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I still agree that it seems a little strange that this problem wasn't fixed ages ago. Realistically, though, the Shuttle was never expected to fly this long. It sounds a lot like a compromise that was made in the earlier days when computers were more limited, probably even moreso for the restricted range of systems that are certified to work under such conditions. Any update is likely to be very expensive and time consuming, simply because the software development and verification process is so solid and reliable.

From the article you quoted, it sounds more like they dropped a spacewalk (for Hubble maintenance, probably not safety-critical) so they could return sooner and avoid encountering the bug. To me it sounds like they did what they should have done, with safety as a priority.

http://www.amazon.com/Rio-Chiba-256-MP3-Player/dp/ B0000AQIFX/sr=8-1/qid=1162872429/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/1 04-7251906-8455143?ie=UTF8&s=electronics

One recent thread about the book (which also comments on why things like functions and OOP appear later in the book than one would think):
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/br owse_thread/thread/b8366618c4547978

Also check the Amazon page for reviews and other feedback plus the author even posted a comment:
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0132269937

To reply to some previous comments:

- It's *much* faster than it used to be: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/python.php

- The indentation only bothers you for 1-4 months. (I didn't like it either at first.)

- It *is* interpreted but byte-compiled like Java to make successive runs faster

- Why ESR likes Python: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882

- Native look-n-feel GUI: http://wxwidgets.org/ and http://wxpython.org/

- Compare to other languages: http://wiki.python.org/moin/LanguageComparisons

- Shopping: http://www.bestbookdeal.com/book/compare/013226993 7 (it seems like Amazon, Buy.com, Bookpool, and Overstock rotate for having best overall price, i.e., no tax [depending on where you live] and free shipping)

- Bad code: Python is attractive to first-time programmers because of its ease, so that's what you may be seeing. Also, bad code is language-independent, regardless; Python does not go out of its way to make this happen. However, Python also attracts long-time programmers because they discover they are more efficient and productive in it.

FWIW, I switched to Python a few years ago (after lots of C/C++, Java, Perl, Tcl, etc.), and I don't want to program in anything else again. The naysayers can pound on me all they like, but from my point of view, I enjoy what I do, I get decent pay, and I can get home on time to feed my kids then hack some more for fun after putting them to bed.

-A.C.

Given that the consequences range from beneficial to dire, the right approach is caution: We should act as though the most likely of dire consequences will transpire, and change our behaviour accordingly. To ignore a *potential* threat that we don't or can't understand ('can't' because of the politics involved).

A crossbow as a home defense weapon? Now we know you're living in a fantasy world.

Hey, the Iceman said they "worked great."

How to Lie with Statistics

I've run across a fascinating book that both debunks human-related global warming and explains the climate changes we are experiencing. It's written by a couple of well established scientists. Of course, such heresy will not be taken well by most folks here whose agendas would not be served if the mantras of Al Gore, et. al., were proven to be full of excrement. Check it out on Amazon: Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years.

Hmm. Seems to repeat most of the arguments in the Skeptical Environmentalist, which was released soon after the original 2001 report, and is a very good and insightful read.

Both analyses are solid enough to make me doubt the vailidity of the "man-made global warming" conclusion.

Lisp is the mother of all languages :-)

Once you learn it, you achieve the zen of programming - lisp is the closest possible language to the mathematical definition of computing. Have you read The Little Lisper? (republished later as The Little Schemer). You can read it in a few evenings, learning some deep programming paradigms and the basics of several complex applications, including compilers.

End-user programming has already had one big success in its history: the Spreadsheet. Programmers of visual languages consider that spreadsheets are the most versatile (and most widespread) modelling language to date; problems of many different domains can be expressed with cells and functions, and non-programmers can use it efficiently to that end.

This flexibility is grounded on the same principles as Lisp: a simple syntax without special cases, which can be used to build any grammar on it. Mi goal is to find a similar language wich can model automatic tasks the same way as the spreadsheet can model data. I'm still in a phase where I accept suggestions :-)

Save some money:

Amazon.com $32.99
Overstock.com $31.34
Half.com $28.95

The snowball itself pretty much a done deal in the geophysics community. A slightly exagerrated but entertaining and accessible popularization of the story is available and I highly recommend it: Snowball Earth: The Story of a Maverick Scientist and His Theory of the Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life As We Know It by Gabrielle Walker

A movie with an American redneck stereotype in Europe would probably be hilarious too.

Amen to that, Vern

Another SF writer, http://www.amazon.com/Newtons-Wake-Space-Ken-MacLe od/dp/B000C4SFRE/sr=8-6/qid=1162740889/ref=pd_bbs_ 6/104-0751852-8763166?ie=UTF8&s=books/Ken McLeod, has had ideas similar to this in his books. In the last one I read, Newtons Wake, the characters often have to engage in combat archaeology, which mainly involves the aggressive hacking of ancient technology. He introduces the concepts with a sense of humour -- in one segment of the book, the characters' electronics are attacked by a virus beamed from a an advanced technological artifact. They are able to tell the virus is based on human-created code because once they go deep enough with their combat archaeology, it's east to spot the Microsoft patches in the virus code.

But in a different sort of way - It isnt necessary to actually reuse the code the way he describes. He simply have to look at software engineering ideas of patterns. Patterns ( http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Oriented-Architectur e-Patterns-Concurrent-Networked/dp/0471606952 ) Have entered the main stream and are finnaly being taught in many undergrad programs - taught and used in graduate programs, and a serious way in which distributed object computing can be done. Patterns provide a tested and verified method for implementing common paradigms of programming, yet can be easily contextualized.

Is this Murakami-Wood guy so paranoid that he has to come up with a pseudonym under which to publish his studies? Hasn't anyone read "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami?

"A Deepness in the Sky" is a excellent novel. If you like SF, it's a must read.

Those few Slashdot readers for whom buying a paper book would be impractical can get an electronic text on a pirate channel. <pirate> Launch an IRC chat client (Opera browser has one built in) and join the room bookz on Undernet, Europe. Once there, enter the line

!EBrarian Hugo 2000 Winner Novel - Vinge, Vernor - A Deepness in the Sky.rar

For simplicity I have skipped the search stage here, listing a file that would probably be accessible for some time. You could get a list of all files by typing e.g.

@seek Vinge Deepness Sky

</pirate>

"And there you have it. In my estimation, it is desperate people - outgunned, with no hope of a "fair fight" - that perform these attacks. The most effective way to stop the attacks is to make them less desperate (ie. by not massacring their loved ones, setting up checkpoints, toppling their democracies, etc)."

This is a common misconception about suicide bombers that just isn't true. Namely that the actors are disparate, tortured souls personally affected by the conflict. I suggest you read Dying to Win by Robert Pape which profiles suicide terrorists and the timing/events surrounding suicide attacks. The results are surprising.

Once you look at the data, it becomes obvious that suicide terrorism is not an act of passion or desperation at all. What seems abhorrent and unthinkable to us is just another form of coercion for the Islamic extremists. In fact, Mr. Pape's point makes perfect sense. If suicide terrorism was simply an act of revenge, why is it that negotiations with group leaders can lead to cease-fires? Moreover, why haven't we seen suicide terrorist attacks employed against totalitarian or media-restricted states?

What does this mean? Well, once you get around the fact that this is another form of coercion you can start to address it as such. Don't intend to occupy Islamic states and not encounter suicide bombers. Contrary to what you say, you wouldn't allow unrestricted borders with Islamic states.

-Grym

Great post flyingsquid. I HIGHLY recommend to you Webster Tarpley's new book: 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Third Edition

There are a number of good 9/11 books in print, but none compare to Tarpley's, IMO. Webster Tarpley also has a few lectures on Google Video (based largely on the content of his book with minor additions), but this one I found very good in particular.

You can also find this book on the eMule network (second edit. only I think), but please support the author if you find it enlightening as I did.

About his book:

Product Description

The thesis of Webster Tarpley's 911 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA has been enthusiastically received with its working model of the 9/11 plot: a covert network of moles, patsies, and a commando cell in the privatized intelligence services, backed by corrupt political and corporate media elites. Buttressed by historical examples like the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Gunpowder Plot, this model makes it clear how such a monstrous false-flag or self-terror exploit is possible even under a largely benign government. That paradox is the incredibility gap that has made most Americans reject the evidence about 9/11 as paranoid fantasy. Tarpley brings decades of expertise to the 9/11 issue. In 1978 he exposed the terrorist Red Brigades as patsies of Italy's fascist P2 shadow government, and 9/11 is on the same pattern. The forthright subtitle, Made in USA, is backed up by an analysis of key figures who behave like moles working for the insidious network. 9/11 Synthetic Terror highlights the salient points of sheer physical impossibility of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. It makes clear that figures like Osama bin Laden are patsies, dupes or double agents, selected for their ethnic coloring as the basis for launching a "Clash of Civilizations," and how absurd it is to imagine that such tools of US intelligence agencies could turn around and infiltrate or overwhelm US defenses unaided. Tarpley shows that the wars on the Islamic world, the Soviet-Afghan, Kosovo and Chechen conflicts, as well as US-UK-NATO synthetic terror incidents like 9/11, Beslan or 3/11 in Madrid, have been contrived to continue the Cold War, in pursuit of the centuries-long campaign for Anglo hegemony over Eurasia and the world. The preface to the second edition explains the significance and superiority of "MIHOP" vs "LIHOP," and the many drills on 9/11 and on 7/7, which were cover and conduit for those false-flag operations. The third edition preface makes clear that 9/11 is the only issue that can stop a new world war and the descent into a police state. It shows up the cowardice of the "left gatekeepers" on this score. The analysis of Moussaoui on trial as a classic weak-minded patsy -- part double agent, part fanatic -- again shows the unique power of Tarpley's mole-patsy model to debunk the lies put out by the war party. For a principled refutation of the 9/11 propaganda myth in all its parts, Tarpley'A bombshell, brilliant book - I strongly recommend 911 Synthetic Terror. Should be required reading for all honest truth seekers, s work is indispensable.

About the Author

The humanist contemporary political philosopher Webster Griffin Tarpley is our most incisive critic of Anglo-American hegemony. As an activist historian he is best known for his George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (1992), a masterpiece of research which is still must reading. He is a 9/11 Truth Scholar and activist; AB Princeton 1966, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa; Fulbright Scholar at University of Turin, Italy; and MA in humanities from Skidmore College. He is fluent in Italian, German, French, Latin and Russian. A decades-long expert on international terrorism, his 1978 study for

I predict that this will happen shortly after all composers simply re-arrange themes and phrases from previous musical pieces in order to create any new compositions...

Already been done at least as far back as 1968. The third movement of Berio's Sinfonia is just a cut-up version of a movement from a Mahler symphony with quotations from fourteen other composers interspliced. Schnittke's Concerti Grossi are based heavily on Bach with most of the original content being only the arrangement. Heck, even Saariaho has written new works with the same musical content as a previous once (Pres, Petals, Nymphea Reflection).

and authors simply splice paragraphs from existing books to form new ones.

This is already done with romance novels. There is software that can write them for you.

I don't think that's correct. For instance, just the other day I had someone follow this link. They didn't buy anything right then, but a few hours later they went directly to it and bought something, and I didn't get any credit. But of course maybe I made a mistake in constructing the link.

Exactly. Same with logging/deforestation. I definitely recommend having a read of Jared Diamond's book 'Collapse', the BC problem is a common, recurring feature in the collapse of many societies. That's why I'm disappointed with the response of the Australian PM John Howard to the recent British-government sponsored report into economic effects of global warming. Basically 'we won't change our behaviour until everyone else does'. As long as politicians place short-term interests ahead of the long-term good, we'll continue to have environmental disaster situations like this. I think ultimately it's the consumer/voter that has to make these changes happen from the bottom-up, because it certainly won't come from the top-down. Such changes have to be market-driven.

Ssssssh! Shut up, the global warming mob might hear you.

Yes, it would be horrible to have all those people who have noticed that global temperature is increasing also notice that you are skeptical that the oceans will run out of sea life just because the living things in the sea are dying off faster than their numbers are being replenished. Those people are so weird, with their fact-based reality and belief that life on this planet matters. I'm glad you're too much of an independent thinker to fall for their soft-headed ruses.

Ssssssh! Shut up, the global warming mob might hear you.

Yes, it would be horrible to have all those people who have noticed that global temperature is increasing also notice that you are skeptical that the oceans will run out of sea life just because the living things in the sea are dying off faster than their numbers are being replenished. Those people are so weird, with their fact-based reality and belief that life on this planet matters. I'm glad you're too much of an independent thinker to fall for their soft-headed ruses.

If you have tried data on Cingular without an unlimited plan, you know how un-free this could be. Personally, this is what I've stacked up to solve this problem.

Cingular 2125 Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone.
$20/month for unlimited data.
Orb at home on my media machine.
Shure i2c-t headset for listening to audio and taking calls.

Then you just stream the data to yourself. Sure, it's harder to actually buy a track, but I only have 256MB of memory on my phone. I'm not going to fill that up with downloaded music.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Besides, I never said the cost was zero; just that you should have to pay for the cost of getting the upgrade and not for the license, which is much, much greater than the infrastructure and bandwidth cost.

Case in point - I'm reading Walter Shirer's 1245 page tome on the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He had to sift through 10,000's of captured documents to distill the complete picture down into his book.

While the 1245 page Rise and Fall covers a period of about 40 years, the source data only covered a period of probably 25 years, and that was the era immediately preceding the information age.

Think what happens when someone wants to research the Second Gulf War for historical fact, background, and rationale. (Hint, I bet his initials won't be GWB.)

The Practice of System and Network Administration by Thomas A. Limoncelli and Christine Hogan is the definitive reference to build, and more importantly, maintain any network and system infrastructure. It is written in an accessible style with plenty of real-world examples that focus on the importance of key infrastructure. It is not a "How To" book exactly, rather it offers advice and specifications for the kind of support infrastructure you have to build to be successful supporting large system and network infrastructure. If you are familiar with this book, please add your comments on it.

Or he could read A Beautiful Math and see that there has been a lot of progress in finding
a mathematical / scientific basis for "social" sciences; specifically in terms of game theory.

No, it doesn't claim that sociology can be treated like, say physics, at least not yet. But some interesting patterns
have started to emerge relating game theory and many other fields, including sociology.

Israel attacked first by bombing him in the early 80's.

Wrong. Iraq was one of the aggressors atacking Israel in 1948. That war never ended (except with Jordan and Egypt) — Israel was perfectly justified in its attack (and, of course, in its desire to stay military superior in the face of hostility). But let's not get distracted by Israel — you don't seem to be seriously disputing the justness of our war in 1991.

As I reminded already, that war ended in cease-fire, which Saddam Hussein violated many times — years before Bush's all-out resumption of hostilities, Clinton and Blair have found it neccessary to attack Iraq's forces on several occasions.

[...] would the country [Iraq] not have been subjected to economic strangulation for so long, his days were surely counted.

Wrong. There were no sanctions before Saddam's attack on Kuwait — and yet he ruled personally for over a decade before then, and his Baath party for much longer. It is sheer naivette (if not stupidity) to claim, he could've been overthrown — look at his fellow Baath ruler in Syria, for example.

That said, I'm glad, we agree, that the sanctions were not working...

Our cause was and remains just, and our mission noble. Thank you very much.

That you firmly believe that shit with the overwhelming evidence leaves me breathless.

There is no "evidence". There are allusions — most of them groundless or outright faulty (as the most common fallacy of "War for Oil" is).

I agree -- the world should've acted pre-emptively back then [Against Nazi Germany] too...

Put the economic factor into the picture and you might see the reason for the inaction.

Whatever the reasons for inaction were back then, I'm glad, that by 2003 US administration found the interests of Democracy (as per the neo-Conservative argument) to be more compelling.

Yesterday's Science Fiction is today's reality.

The title of this story reminds me of Moses May Have Been an Apache and Other Actual Facts

They attributed it to a testing slipup.

If you think this topic is interesting, you might really like Greg Bear's novel on the topic: Darwin's Radio.

With phrases like "In the next stage of evolution, humans are history" and "The next Great War will start inside us" on the cover, you know what you're in for.

I don't know if you're stupid, ignorant or lying, but this is what a clean Amazon link to the book with ISBN (international standard book number) 1933596708 looks like:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933596708

The string between the last / and the ? in your URL is an Amazon associate ID.

Stay the hell away from this book: http://www.amazon.com/AdSense-Code-Google-Making-M oney/dp/1933596708/sr=8-2/qid=1162405831/ref=pd_bb s_2/002-3621573-4586425?ie=UTF8&s=books

A note about partisanship: Since Democrats figure prominently in the vast majority of examples of election fraud described in Stealing Elections, some readers will jump to the conclusion that this is a one-sided attack on a single party. I do not believe Republicans are inherently more virtuous or honest than anyone else in politics, and I myself often vote Libertarian or independent. Voter fraud occurs in both Republican strongholds such as Kentucky hollows and Democratic bastions such as New Orleans. When Republicans operated political machines such as Philadelphia's Meehan dynasty up until 1951 or the patronage mill pf Nassau County, New York, until the 1990s, they were fully capable of bending -- and breaking -- the rules. Earl Mazo, the journalist who exhaustively documented the election fraud in Richard Daley's Chicago that may have handed Illinois to John F. Kennedy in the photo-finish 1960 election, says there was also "definitely fraud" in downstate Republican counties "but they didn't have the votes to counterbalance Chicago."

While they have not had the control of local and administrative offices necessary to tilt the rules improperly in their favor, Republicans have at times been guilty of intimidation tactics designed to discourage voting. In the 1980s, the Republican National Committee hired off-duty policemen to monitor polling places in New Jersey and Louisiana in the neighborhoods of minority voters, until the outcry forced them to sign a consent decree forswearing all such "ballot security" programs in the future.

In their book Dirty Little Secrets, Larry Sabato and co-author Glenn Simpson of the Wall Street Journal noted another factor in why Republican election fraud is less common. Republican base voters are middle-class and not easily induced to commit fraud, while "the pool of people who appear to be available and more vulnerable to an invitation to participate in vote fraud tend to lean Democratic." Some liberal activists that Sabato and Simpson interviewed even partly justified fraudulent electoral behavior on the grounds that because the poor and dispossessed have so little political clout, "extraordinary measures (for example, stretching the absentee ballot or registration rules) are required to compensate." Paul Herrison, director of the Center for American Politics at the University of Maryland, agrees that "most incidents of wide-scale voter fraud reportedly occur in inner cities, which are largely populated by minority groups."

Democrats are far more skilled at encouraging poor people -- who need money -- to participate in shady vote-buying schemes. "I had no choice. I was hungry that day," Thomas Felder told the Miami Herald in explaining why he illegally voted in a mayoral election. "You wanted the money, you were told who to vote for." Sometimes it's not just food that vote stealers are hungry for. A former Democratic congressman gave me this exp

Stay the hell away from this book: http://www.amazon.com/AdSense-Code-Google-Making-M oney/dp/1933596708/sr=8-2/qid=1162405831/ref=pd_bb s_2/002-3621573-4586425?ie=UTF8&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/BOSS-AUDIO-FM-MOD-FM-MODULAT OR/dp/B00009WDZG/sr=8-2/qid=1162404564/ref=pd_bbs_ sr_2/103-4188325-4467047?ie=UTF8&s=electronics

It's called an FM modulator, any car audio/electronics store should have them.

All of which was why dontclick.it originally drove me to add an iGesture touch pad to my Christmas 2003 wishlist. At the same time I chased after my first Tablet PC. I'm happy to report in response to "news" of dontclick.it that consumers thinking differently have some great hardware alternatives, granted some of them may lock you into software "alternatives" the typical /.er might rather avoid. UMPCs with the Touch Pack have taken it to the glorious next level, where finally no other tool (pen) need be held to work with the PC, and sans anything too futuristic still like eyeball tracking lasers or brain implants. Thank you, Microsoft et al. for making it real.

How's it going? For machine performance, worky reasons I do have a desktop, with which I'm still using that iGesture, right now in fact. With a little learning, it's fantastic -- far more comfortable, natural, and powerful than any classic form mouse. Are iGesture pads the future of hardware? Hardly, sadly. Almost all people wouldn't even consider remapping for a Dvorak keyboard or any other arrangement despite numerous benefits, so good luck prying the mouse from their hands.

Aside from the mouse itself, for pure click reduction I doubt the extremity of dontclick.it can be considered a likely end for most of site or application design. One other thing dontclick.it led me to, however, was to more actively reduce the number of clicks in my user interface designs. Back in 2003, this User Interface Engineering post was also new, regarding the practicality of the Three-Click Rule. "Every piece of content should take no more than three clicks to access." The article finds via pointed clicking research that the number of clicks itself is not an issue, but it acknowledges that for designers to focus on reducing clicks is a useful means to the end of better, more user centric design.

As a software UI designer/developer, I keep it in mind. I think in terms of click reduction and it leads to simple, usable sites and software. Thank you, dontclick.it for raising the point, but yes, despite great alternatives in hardware and great intentions in software, most users still must click.

This is just another instance that would have shown up in Chris Mooney's book had it been reported a couple of years ago. The tactics and arguments are the same as those used on many other issues and point out the desperate need to revive the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment that was destroyed by the Republican majority in the House following the 1994 election.

Oh and it's a fraction of the price of Windows.

Spin spin spin. To buy OS X.5, as fanboys are telling me constantly, it's technically an upgrade, not a full version. After all, you have to own the existing OS.

Apple Store sells OS X 10.4 for $129
Amazon sells Windows XP Home Upgrade edition for $89

So, I guess it's a fraction of the price of Windows. If by fraction you mean 13/8ths.

So you were 12 and played a game rated M(17+)? Somebody's parents didn't check the rating.

When I look at the American Best Buy site, I don't see similar bundles being offered.

Not Best Buy... Amazon's doing it, though.

http://www.greatbirdfluhoax.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Bird-Flu-Hoax-Pandemic /dp/0785221875

"Another street fighter movie?"

If they can make the movie more like the 1994/95 classic, except with more professional writing, but keep the same excitement and awesome fights, then they might have a good chance at making it decent.

http://www.amazon.com/Street-Fighter-II-Animated-M ovie/dp/1573306886/sr=1-3/qid=1162312713/ref=pd_bb s_3/002-8879132-9336042?ie=UTF8&s=dvd

You're missing a big possibility - terraforming Mars. Mars is a far better candidate for terraforming than Venus. What we learn about these microbes could be useful in engineering microbes (and possibly other forms of life) that could thrive on Mars.

If you're so gung ho about terraforming, you've probably already read Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy starting with Red Mars . But if so, you've apparently forgotten that the issue of terraforming causes huge freakin' polemics about ecological responsibility, and it's certainly believable that violence could erupt over the issue.

Ebbing is a chemist, not a physicist.

That honestly was my first thought when I read the grandparent's post. I guess it's obvious whether or not I have a girlfriend.

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0765315688/ref=s9_asi n_image_1/002-2488787-3446424

For your perusal: (Guessing the editors couldn't pick just one)

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin's_Dangerous_Id ea

Video Pesentation at TED
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key =d_dennett&gclid=CJvOo4LXo4gCFR4IUAodOhKBVQ&flashE nabled=1

Book
http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Dangerous-Idea-Evolu tion-Meanings/dp/068482471X

HomePage
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/~ddennett.htm