09.29.03
Posted in forum archive at 11:23 am by
In a bit of unexpected news, Nigeria has joined the space age. The country had its first space bound payload launched aboard a Russian rocket. It just goes to show the value of information; a poor nation like Nigeria would rather launch a satellite than feed it’s own starving population:
Most villages outside state capitals have no running water or electricity, 70 percent of the country’s roads are dirt tracks, and over 30 percent of the population is illiterate. Only nine in every 1,000 residents has a telephone, only six in 1,000 a computer, according to the World Bank. Annual per capital income is about $290.
As for the uses? Well, they’ll just be looking at stuff.
The government plans to use the $13 million satellite to monitor water resources, soil erosion, deforestation and natural or man-made disasters, space agency spokesman Solomon Olaniyi told The Associated Press.
It will be used to surveil military facilities and the country’s crude oil pipelines and infrastructure. Nigeria is one of the world’s largest exporters of oil, but thieves siphon off hundreds of thousands of barrels daily.
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09.23.03
Posted in forum archive at 11:34 pm by
Val saw this on another forum and thought it might be interesting to try it here. Here’s the way it works:
I’ll start by posting a rather lengthy list of something. I’ll then state that I’m removing one item from the list. Once it’s gone, it’s gone – nobody can bring it back. Everyone then is able to choose one item at a time for themselves, take it off the list, and post the new list (ahh, the wonders of cut and paste). We keep going until we have chosen a winning item. Since I’m not so sure how this will go I’ll start with a small list (I’ve seen some with 4 or 5 dozen items)….
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If these celebrities were put into a steel cage and had to fight to the death, which one do you think wouldn’t survive? (Click on the names for more info if stumped)…
- Madge (we know her as Madonna)
- David Beckham
- Gary Coleman
- John Carmack
- Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo
- David Bowie
- Jennifer Garner
- Forrest Gump
- Nancy Pelosi
- A Barrel of Monkeys
- Optimus Prime (not the transformer)
- Tonya Harding
- MacGyver
- Pauly Shore
- Martha Stewart
- Julio Iglesias
- The Ramones
- Smurfette
- Tito Puente
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09.10.03
Posted in forum archive at 11:37 am by
The RIAA, that watershed of reason and thoughtfulness, has sued a 12 year old girl and a 71 year old grandfather for their evil, twisted, downloading ways. Because owning a copy of “If you’re happy and you know it” is a crime.
In this case, the Texas Grandfather wasn’t even responsible – it was his grandkids that filled up his computer when they came to visit. Each copyrighted song carries a maximum penalty of $150,000.
Thankfully, the 12 year old girl got off by having her parents pay $2000 for the 1000 or so songs on their computer. 
Boy, there’s a lot of money being sucked up by this. Isn’t there something better we could be using that money for?
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Posted in forum archive at 11:17 am by
I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us.
~ Martin Luther
Astronomers have detected sound waves from a super-massive black hole. The “note” is the deepest ever detected from an object in the Universe.
Yep, that’s right. Turns out a blackhole is emitting a note quivalanet to a b flat that’s 57 octives below middle C (talk about your booty shaking sub bass). Further, this note has been sustained for 2.5 billion years. 
The question not answered by the article, and the one I’d like to know, is that if light cannot escape the huge gravitational pull of a blackhole, how can sound? 
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09.09.03
Posted in forum archive at 12:36 pm by
Ugh. The last two days I’ve been doing a comprehensive survey of all the other utah web design firms that I can find – it’s a pretty big list; approximately 75 or so. I’m trying to get an idea of where I fit, of who the competition is. They range from the beautifully professional to the painfully laughable.
I think at least from online presentation, Vox Pop Design could easily be in the top 20%, maybe 15% of web design firms in Utah. Web design has by no means stagnated. In fact, there is more work than ever to be done. However, the big firms with names are just getting bigger; the extra work is getting absorbed by established players.
I know I’m better than a majority of the competition. But I don’t know how to let the world (or at least those looking for design work) know that. That is the big barrier here. It’s not technical. The technology has advanced to the point where a person with some ambition can create something on par with the major firms. The technology playing field has leveled. However, that is not enough to overcome.
In another thread we briefly talked about the differences in web technologies. I’m a coldfusion fan for many reasons but another reason just occured to me – it’s a way to seperate yourself from the crowd. There are many fine PHP, MySQL developers out there but the fact that both those technologies are free means that anybody can download them and state that they’ve had ‘experience’ or that they’re a ‘PHP’ developer. The Coldfusion sticker price is a hurdle; it helps seperate me from a whole mass of developers. So maybe the technology isn’t nearly as balanced as I stated above…
At any rate, I’m happy to see that Vox Pop seems to be on target in presentation. Now I just need to scare up some business.
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