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MapGuide is a very nice selection of maps of Oahu. Great for a good general overview of the island and its neighborhoods; fine grained detail is available from the Interactive Geographic Information Systems Maps and Data supplied by the City and County.
Shopping online, unless you're buying locally, usually involves shipping expenses that are dictated by the seller. Compare her prices with published rates from the US Postal Service, FedEx and UPS.
If you spend time in the Explorer window and use the right-click functionality, then you'll enjoy the control over the menus presented that ContextEdit provides. The license is free from PCMagazine.
"A Functional Specification describes what an application does and how a person interacts with it." It's a detailed blueprint of the application, used to delineate the actions required and the on-screen layout that potential users will be working in as they manipulate the software. Once vetted, it goes to the programmers to be developed into working code. Small projects generally don't warrant the expense but knowing how the functional spec is used can make both developers and clients more aware of the interactive processes involved.
I haven't come across this particular capability in my word processor: Web Frequency Indexer lets you create a list of words in a text, with the number of times each word occurs. Just Paste or type in your text and select a sort order. I'd never have known otherwise that the word "the" is used 103 times on this page!
If you travel but your ISP doesn't travel with you (perhaps you're not on AOL), there is an economical solution: it's prepaid Internet access on a CD you can buy at Staples, CompUSA, Radio Shack or 7-11. No credit cards, no membership, no monthly bills and no personal information are required. Slingshot is easy to use and it's private. It costs about $10 for 600 minutes of local access or 120 minutes on their nationwide toll-free network.
It used to be completely do it yourself...now you can build your own website through a console at Yahoo.com for $14.95. For console-less website hosting at half the price, take a look at PowWeb. Personally, I shop global but I buy local, and I like Flex.com at $9.95 per month.
For those who still go down to the sea in small boats, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Maritime Safety Information Center provides a number of javascript powered navigation calculators AND access to The American Practical Navigator which can be downloaded in PDF format.
The Operating Systems Handbook cost $49.50 new, in 1995. A working knowledge of UNIX, VMS, OS/400, VM/CMS, and MVS is as valuable today as it was then but today the book is available for download in .PDF format, for free.
I've been putting together a list of things you can do with a couple of six year old computers, say P120s with 64MB of RAM and 1.2Gig HDDs...like the one I'm writing on now. Near the top of the list is SmoothWall: a free operating system that converts a redundant PC into a firewall and VPN gateway, similar to Gnatbox (but not quite), then the Linux Router or Freesco or maybe Pocket Linux or Coyote. Then another NIC and a wireless access point...and, and, and the list just keeps getting longer.
Esther Dyson has a solution for SPAM that all of us can subscribe to in Should You Be Paid For Reading This Message?
"For example, if you want to send me an e-mail (and you are not in my address book, or perhaps even if you are!), my default charge is $1. If I LIKE what you send, I may decide to cancel the charge. If I DON’T like it, I may block further mail from you…or I may simply raise my rate to $10. It’s up to you whether you want to pay that much next time. You may decide I’m not worth it."
C, C+, C++, C#....isn't it about time for a new programming language? How about a D Programming Language?
More than Marketing: KnowThis is a virtual library of resources aimed at facilitating the exchange of goods and services. It's a middle man that lives in the details here and he can help you to find that one in two-hundred and fifty that are born every minute.
"WebTime 2000 is a small utility that will synchronize your PC's internal clock with one of the several atomic clocks maintained by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology." You can pay up to $20.00 for a program that does the same thing, but this one is free.
What to do when half of what you hear contradicts the other half? Adjust your perspective and count the days at The Long Now.
From warehouses full of confiscated (and otherwise legally acquired) swag, to you electronically: it's the EBay of your Federal Government, the General Services Administration Auctions and Bid4Assets! (Your PayPal account isn't going to work here and you will have to give them your Social Security number...but what the heck, they gave it to you in the first place.)
Newer sites aren't necessarily easier to use, but compare these two modem resources and judge for yourself: the newest 56k modem resource, Vee90, vs. the venerable Modemsite.
The Los Alamos National Research Library newsletter is published monthly and you can subscribe to their notification mailing list. LANL is the home of the Library Without Walls Project and what the Internet was always meant to be.
There was a tempest in the teapot of our local alternative newspaper, the Honolulu Weekly. It's probably blown over already, but look here for insight into the workings of the Weekly from the perspective of the "founding editors Julia Steele and Derek Ferrar on the Weekly's 10th Anniversary."
The pixel artist at minipops was headed for the edge of less-is-better and fell off. (If you look real hard you can almost hear where the money went.)
Interested in monitoring patent submissions in a particular industry? Chris Sherman does a walk-through: setting up an email alert about inventions recently patented in the United States.
If I had money in the market, some of it would be in Healthcare Software and Applications providers who are helping to bring the profession into compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) before the October, 2002, deadline.
It would be a conservative investment that I'd place through BuyandHold.com.
But I'm looking real hard at OpenSolutions too.
Ok, so maybe I'll just buy one share.
The Web Price Index Rate Card displays 2001's median prices for full-site web development. Makes you wonder how small is small.
Pass the paranoia, please: When the focus is computer security, the site reviews point to Bugtraq, CERT, and SANS, The Honeynet Project, WhiteHats and Packet Storm, all aimed at Systems Administrators. The folks at home should be running free personal firewall software like ZoneAlarm or Sygate SPF.
The Internet Storm Center tracks unusual traffic patterns before they are tied to a particular attack and presents graphs of malicious network probes by port and IP address.
Of course uncommon sense, which never prevails, dictates that friends don't send friends attachments (without prior notice) and nobody should open a downloaded file until it's been scanned for viruses. Look to The VirusBulletin for a pagefull of links to AV resources and Wilders.org for directions to free AntiViral software.
For personal PC security on your hard drive, there's free virtual disk based encryption software called Scramware. Use of this program will make the cost of cracking your files prohibitive and it'll keep the kids out of your stash, too.
Chapter Two of Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices is online, and it's just another reason to love Chris Locke and his partnering publicist, Eric Norlin:
"Whose property is intellect? Whose right the right to copy what has gone before? Human culture has always been the work of thieves, beginning with Prometheus. Kill Napster today, get the fire next time.
Prometheus, lest we forget is the lesser Greek god that created man, stole fire, and -- in the process of duping Zeus -- performed the first sacrifice, the beginnings of human culture.
And fire, that infinitely shareable resource, figuratively as word and factually as warmth is what binds us to our common origins in the darkness of time when we came together to share our humanity in community with the true blessings of Prometheus."
Napster is history: Freenet manages to "route around" some of the limitations of other P2P programs by creating a distributed, autonomous network among anonymous users. The ultimate in free speech, it's promising, it's frightening, it's not going to go away and it's anarchy, online. Freegle is an effort to create an efficient way of finding content on Freenet.
You hear about them all the time but never get to see them! You can view the graphical representations of a good number of algorithms at The Stony Brook Algorithm Repository.
"I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me — no, that's too much to ask of anyone — if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach."
The Internet Public Library is, "the first public library of and for the Internet community," and has been receiving awards since before the Internet was big. Their Pathfinders, written by IPL staff, direct users to pertinent data on a wide range of topics.
The dirty bit just sounds like the name of a geek biker bar. Actually, it's a technique used by the cache controller in your computer to ensure cached data is written back to memory before it is lost in a cache line shuffle. System Cache is a discussion in depth of this technology which is responsible for much of the increase in PC performance.
"A dictionary is a collection of words and definitions about all subjects. Having said this, many of the collections of definitions on websites are called dictionaries but should really be called glossaries as the list of definitions is restricted to specific subject/s. These are also included in the Glossarist whereas general dictionaries are not."
There are currently 4577 glossaries in the database, of which 679 have been catalogued into 130 categories.
I've wanted to know: What they were protesting and why they rioted in Genoa. Read, THE GLOBALIZER WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, and you'll know too.
Pretend you're a lawyer! Research a real life legal problem with the technology that is changing the practice of law. Then consider the ramifications of machine determined justice...