sumi, a couple days later, but I've had that happen on my dial-up. I assumed that it didn't ever get to where it needed to get to to show anything on the screen (or something like that, only in sense-making-ese), so I make sure that nothing else is loading the first time I load gmail at home.

I have a quick question and googling this did not produce any results.

I would like to encode a firefox bookmark so that every time I click it, the link opens in a new window, not a new tab. Is there a way to do this or do I just need to use Tab Mix Plus extension?

le n, on my Mac version, that's an option in preferences: tabs.

I don't want this to happen to all my links, just one particular link.

I don't know a way to encode it to a particular bookmark, but shift-leftclick opens the target of a hyperlink in a new window, and it works on bookmarks too.

dcp, okay, I think that will have to do. thanks!

The very awesome Handbrake DVD-ripper for the Mac is now available for Windows and Linux, too. Plus, shiny new features like AppleTV support that I'll probably never use.

So, in continuing phone discussion, I'm thinking about getting the Nokia N80: [link]

Data plans royally suck here, but the thought of at least getting to get my email anywhere is very, very appealing. Thoughts?

Blast from the past: The coming record revolution: digital discs (Nov, 1981)

A Sony technician slipped a small disc into the slot of a player no larger than a portable cassette machine. I noticed the record’s shiny surface broke light into rainbow colors. Seconds later I was bathed in rich, wide-ranging stereo music that sounded better than anything I’d ever heard from discs or tapes.

Sony Corporation’s Dr. Toshi Doi, a leading digital-systems designer, explained that this was a true digital record: Information stored as number codes on its surface was being converted into music. Instead of grooves, this disc had an optical track “read” by a laser beam. I heard absolutely no surface noise or distortion and no pitch fluctuations from the spinning disc. Dynamic range, or the difference between the loudest and softest musical sounds, was awesome.

You can’t buy such a digital audio disc (DAD) now at any price. But players and digital discs will be on the market in 1982-’83—sooner than anticipated. The new DAD technology merges hardware similar to that used for videodiscs IPS, July ‘801 with specially developed digital integrated circuits. Disc players, which can be plugged into any conventional hi-fi system, could cost from $500 to $1,000. Discs, initially, will cost about $15.

...

Actually, each side of a Philips-Sony disc has a storage capacity of over eight billion bits. This is more capacity than 60 minutes of sound requires, so the added digital storage space offers fascinating new possibilities for hi-fi recordings. Some of the extra two-billion-odd bits, for example, can store detailed information about the music tracks—length, sequence, title, or perhaps the text of selections. This added information might be displayed on an alphanumeric display on the player, or other models could put it on a TV monitor.

Wow.

I purchased my first CD player in 1984 I think. Yikes, that was a while back now.