All of my car-owning buddies used to kid me because I never had a real hot rod. Well, a little over a year ago, a guy named Randy Grubb showed up at my garage. He was hauling a trailer with a car on it that he and a pal of his, Mike Leeds, had built. Unfortunately, the car had no rear brakes, headlights or turn signals and was far from road legal. However, it did have a 190-in. wheelbase and an engine from an M-47 Patton tank. Naturally, it got my attention.

So I handed over shopping bags full of $20 bills and the car was mine. And, it stopped all of that no-hot-rod nonsense I was hearing--in a hurry.
...
This engine is an AV-1790-5B and it's 1792 cu. in. It has overhead cams and Hemi heads. Since it was designed to move a tank, it puts out 810 hp and makes 1560 ft.-lb. of torque. But you can't just hit the local neighborhood NAPA store for replacement parts on one of these. Fortunately, a fellow by the name of Roy Smith has a surplus company in Augusta, Ga., and he has piles of them sitting there.

To be Leno - a real car guy

BASIC Computer Language Turns 40

10 PRINT "In 1963 two Dartmouth College math professors had a radical"

20 PRINT "idea - create a computer language muscular enough to harness"

30 PRINT "the power of the period's computers, yet simple enough that even"

40 PRINT "the school's janitors could use it."

50 END

Happy Birthday to BASIC

This Week's Onion Must Read...

"Capable of navigating the billions of thoughts, experiences, and emotions that make up the human psyche, the new Yahoo soul-search engine helps users find what's deep inside them quickly and easily," Yahoo CEO Terry Semel said. "All those long, difficult nights of pondering your place in this world are a thing of the past." In the past, a soul search was a labor-intensive and time-consuming process.

"A soul search often required backpacking trips across Europe, disastrous long-term relationships with incompatible lovers, and years of expensive therapy, "Worse, the search process often included depression, lowered self-worth, and intense doubt." Semel called the old way of seeking clarity "a logistical nightmare."

Onion : Yahoo Lauches Soul Search Engine

These idiots are really bent on self destruction...

The SCO Group, the company that's hoping to profit from its assertion that Linux violates its Unix intellectual property, has threatened legal action against two federal supercomputer users, letters released Thursday show.
...
The letter to NERSC director Horst Simon used strong language in its effort to convince the research facility to buy a license that will let it use Linux without fear of SCO legal action.
...
"If you fail to respond to our efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement, WE WILL TURN YOUR NAME OVER TO OUR OUTSIDE COUNSEL FOR CONSIDERATION OF LEGAL ACTION," Pettit said

SCO targets federal supercomputer users

More bottom feeding...

Linux threatens Microsoft's business--chiefly in hampering the growth of Windows on higher-end computers called servers, but also in Microsoft's desktop computing stronghold and in "embedded" computing devices such as electronic ticket dispensers, where Microsoft is trying to expand.
...
"There's no smoking gun yet showing an orchestrated Microsoft executive-level pulling of SCO's puppet strings. What there is, however, is rather unseemly involvement by Microsoft around the periphery of SCO's funding," Haff said. "Given that Microsoft, on the one hand, is a convicted monopolist and that, on the other, SCO's financial dealings and actions look increasingly shady, Microsoft should certainly be worried about even a little bit of SCO's stench rubbing off."

Investment firm confirms Microsoft link to SCO

Finally after all these years.. Affirmation of what I have been saying all along...

Technology has paid off handsomely for porn sites in the USA. Led by sites like Danni's Hard Drive and Cybererotica, they generated $2 billion in revenue last year, up 10% to 15% from 2002, says Adult Video News, a trade magazine. That's about 10% of the overall domestic porn market. The number of porn sites has vaulted eighteenfold, to 1.3 million, since 1998, says the National Research Council.
...
"Technology turned trash into cash," Harris says. "That's a lesson other industries can learn."

Online porn often leads high-tech way

Add one if it will help. Haiku venting makes me feel so much better. The theme of this meme is All work and no play make Jack a dull (and tired) geek. Maybe I was dull before and never noticed ;)

Engineer Burnout
Too Many Tasks To Juggle
rm dash f star

bucy wrote:
] ] Today, the big issue is Java. Sun's insistence on
] ] continuing tight control of the Java code has damaged
] ] Sun's long-term interests by throttling acceptance of the
] ] language in the open-source community, ceding the field
] ] (and probably the future) to scripting-language
] ] competitors like Python and Perl. Once again the choice
] ] is between control and ubiquity, and despite your claim
] ] that "open source is our friend" Sun appears to be
] ] choosing control. Sun's terms are so restrictive that
] ] Linux distributions cannot even include Java binaries for
] ] use as a browser plugin, let alone as a standalone
] ] development tool.

Said Eric Raymond (Moses) to the Pharohs of Egypt (Sun):
"Let my Java Go!"

RE: ESR to Sun: Let Java Go

Maybe SCO should hire Dr. Evil. Then they could sue for

ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS!

What a club of morons.. I give them 1 yr before they are bankrupt with these tactics. The lawyers will own all the shares because that's all they can pay with.

Linux antagonist SCO Group is seeking to add $2 billion to its legal claim against computing giant IBM while changing the scope of the suit.

In an amended complaint submitted shortly before a hearing Friday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, SCO lists two new causes of action against IBM, both of which include claims for damages of at least $1 billion. The changes bring the total amount sought to about $5 billion. Damages previously had been set at $3 billion.

CNET : SCO claim reaches $5 billion

] Engineering geek names son version 2.0

...instead of jr. or junior.
what about beta-versions? final releases or licensing?

[via http://boingboing.net/2004_02_01_archive.html#107567946375749858]

After 2.0's birth, the Cusacks sent out an electronic birth announcement.

"I wrote in the birth announcement e-mail stuff, like there's a lot of features from version 1.0 with additional features from Jamie," Jon Cusack said.

CNN.com - Engineering geek names son version 2.0