Man when I was a kid I wanted one so bad... Maybe I should hit up ebay? - J. Abdul-Qahhar
My first computer was a Commodore 64. I paid $1K for it, borrowed against my first year teacher salary. I was a computer teacher in K-8 school. - Charlene Kingston
That was my third commuter, but the one I miss the most was my amiga, so sad! - Michael Fidler via twhirl
So, apperently the Amiga might be coming back. I watched some of the other videos associated with this one , and their was a couple of commercials for it. Does anybody know anything about this? - Michael Fidler via twhirl
i bought a 2 inch thick book with code to type in. For the SID player editor. Took forever but was worth it. Loved SID music on quantum link. - Rodfather
OK, now I have to get mine out of the basement and fire it up... I think I still have my Jumpman cartridge... loved that game. Wonder if it still works? - Kevin C. Tofel
the amiga is in eternal "return" mode, only that it cant find any hardware to run on... - turn.self.off via twhirl
I skipped the 64 and went straight from Vic 20 to Amiga. (via an Amstrad all-in-one) - Steve 'Chippy' Paine
I got an Amiga 3000 collecting dust in the closet right behind me, I thin warek I still have all my software. I could of sold it, but it has sentimental value. I'm serious. - Michael Fidler via twhirl
I started on a DEC PDP-10 at my High School, but my first "PC" was a TRS-80 Color Computer. I went from there to the Amiga 1000 (I still have one of those) and the off to various PC compatibles. - Soulhuntre via twhirl
I had both a Commodore 64 and an IBM PC. I could do more with the PC. In all honesty I think the Apple IIs were the best machines. I used them in school and they were great - Noah David Simon
Heh -- another PDP-10 user ( I am older -- I was a user in my first job) - have you seen this site http://www.pdpplanet.com/ ? -- over the web access to PDP-10 courtesy Paul Allen - Brian Sullivan
My love for the C-64 is almost outshadowed by how lame this commercial was... heh - Michael W. May
Coleco ADAM, baby! Although the first computer I ever USED was a TI99-4A - Nine - Like the number
oh I wanted an ADAM so bad. how was it? I had a Colegovision - Noah David Simon
I used that computer for years and years, man. I loved it. It was really easy to rebuild, too. Swapped the printer-based power supply for a different sort of external power source, added tape drives and disk drives and a 80-column card... loved it. - Nine - Like the number
"One question that was repeatedly presented to the panel was how to make money off social networks. Underlying this question, and at least once stated explicitly, was the issue of whether social networks really matter or are just the latest flash in the pan, the latest bubble, and soon to fade if people find the riches they deliver fall short of their absurdly hyped expectations." - Thomas Brox Røst via Bookmarklet
"The best answer to this question came only at the very end, sneaking in when the session was already over, from panel chair Andrew Tompkins. Andrew said that he thought that what was most likely is that most money would be made from understanding an individual in a network and their immediate neighborhood. He expected that, as the space matured, the more theoretical work that we see now that looks at global patterns and trends across different types of social networks would continue, but the emphasis would shift to understanding each person in the network and from their behavior and their immediate neighbors to help people find and discover things they want. - Thomas Brox Røst
It's this notion of "respectability through seniority" that troubles me. If I read a blog, the position of the author in the academic food chain is the last thing on my mind. So long as they articulate interesting ideas, I don't care who they are. This challenge just feels like an attempt to reconcile the traditional with the new; I'd rather embrace the new and reject the traditional. - Neil Saunders
here here. I support Neil. As possibly a "senior" scientist (the notion scares me) who also blogs, I have tried to encourage colleagues to blog. But in the end, it is the skills and enthusiasm of the blogger that makes their blogs useful and interesting. It is not their level in the current system, which has serious flaws anyway. I propose we try to get more people to consider science blogging. But not focus on particular subclasses. - Jonathan Eisen
Yes but, if senior scientists blog, then more junior scientists might follow. Isn't that a good thing? Its not that the senior scientists write better blogs, more that they lead by example. - Duncan Hull
Actually, I think all we need is for senior scientists to respects blogs and OPen Science as contributions and thus when people are hired and/or promoted they will get some credit for it. If in a committee meeting a department chair says "we want to hire this person in part becuase of their blog" then others in that department might start blogging. I agree, in addition, having senior scientists blog would not hurt, but they have to give the junior ones credit if they start to do it - Jonathan Eisen
Right, Johnathan. It's mostly the younger scientists who are driving the innovation in new forms of publishing, so in a way blogging can serve to balance the overweighting of seniority. - Mr. Gunn
At one level part of the motivation was that we felt there are 'senior' or 'respectable' scientists out there who have interesting things to say and who could kick off an interesting dialogue (as indeed Jonathan does with his blog). A bit of encouragement might get them over the line and into the community and this would provide a more diverse range of perspectives in the science blogosphere. - Cameron Neylon
I think a turning point for scientific blogging will happen when a scientific blogposting stands out and becomes cited. - Amund Tveit
If we go back to the email analogy again - I would guess that the use of email rapidly became mainstream once more senior people realised how effective it was for communication. Just trying to kick start that process for blogs - or at least see if we can move it on a bit. - Cameron Neylon
"Every time we slip effortlessly into a daydream, a distinct pattern of brain areas is activated, which is known as the default network. Studies show that this network is most engaged when people are performing tasks that require little conscious attention, such as routine driving on the highway or reading a tedious text. Although such mental trances are often seen as a sign of lethargy - we are staring haplessly into space - the cortex is actually very active during this default state, as numerous brain regions interact. Instead of responding to the outside world, the brain starts to contemplate its internal landscape. This is when new and creative connections are made between seemingly unrelated ideas." - Ginger Makela via Bookmarklet
The favorite jobs I've had are ones where I'm doing repetitive physical labor -- making lattes or pressing clothes -- because it releases my brain somehow. When I was in college, I got most of my ideas for papers while I mindlessly pressed clothes. - Ginger Makela
My dad has long wondered why more smart people don't do physical labor just for this reason... that it unlocks the mind in a why little else can. - Clare Dibble
If I want to talk to my kids about something, I do it while we are playing catch or doing something similarly repetitive. It's the surest way to get them to open up. - Todd Nemet
I do my best thinking in the shower or while trying to get to sleep. Sometimes staring out the window is good, but not as much. I've been doing lots of repetitive physical labor lately, and don't have much in the way of ideas to show for it. - Gabe Schaffer
And Visual Studio. Scratch that - take Eclipse! - Yuvi
I can open Photoshop on the Mac OS X side. VMware Fusion has been killing me on speed, but this is working fine. I closed Safari on the Mac side. :-) - Louis Gray
I'm also running it in Linux via seamlessRDP, and it's working just fine. You could do seamlessrdp mode via VMware, too...if you don't want to actually see anything else but Chrome itself (and/or whatever other Win apps).I did this with Twhirl and some other clients a long time ago now, too. - abacab
Tried it in parallels, but parallels can't stay stable enough to be open all day - Jesse Stay
I find myself missing Roboform, Adblock, and Searchbox but finding that the rest of the plugins I have on FF3 are nice but not absolutely necessary. - Ernie Oporto
you don't need the searchbox since the address bar is a searchbox too - stefan
Try your Wordpress admin console with Chrome. I can't believe how fast it is. - Tim Steward
i will never use it without adblock .. wonder if google has the guts to allow it - Gregory Lent
Would fast cheap "video conferencing" help this? Already I don't understand why computer monitors don't have a small video camera built in as a standard thing, with video conference software also standard with the OS. Surely soon this will be the case and even now the hardware/software is pretty cheap to get and easy to use. - Bill Hooker
Online collaboration for paper writing works well for me. But the tools could be better. - Martin Fenner
Bill, I was recently trying to understand how video conferencing would help in research, but for that one would need to install cameras in the lab (or its equivalent), not in the conferencing room (as it usually happens). There's simply not enough people with such setup to see if it actually works. Martin, writing works for me too, but the whole process before writing is usually a bottleneck. - Pawel Szczesny
I know a few groups that use videoconferencing today. Cheapest example I saw was my buddy Hari on his isight while he was at a synchotron. Of course, IM works great too as do things like Campfire - Deepak
The Mac OS offers a cheap video conferencing solution and has for years. Multi-participant video iChat is quite good via included cams. Granted, it is difficult to have multiple participants at a single location -- that is, in front of a single camera -- but you can't beat the cost and the ease of use. - Todd Harris
I saw a good use of an iMac between two labs in different buildings at MIT. Just set up in a corner running all the time and it almost created the illusion of the two labs being joined. To the extent that people waved on the way past. - Cameron Neylon
Definitely technology is here or almost here, but to convince people to use it is another story. But even if that could happen, I have no idea if technology will remove the need of face to face meetings. Few more months of missed opportunities because of my location and out of frustration I will have to move to US. - Pawel Szczesny
Properly read the post now :-) I think one of the big issues is having some context to put the online interaction into. It can be much easier to have those conversations if you can see in your mind how you think the other people will react (interesting question as to whether the accuracy of that model is important) - Cameron Neylon
Cameron, what do you mean by context (model)? - Pawel Szczesny
Sorry, wrote that sentence the wrong way around. Basically just saying that using a face to face meeting to kick something off really helps because you've got some sort of view of how the other people might react. Just that having made that personal connection in RL its much easier to carry it on online - Cameron Neylon
@Cameron - there's a couple of papers out of CREW at UMich on supporting computer mediated communication (in science and engineering) - particularly one called "distance matters" -- a f2f meeting does help with trust and establishing common ground - video conferencing not really necessary unless language issues.. - Christina
Christina - thanks for the tip - will try to track these down at some point - Cameron Neylon
Well for one thing everybody was too tired to leave the room and we were forced to talk at the meeting - then at the pub - then over dinner :) - Jean-Claude Bradley
Gee Rob, it depends on your definition of language. My current project has C, C++, C#, Python, JavaScript, SQL, HTML, SVG, and some other domain-specific languages. I know that I don't use regularly, though. - Gabe Schaffer
Gabe: seems like a longterm project? - Amund Tveit
Amund: I've only had the job for a couple years, but some of the C code originally ran on VMS. Our revision history only goes back to the late 90s, but a lot of the code predates ANSI C. - Gabe Schaffer
Gee Gabe. Maybe Clare was right. I started programming too late in life to ever catch up with people like you and Paul. - Robert Felty
It's never too late, Rob. The thing is that once you know programming, each new language takes only incremental work. - Gabe Schaffer
Thanks for the encouragement Gabe. I started learning Python this summer, and it went pretty quickly. I am actually teaching a programming course for linguists this semester, and we will be using python. - Robert Felty
Does that have anything to do with Python, Paul? - Gabe Schaffer
No, it's JS, but the basics of programming are fairly similar regardless of language, and JS and Python are actually quite similar beneath the syntax. I've been thinking about writing a JS to Python translator actually. It seems like it should be relatively straightforward (though perhaps there are a few difficult corner-cases). - Paul Buchheit
Paul - appjet does indeed look cool, though I think I already know most of the stuff they have there. I am just more impressed by how you and Gabe seem to know all the nitty-gritty about so many different languages. For the most part, I don't really use advanced python or javascript features that would necessitate me to know the difference between 1.5 and 1.8 (javascript) or 2.3 and 2.6 (python). I am confused about python's super though, since I see lots of positive and negative remarks about it. - Robert Felty
I think it's the industry's best chance to topple IE. - l0ckergn0me
I'd love to take it for a spin. Is there an ETA for the public release yet? - Ray Metzen
I read the comic book twice, and despite my Safari leanings, I think this one has legs. Question is... if iPhone trumps Android, does Google port it to the iPhone? - Louis Gray
That's not the point. I use Firefox, and want to know why Google, which has a good relationship with Mozilla (apparently) chose to go the Not Invented Here route, when there was an established open source platform to work with. The only thing I can think of is that this is to get a good mobile browser since webkit has proven itself on the iphone. - Deepak
Please let Google release it as an app for the iPhone with Gears, Flash and Java enabled. And please let Apple let them do that! - Tony Ruscoe
I'm still curious about the firefox usage aggrigation project mentioned in the first half of the year, had a techcrunch article but has gone strangely quiet ever since. Some are claiming it'll cover only interface stats and others actual traffic data. - alphaxion
first release will be sep-02. it now seems clear that APIs like safebrowsing [http://bit.ly/3QvWL7] and gears [http://bit.ly/4amra2] were all part of a longer-term strategy to change the game for their app set. - MikeAmundsen
Deepak, the most logical explanation seems to be that Google wants to take Chrome in a direction where Mozilla doesn't want to go. What exactly that is remains to be seen when the thing is released... - Ray Metzen
Deepak, it may be that the Webkit codebase is simply easier to work with. I haven't looked at either in years, but Firefox used to be quite a beast. - Paul Buchheit
Sounds great to have new players on the browser field. But how will the support from Google to Mozilla be affected after Chrome? - Christian Van Der Henst
Ray/Paul, fair enough. I am not saying that the choice is wrong, but I would like to know why. The mobile future is my guess, but it's only a guess. - Deepak
Deepak, that's probably a good guess. Another reason might be that Google apps are more deeply integrated than Mozilla would be comfortable with. - Ray Metzen
I think everybody has the same question. Why Chrome when we have Firefox? Why can't Google extend support to FF? - Rohit Srivastwa
That's bad news for Firefox. The early Google Chrome adopters are likely to be the same people that jumped on early FF as well. But what's more important, I think the idea behind Chrome is to build and position it as an application platform, which FF failed to achieve. - Franci Penov
Looking forward to it. My designer isn't happy though, yet another browser to test not that IE is going away anytime soon. - Angsuman Chakraborty
Paul, thanks for the link, that's illuminating. - Jason Wehmhoener
Frankly I am concerned that Google is becoming more like Microsoft, leaving not much room for small companies to innovate and make a living. - Angsuman Chakraborty
I actually only go to beta.ff.com when I want to post a photo directly to FF. Not that I don't like it, I just don't need the majority of the new features. - Svetlana Gladkova
simplicity is nice, but i like the group feature, now i can access the user feeds by my own interests... even google has many features but not for everyone :). i think ff should be like apple, not like M$, thats also right :) - Alexander Oelling
I hate the old one and love the new one. The old one is too bare bones, and the new one provides just enough information. - Stephen Pierzchala
They added some new feats in the new one but designwise the old one still rocks!! - Hayk Hakobyan
It seems to me that I can't get past the first page in beta. If I click on the second page it always shows me pretty much the same stuff as the first, and the third and the fourth. When I go back to the first, it's all still there so it's not as though it's just moving at the same speed I'm going through it. Just feels very buggy. - Robert DeBord
I first heard about new design... just about now and I also think that it looks too odd currently, but I hope team gets things to better shape during time. Hey, it's still beta. ;) - Daniel Schildt
I love the new one except I can't find my feed on it. I always go back to the old one to do that and click on me. - Robert Scoble
I'm really starting to appreciate the power of tagging users in the Friends Lists. So I'm digging the beta. - Hutch Carpenter
I agree, I favour the current one quite a bit. - Heather
I love the new design. Much better IMO... - Brad Brooks
I am a fan of the new look. Yes, it resembles Google's look a little too much but it puts better use to the page. I also like the new features. - geekazine
I love the the new design also. It really helps with organization and it's a lot easier than before to keep track of friends (and favorite peeps) while adding even more subscriptions. - m.0
Robert, your feeds are right under the rooms in the right column. - Radek Pilich
well, the only thing i hate is what Scoble said: I have to click on my name to get to my feed, and it's too far on the right. less movement, please! - Zio Bonino
I want to see only items that I've commented on, though. I can't find that in the new design. Is it there? - Robert Scoble
You click on your name, top right, then you select Comments + Likes. Or probably I haven't understood. - Zio Bonino
Robert, it's there. Go to My Feed, Comments + Likes, and then right below that there is a link to show Comments only, Likes only, or both. - Akiva Moskovitz
disagree... maybe it is a free market conservative thing - Noah David Simon
I agree. New FF design is less effective. - susan mernit
I preferred the tabs in the old design, especially the "Me" tab like Scoble does too. But I do like the group feature and the ability to post a picture. - Winston Teo
the beta seems to be having problems this morning. twice i tried to make a comment only to get an error message. - Ruth Ferguson
I prefer the *features* of the new version. Don't care about the design either way. It's simple, so the only thing to criticise is one's own (un)flexible routine. - Vincent van Wylick
I much prefer the beta, by the way. Haven't gone back to the classic interface since. - Akiva Moskovitz
it's not called beta.friendfeed.com for nothing maybe not all but some of what's there well get pulled over maybe .. just have to wait and see - JohnBfromMemphis
I'm quite liking the new design. It's put certain features in better places. New design less efficient? In what way? I find it very efficient, I can select the rooms I can see on my sidebar. You can now create friend lists (of which I've used to put all my imaginary Flickr friends on and thus can see all their photos in one stream without any of noise). All the features are there just in different places, e.g. the Me tab is accessed by clicking on your username. - Kol Tregaskes
Robert, if you want your Comments only, click on your name/username, then Comments + Likes then Comments (only), fairly painless. I still use NoiseRiver for this as it highlights your comments and also replies to your comments, wish FF did that itself though. - Kol Tregaskes
This paper presents the top 10 data mining algorithms identified by the IEEE
International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) in December 2006: C4.5, k-Means, SVM,
Apriori, EM, PageRank, AdaBoost, kNN, Naive Bayes, and CART. These top 10 algorithms
are among the most influential data mining algorithms in the research community. - Krishna Gade
“I've now found a reason to want to be more wealthy: business class. 9 hours sleep in a near flat bed on a 14-15 hour flight. It was a points upgrade this time, but I'd love to be able to afford it outright in the future”
Have you checked out those really cool, expensive cars? They live up to their billing. - Andrew Burd
Andrew, I've only just got back so I haven't grabbed the video yet, but I did a Beverly Hill celeb tour on Monday and we went past this house with 9 Ferrari's and RRs, all brand new (they were being washed). Nope, I'd just be happy with one Aston Martin :-) - Duncan Riley
OMG I flew first class to Argentina and couldn't even bear to LOOK in coach! The last time I priced tickets to Buenos Aires, the $ difference between first and coach was about a grand. Sounds like a lot, but I'd be willing to pay it in order to not have a crick in my back the whole vacation. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
Too bad they don't have the upstairs lounges in 747's anymore ... That was cool ... now they're filled with seats - Charlie Anzman
@stupdblogger I only wish that was the difference on the AUS-US trips, it's closer to $2-3k extra off a base which is already $2-3k. - Duncan Riley
I recently flew on the all business class Singapore Air flight from Singapore->Newark. 18 hours direct. I can't imagine doing a flight like that in coach. It was well worth the 160,000 miles it cost me ;-) http://www.flickr.com/photos/t... - Tom Wentworth
Growing up overseas I got to do this a few times through my Dad's miles. I don't think I appreciated it as much back then as I would now. - Jesse Stay
Flew Upper Class across the Atlantic a few times recently for work. I'll never be able to afford it on my salaray though, which makes me feel really guilty - my poor wife - Michael Moran
I fly business all the time to Asia, and with points fly Upper Class on Virgin(bed, masseuse, in-flight bar) to UK. Today it's Singapore Business home, will be a nice relaxing flight. It's one reason in particular to have American Express, just transfer points.[I've flown Continental EWR-HKG and back 2X and won't put up w/ that again] - clarke thomas
I can't afford to pay for the upgrade either. I asked and it costs $8,000. Yowza. Of course if you COULD afford that you'd be looking longingly at the next level of luxury: owning your own plane. Bad thing about humans. We are never happy with what we have. Hell, those of us in coach have it better than ANY rich person 50 years ago. Think about that one! - Robert Scoble
For $8,000 a ticket, it almost sounds like that the luxury level ladder goes coach->owning a plane->first class upgrade. Obviously not the same thing, but once you get past $15-20k, you're looking at the price of a used Cessna or Piper Cherokee. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
You might be able to pick one up cheap but don't forget about the running costs the fuel for example and where are you going to park it?! - Arthur Guy
I know, which is why it's not a one-to-one comparison, but at those shockingly high prices for tickets, you hafta wonder when it'll be cheaper to own than rent a seat. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
prediction .. airfares will never again be as cheap as they are now ... agree? or disagree? - Gregory Lent
Agreed Greg. Prices go up, but rarely come down. Even when market conditions change, as is the case in Aus. Fuel goes up, so we pay more for food. But when it goes down, we're still paying that 'inflated' price. - Mo Kargas
I hear ya on that! It's the only way to actually enjoy traveling. Otherwise you just feel like cattle in coach crammed between someone with a questionable odor and somone else that keeps invading your already limited space. - Shannon
Need to wrap my head around this. Just a cursory read through left me somewhat confused. People have been extracting value from data mining for years and years, so data as currency is hardly a new phenomenon. We just have access to a lot more. And it's always derived data where the real value lies. - Deepak
I'm not sure this qualifies as "peer review" - there are no conclusions derived from data - just a summary of the available services. The fact that people can add new information is helpful - though it will be interesting to see what the editors will accept. The one thing I disagree is the the requirement to register (even if free) to just read the article - Jean-Claude Bradley
Euan tells me the wiki will be (peer?) reviewed by Lincoln Stein and the journal editors, we're also drafting a response to the original article on the wiki http://nrgwiki.nature.com/cybe... - Duncan Hull
I am not sure the Wiki should be peer reviewed either, but it take off from a peer reviewed article, hence the title. Duncan, looking forward to the response - Deepak
Moderation is fine. Question is, who should own that part. The publisher or the author? - Deepak
Is this really peer review? In any case, along the conclusions of this post, in the present system, most scientists survive by publishing incremental results. If prestigious publishers take charge of the Wiki, it may take off in some way. Otherwise, I see authors resisting this type of publishing. - Aarthy
IMO, publishing incremental results is a function of the need to publish in volume, when the follow up paper really doesn't merit being a paper on its own. I definitely acknowledge that publishers owning the wiki platform reduces friction - Deepak
"ØMQ is already very fast. We're getting 30μsec end-to-end latencies and over 3 million messages a second today. ØMQ is fully open sourced GPLv3-licensed software written in C++." Via AmitP. - DeWitt Clinton
"Now that Amazon’s Elastic Block Store (EBS) is publicly available, running a complete Django installation on Amazon Web Services (AWS) is easier than ever.
Why EBS? EBS provides persistent storage, which means that the Django database is kept safe even after the Django EC2 instances terminate.
This tutorial will take you through all the necessary steps for setting up Django with a persistent PostgreSQL database on AWS. " - Thomas Brox Røst via Bookmarklet
SB, is this the same people behind that old blog that was supposed to be by G-d? That blog was unreasonably funny. - Akiva Moskovitz
I don't know, Akiva, there's no site listed. But the bio is "# Bio I'm into creating universes, smiting people, writing holy books and listening to prayers." and the stream is entertaining. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
