J Larsen

On the other hand, I have always had profound hatred for... 40. I Wanna Sex You Up ... Color Me Badd ... 1991 That song is SO incredibly annoying it's hard to describe.

Where's "Owner of a Lonely Heart"? Where's that damn Savage Garden song I couldn't esape a few years ago? Where's "Oops I Did it Again"? I'd listen to the Beatles trying to do ska all day before listening to those tunes.

South side of east 6th Street, between First and Second Avenues ] D'oh!!!!! Thanks for the catch!

For that matter, if you're in to Indian it's not all that far of a walk over to E 7th St (Indian Row - almost everything on the block is an Indian restaurant).

There are plenty of excellent restaurants in the West Village, but they're mostly expensive (Babbo, Il Mulino, One if by Land) or pizza (Joe's, Nick's). The only moderately priced yet fairly good place I can think of off the top of my head is the Cornelia St. Cafe (which has live jazz in the basement, BTW). It's on Cornelia just off Sixth Ave, about two blocks from the Blue Note. They serve mostly New American. Not the city's best, but decent enough and <$25.

Brandon, the iBook should actually run cooler than the PowerBook. Most of the heat generated by your computer comes from the CPU. Higher-grade CPUs use smaller and fast electronics. The smaller and faster you make the transistors, the more heat they dissipate - it's just a fact of life in microelectronics (which happens to be my field). This is also the reason you don't see G5 books, BTW. If you included enough cooling elements, it wouldn't be very portable anymore. Evidently they're going to try to release one with a reduced clock speed within a year or so.

Fair enough on the "6 years" issue. On the software, I often run all of these programs simultaneously: Project Developer, Terminal, Mathematica (often with add-on packages), StatView (not a great program but it exports to Origin), Excel (for quick-and-dirty checks), and TeXShop, along with some proprietary stuff. The new version of Mathematica is what eats up a lot of my processing power, but the trend towards bigger software is not limited to my field. It amazes me how big regular operating systems are now - a few years ago you'd be hard-pressed to just boot up a contemporary OS on even a high-end personal computer! One amazing result of the G5 is how fast the price of traditional workstations dropped after its introduction. You can get a high-end Sun workstation for around ten grand now! The top model in '99 was around 60 grand! I think that tells you a lot about the quality of the G5.

That's true as of this moment, but it is changing. As commercial hardware improves, software developers are taking advantage. I used to be able to do my work on a machine with just 64MB RAM, running at around 200MHz. Now, just a few years later, I need ten times those specs to do the same work if I want to be using the current versions of all the necessary software. Of course, the new software is much better and can do a lot more, but you need the new hardware whether or not you're taking advantage of the new software features. This isn't just limited to my work - just look at how fast the demands of new operating systems are growing. BTW, Apple's hyperbole of calling the G5 a "supercomputer" is one of my many Apple advertising pet peeves. It's more like a workstation. BIG difference.

The advantages of the PowerBook are that they are notably faster, they sport FireWire 800, they have (I believe) larger HD capacity, they have large RAM capacity, their caches are 25% larger, and I think they are a bit lighter. I'm not sure if this is still the case, but at least until recently SuperDrives were only packaged in PowerBooks. My experience has also been that the casings are much better made for the PowerBooks than for the iBooks. If you're regularly doing a lot of computationally intensive stuff, the speed, RAM and cache differences point you towards the PowerBook. That's why I went with the PowerBook - I use it primarly for numerical modeling. If you're doing modeling, software development, video editing, etc, you'll want the PowerBook. If you like downloading MP3s, storing video, or storing lot of digital pictures, the HD difference points to the PowerBook (of course, you could always get a FW external HD to supplement the iBook, but the cost of the external drive may exceed the price difference between the notebook models you're looking at). If you really want to use your notebook to burn DVDs, for the price difference the inclusion of the SuperDrive with the PowerBook is a great deal. If none of these things matter to you, and you're sure that the upgrade limitations on the iBook aren't going to bite you in the ass in the future, then the iBook will do just fine for you.

I don't think there's that much difference. There will be a lot more people crossing the bridge on the weekends, but it never gets prohibitively crowded (except on July 4, anyway). Also, the SI ferry may get crowded during rush hour.

And the same guy who caught 660 caught 661. Crazy.

Il Bagatto - it got a 24 for food, which is VERY high. They got slammed on service, but the est. cost is just $30, which easily qualifies as a bargain in Manhattan. I'm going to have to try this one out myself! Now that you mentioned "Italian" and "East Village" in the same sentence, I've remembered Lil' Frankies on First Ave. between First and Second. The pizza isn't the greatest, but the Italian dishes are excellent. They make this salmon baked in a paper bag dish that's amazing.

Jazz Record Center is the best. Kim's (and the other stores on St. Mark's) will occassionally have some good used discs.

Thanks, 7/4. Have you eaten there? I've never tried it. BTW, ua, I have one more recommendation on cheap-ish Italian restaurants for you: Piccolo Angolo on Hudson and Jane. However, I've never eaten at this place - I only noticed that it's in Manhattan and that it got a very high food rating and low cost rating in the 2004 Zagat. BTW, I highly recommend picking that book up - it's only $13 and it's very rarely lead me astray. Just be very skeptical of any high food ratings for places near Columbia or NYU - the college kids tend to be very easily impressed and seem to inflate the ratings of anything near their dorms. In fact, that's the only way I've ever been burned by Zagat - otherwise I've found it to be spot-on.

Hey ua - I'm probably in the minority here, but I think Virgil's sucks. Two qualifiers: I've had REALLY good BBQ in my life, and I used to work in close proximity to Virgil's, so I've had a lot of take-out from them - I may have just gotten sick of their food. I find it bland compared to authentic southern BBQ. Actually, I think you can find better BBQ even in Manhattan - there's a place called Tennessee Mountain that a few friends swear by. For affordable yet excellent Italian, try Genarro (est. cost ~$35/person, provided you don't go too crazy with wines and other extras). Babbo and Il Mulino are, IMO, the gold-bar standards, but they fall into the "special occasion" realm of the price spectrum for most people (Babbo is around $70/person with basic wine, Il Mulino is more like $100). I think Genarro is your best bet. If you've decided that you're going to the AMNH, Genarro is right in the neighborhood. A nice afternoon/early evening could be: Lunch at Barney Greengrass, AMNH, early dinner at Genarro (if you don't go to Genarro early you won't get in). All three things are a stone's throw from one another. Do you like French? There are quite a few good, moderately priced bistros in the city. Asian and Indian are also both great for bargain dining. BTW, sorry for derailing your thread with my SI comment - I really meant it to be innocent and got carried away with the controversy!

Next season is the last season (though it's going to be a short season - just 10 episodes next time).

I have to say, so far this season is a damn sight better than the previous two. The last couple episodes were very strong.

I know this has little to do with what you're talking about, but it's cool all the same. Humanoid robots have been with us for a few years. The last couple of movies on this page, with the robot going down a flight of stairs, are particularly impressive. Honda Robot Project Movies

It's one of the best cast movies I've ever seen - everyone is perfect for their role. I thought it should have been movie of the year over the last Rings movie.

Doesn't their saliva contain a lot of enzymes lacking in humans for breaking down food particles (or whatever else) is sticking to their teeth and gums?

How about Blitzkrieg Bop or Sheena is a Punk Rocker by the Ramones?

If you're talking about the EP, it's a great record. If you're talking about the box set, I listen to discs one and two all the time, five (pre-Ubu demos) every now and then, and three and four rarely (Mayo Thompson era). You get all the best Ubu and a bit more. Give it time to grow on you.

Not really a fan of the group, but if you're going to talk about antemic songs, U2 has to be mentioned somewhere. "In the Name of Love", "Sunday Bloody Sunday", and "Where the Streets Have No Name" immediately come to mind.

There's a local group called Dick van Dick. It made me laugh the first time I heard it.

While I'm at it, there's a horrible indie group out called Volcano, I'm Still Excited, and there's another band called Hal's Whoops I'm an Indian Writer. There's another called What is it Like to be a Bat? I can't think of anything to top the clit/puppy group, though.