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I just love that everyone talks about the blog, particular posts etc., but nobody puts any links to them. Here you have three rants (with links):

How to write a Gnome application
How to write a KDE application
on sound

I just love that everyone talks about the blog, particular posts etc., but nobody puts any links to them. Here you have three rants (with links):

How to write a Gnome application
How to write a KDE application
on sound

I made myself a lot of enemies apparently.

I don't think its so much enemies you make, its the attitude you take towards the community you are trying to influence. There are many very intelligent computer scientists, and you seem to suggest that most are idiots. You will not be seen as insightful if you cannot recognize the great accomplishments already made.

Personally, I disagree with your positions on physics, and (especially) mathematics. Statements like "Continuity ... leads to an infinite regress" belie your lack of understanding of these mature fields. Who is going to trust your analysis when you make these statements without any real argument? Down-modding these statements is not censorship, it's moderation: we do not need any more of this crap on /.

With this kind of broader view of your posts, its tempting to just throw away all of your comments as "crackpot posts." Which is, by the way, what happened with your previous post: someone just though, "Oh it's that crackpot Louis Savain again; time for a downmod." This is bad, because that post in particular was actually insightful.

The thing is, we do need new programming languages; we do need implicit concurrency; we do need simplicity. Unfortunately, we don't need your arrogance or extremism. You may have something to offer, but it isn't your hate.

Your COSA project doesn't get traction because it requires the world to change; for better or worse, you must take the world as it is and nudge it where you think it should go. There are many people smarter than you who should and do have more sway in the matter: you should be seeking to convince them. Why not code a working version of COSA which can run on a single-core computer, but can exploit arbitrarily many additional cores? People would be less unimpressed by you if you produced a functional product.

I helped develop the racer that will fly at Oshkosh- as chief test engineer, I've been the flight test engineer in the right seat on six of the flights to date. RRL is still working out the race concept, but I suspect that it will include obligatory "style" maneuvers, with precision rewarded by a points system.

With the great thrust-to-weight ratio available from the rocket engine, steep climbing maneuvers such as a pair of back-to-back immelmans are _very_ impressive, both from on board and as viewed from the ground. It won't be just a case of "Turn left!" by a long shot, believe me! The sound of the engine is also pretty sweet, in my not-unbiased opinion.

For some photos of the plane in flight under power, yanking and banking, see http://mojaveskies.blogspot.com/ -Alan has several posts in May & June as well as July.

Working on this has been a VERY fun project.

What have O2 done wrong?

People should not share their emails with the public.

http://1000milesdown.blogspot.com/2008/04/day-3-foyers-connell-84-miles.html

http://1000milesdown.blogspot.com/2008/04/day-3-foyers-connell-84-miles.html

The email they got from O2 is on this blog

It is time for professor Olukotun and the rest of the multicore architecture design community to realize that multithreading is not part of the future of parallel computing and that the industry must adopt a non-algorithmic model. I am not one to say I told you so but, one day soon (when the parallel programming crisis heats up to unbearable levels), you will get the message loud and clear.

I don't know about preventing prosecutors from using photos. However . . . to deter employers from viewing and abusing social networking pages, employees might post legal terms of service under which employers agree to scram. This idea should not be taken as legal advice for anyone, just fodder for public discussion. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2007/11/privacy-advocates-such-as-nyu-professor.html

I don't know about preventing prosecutors from using photos. However . . . to deter employers from viewing and abusing social networking pages, employees might post legal terms of service under which employers agree to scram. This idea should not be taken as legal advice for anyone, just fodder for public discussion. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2007/11/privacy-advocates-such-as-nyu-professor.html

I've just realised that the reason Google had indexed that MMS along with the others is because they've been linked to from other websites. For example the one I pasted above is linked to here http://1000milesdown.blogspot.com/2008/04/day-3-foyers-connell-84-miles.html

I guess, in a way this isn't really a security problem, but more like a 'feature'. It gives you some space to store a message that you can then link to and uses a 16 digit hex key to hide the message through obscurity.

You can use GoogleDocs without a web connection: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/03/bringing-cloud-with-you.html

Jimmy Carter, a nuclear engineer...

This continues to be perpetuated, but it is inaccurate, at best:

http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2006/01/picking-on-jimmy-carter-myth.html

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq60-14.htm

Not trying to pick on you, as what you wrote was sensible, just tired of seeing this "President Carter, nuclear expert" myth.

- T

Everyone - I hope you realize that the main motive behind HD Radio/IBOC is to jam the smaller competitors off the dial (community-based radio), with adjacent-channel interference. iBiquity and the HD Radio Alliance owned stations are attempting to hijack our public airways through this jamming scheme and through confiscatory licensing and on-going percentage fees. HD Radio/IBOC is going to decimate the smaller broadcasters. HD Radio - a high-level corporate scam and huge carney-shill:

"Corporate Hijacking of Our Public Airways"

http://hdradiofarce.blogspot.com/2008/03/is-hd-r-farce.html

With the new RadioGuard, which iBiquity is seeking FCC approval, all current HD radios may become obsolete, as the first-generation HD radios became without multicasting. This scheme demands comtinued HD radio purchases, and with the proposed 10db FM-HD power increase, will require current repalcement of HD Radio hardware by broadcasters. This scheme only benefits iBiquity and the HD Radio hardware manufacturers. If you buy HD radios, then you are supporting this disaster.

I'm not familiar with this particular Air Traffic Control system vendor, but historically there have been various options used for fail-over when your radar goes wonky.

if its not an airport control tower ATC:
1) "shrimp boats" - commonly used before the introduction of radar-based (aka "positive control") ATC, the older green-screen ATC consoles seen in older movies were specially designed to be able to swing down from a vertical orientation to a horizontal one so that the controllers could revert to using "shrimp boats" when radar wasn't working (http://jurassicbark.blogspot.com/2008/05/fix-on-fail.html/).
2) redundant ATC systems complete with redundant feeds from the radar sites - the "DARC" with "RDP" referenced in the blog post at that URL is one such redundant system

for airport control tower ATCs:
1) you said it as a joke, but binoculars are (or at least used to be) an officially-planned fail-over method for use when the radars went out. Airport tower ATC is mostly visual-based control anyway (that's why they have/need all those panoramic windows) so its not as silly as you thought.

It really comes down to how many "nines" of availability Dublin ATC imposed as a requirement upon their ATC vendor. If their ATC operations were as disrupted by a single NIC failure as the article implies, they can't have asked for a highly available system but that doesn't mean they couldn't have had a fail-over ATC method available if they had wanted one.

Is Our Children Learning? - George Bush This is throwing us back 200 years. I cant beleive it , it ticks me off to no end. I am going to become a teacher ad try and teach the feasibility of the "tooth fairy" causing problems with global warming because her wings are flapping too fast generating heat. http://godandall.blogspot.com/

I think you need to give these organizers of this "sport" a little more credit.

One of the things they are doing... perhaps precisely because of the wake issue you are bringing up... is that each rocket will be following a "different course" that will be plotted out with a GPS system. Ultimately all of the rockets will have to travel the same distance and the pilots will have to hit certain waypoints in order to qualify for the race, but the rockets are kept separated from each other during the competition.

The real trick to this "sport" is that the pilots have only a limited amount of fuel to fly their plane. I can't remember precisely the amount of fuel on board, but it is something on the order of about 100-150 seconds of thrust, where the pilot has to very precisely time how long he is going to be operating the motors and then shutting them down in a glide pattern until some more thrust is needed.

This will be happening in a venue similar to most air shows, where aviation demonstrations traveling at much higher velocities and altitudes are routine and have groups like the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angles who perform these demonstrations rather routinely.

As far as fuel waste, I don't see how these kind of rocket racers are going to be more wasteful than a bunch of F-16s flying in formation performing aerial demonstrations.

I should also point out one last thing: Although you may have looked at some CGI generated video (I don't know precisely what you saw), this /. posting was generated in response to an actual demonstration of the vehicle in California (Mojave Airport) in preparation for the annual Wisconsin air show.... where I'd also like to point out there are a great many other aircraft performing demonstrations as well.

If you want to see some non-CGI pics of one of these rockets in action, take a look at:

http://mojaveskies.blogspot.com/2008/07/and-few-more-of-rocket-racer.html

Certainly this is something worth looking at, and hopefully will answer some of your questions from a real vehicle rather than some theoretical musings.

You know, the Republicans don't like McCain much, do they? I wonder if that's bad. Republicans are not happy about the direction their party is going. Oh, and hey, for all the non-Americans who read this message, I want to apologize in advance for the outcome of the election. I voted in my caucus and it did not turn out in favor of my candidate.

All DBAs worth respecting understand this simple fact.

Damn those Google idiots and their inability to hire competent employees. It's a good thing they only use it for Adwords and not something important to their business.

Meh, doesn't matter, I just won't respect them. They're clearly just a bunch of paranoid children over there anyway. I'll take my cues from randoms on Slashdot, thank-you-very-much.

I can answer your question about right mouse clicking. Just enable two finger touch for the touchpad, and that will give you a right mouse button click on the touch pad. Full description here http://leopardtips.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-to-right-click-on-mac.html

Heh, we just got one neighborhood in our closest local city-like community a neighborhood-wide wifi setup as phase 1 of a municipal wifi project: http://oncee.blogspot.com/2008/06/free-east-end-wireless-up-and-running.html

Of course, I'm referring to it as a city-like community despite being our state capitol since if things don't change it'll be off the most declining cities lists by caveat of being too small to qualify. =)

Funny you mention that because WALL-E was the first real departure of Pixar's common memes of road trips, and comedy routines, with everything ending wrapped up in a tidy little bow, as originally formulated by W-B and Disney. Ratatouille was a small step away. I found this blog post interesting

http://ghiblicon.blogspot.com/2008/06/pixar-wall-e-and-rubber-soul.html

Personally I thought the plot was small but appropriately sized, the characters while not exceptionally deep were perfectly engaging and demonstrative in their motivations, and incredibly memorable. In all my first or second favorite Pixar movie.

That's correct. Moreover, google will ignore whatever comes after a + sign, so email sent to firstlast+slashdot@gmail.com will be delivered to firstlast@gmail.com

you are incorrect. john.richards@gmail.com send mail to johnrichards@gmail.com not to richards@gmail.com. Stripping the punctuation means gmail ignores it, not kills off the first part.

what you are talking about is using + in your email address: see here Google Blog

HD Radio/IBOC jams on both AM and FM and suffers from dropouts, poor coverage, interference, bland programming, and almost zero consumer interest: http://hdradiofarce.blogspot.com/

Oh my.

Yes, case-in-point: Amazon's one-click.

The What: "being able to buy in one click"

It's like patenting: "being able to travel 1000 miles in 2 hours."

Alonzo Fyfe made a great point about political positioning that I think also applies to the two party system. If you want to actually get anything done, you have to conjure up enough political backing to make it happen; it doesn't matter how right you are if nobody listens to you. You have to take the best set of positions that will still get you 51% of the vote. As a voter, you have to choose the compromise position that's more acceptable to you; voting third party leaves more power with whichever side you agree with slightly less.

Fyfe's really insightful point, I thought, was that it's incumbent upon us as citizens to create a political reality in which politicians can take the positions we all know are correct/moral/logical/win karma on /. This isn't something you do at the ballot box; it takes real work to make a substantial number of people think. The Ron Paul movement does a great job of that, but notice that he's still a registered republican.

CmdrToco says, "Assuming the spider adheres to robots.txt, this is clever and well done." Query whether robots.txt can legally or morally be used, like a web End User License Agreement (EULA), to restrict the policitical conversation the McCain campaign is pursuing here. It is one thing to use a EULA to govern issues like privacy and legal liability. It would be another to employ it to limit free political speech. What do you think? --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-privacy-policy-terms-of-service.html

CmdrToco says, "Assuming the spider adheres to robots.txt, this is clever and well done." Query whether robots.txt can legally or morally be used, like a web End User License Agreement (EULA), to restrict the policitical conversation the McCain campaign is pursuing here. It is one thing to use a EULA to govern issues like privacy and legal liability. It would be another to employ it to limit free political speech. What do you think? --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-privacy-policy-terms-of-service.html

William Patry, one of the leading authorities on copyright law and counsel for Google, has posted a very negative discussion of this decision on his blog. It sounds like there is a good chance of reversal on appeal. Unlike most ./-ers, this is someone who really knows what he is talking about.

Google is an integral part of today's online scams. Google provides material support to scammers, and helps collect the money.

• Gmail - provides free, anonymous communication with scammers and large numbers of e-mail accounts for spammers.
• Blogger/Blogspot - provides redirection to hostile sites.
• YouTube - hosts instructional videos on how to scam.
• Google AdWords - runs paid ads for services needed by scammers, such as "bulletproof hosting".
• Google Checkout - collects money for scam tools.

Google's proliferation of low-security services makes it easier for scammers to operate, and to hide. If they had to buy those services from a hosting company, there'd be a money trail to follow back to the source. Using Google's free, unauthenticated services makes it easier for the operator to conceal their identity.

It's full-service evil.

This was modded as insightful? You've got to be kidding. Yes, I'm sure that there are plenty of people on SL who are just looking for the 3D MMORPG version of phone sex. However, there are also plenty of people who are just sharing their non-perverted hobbies and interests in a 3D version of the web where you can text chat with the other surfers who are currently at the same page that you are at. I have blogged on this.

If you can read Portuguese, check my blog

If you can use Babelfish, check out his blog :-)

> not to mention, in 2007 that the northwest passage was completely ice free for the first time in recorded history.

Yea, right. Pull the other one. First time in recorded history huh? Except for 1906, 1944, 1957, 1969, 1977, 1984, 1985, 1988 and 2000 in wooden ships, catamarans, naval vessels, cruise ships, etc.

Stop beliving the propaganda and do some googling before you open yer piehole and up looking like a retard.

btw, here is the link I got from Google searching for "northwest passage ice free"
Classically Liberal: Bad reporting about the Northwest Passage issue

Every time I read about the latest multicore processor that uses a parallel programming model based on multithreading, I just want to cry. How many times must it be repeated to the industry that multithreading is not part of the future of parallel computing? Multithreading simply sucks. Concurrent threads are non-deterministic, prone to errors and hard to program. There is an infinitely better way to design and program parallel computers that does not involves threads at all. To find out why multithreading's days are numbered, read Parallel Computing: Why the Future Is Non-Algorithmic.

Not everyone is a *nix geek. Yes there is a linux way to do things but not everyone wants to deal with that. There is an OS X and a Windows version.

I bought my sister, brother and myself a version of Orbicle's Undercover which does everything this does and a bit more. It'll take pictures of the thieves (if your Mac has a built in iSight), change contrast, etc.)

I was pondering making my own group of shell scripts do do something similar.
curl -O mywebsite/stolen.txt. Leave it at a 0, then make it a 1 when my laptop is stolen. Then have it do weird stuff. isightcapture can record pictures of someone as soon as the lid opens or during invalid login attempts. There are apple scripts to change the monitor contrast, computer volume, say stuff. (All of which Undercover does).

As soon as it detects it is in an Apple Store (by host name) it cranks the volume up and announces "This laptop is stolen. This laptop is stolen."

I thought about how much work that would take and I thought, meh. I'm watching TV and bought Undercover.

Finally, this is open source. Isn't that what the slashdot crowd bitches about most "ZOMG IT'S NOT OPEN SOURCE BURNNN". Someone took the time to build an installer for 3 different systems, make it so it used a DHS so you didn't have to configure FTP settings (You know not everyone has a my.website that they can read logs on daily) and all 1/2 the people here can do is bitch about how stupid it is or easy it could be to do with cron.

Thieves are stupid. Most will boot the machine and use it. Look at Orbiclue's "success stories." One thief loaded WoW then tried to delete all the personal files of the person. This isn't going to stop a corporate hacker but the jackass that breaks into your car, you might have a chance.

You'd rather see these inovations (if not pure "inventions") buried in a closet somewhere until the corn lobby disappears?

These (solar powered heater, charcoal from dung or solar smelters etc.) are no innovations or inventions. They are gadgets, and expensive gadgets too ( you can probably boil beans with a "solar smelter", but you won't smelt anything unless you can get some really large mirrors). If they are distributed they will make the "beneficiaries" become more dependent on aid and handouts because they will kill whatever industry supplied those people with the same services as the "innovations and inventions" pushed by TED.

TED and the folk behind it are no better than the Victorian ladies that went slumming and giving handouts to the polite paupers. It did not help the paupers much, but it made those ladies feel a lot better about themselves.

Those "poor third world people" are not helpless dopes. If they can't export wine or grain, they will export cocaine or opium, since it's a lot easier to sneak in a 5kg package than to sneak it's equivalent in grain or frozen meat. This was done by Europeans, too, when they were themselves third world countries (Opium Wars happened only because the Chinese taxed imports to death when not forbidding them outright, and opium was the only thing that had a high enough mark up to justify the trouble of fitting a ship).

Please explain why you think there isn't room for evolutionary technological advances that can improve the lives of billions of people until we get our own governmental policies 'fixed.'

"evolutionary technological advances" ? Have you watched the TED movies ? Dung or corn stalk charcoal is a technological innovation ? "improve the lives of billions of people" ? Can anybody pay for solar panels to improve the lives of billions ? Last time I heard there were not enough money to pay for solar panels to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands: in my area a 40W (peak power) solar panel costs 380 Euro. At this price the whole military budget of US for 2008 will buy about 40GW of power, which is less than what, for example, Rumania uses during one year.

Want to help the poor ? Then stop sending aid, and give them a chance to build their economies. Or, if you are into churches and going on missions, send English language teachers and set up Internet Cafes besides talking about Jeesus H. Christ and handing out used clothes.

Don't worry about "farm subsidies" right now: worry about "quality standards", "sanitary regulations" etc. ... yes, about the Bumpers Amendment, too, if you do care about "foreign aid".

The sad part is that the whole trade lockup is not directed against the "third world countries", but is set up against the other "first world countries". The 'poor aborigines' are just innocent bystanders that get slugged down when US and EU and the other big guys fire trade regulations and taxes at each other.

why not conserve energy through green roofs, better windows, hybrids and the like? i think we spend so much time looking for "novel" solutions when real and cost effective solutions are at our finger tips. I read a lot about green roofs. The best place I found was http://www.cleanerairforcities.blogspot.com/ I also read a great series of articles about hybrids and solar, as well as costs and benefits at http://www.economicefficiency.blogspot.com/ Conserve first, innovate in parallel!

why not conserve energy through green roofs, better windows, hybrids and the like? i think we spend so much time looking for "novel" solutions when real and cost effective solutions are at our finger tips. I read a lot about green roofs. The best place I found was http://www.cleanerairforcities.blogspot.com/ I also read a great series of articles about hybrids and solar, as well as costs and benefits at http://www.economicefficiency.blogspot.com/ Conserve first, innovate in parallel!

Hello!
Since you're a mathematician, maybe you'll be interested in cosmology (=theoretical astrophysics).
Here is one recommendation:
Cosmology: A Very Short Introduction - Peter Coles (1)
http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780192854162

OTOH, the following book is quite provocative:
The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin (2)
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2006/08/lee-smolins-trouble-with-physics.html

BTW, http://fliptomato.wordpress.com/2007/03/09/the-trouble-with-smolin/

------------
(1) Professor of Astrophysics, University of Nottingham
(2) Researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario

http://iphone-gps.blogspot.com/

You can also make your own open source projects. If it is something big put it out on SourceForge. If it is something small just put it into a blog. A blog is a great place to show your skills. Not only will you show some code, but you will show your communication skills. The ability to frame a problem's scope, solve the problem, and communicate well about your solution is what most companies are looking for.

You look at my attempt if for inspiration: http://zgrossbart.blogspot.com/

http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/07/wild-rationalizations.html

For the unaquainted, here is the birth of K Pride Week:

http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/07/k-pride.html

http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/07/wild-rationalizations.html

For the unaquainted, here is the birth of K Pride Week:

http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/07/k-pride.html

Any good programmer attempting to translate a large program into Brainfuck would not try to do it manually. There are already programs which can translate various languages into Brainfuck (1 2 3 4). It should be feasible to target one of those languages.

If more folks had green roofs, they wouldn't need gutters. Green roofs improve the r-value by 20+%, as well as reducing storm water runoff. They also reduce fine particulate matter in the air and CO2. I have read about them at http://www.cleanerairforcities.blogspot.com/ Did I mention they also look great!?

People willing to line up infront of the store as early in the morning just to own this two gadget. Well they really break the market. cheers Find your refurbished laptop

I saw one in a gaming arcade. http://colorgenie.blogspot.com/2008/07/bsod-on-gaming-machine.html

The 500+ figure includes each e-book as a separate "app", but still there's a pretty good showing with much more to come. A lot of it is free or very cheap.

It also includes the doubling up of the free apps -- poking around, it looks like almost half of them are "free" demos, and there's a second premium app you have to buy.

It also includes some pretty crappy apps that surprisingly made the launch day cut: "seven tip calculators, three flashlight applications, nine Bible-related entries, two Zen garden applications, five blackjack games, and almost 10 percent of the entries are ebooks. There is an application to simulate the playing of a tiny violin to console your friends, a Light Saber emulator, an application that gives you a cartoon eye, and two applications that simulate the look of a beer mug."

A $0.99 "flashlight" app that does nothing but turn the screen white seems like a dubious inclusion in the "500+" claim. Others include a $2.99 app called "Looky" that provides Google Suggest capability, which Google provides for free. My favorite is "Hold On!", which records how long you can hold your finger on an on-screen button (with "records").

As for the "doubling up of the free apps," I see more free "ad-supported" versions than "demos." Double-counting "demos" would be really obnoxious, but fully-functional ad-supported versions are less so, IMO. One nice-looking example for Flickr users: Exposure (free ad-supported, $9.99 w/o ads), a Flickr browser that has a "Near Me" feature which uses the iPhone's location capabilities (including 1st-gen iPhones) to browse photos near you.

[Obama]had terrible judgement to start with

Obama was against Iraq from the beginning.

...have left a whole people to live a brutal life under Sharia, with the women especially living a totally different life than they can live today.

Clearly your confusing Iraq with Afghanistan. Iraqis didn't live under Sharia, although the government has taken steps in that direction since our idiotic invasion.