So this Spanish g
uy has a theory that i
ncreased a
tmospheric flu
ctuations due to global warming are responsible for an increase
in the
frequency a
nd mass of random falling blocks of ice. These megacryometeors can weigh 10-20 Kgs and fall out of apparently clear skies. I was pretty equanimous about all this, and then I read this happy thought…
So Barbara spotted that diligent researchers have conclusively established that there’s no correlation between shoe size and penis size.
So I plugged in the DSL router thingy and instantly got 1400/680 connection speeds from the naffly named Cyberonic, a WorldCom reseller. This is incredible! Twice as much porn! Twice as many MP3s! Now I just have to work on setting up the web server again. I just hope that this little bit of WorldCom (the old and venerable UUNet) stays running through their bankruptcy. This is the best upload cheap deal I could find: $50/$40 per month for 1500/768 and one static IP. Of course, through DynDNS I could manage www.meehawl.com with a dynamic IP, but the static one came free! I am actually getting slightly more than the average WorldCom speeds, but their results still pale compared with Optonline’s 3500/850.
So the time has come to shut down the old DSL… Here’s hoping the new one is up and running soon!
Here’s a nice short piece on the likely aftermath of a US invasion of Iraq: civil war, mass slaughter and rape, and probably a pro-Iranian Iraqi regime.
Apparently, kicking out the moneylenders is just so passe. These days, Jesus will be taking on the burger flippers and assorted Agents Of Mammon who’ve infested his megaChurch temples.
So I joined Netflix, one of the first of the DVD rental mailer companies, a long time ago and like it a lot. I was interested, then, to read a rough calculation that, in terms of 190,000 MPEG-2 format DVDs, Netflix’s daily bandwidth totals 1.5 TB. This is a sizable fraction of the current total estimated Internet daily bandwidth: somewhere between 2-4 TB. Of course, Peter Wayner’s calculations do not allow for the online delivery of movies in more compression-efficient formats, such as the MPEG-4-derived DIVX, where a typical 4-7 GB DVD can be reduced to around 700 MB with minimal quality loss.
I guess the CD manufacturers also thought they were safe, when a typical CD occupied 700MB of data in an era of mainly dialup connections. Then along came MP3 with its one-tenth compression ratio and so much for that idea.
And I found out from some surfing that some Netflix competitors, such as CafeDVD, QwikFlicks, and DVD Avenue, are cheaper and offer porn, something Netflix avoids.
So we finally moved the bulk of our stuff this weekend, thanks to superlative assistance from a small army of people who turned up and helped out. We have established our beach-head in the new apartment and landed our supplies. We cleared lines of sight, secured our perimeter, and are now probing deep into the corners of the rooms hunting down the last pockets of resistance…
So apparently Giant Squids are taking over the planet. Unwittingly, us human dupes have been warming the oceans and killing off whales so successfully that now Architeuthis Dux is breeding out of control. In biomass terms, the Giant Squids have already won: there are more of them than us. I think I’ll go watch 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea again and pay closer attention to the squid battle. It won’t be long before I have to fight them in the streets. Know Your Enemy. Fight the Cthulhoids!
I note that a new transcaucasus pipeline project runs through Georgia. How convenient it is, then, that US troops deployed there several months ago. Regional commentators are already flagging an increasing US involvement in the region. I noted as much last February, and I wasn’t the only one. It seems Georgia is the very model of a modern corporatist State, and its nationalistic fervour ensures it’s aligning its energy production infrastructure with the US, instead of the Russians. They are even threatening to bomb this latest pipeline.