interesting - you can get your grandparent’s fbi files. I imagine there must be some fascinating stories in there from world war II, the McCarthy era, the cold war … so many periods of paranoia stacked one of top of the other.
http://getgrandpasfbifile.com
Add comment June 13th, 2007
via eco-geek
About 3 years ago I went to a microsoft presentation about Longhorn . The crowd gasped when the presenter commented that the next version of Windows was 500% more resource intensive than XP.
It’s possible that since then they managed to wrangle in some of that 500% increase but Microsoft Vista has been heartily criticized for it’s resource-intensiveness which renders perfectly good hardware obsolete. As people upgrade to Vista, they’ll hopefully at least recycle their now-obsolete computers responsibly at a place like FreeGeek. Even so, recycling perfectly good hardware to make a software upgrade seems a bit silly and wasteful.
There are many reasons that businesses won’t upgrade to linux desktops, but there are more reasons than ever for home computer users to consider a linux desktop instead. Â Â The community documentation has come a long way to this end.
Unfortunately, I work in a business that does require me to get a copy of Vista for testing .NET development. I wouldn’t do .NET development if the entire state of Washington wasn’t committed to it, but if I want to do any state contracts, I have to. Seems like a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars. Hopefully it’ll run in a VM environment. We’ll see.
Add comment March 4th, 2007
Wow, I just looked up some old friends that I lost touch with years ago and tracked all the places they’ve lived since leaving Olympia. I’m not entirely comfortable with how consistently correct the information is in people search
I couldn’t find much info on the site about how to anonymize oneself. Sure am glad I’m not trying to remain anonymous from any sort of abusive past. But it was just a year ago that we had a local neo nazi infestation that tried to intimidate everyone who expressed displeasure at their behavior.
We desparately need to be in control of our personal data.
Add comment February 9th, 2007
I absolutely hate wasting my time trying to get a person on the phone when I have to deal with something that a phone bot can’t deal with. Anyway, gethuman.com lists out phone numbers you can call to get people. Very handy.
Add comment February 5th, 2007
Tufte is near and dear to my little science-geek heart for bringing the concept of displaying statistical information in creative and meaningful ways… a statistician who takes inspiration from art.
Chris Jordan is an artist taking inspiration from statistics with a new series entitled “Running the Numbers: an American Self Portrait”.
This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics tend to feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or a trillion dollars spent on the Iraq war. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed photographic prints assembled from tens-of-thousands of smaller images. The series is still in its early stages, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.
This would definitely be more awe inspiring in person - take a look at the dimensions when looking at each piece.
Add comment February 1st, 2007