If you don't know fado, Mafalda Arnauth's first US album is a good place to begin.

All Music Guide says: "The crop of young fadistas currently singing have made Portugal's fado style a thing of international joy. On her third album (the first to be released in the U.S.), Mafalda Arnauth shows that among her contemporaries, she's the one with the most traditional heart.

There's no denying that, from the first note, she has the purity and emotion that fado demands of a singer.

Exquisite as the backing is -- and there's no doubting the virtuosity of the musicians -- it's Arnauth's voice that is the centerpiece here. Liquid and limpid, it's a gorgeous thing, perfectly suited to fado. Hers is a voice with depth; there's none of the shallowness of pop music here.

With a very tasteful choice of songs, expressed in an almost perfect manner, you have an artist who's keeping the flame of traditional fado burning very bright indeed."

The Rhapsody review for "Encantamento" reads: "Mafalda Arnauth is the young Portuguese singer who's almost single-handedly reviving fado, Portugal's sea-faring version of the blues. Her voice is a peerless instrument: supple, warm and shot through with longing. The backing is (thankfully) simple and traditional, allowing the material and the artist to fully shine."

Mafalda Arnauth

The Ancestor's Tale is at once a far-reaching survey of the latest, best thinking on biology and a fascinating history of all living things.

The Ancestor's Tale

The 30 minute video here is not to be missed.

Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan

Pakistan.

America's Secret War - George Friedman - Author interviews

To have a real debate, the contestants should be allowed to question each other directly.

This gives an entirely new meaning to "what questions are you asking yourself?"

Bush, Kerry and a Debate That Isn't

I wrote the following text after class today (Thursday 01/16/1997) in an effort to collect my own thoughts on the current place of the floppy disk in the environment of the customer, the user of the diskette. I explored the issue in a pragmatic manner in order to evaluate the importance of the floppy disk to the customer relative to other secondary storage technologies and its role in day-to-day computer use. This user-centric approach differs from the disk-centric approach that I've taken up to this point. (For example, in previous exercises I explored the exclusive use of the floppy disk without regard to its place in normal computer use.)

I look forward to any comments you may have on the issues presented.

Sincerely,

Jeremy
CMPE Undergraduate CS1803A

--- 8< ---

Putting the Floppy Diskette in Perspective

In developing a specification for the 3.5" floppy diskette, it's important to consider the place it occupies in today's varied landscape of secondary storage systems. The floppy disk was displaced as the leader in commodity storage systems over a decade ago. As a result, the floppy disk must assume its place as a last-resort file storage and transfer medium.

Today's hard disks are faster, cheaper, more compact, and more reliable than floppy disks. Actually, this has been the case for several years. Hard disk drives (10 MBytes/sec and beyond) are several orders of magnitude faster than floppy disk drives (250 Kbits/sec up to 500 Kbits/sec). Per unit of data capacity, hard disks (US$0.17/MB) are far less expensive than floppy diskettes (US$0.40/MB). Hard disks store up to 384 MBytes per cubic inch while floppy disks store only 1.10 MBytes per cubic inch. Hard disk drives (300,000 POH - 1,000,000 POH) are also more reliable than floppy disk drives (30,000 - 80,000 POH).

The importance of the floppy diskette's portability is rapidly diminishing with the exponential growth of high-speed, high-capacity, low-cost, high-availability worldwide internetworking technology. No longer is it necessary (or even particularly effective) to use a diskette to transfer a file from one computer system to another. When the two are networked, file transfer, whether intra-system or inter- system, is a simple file copy operation.

In addition to usage considerations, the end of the floppy disk's reign is also readily apparent in the history of technological improvements in design and operation. While form factor, density, and usability have improved slightly over two decades of use, floppy disk recording technology has not. True, improvements were made in disk drive systems to allow the use of double-sided disks without removing and turning over the disk; however, this was primarily an improvement in usability. Also, recording densities have improved from 120 KB to 1.44 MB, or a factor of 12.288 increase in storage capacity per floppy disk. Meanwhile, hard disk drive densities have improved from less than ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

In the book, George Friedman identifies the United States' most dangerous enemies, delves into presidential strategies of the last quarter century, and reveals the real reasons behind the attack of 9/11-and the Bush administration's motivation for the war in Iraq. It describes in eye-opening detail America's covert and overt efforts in the global war against terrorism.

Stratfor's George Friedman has a new book. It will be released on October 5, 2004. Here you can read the preface and prologue as well as chapter summaries.

This web site also includes a 30 minute video interview with George Friedman. It's available at

http://www.americassecretwar.com/GFIntrvFull.mpg

America's Secret War

Just watch it.

It begins: "Here at Rockwell Automation world headquarters, research has been proceeding to develop a line of automation products that establishes new standards for quality, technological leadership, and operating excellence."

The Retro Encabulator

flynn23 quoted:
]] The number of broadband Internet subscribers in the US has tripled since 2001.

"Triple! Triple! Triple!!"

I can almost hear Harry Caray.

This is called spin, but it's pretty weak.

You only have to read five sentences into the article to find:

"The report also says that the number of users of broadband services (speeds exceeding 200 kbps in both directions) soared to 28 million in December 2003 from 9.6 million in 2001."

In other words, broadband penetration in the US went from 3.2 percent to 9.5 percent; that means in each year since 2001, another 2 percent of the population has obtained broadband access. At that rate, everyone could have broadband access as soon as 2050. Outstanding! What an astonishing achievement!

Compare to South Korea, which by various estimates has broadband penetration somewhere between 60 percent and 80 percent, depending on the details of your definition.

RE: FCC: Broadband Usage Has Tripled

k wrote:
] ] PATRIOT DAY OBSERVANCE
] ]
] ] Patriot Day became a day of national observance on Dec.
] ] 18, 2001, when President George W. Bush signed a
] ] presidential proclamation.
] ]
] ] The Patriot Day resolution designates a day to honor
] ] those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on
] ] the United States.
]
] [ Did anyone else know about this? I had no idea. -k]

Houston, we have a name space problem.

Patriots Day is already a state holiday in Massachusetts.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/patriotsday/

http://boston.about.com/cs/history/a/patriots_day.htm

We will have to start scoping our variables, so that we can disambiguate between US::Patriot_Day and MA::Patriots_Day.

RE: Patriot Day 2004

If only the "alternative weeklies" could write like this, they might be worth reading.

To a small group of activists meeting in New York City in the early 1970s, Rob Stein had brought thirty-eight charts diagramming the organizational structure of the Republican "Message Machine," an octopus-like network of open and hidden microphones that he described as "perhaps the most potent, independent institutionalized apparatus ever assembled in a democracy to promote one belief system."

In July 1968, the Republicans knew they were in trouble, but they didn't know why. Ideas apparently mattered, and words were maybe more important than they had guessed; unfortunately, they didn't have any.

Having exchanged intellectual curiosity for ideological certainty, they had forfeited their powers of observation as well as their senses of humor.

But if a set of coherent ideas was hard to find in all the sermons from the mount, what was not hard to find was the common tendency to believe in some form of transcendent truth. A religious as opposed to a secular way of thinking. Good versus Evil, right or wrong, saved or damned, with us or against us, and no light-minded trifling with doubt or ambiguity.

In place of intelligence, which might tempt them to consort with wicked or insulting questions for which they don't already possess the answers, the parties of the right substitute ideology, which, although sometimes archaic and bizarre, is always virtuous.

The dumbing down of the public discourse follows as the day the night, and so it comes as no surprise that both candidates in this year's presidential election present themselves as embodiments of what they call "values" rather than as the proponents of an idea.

The Republican Propaganda Mill, a Brief History | Harper's