Wikipedia is a way of life. I am a complete Wikipedia addict! While I was growing up, I was surrounded by books and books, including volumes and volumes of various encyclopedias -- some were specialized encyclopedias and others were more general. My grand-parents had a multi-volume, personalized, hard-cover print of some sort of Papyrus - Larousse - Britannica combination (Papyrus, Larousse and Britannica are Greek, French and British encyclopedia publishers respectively). It was written in Greek, in a very formal and half-boring language. I would look-up random words in the encyclopedia in my free-time. When I was really young, that encyclopedia was difficult to read, but I enjoyed all the drawings, pictures and diagrams that it contained. I used more regularly a smaller and inexpensive encyclopedia that we had purchased in the eighties.

When I moved away from home, I did not have those encyclopedias handy. I also realized that it was very difficult to carry around that wealth of knowledge -- either in my head or on book-shelves -- while in college. The solution to this came in the nineties, with the internet and the concept of the "search engine." It was revolutionary in that you could almost instantly find "some information" about nearly everything (and towards the end of the nineties, nearly anything). The good part about this was that you could (and still can) find information about everything, the unfortunate part was that there was, apparently, no credible source of information. Additionally, information could be funneled in a manner such that it serves certain person's or groups of persons' interests ("propaganda" ?).

But today (2005), most educational institutions have internet subscriptions to very credible sources of information (such as Britannica, etc), and thankfully access to the information is either free or quite inexpensive, at least in the modernized world. This solves all problems but that of propaganda. This is where Wikipedia, at least the way I see it, comes into play. It is a "free" encyclopedia, in which content is added and altered/refined as it is viewed and reviewed by its visitors. This does not eliminate the propaganda problem completely, but certainly opens an avenue towards the ultimate source of "credible" "true" and "unbiased" knowledge.

So what if you do not share the same thoughts with me about this. There are other reasons why such an encyclopedia can be considered a monument of the modern world. It is searchable, and the content is written and outlined in a way such that it forms a large "graph," where objects (nodes) are linked to other objects by "one-way" connectors. The relationship between objects is inferred by the text that accompanies them. It is hypertext at its best!

I avoid visiting Wikipedia when I have any time to spend, because I usually spend all of the time I have jumping from node to node of information. I have got it down to a science! I do "tabbed browsing," where I use a browser that can open not only multiple windows, but multiple contexts (tabs) within a window. I organize my Wikipedia browsing by opening a first window (with one tab) and searching for the word of interest. Then, as I read the text and encounter other words of interest, I open different tabs with their Wikipedia definitions. Every once in a while I will encounter a whole different "category" of interest, and then I open an entirely different window, in which I follow the same approach until my time runs out. It can take hours!

I encourage everyone to try Wikipedia, and contribute if you can.

Amiga Because true love never dies.

Slackware Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution, and it is my Linux distribution of choice. Read about the various linux distributions, and you will find that Slackware tries to be flexible and "user-friendly" without diverting from a standardized unix behaviour and configuration. It works for me, not without a bit of pain at times, but I feel far more comfortable using my machine after having taken a short configuration "bus tour" than after having had some automatic configuration utility do it for me.

Slackware's creator (Patrick Volkerding) has, after all, graduated from the same university system as I did, so how can I go wrong with that!

OpenGL is a definition and specification of an API... Yes, this sounds very dry and abstract, but that is exactly what it is! OpenGL is a standard for generating (mostly but not solely 3D) graphics with a computer. Most of the 3D applications that promise "fast" or "high-performance" graphics are based on something like OpenGL. The beauty of this "specification" is that it can be implimented on hardware; by hardware I mean any graphics adapter that is capable of generating graphics and not just display them. Most of the 3D games that are in the market today use either OpenGL or DirectX/Direct3D (a standard developed for a particular but very popular operating system).

Typically, the OpenGL API allows the programmer to perform a set of operations on a set (or multiple sets) of data that has been piped to the hardware. The API talks (almost) directly to the hardware, and therefore much of the 3D graphics generation is relieved from the computer's CPU and is done very efficiently on the "GPU." GPUs can be very expensive, and since they are dedicated hardware, they are very good and very fast in what they do. However, the programmer is still the one who runs the show...

Why should people develop software for OpenGL? The answer is simple, in my opinion: the application is (a) more portable, and (b) since it relies on a strict set of standards, it is very likely to perform exactly as expected.

Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and National Pablic Radio (NPR) have been on my dial forever.

Trance music will be the last genre standing... It is science that makes it possible. Long sequences of mathematically generated numbers representing the sounds that we hear is it. If done right, it can be very good. I can tell the difference between a cheap Yamaha piano sound and a regular piano, but I cannot -- at all -- tell the difference between an expensive Korg "Workstation" piano sound and a regular piano. The very musically inclined can argue about this all they want... And, yes, repetitive electronic music can be very pleasing to the ear. It takes a particular ear to enjoy it, but I have it. Do you? Try listening to the productions of the modern masters, like Ronski Speed and John O'Callahan, or Darude.

Message Passing Interface (MPI) is quite simply one of the best things that happened to the world of computing in the last 20 years. I have to admit that there are some things that I would like to see added to MPI, but for the most part, it works excellently for me! To be sucessful in developing parallel codes with MPI, you must be able to think like the processor. Be agressive in your thinking... I mean, if a processor wants to do something, that procesor will do it, and other processors will have to respect that, but remember that the weight is on you, the developer, to make sure that "the orchestra" is playing the same piece.

AudiWorld B5 S4/RS4 Forum I consider as the most comprehensive resource for the vehicle's enthusiast and fanatic base. The information that can be found on this forum covers absolutely everything one needs to know about the car. Sometimes the information is not easy to search and find, but it is there. And whatever is not there, a simple question will bring it to the surface. If you are curious about something, somebody on this forum has already gone after it and has done the research for you. There is also a good sense of sarcasm that reflects the irony and conflict that characterizes the true fanatic of the B5 line of S-cars. I admit to all counts of narcissism the forum's members take pride in admitting.