Elefant

Elefant

Samorost

Samorost

Microsoft Windows Officially Broken

Very interesting article which describes new internal coding practices at Microsoft. Because of the complexity of the new version of windows codenamed Vista they discarded all the code written and started to build at a new - first kernel and then adding other modules one by one. Not trying to write all at once but piece by piece.
Finally some sense...

Microsoft Windows Officially Broken

Windows was broken and Microsoft has admitted it. In an unprecedented attempt to explain its Longhorn problems and how it abandoned its traditional way of working, the normally secretive software giant has given unparalleled access to The Wall Street Journal, even revealing how Vice President Jim Allchin, personally broke the bad news to Bill Gates.

The Star Pillars of Sharpless 171

Towering pillars of cold gas and dark dust adorn the center star forming region of Sharpless 171. An open cluster of stars is forming there from the gas in cold molecular clouds. As energetic light emitted by young massive stars boils away the opaque dust, the region fragments and picturesque pillars of the remnant gas and dust form and slowly evaporate. The energetic light also illuminates the surrounding hydrogen gas, energize it to glow as a red emission nebula. Pictured above is the active central region of the Sharpless 171 greater emission nebula. Sharpless 171 incorporates NGC 7822 and the active region Cederblad 214, much of which is imaged above. The area above spans about 20 light years, lies about 3,000 light years away, and can be seen with a telescope toward the northern constellation of the King of Ethiopia (Cepheus).

Hagar the Horrible at His Best :)

Gene Wolfe - Book of The New Sun (series)

Found this fancy sword image. Reminds me of the sword named "Terminus-Est" of the Severian from the order of "Seekers for Truth and Penitence" in the "Book of the New Sun" from the Gene Wolfe. A must read for a fantasy fan.

Great review of the whole series can be found here: http://www.inchoatus.com/Reviews/BookoftheNewSun,GeneWolfe.htm

Why You Should Read This

You cannot go on with your life claiming some affiliation with the community of science fiction and not have read New Sun. It is that important. Do not expect any tropes from prior novels to exist here… you are completely unprepared from your prior reading experience. For any enthusiast of Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, or other authors deeply concerned with the perception of the human mind—its capabilities, its subtleties, its place as an individual in vast community of minds—you will be enlightened by this book.

Captain's Blog

Space News & General Commentary by Richard C. Hoagland.

http://www.enterprisemission.com/weblog/weblog.htm

Cat's Eye

Staring across interstellar space, the alluring Cat's Eye nebula lies three thousand light-years from Earth. A classic planetary nebula, the Cat's Eye (NGC 6543) represents a final, brief yet glorious phase in the life of a sun-like star. This nebula's dying central star may have produced the simple, outer pattern of dusty concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. But the formation of the beautiful, more complex inner structures is not well understood. Seen so clearly in this sharp Hubble Space Telescope image, the truly cosmic eye is over half a light-year across. Of course, gazing into the Cat's Eye, astronomers may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years.

Opera web browser now free for download

Twice the Speed and No Speedos: Opera Reaches One Million Downloads in Two Days
Oslo, Norway - September 22, 2005

More than one million people have downloaded the Opera browser in the two days since Opera announced it was dropping the ad banner and going completely free.

The download rate doubles the previous record reached in April when the company released Opera 8. According to server logs, a majority of downloads came from Internet Explorer users.

"The success of our free browser proves the world is ready for a fresh option," said a dry and landlocked Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software. "I'm most excited about the hundreds of thousands of new users who have discovered the speed, security and usability of our browser for the first time."

http://opera.com/download/

Quake 4 Preview

....
All of the press members attendance where then told to go ahead and start a new game. We were also advised to watch the opening scene and not to hit bypass it. Not that I had any intentions to do so, but I could clearly see why they wanted us to see it considering the opening sequence lines up perfectly to the ending of Quake 2.

I have to mention as well that the pre-rendered sequence was flawlessly integrated into the actual beginning level; it was done so well that I didn’t even notice for a few seconds that I was actually in the game and could begin playing. The world of Quake 4, as I mentioned previously is all built around what happens at the end of Quake 2. The marines have landed on the Strogg home planet shortly after the hero in Quake 2 managed to defeat Makron, the Strogg’s collective brain and leader. Clearly this was a absolute blow to the Strogg and they are struggling to regroup their army and fight back against Earth’s marines.

That being said, you can only imagine what the Strogg home planet must look like… an absolute war zone. The opening sequence ended and I was left with the dire feeling that this was going to be a long and hard fought battle across the war torn landscape. Screams, explosions, gunfire, so much many more visuals and sounds filled my senses and left me in complete awe for a moment. I almost “didn’t” want to move from my spawn point. Quake 4 much like Doom 3 delivers that imminent danger attitude to its overall environment. You clearly know right from the start that this isn’t going to be a walk in the park, there is no extremely long back-story to mull through, the adrenaline pumping action starts off right from the very first moment you set foot on the planet.
....
Perfection seems to be key with this title, and much like another development company, Blizzard Entertainment, Ravensoft and id Software want to make sure the PC and XBOX 360 versions of Quake 4 are rock solid before releasing them. In saying that, we were given the standard response of “It’ll be done when it’s done” when we asked for approximate release dates. I take comfort however in knowing that the game isn’t being rushed out the door by Activision to make a quick buck. All parties involved know that the game will take its rightful throne as the king of multiplayer (and single-player) gaming if Ravensoft is allowed the time to tweak and perfect every minute detail of the development process.
That being said, all we can do now is wait for this masterpiece of a game to be finished. After all, at least we know Quake 4 will be released at some point and most likely before the end of the year… unlike other legendary franchises that have been stuck in development “forever”.

Quake 4 Preview

Funny Picture of The Day

Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents

Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.
Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.

Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents

The Brave New World of Scalar Electromagnetics

Fascinating reading of The Brave New World of Scalar Electromagnetics about zero point energy. (69 pages of word document, with extensive links and diagrams). This page is basically an "begginers guide" of the massive original source of information at http://www.cheniere.org/

1. The solutions to the energy crisis and the "oil problem" are in hand. These oil wars are unnecessary. There is endless energy available freely from the domain of time.

2. Unbelievably powerful weapons are not only possible, but are already operating in several nations. The many powers of these weapons are unprecedented and mind-boggling.

3. The cure of diseases such as cancer and AIDS, in fact nearly any disease, has become possible within a few years of sufficient funding. Everyone can be made healthy and stay healthy.

4. Mind control on a mass scale has now become possible, and the machines to do it are already in place in certain nations. It has become possible to mentally enslave whole populations with the twist of a few dials.

So the layman will need to understand that there is a new kind of electromagnetic energy that is altogether different from what he knows, e.g. radio, TV, cell phones, etc. The ordinary EM waves that we have known about are called transverse EM waves, to distinguish them from the new longitudinal EM waves. These scalar waves do not actually exist in our "material" world, but exist only in the vacuum of empty space, or the time domain. And we must keep in mind that this vacuum of space we speak of exists all through everything. Even our bodies are mostly empty space between atoms and molecules. So the gateway to this seething ocean of energy can be there at every point in the universe. This seething ocean of energy is all around us and all through us.....

How to cheat BitTorrent and why nobody does

Introduction

BitTorrent3 is currently “king” of the popular file-sharing clients. Some reports have claimed that it accounts for the majority of peer-to-peer traffic on the internet others that Hollywood is doomed [10, 13]. Bram Cohen, the original inventor of BitTorrent, is now under high demand on the invited talks circuit.

How BitTorrent works

BitTorrent works by groups of users (called swarms) with an interest in downloading a single specific file (be this an mp3, dvd or executable file) coordinating and cooperating to speed-up the process. Cohen describes how this works in some detail in his paper [3]. Here we give enough relevant details to allow us to develop our hypothesis.
To release a file on the BitTorrent network, one needs to create a specific description file (commonly called a “torrent file”) which contains the necessary information for clients to prepare the download and join the swarm. For our concerns, the main information stored in this file is the address of the “tracker”.

Faking Identity in BitTorrent

In the context of BitTorrent, identity is signalled to the tracker and to other peers using a 20-byte string. A unique identity is generated by the client for each swarm it participates in. This identity is used for every interaction with the tracker and is sent to other peers during the handshake at the beginning of each connection. The tracker, when it returns a list of peers, sends the identity of each of them, in addition to the address and port to connect to.

When a client initiates a connection, it checks whether the identity it receives in the handshake matches the one it has obtained from the tracker. If this is not the case, it drops the connection. The recipient of the connection, however, cannot perform this sort of checking as it has only a limited view of the peers in the swarm. Moreover, trackers do not provide an interface to perform online identity checks.

A client that would want to fake its own identity could do it very easily. As long as trackers do not allow online identity checks (based on IP addresses and ports), it is sufficient to have one identity to interact with the tracker and with the connecting peers, plus one distinct identity for every other peer it connects to. Given the current liberalism of the current implementations it is not even necessary to remember the identity used with a given peer and the (fake) identity could be created randomly for each new outgoing connection. In the eventuality where trackers and (legitimate) clients would become more cautious, it would be necessary to open a new port for each identity used and register to the tracker using these parameters. As long as trackers support clients connecting from behind a firewall, this subterfuge cannot be defeated.

Why does BitTorrent work?

Given that, currently at least, BitTorrent is “king” of the file-sharers and yet, it would seem, is so easy to cheat, why does it work? Also, as stated previously, the system relies to some extent on the pure altruism of ”seeders” who have nothing to gain from continuing to serve the file. Why is there so much cooperation going on? Why doesn’t selfish behaviour swamp the system? One obvious answer is that people are simply more cooperative and altruistic than a worst case kind of economic rationality would suggest - that people don’t always act selfishly when they could.

Leaving Meta-Data to the Users

One aspect that place BitTorrent apart from many other file-sharing systems is the way that meta-information concerning content is distributed. BitTorrent, infact, does not distribute metainformation at all. In order to download a particular file using BitTorrent the user must supply the details of the specific file which are included in a .torrent file. How the user gets this .torrent file is not a concern of the BitTorrent client.


Torrents as Tribes

This “leave it to the user” approach to meta-data is sometimes considered a weakness of BitTorrent, however, we hypothesise this is actually a key strength of the system and helps to support altruism and cooperation.

It does this in two ways. Firstly, by fostering cooperative in-groups of like-minded users with common interests and isolating them, to some extent, from casual users finding meta-data with simple queries - to find and register onto some torrent websites is time-consuming and requires users who know what they are looking for so reducing the casual user (who may be less altruistic). Secondly, and more significantly, each individual torrent swarm is logically isolated from all other torrent swarms, even those sharing the same files running on different trackers.

Conclusion

We have argued that the success of Bittorent is unlikely to be due purely to the use of the tit-fortat inspired protocol, as is often claimed. We argue that the real driving force behind the high cooperation might be the by-product of the lack of meta-data search within BitTorrent. This results in the creation of a number of disconnected “tribes” at both the swarm and the tracker level.

The users are active in the tribal dynamics by selecting those tribes that best satisfy their needs hence tribes filled with free-riders will tend to die out. We compare this to existing simulations of tribal dynamics in both human and peer-to-peer systems.

We advance a number of hypothesis which our theory suggests including the production of both cheating peers and unconditionally altruistic peers. We argue that releasing such peers into the “wild” of the BitTorrent ecology would not damage BitTorrent but could actually increase the system level performance because unconditional altruism would tend to be selected and predominate. In order to fully test these hypotheses we would need to construct and release such clients into the ”wild” and collect data from them. This may be the subject of future work. It’s a sobering thought to consider that, perhaps, the most bandwidth hungry applications on the internet today work by complex social mechanisms we don’t yet understand. However, this is less sobering when one realises that since peer-to-peer systems are really just computationally supported human social systems then we should expect the same issues to arise as we observe within human social systems - namely the question “what’s going on?”.

How to cheat BitTorrent and why nobody does

The Dossier - online videos

Here you will find streaming/downloadable films, lectures and documentaries.

These are split into six categories:

September 11th
Iraq War
the CIA
drugs & money
the Elite & secret societies
cover-ups

Approaching Asteroid Itokawa

What are asteroids made of? To help find out, Japan's JAXA space agency launched the Hayabusa mission to rendezvous with asteroid Itokawa. Last week, the small robotic Hayabusa spacecraft arrived at asteroid Itokawa and stationed itself only 20 kilometers away. Although a long term goal is to find out how much ice, rock and trace elements reside on the asteroid's surface, a shorter term goal is to determine the mass of the asteroid by measuring the attraction of the drifting Hayabusa spacecraft. During the next few months, Hayabusa will also image and map asteroid Itokawa as it orbits the Sun. The above time-lapse image sequence was taken by Hayabusa upon final approach, showing the general oblong shape of the asteroid. In November, a small coffee-can sized robot dubbed MINERVA is scheduled for release and is expected to hop around the asteroid taking pictures. Also in November, Hayabusa will fire pellets into asteroid Itokawa and collect some of the debris in a return capsule. In December, Hayabusa will fire its rockets toward Earth and drop the return capsule to Earth in 2007 June.

RA MATERIAL / LAW OF ONE (STUDY GUIDE)

http://ascension2000.com/Ra-studyguide.htm

Ra’s words, brought through in 1981, are arguably the penultimate source of accurate ET information in history.

This study guide gives a wonderful overview of the main philosophies, concepts and practices of the Law of One, predominantly through excerpts.

Let’s put it this way – this is the ONLY work that has attempted to summarize Ra’s worldview in one streamlined form. It is invaluable to all seekers of Truth, Wisdom and Compassion. PLEASE PRINT THIS AND STUDY IT THOROUGLY.


STUDY GUIDE TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECTION ONE:

INTRODUCTION
Carla channels Ra

THE MESSAGE OF RA: THE LAW OF ONE

WHO IS RA?
1. Introduction to Ra material
2. The history of Ra
3. How were the pyramids built?

WHO ARE WE?
4. The various origins of the 3rd density beings on earth
5. Simultaneous time
6. The higher self


SECTION TWO:

THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS: SETTING UP THE GAME

A. BEGINNINGS
7. The beginning of all things
8. The tools of creation
9. The creation
10. The law of One
11. An extension of the 1st distortion; the veil of forgetfulness and the law of confusion
12. The infringement of free will
13. The mystery of Infinity


SECTION THREE:

B. DIFFERENT STRUCTURES
14. The architecture and nature of the densities
15. The galaxies
16. The planets in our galaxy
17. Some planets were created without polarity
18. The Sirius system and balance
19. The sun
20. The black hole and the great central sun


SECTION FOUR:

MOVES WITHIN THE GAME: APPARENT CHANGES

A. CHANGES IN PLANET EARTH
21. The coming Earth changes
22. The harvest of planet earth
23. The harvest of Venus

B. GROWING
24. Spiritual growth
25. Being truly helpful
26. An important variable, polarity
27. Meditation
28. Enlightenment

C. JESUS
29. Jesus, an enlightened healer


SECTION FIVE:

D. HEALING
30. Can you train us in healing awareness?
31. Healing
32. Balance can remove the need for catalysts
33. The end of the physical body
34. Mental Illness
35. Changing society


SECTION SIX:

E. ENERGY CENTERS AND ENERGY TRANSFERS

36. Sexual energy
37. The 7 chakras and their rays
38. The rotation and crystallization of chakras
39. The various energy bodies


SECTION SEVEN:

MOVES COMING FROM BEYOND OUR PLANET

40. The confederation
41. UFO's
42. The quarantine of Earth - affect on free will
43. The great choice: to serve others or self
44. Entities of negative polarization
45. Psychic greetings by negatively polarized entities
46. How to respond to negative entities
47. The 10 Commandments


SECTION EIGHT:

HOW TO WIN THE GAME

ADONAI

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS

48. The power of crystals, pyramids and sounds
49. Famous people
50. Nuclear energy
51. Messages from Michael
52. Helpers
53. Atlantis
54. The mind/body/spirit complex
55. Working with light
56. Right brain/left brain
57. True color

Rational trigonometry replaces sines, cosines, tangents and a host of other trigonometric functions with elementary arithmetic.

Mathematics students have cause to celebrate.

A University of New South Wales academic, Dr Norman Wildberger, has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit.

What's more, his simple new framework means calculations can be done without trigonometric tables or calculators, yet often with greater accuracy.

Established by the ancient Greeks and Romans, trigonometry is used in surveying, navigation, engineering, construction and the sciences to calculate the relationships between the sides and vertices of triangles.

"Generations of students have struggled with classical trigonometry because the framework is wrong," says Wildberger, whose book is titled Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry (Wild Egg books).

Dr Wildberger has replaced traditional ideas of angles and distance with new concepts called "spread" and "quadrance".

These new concepts mean that trigonometric problems can be done with algebra," says Wildberger, an associate professor of mathematics at UNSW.

"Rational trigonometry replaces sines, cosines, tangents and a host of other trigonometric functions with elementary arithmetic."

"For the past two thousand years we have relied on the false assumptions that distance is the best way to measure the separation of two points, and that angle is the best way to measure the separation of two lines.

"So teachers have resigned themselves to teaching students about circles and pi and complicated trigonometric functions that relate circular arc lengths to x and y projections – all in order to analyse triangles. No wonder students are left scratching their heads," he says.

"But with no alternative to the classical framework, each year millions of students memorise the formulas, pass or fail the tests, and then promptly forget the unpleasant experience.

"And we mathematicians wonder why so many people view our beautiful subject with distaste bordering on hostility.

"Now there is a better way. Once you learn the five main rules of rational trigonometry and how to simply apply them, you realise that classical trigonometry represents a misunderstanding of geometry."

DIVINE PROPORTIONS: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry

YouSendIt (Send 1GB Attachment With 1 Click)

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Quotes Of The Day

Wisps of the Orion Nebula

The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. In the above deep image, faint wisps and sheets of dust and gas are particularly evident. The Great Nebula in Orion can be found with the unaided eye just below and to the left of the easily identifiable belt of three stars in the popular constellation Orion. In addition to housing a bright open cluster of stars known as the Trapezium, the Orion Nebula contains many stellar nurseries. These nurseries contain hydrogen gas, hot young stars, proplyds, and stellar jets spewing material at high speeds. Also known as M42, the Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun.

Huge Triangle Dims Airport Lights In Puerto Rico - Photos

This information has just been recieved from researchers Jose A. Martinez and Willie Durand Urbina of Puerto Rico's Proyecto ARGUS

SOURCE: Proyecto Argus
DATE: 9-14-05

TRIANGULAR UFO OVER PUERTO RICO -- Proyecto ARGUS Reports

The following is a preliminary report of this event in Puerto Rico -- the flight of a large triangular UFO over Puerto Rico. More witnesses to this sighting are coming forward, since there were more people on the avenue when the event took place. We would like any witnesses living in Puerto Rico's Carolina and Urb. Los Angeles districts to please phone us at the following numbers in order to continue our research. At this time only one person has photographed the object, but we are aware that more people saw it, including administrative personnel from the [Luis Munoz Marin International] Airport. Tel. 787-821-1671 and 787-764-3206

Transcript of the Interview by Willie Durand Urbina and Jose A. Martinez Echevarria with the witness to the triangular UFO seen on May 15, 2005 at 12:16 a.m.

Google Blog Search

What is Blog Search?

Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs. Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you're looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice.

Your results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger; our blog index is continually updated, so you'll always get the most accurate and up-to-date results; and you can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages as well.

Google Blog Search

How Bob the Millionaire became a pirate

The Norwegian television station TVNorge have done reasearch that shows a loss of about 10% of the viewers on the series “Lost” to filesharing and bittorrent.

I am puzzled by the fact that the big studios don’t get the point. If they have a look at the music industry they can see parts of the solution. One of them is called iTunes Music Store. Or, to be very precise: legal and user friendly alternatives.

The reason why so many people downloaded Lost here in Norway is the fact that we got the episodes months behind the US. So, the brilliant story telling in Lost became the biggest motivation for download of new episodes from the net.

The people in the movie and television industry are wizards at visual communication. In a hope that they might get the point I have taken up the art of comic drawing. Something that I have not done since the age of 14. You can clearly see that in my story about Bob the Millionaire, but the message is the important stuff here. The strip about Bob the Millionaire is based on a true story.

And, Bob the Millionaire is in for a very pleasant surprise!

Interview With Monty Montgomery, Twin Peaks & Wild At Heart Producer

"As for my role as a producer; well, since the credited producer was barred from the set by David; I did all kinds of tasks, from second unit directing to going for toothbrushes and toothpaste for the crew when snowed into a location one night."


Monty Montgomery interview "Who killed Laura Palmer?" was the hottest question of the summer in 1990. Twin Peaks was the soap opera that changed the parameters of the medium for which the lasting of intellectual and emotional impact isn't really characteristic. Fifteen years later, we have met Monty Montgomery, one of the producers of the series at the Istanbul Film festival, which he attended as the member of the grand jury. He was one of the founding forces of the independent production company Propaganda Films, responsible for thousands of music videos (Madonna, Michael Jackson), commercials (Coca-Cola, Nike) and movies such as Being John Malkovich.

1. You got involved in films at the tender age of 15 - with the production of Wings of Ash: Pilot for a Dramatization of the Life of Antonin Artaud (1978). Could you tell us more about this project?

Wings of Ash was developed by the painter Marcus Reichert & myself based on the life of Antonin Artaud. Reichert was friendly with Francis Bacon, who in turn after reading the screenplay mentioned the project to Mick Jagger. Jagger expressed interest in playing the part, so I put together privately the money to produce an elaborate screen test. Ed Lachman was the Director of Photography & I remember we 'borrowed' all the camera and lighting equipment off of a Dino De Laurentis production which was on hiatus during our shooting schedule in New York City. The test was not a success for a number of reasons which shall go unanswered unless important for the reader's intrigue. Oddly enough, some years back I saw listed in a Christie's Film Ephemera auction catalog: 'a rare 35mm print of WINGS OF ASH.� I never even had a print myself!

2. Your second producing credit (Union City, 1980) followed two years later...

I bought the rights to a Cornell Woolrich short story entitled The Corpse Next Door. Woolrich had written the story which became Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW. Reichert wrote the screenplay and I produced the movie, which became eventually UNION CITY. Deborah Harry of Blondie was cast to star and Ed Lachman was once again the DOP. Kathryn Bigelow was the script supervisor and the production was generally chaotic for me as a producer. Things got so bad with the Mafia in New Jersey; I was forced to hire another more experienced producer for two weeks. This being Fred Caruso who had line produced The Godfather, etc. Fred & I hit it off like a house on fire and he became my mentor. I learned more from him in two weeks than I did during the rest of my career & had a wonderful time during the process. Ironically, Fred went on to produce Blue Velvet & asked me to come work with him on the film; which I did not; but here I get ahead of myself. Union City was a mess as a finished product�.what I considered, even then as a failure, but the experience was tremendous. MOMA owns the negative now, so perhaps it has some artistic value?

3. You only directed (co-directed) one movie, The Loveless (1982), which was a screen debut of Willem Dafoe. What was the nature of that project and your involvement in it?

Kathryn Bigelow & I began talking about writing a script together. She was at Columbia Film School during this time. Eventually we wrote 'US 17' which became THE LOVELESS after many post production/ distribution name changes. A peculiar biker movie set in the 50's about nihilism. I produced this movie with a great friend A. Kitman (Alex) Ho. Alex was Fred's protégé and off we went to the deep south of America to make this highly stylized student feature film. Any other information about this movie I recommend you purchase a DVD which has commentary by myself, Willem Dafoe & Kathryn; plus extensive supplemental info, photos, etc'

4. How did you get connected with David Lynch initially?

Isabella Rossellini encouraged David Lynch to meet me. This meeting was arranged by Alan Mendel, who then was Isabella's manager or agent or both. I went over to David's house and we chatted for awhile. A week or two later; he called to ask if I would like to produce a short film THE COWBOY AND THE FRENCHMAN for French Television. I did; and so began our working relationship. The production went beautifully, everyone had fun and David was extremely pleased with the way the production was handled from start to finish. I took no personal credit, since Propaganda was just getting started.

5. What was your role as a producer on the series Twin Peaks?

By this stage, David & I had become pretty good friends and were spending time together over meals, etc. Propaganda had a loose relationship with him and we were helping with post production on various projects of his. The Twin Peaks Pilot movie production office was at Propaganda and David had asked me to unofficially keep an eye on what was happening, since he was in New York working on something else. I had nothing whatsoever to do with the creative development or the deal making of the Pilot movie for the series. The deal was made by Tony Krantz of CAA who was David's then agent. Eventually, I voiced some concerns to David about the pre-production & he decided to ask me to come on board as his producer & off we went to Seattle, Washington with a small budget for such an ambitious movie to be made in a very short schedule. There was little sleep to be had and we never took off our expedition gear, since the weather conditions were a challenge at best. If it did not rain, it snowed, if it did not snow, it hailed or sleeted or was foggy or everything all at once, etc. It was intensely pleasurable and the results were well worth the efforts. As for my role as a producer; well, since the credited producer was barred from the set by David; I did all kinds of tasks, from second unit directing to going for toothbrushes and toothpaste for the crew when snowed into a location one night. Duwayne Dunham the editor who had done Blue Velvet was a good friend of mine and the post production was a joy both on location and in Los Angeles.

6. What was in your opinion the secret of the Twin Peaks success? How did you react to the sudden and massive popularity of the series?

I guess Twin Peaks was at the right place at the right time. I never gave much thought to why it was so successful and had no time to reflect on the popularity of the initial success of the series, since I was working on so many other projects. By the time the episodes began to be broadcast (David directed the first three, which we did together) we were up to our eyeballs at Lucas Ranch mixing WILD AT HEART frantically to make the Cannes screening deadline. David and I carried the film onto the plane ourselves.

7. The series went pretty far in terms of what might be acceptable to TV audiences (at the time). How could you sell the ideas, was it a trouble to get the money?

I did deal with ABC�s Standard's & Practices Legal Department about script changes during the production about forms of bondage & some clothing issues, but in the end nothing too radical.

8. Do you think it would be easier to make similar kind of TV show today, I mean, how would you compete with that kind of series?

I have never been interested in Television, quite frankly and do not even own one.

9. You were not connected with the movie "Twin Peaks: Fire walk With me". How come?

There was no reason for me to be involved in Fire Walk with Me.

10. 1990 was quite a busy year for you - producing Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, Jack Fisk's movie "Daddy's Dyin'... Who's Got the Will", Industrial symphony No.1... and you were only 27. How did you manage all that?

Strike while the iron is hot. Actually, I only set up Jack Fisk's movie and did the pre-production, scouting with Jack, since I was focused on WILD AT HEART. My partner Joni Sighvattson was the main producer of this movie. Industrial Symphony was like a music video, which Propaganda was well equipped to handle on the spur of the moment.

11. Were there at any time plans to continue with series? Could you imagine Twin Peaks, 20 year later?

No comment.

12. What is the story behind Wild at heart? Is it true that you wanted to direct initially, but David Lynch fell in love with the book?

Barry Gifford who wrote the book WILD AT HEART was then the editor at Black Lizard Press in San Francisco. Specializing in re-publishing NOIR titles; so he and I had a cordial relationship without ever having met in person, because I had optioned a couple of their books. One day the galleys for his book arrived with a letter. I had been looking for another story to direct & I loved the book immediately. I quickly made a deal for the rights and called David Lynch to ask if he might consider acting as Executive Producer. I sent the book over one Friday and he called me on Sunday and said: 'Monty, you are not going to direct this movie, because I am'. We laughed and he started to write the script. I remember PolyGram would not pay for the screenplay, so Steve Golin and I put our own money into the script deal & fortunately we were making the movie within about six months.

13. If I understand correctly, some scenes from Wild at Heart were shot, but later deleted in editing, are there any plans for the issuing of director's cut or something like that?

Yes, many scenes were shot and never used for one reason or another. Some scenes were too violent for test audiences, some scenes just made the movie too long; no matter how good they were by themselves. The current new release DVD is out. No plans to my knowledge for a Director's Cut version, unless you would like to pay for it.

14. Were you interested in directing any other movies besides The Loveless and Wild at Heart? Are you still interested in directing?

I am interested in directing again.

15. The press release from the Istanbul FF says that you are the founder of American Cinematheque. Could you elaborate on that, please?

The American Cinematheque was the dream of two both deceased men, Gary Essert and Gary Abrahams. I met Gary Essert thru FILMEX which had been the Los Angeles Film Festival when THE LOVELESS was shown back in the 1980s. He shared his enthusiasm for the Cinematheque with me and I participated financially back when their operating budget was fragile. At the time it was risky & I gave what seemed to be large amounts of money, but by today's standards it would be nothing. Eventually it all became a reality and I was able to connect Propaganda into the production end of the first Awards Shows & my partner Joni Sighvattson went on to serve as President. ("http://www.americancinematheque.com/indexegyptian.html")

16. What is your connection with Steve Golin and Propaganda Films?

Steve Golin was my partner at Propaganda, is a dear friend and we produced many projects with one another during a 15 year period.

17. You produced your last feature film in 1996 (The Portrait of a Lady, directed by Jane Campion). What have you been up to since then?

I had several false starts on feature projects and produced with David Lynch an album of music for my wife ("http://www.lynchnet.com/luxvivens/"). I lived on an island in Maine for three years and wrote three new screenplays and a book.

18. How did you get the (memorable, I must add) role of "The Cowboy" in Mulholland Dr.?

David wrote the part of THE COWBOY for me and would not take no for an answer when I tried to avoid playing the role up until the very last minute. David is a lifelong friend. We are regularly in touch.

Fleischfilm

Short experimental art movies

http://www.fleischfilm.com/html/film.htm

Example...

Blutrausch/Bloodlust [1999]
16mm, 4:20 minutes

an attempt to constitute a human / machine dialogue. it shows the filmmaker's blood as seen / heard by the eyes / ears of the machine which is a film projector with optical sound. he affixed his blood onto clear film leader by cutting into the flesh and then pressing the film leader onto the wound. additionally he had blood taken with a syringe and afterwards dripped it on the film leader. fresh and clotted blood was used for a maximum of variety

FableVision

Welcome to FVTV, your source for whimsical,
innovative animation on the web!

The Shadow of Phobos

Hurtling through space above the Red Planet, potato-shaped Phobos completes an orbit of Mars in less than eight hours. In fact, since its orbital period is shorter than the planet's rotation period, Mars-based observers see Phobos rise in the west and set in the east - traveling from horizon to horizon in about 5 1/2 hours. These three images from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft record the oval shadow of Phobos racing over western Xanthe Terra on August 26, 1999. The area imaged is about 250 kilometers across and is seen in panels from left to right as red filter, blue filter, and combined color composite views from the MGS wide-angle camera system. The three dark spots most easily seen in the red filter image are likely small fields of dark sand dunes on crater floors. Standing in the shadow of Phobos, you would see the Martian version of a solar eclipse!

An Illustrated Guide to Cryptographic Hashes

A "hash" (also called a "digest", and informally a "checksum") is a kind of "signature" for a stream of data that represents the contents. The closest real-life analog we can think is "a tamper-evident seal on a software package": if you open the box (change the file), it's detected.

The illustrated guide covers the following topics: (Very interesting read)
- How are hashes used?
- Verifying file integrity
- Hashing passwords
- Digitally Signed Documents
- Hash Collisions?
- What's inside a cryptographic hash?


An Illustrated Guide to Cryptographic Hashes

GoogleRankings (Check the ranking of a web page in Google™ )

While there are many methods out there for building a profitable website, from banner ads to email campaigns, by far the most cost effective over time has proven repeatedly to be search engine positioning. Use the steps in this article to hook up your site. Once you think you've got it right, check your keywords over at GoogleRankings

WinTasks Process Library

In the recesses of your computer, 20-30 invisible processes run silently in the background. Some hog system resources, turning your PC into a sluggish computer. Worse yet, other useless processes harbour spyware and Trojans - violating your privacy and giving hackers free reign on your computer. WinTasks Process Library is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to know the exact purpose of every single process. The categories available online are:

-Top Security Risks
-Top System Processes
-Top Applications
-Other Processes

WinTasks Process Library

Eye of the Spider

123Promotion's Eye of the Search Engine Spider is a great utility to see how a search engine spider sees your web site. This tool is VERY useful in showing you which information the search engines read first. Is the most important information on your pages near the top?

For instance if one puts url of this blog in the Eye of the spider one gets...

URL: http://hal9ksblog.blogspot.com/
(: the truth is out there :)
[ ** End of Title ** ]


Notify Blogger about objectionable content.
[HYPERLINK: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1200] What does
this mean?

[HYPERLINK: http://www.blogger.com/] [IMG:ALT TAG: Blogger]
[FORM: http://search.blogger.com/]

[HYPERLINK: http://www.blogger.com/] [IMG:ALT TAG: Get your own blog]
[IMG:ALT TAG: Flag Blog] [HYPERLINK:
http://www.blogger.com/redirect/next_blog.pyra?navBar=true] [IMG:ALT TAG:
Next blog]

[FORM-FIELD] [FORM-FIELD] [FORM-FIELD] [FORM-FIELD] [FORM-FIELD] BlogThis!


(: the truth is out there :)


About Me

[HYPERLINK: http://www.blogger.com/profile/12906312] [IMG:ALT TAG: My
Photo]
Name:john d.

[HYPERLINK: http://www.blogger.com/profile/12906312] View my complete
profile [HYPERLINK: http://easyhitcounters.com/stats.php?site=k9lah]
[HYPERLINK: http://easyhitcounters.com/] Free Counter


[IMG:ALT TAG: Recent Posts]
.....

Real-time HTML editor

Welcome to the real-time HTML editor!

The Google Pagerank Algorithm

So what is PageRank?

In short PageRank is a “vote”, by all the other pages on the Web, about how important a page is. A link to a page counts as a vote of support. If there’s no link there’s no support (but it’s an abstention from voting rather than a vote against the page).

Quoting from the original Google paper, PageRank is defined like this:

We assume page A has pages T1...Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations). The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. There are more details about d in the next section. Also C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A. The PageRank of a page A is given as follows:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

Note that the PageRanks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all web pages' PageRanks will be one.

PageRank or PR(A) can be calculated using a simple iterative algorithm, and corresponds to the principal eigenvector of the normalized link matrix of the web.

but that’s not too helpful so let’s break it down into sections.

PR(Tn) - Each page has a notion of its own self-importance. That’s “PR(T1)” for the first page in the web all the way up to “PR(Tn)” for the last page
C(Tn) - Each page spreads its vote out evenly amongst all of it’s outgoing links. The count, or number, of outgoing links for page 1 is “C(T1)”, “C(Tn)” for page n, and so on for all pages.
PR(Tn)/C(Tn) - so if our page (page A) has a backlink from page “n” the share of the vote page A will get is “PR(Tn)/C(Tn)”
d(... - All these fractions of votes are added together but, to stop the other pages having too much influence, this total vote is “damped down” by multiplying it by 0.85 (the factor “d”)
(1 - d) - The (1 – d) bit at the beginning is a bit of probability math magic so the “sum of all web pages' PageRanks will be one”: it adds in the bit lost by the d(.... It also means that if a page has no links to it (no backlinks) even then it will still get a small PR of 0.15 (i.e. 1 – 0.85). (Aside: the Google paper says “the sum of all pages” but they mean the “the normalised sum” – otherwise known as “the average” to you and me.

The Google Pagerank Algorithm

Inside Google Blog

Google Blog

Tools You Might Have Missed

Here is a collection of research tools , as you might have missed them the first time around. Many of them access the Google API, some access the Yahoo API.

Actors: What roles does an actor play?
LinkZoom: Enter your URL to see links zoomed in a slideshow.
Web of Letters: Spell words using images found on the web. This tool uses the Yahoo API.
AnyRank: Find the CurseRank, GeekRank, NaughtyRank, or IntellectRank for your URL.
Neighborsearch: Searches within pages linked from a site.
Moviebot: See automated movie ratings, like for “Terminator.”
Google Mini: A small version of Google (IE-only).
Google Rotated: A rotated version of Google (IE-only).
The Google Family Tree: See relatives of any famous person.
Ageshare: In which age group do keywords like “ice cream” appear most often?
Categorizer: Automatically find a category for your keywords.
FindForward: Collects many different search tools from this blog.
Citybrowser: Find out everything about a city.
The Google Encyclopedia: Data-mining through search engines.
Auto-linker: Automatically insert links into any text.
Domain Generator: Get a random domain name.
Google Years: Show the PageCount for the years 1000-2100.
Illusionizer: Replaces the images on any page by matching Google Images results.
Memomarker: Get the “Googlonym" for any URL or text.
PageBoost: Get only positive reviews for your URL.
Permutator: Find variations for any URL.
PersonMap: Which character traits most closely describe you or another person? The nearer an attribute is to the center, the more fitting it is.
Image Quiz: My stats tell me this is the most popular page here ever.
Quote Finder: Check if a source is original or taken from somewhere else.
Random page: Takes random words, googles them, and redirects you to the first page found.
Random Book: Grabs a random book, CD, DVD, or VHS from Amazon.
Random Ego-Googler: Find a random person on the web.
Memecodes: Darwinistic random page genes in a battle for search engine attention.
Search Grid: Truly two-dimensional search results.
Stereoscopic ASCII vision: Create one of those images you need to gaze on for a minute to see them in 3D.
Google Suggests: Find out what options Google Suggest offers.
Word Popularity Colorizer: Visualize how frequent keywords are relative to the context they appear in.
Theorybot: Random theories on the click of a button.
Egobot: Talk to the web through Egobot.
The Google Couch Potato: Infinitely stream Google Videos.
Random Yahoo Images: See random image compositions.
The Memespread Analyzer. -->
Keyword Variations: Finds site with variants of your keyword.

TyperA - test your typing skills

TyperA is a Java program that tests your typing speed. You get randomly chosen words or sentences and try to type them as fast as possible. A game lasts for one or two minutes and the program counts the letters of the correctly typed words and divides it by the test time. This will be your score, expressed in KPM, keystrokes per minute.

TyperA is a 100% free game, developed on Linux platform with free utilities, running on a Apache/Linux server. You can play TyperA with any browser that can do Java (Netscape, IE, ...). Support for cookies and frames is also required.

How Google really works (The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine)

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page
{sergey, page}@cs.stanford.edu
Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
Abstract

In this paper, we present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine which makes heavy use of the structure present in hypertext. Google is designed to crawl and index the Web efficiently and produce much more satisfying search results than existing systems. The prototype with a full text and hyperlink database of at least 24 million pages is available at http://google.stanford.edu/

To engineer a search engine is a challenging task. Search engines index tens to hundreds of millions of web pages involving a comparable number of distinct terms. They answer tens of millions of queries every day. Despite the importance of large-scale search engines on the web, very little academic research has been done on them. Furthermore, due to rapid advance in technology and web proliferation, creating a web search engine today is very different from three years ago. This paper provides an in-depth description of our large-scale web search engine -- the first such detailed public description we know of to date.

Apart from the problems of scaling traditional search techniques to data of this magnitude, there are new technical challenges involved with using the additional information present in hypertext to produce better search results. This paper addresses this question of how to build a practical large-scale system which can exploit the additional information present in hypertext. Also we look at the problem of how to effectively deal with uncontrolled hypertext collections where anyone can publish anything they want.

Keywords: World Wide Web, Search Engines, Information Retrieval, PageRank, Google

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

ASCII Babes

WHAT IS?

ASCII ART? It's an image that is made up of keyboard characters. Sometimes it's as simple as a 'email sig' or an emoticon :) But in the case of asciibabes.com it's a portrait of a person. With an average of 80,000+ keyboard characters. There's a lot happening there, so you might have to move AWAY from the screen to be able to see the detail.

Pictures made out of ASCII characters -> ASCIIBABES

FCK editor - text editor for the internet

This HTML text editor brings to the web many of the powerful functionalities of desktop editors like MS Word. It's lightweight and doesn't require any kind of installation on the client computer.
Because it is Open Source, you may use it however you want.

Check Live Demo
or
Download ver. 2.0

Eye of Science (microscopic photography)

As a two-person team of photographer and biologist, our aim is to
combine scientific exactness with aesthetic appearances, and thereby
help to bridge the gap between the world of science and the
world of art. We are committed to the rigorous standards of scientific
investigation, but also to the use of color as a creative and harmonious
tool to achieve beauty. By combining science and aesthetics we hope
to enthuse our audience. Day after day we explore fascinating forms and
structures in a world beyond human vision.

Eye of Science Gallery

IBM has a monthly Ponder This page, with questions and solutions dating back to 1998. There is still time to get your name on the top 100 solvers.

Challenge for September 2005 is

Ponder This Challenge:
Puzzle for September 2005.

This puzzle was sent in by Alan O'Donnell.
It comes in three parts; solve as many as you can.

Part 1:
You have a frictionless pulley with a rope over it. On one side is a 3kg weight. On the other side is a weightless frictionless pulley with another rope over it. This second pulley has a 1kg weight on one side, and a 2kg weight on the other. You have a frictionless pulley with a rope over it; the pulley is attached to an immovable ceiling.

At what rate (in terms of g, the acceleration due to gravity) does the 3kg weight accelerate downwards when the system is released?

Part 2:
Suppose the system described in Part 1 is on one end of a rope over another pulley, with a 6kg weight on the other side. How fast does the 6kg weight accelerate in terms of g?

Part 3:
Suppose this sequence is continued with weights 1kg, 2kg, 3kg, 6kg, 12kg, 24kg, ..., 3*(2**m)kg. What is the general term for the acceleration of the heaviest object?




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first 100 people who answer all three parts correctly will be listed. The answer will be posted a week after the 100th is received, or at the end of the month.
We will post the names of those who submit a correct, original solution! If you don't want your name posted then please include such a statement in your submission!

The IP Address Locator

The IP Address Locator at geobytes.com is a free service that gives the following information about any IP address. Country Code, Region Code, City Code, City ID, Timezone, State, City Name, Latitude, and Longitude. Then feeds that information to the U.S. Census Bureau's TIGER Mapping Service to display a map of where the IP address is from. Very cool stuff to find out who keeps pinging your router with those silly scriptz!

Google 4 Unsecure Web Video Cams

Unsecure WebCams -> GO FIND!

Binary Translator

Well...translate this :)

01110001 01110101 01101001 01100011 01101011 00100111 01101110 00100111 01100100 01101001 01110010 01110100 01111001 00100000 01110000 00110010 01110000 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01111000 01111001 00100000 01110010 01110101 01101100 01111010 00100000 00111010 00101001

http://www.adcott.net/binary/

Playing With Time

Playing With Time is an exciting, new project that looks at how the world around you is changing over many different time periods. The project consists of two major parts: this web site and a traveling museum exhibit. The site is being developed by Red Hill Studios. The exhibit is a collaboration between Red Hill and the Science Museum of Minnesota. Here at the Playing With Time web site, unseen worlds of change will be revealed. You will see time sped up and slowed down, and behold the beauty of change.

Gallery of Playing With Time

fazed

Geeky links from all over the net @ Fazed

3D cosmos

Torrentspy

Probbably the best "non login needed" BitTorrent tracker http://www.torrentspy.com/latest.asp