Soccer. Soccer. Soccer. OK, football! Sports 22. The 22nd topic in the sports conference has lots of updates on the red hot World Cup which is seeing matches with England and the US tomorrow (Friday). Even a romantic bit of a story from Korea. Don't miss it.

Why is the last Webtrends report showing April stats? Where can you see more current utilization figures?

I started to do the report yesterday but the download failed. I'll be updating it soon.

Sniper. Topic 81 in news.

Sheryl Crow, she's a babe. http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/public/read/babes/77/since/-7 In homage to drool, these fine babes are making their debut this week in Mike Griggs 'babes conference'. topic res title 72 1 Helena Bonham Carter 73 0 Jane Seymour 74 1 Emma Thompson 75 0 Justine Waddell 76 2 Kate Winslet It's just a coincidence that these 5 topics are sandwiched in between Miss Universe and Sheryl Crow.

Good news for your heart. See the heart topic in health for news, of a new more effective test for heart disease. And it's not a cholesterol test.

Why is Jiang still holding on to military power in China? You're going to have to check out the China topic in the news conference to find out.

Who is John Tsatsaragos? You'll have to voyage to the Geo conference to find out. He has sage comments on all of these topics today: 2 952 Vulcanism 24 876 Beyond Planet Earth 25 165 Natural Disasters: Drastic Changes in the Landscape 31 123 Geo Mysteries 45 34 Earth Medicine

Who are Austin, Texas hottest news babes? http://www.spring.net/newsbabes Results of this years poll have been tallied and the top ten are revealed. You'll be surprised at the newcomers who have risen to number one and two. And find out who is Austin's all time news babe for the fifth consecutive year.

I have 3 questions for Joe, our English ambassador, about Newcastle. See the soccer topic in sports for the questions. I'll email Joe and give him a heads up.

Who's Shari Fletcher and does she like Lord of the Rings and someone named Viggo? You'll have to visit the web conference to find out who she's drooling over. Topic 2 on cool websites. Clue. Viggo is "Number two on my List of Men I'd Flip the Switch For." Who could number one be? http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/public/read/web/2/since/-30

JFK. Was he deceitful or noble to hide his medical problems from the public. Discuss in politics. The Beatles just did a tribute to George Harrison in London. Read about it in topic 55 in the Spring's music conference. And talk about Paul's recent televised concert, wasn't it great?

In "Grade A: The Market for a Yale Woman's Eggs," published in the December Atlantic, Jessica Cohen describes her experience as a potential egg donor being screened by a highly selective couple whose advertisement she first sees in the Yale Daily News. Loving family seeks exceptional egg donor with 1500 SAT, great looks, good family health history, Jewish heritage and athletic. Height 5'4''-5'9'', Age 18-29. We will pay EXTREMELY well and will take care of all expenses. Hope to hear from you. Cohen wonders, "Should couples be able to pay a premium on an open market for their idea of the perfect egg?" She ultimately withdraws from a process she thinks will create "a child encumbered with too many expectations." Cohen suggests that perhaps modern-day Social Darwinists would support egg donation on an open market because "modern success is measured largely in financial terms" and therefore "the most successful couples, eager to pay more, [should] have access to the most expensive eggs." What are the most important ethical questions this issue raises? Should the process of egg donation be regulated? How? Discuss in topic 49 in the (gasp) babes conference.

I found what I think is a very neat application. If you go to http://www.wimba.com/tools/vmail/showroom.php you can record a voice email and send it to anyone you like. Send one to me! (terry@spring.net) I'd love to hear from you using this tool so I could hear you. I've been reading your posts for so long and I often wonder what the voices behind all the words are like! Tell me how your holidays are going and what you'd like to see more of on the Spring, I'll listen!

Hi all You have to feel sorry for the people of Sydney as a big bushfire outbreak, exacerbated by drought moves toward the city and towns on the outskirts. Australia has an annual bushfire problem, but this has been exacerbated by the worst drought in living memory and increasingly severe water shortages, which are hampering fire fighting efforts. The Murray-Darling River has all but dried up in many areas and in others, the "Australian Nile" is crossable on barefoot. Much water goes to waste through irrigation schemes, and 99% of total volume is used for power-generation/irrigation and industrial purposes in the M-D basin. As for the fires, well, they have been a given ever since the drought began in June which is the wettest time of year for the area, and the time when the weather is coolest. Humidity has exacerbated the fires by being very low and is falling as I type this. Anyway, if you feel for Australia, go to the Australia subject in the Travel category. Rob

What are we going to talk about today?

Have to peruse these goodies in the morning when I have more time. John Tsatsaragos is the most wonderful man. He, with his self-taught English has kept Geo alive while I was out traipsing around on the mainland with Geo's resident archaeologist.

I'm posting on the new server. Annyone making it here yet?

Looks great terry. I need to see if I can get rid of the holiday stuff and back to the Greek key horizontal bars.

Hi all Please go to Geo Conference and visit number 64, where New Zealand has had a magnitude 5.6 earthquake that did a bit of damage. Alternatively you can go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worldearthquakes (Marcia, this is the former World Seismicity) for detailed coverage. Rob

Marci made a comeback today and we're glad to see her. She's all over Geo, of course. The Grammy's were last night and there's conversation about them in the Odds and Ends topic in drool, in the music conference, and I made a little webpage for the event at http://www.spring.net/music/grammy.html There's a remarkable picture there of Norah Jones with her half sister Anouska Shankar showing off their buttocks tattoos side by side. The 'inside' scoop!

Spring has a new website of interest in the Austin Texas area: http://www.austinmayor.com is about the upcoming Austin Mayor's race. There's a topic about this in the politics conference.

Today hot topic, Marc Katz. See http://www.austinmayor.com

Our newest site http://www.austinmayor.com is getting loads of hits but google just won't index it for some reason. Never had this happen before. What's wrong with what I'm doing? I have the meta tags and all in place. And it's linked from lots of other sites.

What do you mean by "won't index it"?

Users interested in trying out a new interface to spring.net might try following the following URL: http://www.spring.net/yabb-bin/pw/backtalk/abalone A couple notes: - Your usual login and password will work. - For now, at least, the "drool" conference is not accessible via this interface. This is deliberate. - Navigation is mostly through the pull-down menu in the upper right hand corner. - You can flag items as "favorites". These are shown first when you read a conference. By default, items you enter are automatically flagged as favorites, and items you respond to are automatically flagged as temporary favorites (just until the next time you read them). - There is a spell checker. - HTML can only be included in responses if you select "Pure HTML" or "Lazy HTML". You can set a default on the prefences page. - Fairwitnesses and (maybe) authors of items can retitle them. Any user can set a "private title" to be shown instead of then standard title. - Users can enter various personal information, if they like, which other users can see. - There are several other different looks that can be selected from the spring.net home page. Pistachio has a good feature set, but is not as pretty. The others are more primitive. - If you notice problems, or have questions, please Email me at mailto:janc@unixpapa.com or enter something in the Backtalk conference.

Oops, typo above. The URL is http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/pw/backtalk/abalone

A lot of the conferences aren't working now in abalone and in the other interfaces. You can't access them. Have you looked at this?

Which conferences?

re posts #24 and #25 above...Google has finally crawled austinmayor.com

Thanks for bringing it up. Bigger thanks for posting in Geo again! I really should look into Abalone if I am going to be associated with it or backlash or whatever it is. Terry, I still can't FTP but that is not news. That my Eudora is jammed and my ISP refuses to unjam it is most worrisome. Outlook express is taking up the job now but I have lost many things people have written to me andI to which I have not yet responded. *SIGH*

Maybe it is just me, but I cannot access the backtalk/abalone website.

It should be working now that we have the bugs out. I'd like to talk about the Open Directory project and how we can best implement it on our site.

Hmmmmmm have we a topic anywhere for that? Please let me know. Despite open chaos here, Geo keeps me sane!

I'll start a topic in the web conference.

Thanks!!!

Topic started. http://dmoz.org is the home of the ODP.

Re #32: Were you ever able to get Backtalk/abalone to work for you? The link on www.spring.net works fine for me. Should just be http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/pw/backtalk/abalone If you still have problems, please post details, or mail me at mailto:jan@unixpapa.com . I'm very interested in getting this working for people, and finding out what new users think about it.

Abalone is working fine.

Abalone is, indeed, working well. Yes I have been there sniffing around. Thanks for reminding me!

abalone rocks more than the others in my experience. bubblegum is for kids, literally.

Kids in grade school actually used bubblegum.

I remember that program! I think there are sites on the web that still use it.

There's a school that still uses it. Or at least they have an archive of it that's still readable. Jan knows the url. It may be on his site. http://www.unixpapa.com/backtalk/ Booktalk is a variation of the Backtalk system developed for the Canton Public Library PULSE system. It designed to be used in schools, with conferences for each classroom under the control of a teacher and all-school conferences shared by all. You can see the original site at http://pulse.cantonpl.org/. Just download the backtalk, bubblegum, and booktalk packages and follow the installation instructions in the booktalk package to install them. (from Jan's page)

wait a sec--what's this backtalk/abalone business?

On the Spring.net main page there is an option called "abalone" that gives you another interface to read through conferences.

It's a bit confusing. Once upon a time, before the Internet was invented, there was a computer program called "PicoSpan". It was written by an friend of mine name of Marcus Watts. It was used in a number of important early computer conferencing systems, most famously "The Well" and was, within a certain small community of users, wildly popular. But two bad things happened to Picospan. First, the company that bought the rights to it from Marcus vanished in a puff of grime, taking the rights to it down into a legal black hole that few would dare to explore. Second, the world wide web was invented, and people started wanting a web interface. In the less distant past, an acquaintance of mine, name of Dave Thaler, decided that implementing a clone of Picospan would be a cool project for his software engineering class at the University of Michigan. I suggested he call it "Yet Another Picospan Program" - Yapp. He did a nice job of writing a program that was virtually indistinguishable from Picospan, and started selling it to people who desperately wanted Picospan, but could not figure out how to get a copy. It soon became obvious to Dave that there was demand for a web interface, so he developed a modified version of Yapp that worked on the web. This is the conferencing system that has been running on Spring for many years. Back in 1996, several other systems I used found a need for a web interface to Picospan. Yapp couldn't be used because it cost money and it didn't have a working web interface yet. So Steve Weiss and I decided to write a new program. We couldn't base it on Picospan or Yapp, because that was proprietary code. So we wrote a new program, called Backtalk. It's completely independent from Picospan, but you can use it to read Picospan conferences, because it understands the Picospan data file formats. Unlike Yapp or Picospan, Backtalk is free, open source software. Backtalk consists of a core program that does all the hard internal stuff, and several sets of scripts that construct the user interface - they determine what the pages look like and how the buttons behave and so forth. The are several different sets of scripts, called "flavors". To the user, different flavors can look like a very different programs, but they are really all the same and access all the same conferences. The two most mature flavors are called "Abalone" and "Pistachio". Abalone is the slickest, Pistachio is old-fashioned but more feature rich. There are others that are all a bit half-baked: bubblegum, papaya, vanilla. Backtalk is on Spring.net as a sort of experiment. The theory was that since Backtalk is built to be 100% compatible with Picospan, and Yapp started life as a Picospan clone, it ought to be possible to run Yapp and Backtalk on the same conference database. Arbornet.org experimented with this briefly, running both Backtalk and Yapp for a while. However, the site administrators deleted Yapp after a week, so it wasn't an extensive test of compatibility. The experiment here on Spring has been mostly a success, but it's been rougher than I expected. Lots of very tiny differences keep showing up in the way Yapp and Backtalk store things, and I keep having to iron them smooth. Still from a users point of view, things work pretty well. You can use the various Backtalk interfaces to do pretty much everything Yapp lets you do, but with a different look and feel. The main limitation on the Backtalk interfaces is that they have been banned from the drool conference. Backtalk has only a few features that Yapp doesn't have, so mostly using Backtalk instead isn't going to gain you any dramatic improvements. At this stage it is mostly a matter of taste. You might like Backtalk better than Yapp. You might not.

thanks jan, i really do get it now! is that what yapp really stands for? *LAUGH*

Spring Server is going down for about 10 minutes now. It's 7:30 pm CST on Saturday night.

Final notice, server going down now.

Should be back around 7:45 pm CST.

The system reboot went smoothly and only interupted service for about 10 minutes, we've discovered that one of our hard drives has crashed, the primary one on the system. But since we're running RAID (redundant hard drives) we didn't lose any data. But we're going to have to buy another hard drive pair to replace the defective pair. I'll be talking to Karen about bundling this upgrade in to our April/May/June fund raising drive. We're ok for now, but I'd like to not be running on a single, nonredundant drive for much longer. I'll be doing a backup this evening, so things will run slow tonight. Don't be surprised if it takes longer to pull up web pages etc. tonight because the server will be churning a lot, backing up data.

The recommendation is to get either a pair of Seagate Barracuda 120 gb drives or a pair of Western Digital 120gb drives. Circuit City might have a sale on Western Digitals so I'll check there today when they open at 9. Some Circuit Cities were selling them for $10 after rebates but that sale ended Saturday. I wish I had become aware of this a little sooner! I see CompUSA has them for 79.99 but it's if you buy something else for $150 or more. They have Western Digital 160 gb drives for 129.99 after the 100 mail in rebate so it's 229.99 at the counter. Just checked, Circuit City's 120 gb Western Digitals are 159.99.

go to frye's and see what they have---they seem to sell a lot of stuff for decent prices.

actually it's fry's and their website is outpost.com

Just when I thought I was current on things PC, and treading water as fast as I can, a whole new set of stuff comes online for me to learn. *Sigh* Ia m still doing telnetting to keep up my skills. I hate not having a mouse, though. We are, indeed, creatures of habit! Fry's is where I got this much-travelled laptop! On the Outskirts of Sacramento.

Origins: Another cruel real-life example of the shocking degradation of women, or a big put-on? That's the question being raised about Hunting for Bambi, a Las Vegas-based business which purportedly offers "hunters" the opportunity, for $10,000, to stalk naked women and shoot them with paintball guns. According to the Hunting for Bambi site, their business is: More shocking than anything you've ever seen before. Labeled by CBS News as a cross between Sex and Violence a deadly combination! Women are being hunted down like animals and shot with paintball guns. This Raw and completely Uncensored video is a cross between Bum Fights and Girls Gone Wild and is sure to be the topic of many Howard Stern Show fans. You will be completely stunned when you see some of the wildest, most outrageous moments ever caught on tape. This is without a doubt one of the sickest and most shocking videos ever made. When it comes to hunting women if you can think of it we probably show it. Women are screaming with fear as our Team Bambi hunters track them down and blast them with paintball guns . . . Contributing to the public's belief in this venture was a local Las Vegas television station, KLAS-TV, running a non-probing news feature on Hunting for Bambi (complete with footage of "hunters" in action) and proclaiming it to be real. Discuss this in the news conference topic 88 Hunting for Bambi

It's hilarious/sick

i heard on the news today that it was a hoax........

I would think so because of the liability issues. Chalk it up to a "myth" and a successful publicity grab.

Yup, a hoax indeed. Highly amusing, though! Just watch somebody go and do it for real now...

you guys need to go to truthorfiction.com if you ever want to know what's up with some of these things we see through the email or otherwise.

There are also excellent hoax sites onlline. I use them whenever I get warnings that "the sky is falling " and our computers will be dust by morning.

I have no doubt the paintball project will surface elsewhere. It is funny in my mind to see what might happen!

I'm glad to see a post from you. I've been checking but haven't seen any for a long time, Marcia.

Lucie, I am on my way to a new life far from the negativity of Hawaii and surroundings there. More in email !

Kia Ora The Rugby World Cup has begun!!! 20 nations, 44 days for 48 games. Defending champions are Australia. http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/public/read/sports/59 Can the mighty Wallabies hold the trophy against the terrifying All Blacks of New Zealand, the roaring Lion of England, the cunning Springboks of South Africa, or the dark horse of France? HEAR THE STADIUMS OF AUSTRALIA ROAR!!!!!! Wait until you hear 100,000 Australians defy the meddling International Rugby Board with "Waltzing Matilda". It is truly awesome. Rob

Kia Ora Got to mention the best place to get Rugby coverage at the World Cup. http://www.foxsportsworld.com/rugby The United States is bravely competing. Well done America. Rob

Read about sports drinks in the sports conference. New topic. OK I'll lead off. My sports are basketball, football, soccer, golf, tennis, badminton, volleball and roque primarily. I drink Gatorade Strawberry Kiwi in the plastic bottle and the twist cap. I'm also trying a beverage called "Trek" just like the bicycle. Has anyone tried it? It comes in a nalgene ("I just found out that nalgene is a durable, clear freezeproof, smash proof, rugged type of plastic") bottle and has of those deals climbers use. What are they called, Caribiners or something like that? I hear it's more common out West, it's rare here. The Trek. I refill those Gatorade and Trek bottles with spring water from Whole Foods in Austin. We don't have our own reverse osmosis on our well yet. I like Mad River "Red Tea" and I've heard of another beverage called soy20 that's about to be released. I may have to mail order some, it's not locally available. What's your sport and drink of choice while playing/competing? Gator Ade sure. But surely there are higher perfomance sports drinks. Whatt would be interesting to find out is which one is most nourishing and which one helps your perfomance the most. What is your sport? What is your sports drink of choice? Why? Do you even think about this?

my fave sports drink is water, for obvious reasons (and i don't like gatorade) but it mostly depends on whether or not i'm participating or spectating (spectating-then a Coke)

Read my "summer watch" chronicle of the seasons in the "austin" conference, and find out how and why I guage the passing and coming of summer by the termperature of the water in my swimming pool.

Nalgene is the most expensive plastic labware made but is also inert and durable. Save the containers and put lots of water in them. Without a doubt, you need more water than anything else! I thought by sports drinks you meant Mint Juleps or some such,,,

Nope, I have a bunch of bottles here of Trek, and it seems to really work for running, swimming and just generally working out and staying balanced and hydrated. I need to get someone to take a picture of me holding up the carabiners with Trek beverages hanging off of them. It's a great sports drink for high performance athletes.

http://trekenergy.com

Don't miss Nightline with Ted Koppel tonight. It's about how 9/11 could have been avoided. There's more about this is the Nightline topic in the news or the tv conference. Take your pick. These topics are cross linked.

i didn't watch it but the news said the white house was to blame. what's the point of pointing fingers at who could've prevented it? there was an intent, and they took advantage of whatever weakness they found.....and in their delusion, the event created heroes of every sort.

More 20-20 backward vision. Armchair quarterbacks never miss. How come they are not running the world? It is so easy...

Meanwhile I fly my flag and dare anyone to find a better country in which to live or which to defend. Try taking out the USA with a hypothetical meteorite strike. Who would save the world from the truly evil, then? Think about it!!!

Who would save the world from a meteor? That would be us.

of course... *smile*

An interesting anti-aging event is going on in Chicago on August 20-22. Find out more at the health conference's newest topic which I created today. or if you want to find out quickly: http://www.worldhealth.net/p/4236,5850.html

new poem in the poetry corner--check it out...

The Presidential Debates, in politics and news.

The annual Spring football pool. In the sports conference.

In the tv conference, I ask, which of these shows should become the subject of the next topic that I create: 24 Adult Swim Amazing Race 6 American Dad American Dreams Animal Planet in my soup Babylon 5 Bittorrent for downloading tv from the net Carnivale Cartoon Network Charlie Rose Deadwood ER Gilmore Girls House Iron Chef It Takes a Thief Jeopardy! MSNBC NCIS Numb3rs NYPD Blue Project Runway Queer TV Shield Simpsons Simple Life Stargate Atlantis Stargate SG-1 Survivor Winter 2005 That 70's Show Veronica Mars Wonderfalls

Survivor Palau

Not sure they're hot topics again, but I've started posting in Food again. Trying to answer old questions that were left hanging around...

Thank you for that. Jeopardy and/or Charlie Rose are my choices.

Mid summer pledge drive. Make donations to the Spring, Firth, Austen, et al at this paypal account banking@wholetech.com