemingly at random and made the standard menu options largely a thing of the past. I see this as progress, because between 1996 and now, that and the implementation of pivot tables is about all the newer MS Office had over Word Perfect and Quattro Pro. Even now, Excel seems incapable of producing readable graphs if your data has the slightest complexity, and the ability to customize graphs without using scripting is extremely limited. Quattro Pro did this with ease.

If you recall, IBM, although they let people make IBM compatible PCs, they used microchannel architecture which was incompatible with other manufacturers PCs, so their PCs were incompatible with many nifty things available for other computers. That was their downfall as much as anything else. Other PCs could do more because they could take advantage of nifty third party stuff.

For years, the saying went, nobody gets fired for going with IBM. Then Microsoft replaced them in that saying. Now, Google does seem much more likely to be the replacement in that phrase than Apple: much of their products are business focused and they personify the mythical central computer I heard about as early as 1977 that knows all about everyone. On the other hand, Apple does seem much more experienced at deliberate evil e.g. drm at iTunes.

Maybe we will get some market diversity at long last in that they will both be 800lb gorillas. --lee

It is worth noting that Pebble in the Sky was his first novel. I think he got better at explaining stuff in a credible way later rather than relying on on almost Star Trek like science mumblings, but his romance scenes are pedestrian in that they remind me of description of someone crossing the street. --lee

Note: I *do* notice the hilarity inherent in the fact that I thank you for teaching me "logical thinking" and then mention my decision to leave Knox to join the Circus. Clown school, specifically! --Molly Nicholas

I still can't believe it. You are one of the best teachers I have ever worked with in my entire life, bar none. I left Knox to join the Circus, and now that I'm leaving the Circus to study Cognitive Science, I'm so grateful for the incredible foundation you gave me in logical thinking. I really feel that you changed my life, and I hope you find a school that appreciates your incredible talents. --Molly Nicholas

I have found other Chekov plays boring, or at best dreary. They generally seem like they would be better to act than to watch. --lee

I was a good friend of Mike's and I recently found out about his death. I have a photo of him that I keep that he gave me and some really good memories. I miss him and my heart goes out to his family. RIP Mike --Joe Newsome

I just assume that whenever I read a Traditional Media article on any complex subject, they're either lying or too stupid to process it correctly. Saves time. --Michael