Slashdot Mirror

http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2006/11/giant-kfc-log o-seen-from-space.html

Then clearly the news of what a ton of people did, will very much trouble you. The site listed in the story, (which is taking some, because they made Slashdot) is not isolated, they are many in a long list of sites, and people, that have tried this.

I think it was cute what Google was trying to do, but let's be honest here, this is not what Google Maps is about, so why advertise it? It was a nice social experiment, the Australians have clearly failed, and the rest of us pay the price by them never announcing it again.

RonB

I think some professional societies have been a little too enthusastic when it comes to promoting the prospects for employment in their fields. Your analysis should be included in profesional society literuature. My advisor, in astronomy, had one Ph.D. student partly because he saw the same math as you. But, your mention of math reminds be of another internal drive which is approching the sublime. In this case, any prize that turns up becomes irrelevant. We've seen a recent case of a major prize being declined: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/2 2/1751225 for proving the Poincare conjecture. It is also worth remembering that making the stakes high can cut another way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno.
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Solar + geothermal heat + a plug in hybrid = no personal fossil fuel consumption. Get started at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Soory, I hadn't thought you would intentionally bais the direction of the bicycle's fall. Let me be clear then, you wish to equate weather and climate instabilities as being of the same nature but different time scales. In weather one can make fairly accurate short term predictions based on physical models. Similarly in climate one can do the same, only the short term for climate is much longer than for weather. The insistance on the Sun being the only important thing is incorrect and can not lead to a useful understanding of climate. The temperature variations you give are very small and much smaller than the difference in temperature of the surface of the Earth with or without an atmosphere. The composition of the atmosphere is of key importance. The Earth's tilt wiht respect to its orbit is 23 degrees so a seasonal change ot 46 degrees does not seem like an "itsy bit" unless you are somehow confused and are taking a changed distance to the Sun as being what is important. It is actually the length of the day and dilution of the sunlight owing to the tilt angle that is important. Since the prospects for a hotter Sun, on the timescale that you concede is OK for making climate predictions, are vanishingly small, your insistance that this is the most important thing to consider seems stubborn at best.
Regarding FUD, as you can see at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html the intent to deceive is present in the ExxonMobil campaign. This has no part in science, where uncertanties are quantified, doubt is used to perfect experiment and curiosity rather than fear is the motive.
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Glad you have solar. Try net metering.

What you describe is normal, and your question exhibits a lack of understanding about white ballence.
essentially, if your white is right, then all the other colors will be as well. your camera has several settings to compinsate for various light types (Tungsten, Flourescent, Daylight)Yours is probably set to AWB (Auto) which is easy - as the camera will figure it out pretty well and a Custom - which you can configure based on the lighting by shooting a grey card - which is a card that is 15% grey (Or there abouts) that the camera can then use to figure out what true white is.

The variation in pixels can also be the result of the ISO setting you are using. 100 has the least noise, but also requires longer exposures. higher settings react faster, but have more noise (400,800,1600) This is a tradeoff between desigered exposure and ambiant light.

I would suggest reading Strobist for more on lighting. There are also several other sites dedicated to post processing images, that you may find helpfull. it also might be worth looking at the various pool discucssion groups on Fliker.

-Peter

Good points. I also thought I would add that laws protecting culture are different in Quebec than in the rest of Canada. French-language, home-grown entertainment is vigorously protected. Every year or so the province's "language police" make headlines for some stupid thing, like forcing a computer store to take down its website because it didn't conform to being bilingual enough, or forcing cities to change street signs to French. http://www.efc.ca/pages/media/calgary-herald.16jun 97.html http://newquebec.blogspot.com/2006/07/beaconsfield -to-language-police-get.html

Quebec probably just doesn't care enough about protecting "outsider" entertainment which competes directly with its own culture, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if the enforcement agencies were turning a blind eye to piracy in Quebec movie theatres for that reason.

But I think the idea that Canada is responsible for 50 per cent of movie piracy is a total load and a FUD attack by the movie companies on our copyright laws, which they hate because they still allow us to make legit copies and downloads of THINGS WE ALREADY OWN (better make that clear).

I hate having to pay a levy on every pack of blank DVDs and CDs I buy, but that's the law and I just look for the deals (discs are always on sale somewhere.)

And I find it freeing that if I buy a CD, and it's invested with rootkits and proprietary players and crap, well, I am within my rights to fire up Limewire or uTorrent and download the cracked version of the album I just bought so I can put it on my MP3 player without having to go through some nightmarish DRM scenario with Windows Media Player.

Tha't the one. In my opinion, butterflies probably have little to do with tornado weather, but I'm happy to concede that which path they take may have depended on when a butterfly took flight.

My favorite butterfly effect predates this idea: Chuang Tzu had a beautiful dream that he was a butterfly. From that day he was never certain that he was a philosopher dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a philosopher.
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Flutter by here to get solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Volcanos cause short term cooling until the ash falls out. Many volcanos erupting together cause longer term warming owing to the higher CO2 concentration.

You seem to want the climate to be entirely free from constraints of cause and effect, it can go wherever it wants for no reason at all. This is, I think, what you mean by instability. Climate feedbacks do occur but this is not the same thing as the butterfly effect which makes weather difficult to predict. Climate follows forcing and both the short term aerosols that you cite and the long term GHG balance have definite effects on climate.
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Because this false equating of weather behavior and climate behavior has been a major part of a well funded attempt to decieve the public http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html you may want to closely scutinize what has influenced your opinion here.

Skeptical about global warming? Who cares, you can still save money by switching to solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Volcanos cause short term cooling until the ash falls out. Many volcanos erupting together cause longer term warming owing to the higher CO2 concentration.

You seem to want the climate to be entirely free from constraints of cause and effect, it can go wherever it wants for no reason at all. This is, I think, what you mean by instability. Climate feedbacks do occur but this is not the same thing as the butterfly effect which makes weather difficult to predict. Climate follows forcing and both the short term aerosols that you cite and the long term GHG balance have definite effects on climate.
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Because this false equating of weather behavior and climate behavior has been a major part of a well funded attempt to decieve the public http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html you may want to closely scutinize what has influenced your opinion here.

Skeptical about global warming? Who cares, you can still save money by switching to solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

It really isn't clear from the article how they define the boundry. It seems like a geologically disturbed region and somehow they put the boundry well above the glass. Yet tsunamis were supposed to have passed there so why not just rapidly cover it we easily eroded disturbed sediment? If the boundry is defined by irridum, and they are drilling in the bottom of a former river, again, sedimentation from irridum enriched erosion might expalain their measurement.

There is quite a lot of evidence that in less disturbed regions the irridum layer marks the dissaperance of megafauna so why is the survival of microorganisms a tracer of these? The KT boundry does not mark the end of flora, insects or microrganisms, just the big stuff.

More detail would be a big help here.
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Halt global warming. Switch to solar power with ease: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Is that enough to provide confidentiality?

Give it a realistic test. Create a Word document with the file name "Arson Confession" and type out something about how you set fire to an orphanage. Make a few revisions. Run Firefox with an extension that leaks memory, leave it up for a day or two so that it forces everything else to be swapped out. Simulate a crash by doing an End Process on Word from the task manager once.

Then boot from a Linux live CD and do something like "strings /dev/hda | fgrep -e Arson Confession orphanage > leaks.txt".

Document names in MRU lists in the registry, temp files, and the swap file might not be covered by the encryption. A file name could be a pretty damaging thing to leak. Consider also that Windows may store the file name as Unicode in some places that wouldn't show on fgrep.

It's good thinking and sound practice to wonder whether the gadget does what it claims, but a huge number of security problems come from threats that were outside what the security designers were thinking about. "Security is like an analogy. It only works up until the point that someone considers an angle or aspect that you haven't previously considered and accounted for."

I agree, additionally, the revolution is the marketing strategy of Apple (which isn't new).

I'd rather have the Nokia N95. About the keyboard, how would you know how to change a song without taking the iPhone out of your pocket?

http://ivansjournal.blogspot.com/

I think you are most likely correct on the 'a lot' part, I'd even say 'the vast majority' for the simple reason that entry into science is accompanied by many hoops to jump through. Because this is part of the training, the habit of seeking recognition becomes pretty ingrained. And, it is pretty hard to be self-taught these days. It also seems to me that schools that have sought to counter this bias in the past have been cowed by the insistence that the transcripts they issue be comparable with those of grade based institutions. I seem to remember that Reed felt that its graduates weren't getting jobs dispite its extreme academic rigor.
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Solar out of the box: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

My grandparents gave me a half roll of these which I still have somewhere. I've found maybe three in change in my life.
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Moderate inflation with a 25 year fixed rate solar rental contract: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

It looks like an ID, and it smells like an ID, but once you scrape all the numbers off it's still an ID. http://www.bertandi.net/mp3/thesassage.mp3
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http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

How about the Nobel and the Fields? But if you want some quick cash try one of these: http://www.claymath.org/millennium/
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http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Some ideas and accomplishments seem to just fit and these are easily recognized. The discovery of DNA came about at a time when encoding was something people were thinking about. It just fit and was recognized with a prize. Some discoveries that are true and important may not fit right away, people's thinking needs to stretch so much that recognition comes only when it is too late to award a prize.

My point, then, is that seeking after recognition is likely to limit your final level of accomplishment. The goal of the X-prize is admirable, and those who compete grow from the challange. This is all good. But inner motivation moves people much further.
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Change the world: solar is for you. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Okay, Norway. You want to play hardball? Saddle up the reindeer, strap some body armor over your queer-ass Dale sweaters, wrap your pretentious scarf tight around your chicken neck, and meet us on the field of battle.

Copernicus never got a prize. His accompishments were just too large to be recognizable. Prizes, especially those mentioned with fixed goals are a lot of fun, but can the truely innovative be discerned in time to reward the inovator? Only sometimes I think.
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Go Solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Google Video is not going away! All they're doing is adding YouTube results to the search results when you search Google Video. Their plan is to at some point incorporate other video websites so that Google Video is not just a place to view videos, but also the one place to search for videos.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/look-ahead- at-google-video-and-youtube.html

Here's a link to the official announcement from Google's blog.

lol, I dont know who is more at fault;

- the business exec for starting up a competing company and getting kickbacks while negotiating to sell a company he had an interest in to his own bosses.
- the wife, who obviously knew what was going on but acquiesced for 3 years until she found out her husband was cheating on her and decided to take him to the cleaners.
or
- the company, sweet old HP who used pretexting to access an employees private phone records but when this failed, stole the social security information from his employment records.

either way makes for very very interesting reading www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/25/hp_tv_kamb see that TV you are watching in the corner, who knows how it's development came about, who knew business was such fun.

Cheers,
Dean
http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/oh-tan gled-web-we-weave.html

Your absolutely right! This is one of the funniest aspects of the whole thing. The only power source we can't compete with on price is hydro. If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. Wind, hydro, tidal and solar only need to be maintained, they don't need to be fed. If feeding you power source becomes awkward then the cost goes up. So, coal, gas, oil and nuclear end up rising in cost is response to demand owing to problems with fuel transport and difficulties that arise from having used up the easy to get stuff already. Only a small fraction of the actual clean up costs for nonrenewables is reflected in the production cost for nonrenewables so while this conributes a bit to our competitiveness, you have to mainly use this as a consumer preference thing after reaching price parity.

While a portion of our cometitiveness arises from reduced distribution costs, the main trigger is the high price of fossil fuels. In your area, you've been immune to this. Once we're fully scaled up, we might drop in cost below your hydro, and I'd be happy about that because the ecosystems that large scale hydro disrupt are a huge loss, but for now don't anticipate walking across Puget Sound on the backs of salmon right way.
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Slashdot users can help you switch to solar! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

One problem with asking for predictions in this case is that it would be very hard for you to confirm that the next two cycles occured or not. So, one is pretty much stuck with trying to account for the past. This is in the nature of observational science as opposed to experimental science. However, it is possible that the model will have consequences which explain other observations, or which suggest new observations which could help to test the validity of the theory. This is a theory about the solar interior. This is probed by heliosiesmology and observations of solar neutinos. It seems a little hard to guess but perhaps a tomogaphic result might test the theory. Certainly, local temperature fluctuations should lead to some scattering of sound waves, a sort of mirage effect.

I'm actually mulling over writing a proposal to use the billing data from the solar power systems we're selling to study the five minute solar oscillation. If we achieve our goal of 25% of the residential power market, power production data with sufficent time resolution would make an increadibly sensitive photometric instrument. Basically you can scrub clouds out of the data completely.
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Get solar! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Actually I just blogged on this. For global warming it is very hard to blame carelessness. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/knowing-warmin g.html

But, you can still do something about it: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Actually I just blogged on this. For global warming it is very hard to blame carelessness. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/knowing-warmin g.html

But, you can still do something about it: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

It's not enough to know which businesses are good; you have to know which ones are good relative to the price their stock is selling for, which is a much, much, much more difficult problem.

The way I see it, it's actually easier. You don't have to waste time looking at financial reports and listening to conference calls, you just pick a stock that's unpopular for irrational reasons.

The alternative? Buy an index fund.

Here's another alternative - just randomly pick stuff. Index funds are too easily manipulated. When it is announced that a new stock is going to be added to an index, people go and buy up that stock, causing the index fund to pay a higher price.

But you need the diversification? Eight stocks cut your risk by 81%. If you have the money and/or the time to invest in 8 stocks, there's little point in bothering with an index fund. Maybe if you want to invest in foreign issues, as they're expensive for the average person to invest in directly.

Be sure to look into DRIPs and other direct investment programs too. DRIPs enable you to automatically invest dividends so you really can just buy it and forget about it; and direct investment programs can cut your commissions to zero in some cases.

Yes, the article was covering a talk that he gave, basically to sell his comnpany's services. All I can say is that I hope nobody actually listens to this guy.

I'm not going to post my rant on here. It's way too long. If anyone wants to peruse it, you can read it in my blog.

And I think you are way off here saying they are only looking out for themselves.

Have you tried actually reading their blog? With all the self-promotion, personal attacks and vitriol, it's glaringly obvious they are doing this first and foremost for drawing attention to themselves.

I got a Precision in 1999 with redhat on it. LinuxCare did the support contract. But Dell seemed to slack off after that.
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Renting Solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Well, if you don't mind the expense of having two of them, you could keep one charged at home, make a quick pit stop, and off you go. If they can make the amps, they can take the amps.

Stop, stop, I can't help flogging this:
If you have solar power you can take your transportation off of fossil fuels too. The range issue looks as though it may be fixed with this technology. Once you get an electric vehicle just add a few solar panels to your locked in rate solar system and your fuel costs are fixed to. How is the FED going to keep inflation at 3% if prices refuse to rise?

I've started keeping a list of users who can help you get a solar power system: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

The GMA950 is a crap 3D card. Even the most basic google research shows that it is NOT a return of Intel to 3D and no reviewer worth a dam has said the graphics "scream". Poor performance and incomplete 3d support are the hallmarks of the GMA950. If you play nothing but Quake II than yea, the GMA950 is for you.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1821814 ,00.asp
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2427 &p=3
http://everythingapple.blogspot.com/2006/03/intel- gma-950-terrible-opengl.html

What drives competitiveness these days in not physics but price. Electricity is very expensive in the North East, so solar is very competitive there. http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID= /20070117/NEWS/701170342/1002/BUSINESS

What has only just started is giving the same deal to homeowners that Walmart, Staples, GM, FedEx and others get.

Slashdot users are starting to make a difference in this http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Using a rental model I think we can get to very large market share for solar. I think this sort of puts things in another light with respect to nuclear power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-renewables -displace-nukes-first.html
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Rent the Sun?!? http://www.jointhesolution.com/mdsolar

To see why I'd advise against continuing to invest in nuclear power see http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-renewables -displace-nukes-first.html.

But if you think that analysis is flawed, you can still work out a way to invest even more by switching to solar personally. Look at the calcualator at http://www.jointhesolution.com/mdolar for a low balled savings estimate (2.2% estimate of annual electric rate increase I thing) and 9% return on the invested savings.

Solar panels are now good for about 30 years, and if you rent from us, we handle the disposal and leave your roof in good shape. Note that since they are still solar grade silicon, they only need to be recycled. They are worth about $25/kilo as raw material.

I do have the numbers to back this up... check out the stats at slowspam.com - this exploits the fact that some spammers target low priority MX hosts and then holds them in a tar pit for as long as they keep the connection open - 671 hours in one case.

More of an explanation here.

I agree with you about diverse sources though not about nuclear power since we have no (energy positive) way to destroy the waste. It seems to me though that one aspect of a mix of sources is that the intermittent ones basically drive out nuclear power because it is inflexible. See more on this at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-renewables -displace-nukes-first.html
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Disclosure: I sell solar power (see my home page).

A number of other bloggers have written rebuttals to the list of 10 reasons to use Windows. Some of them are actually pretty scathing.

http://www.tipsdr.com/?p=725
http://pinderkent.blogsavy.com/archives/30
http://scott2096.blogspot.com/2007/01/10-reasons-n ot-to-get-vista.html
http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2007/01/it_won t_conjure.html

These lists were also discussed a lot over at OSNews recently: http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=17024

But won't stealing energy from the core of the earth slow it down, causing the planet's electromagnetic field to rapidly deteriorate, killing us all?!

Just wondering.

Actually, nofollow predates Google. It dates back to at least HTML 2.0, so sometime around '94 or so.

No it doesn't.

You're thinking of the rel attribute itself, which indeed has been part of the semantics of HTML forever and ever. But using rel="nofollow" as a flag for search engines is much newer.

The M$' PR guys of course target the people who haven't read the original paper.

What PR says is in fact in direct contradiction of purpose the DRM/HDCP was implemented in Vista: to close analogue hole. As long as any kind of unsecured channel remains - and can be used simultaneously with secure one - data could be leaked.

On other side, if the guy isn't lying, then M$ didn't really closed the analogue hole - and hacks are to be expected soon. Somehow, I find that more probable. Blood of innocent bystanders (and that's all industries minus RIAA/MPAA) in the DRM/HDCP vs. analogue hole battle is too be expected.

P.S. I'd rather have M$ PR drones to answer that DRM related question:

DRM is especially idiotic because it only annoys paying customers. Pirates get a better experience than people who paid for the product!!!

Worse part, the remark is made my Microsofty - the worker of M$ itself. Just try to imaging the gap between management and normal workers present in M$ right now.

http://choosedoubt.blogspot.com/2006/08/why-agnost icism-is-also-stupid.html

Forget scientific data, I do analysis of hockey statistics for my blog, and Calc just doesn't cut it for my needs (web page table import, and >30K records). I didn't realize the latest office extends the record limit beyond 65K, I'll have to look into that...

Well, I think there is some rethinking to do if we go to renewables. I mentioned William McDonough's thinking in an earlier post. The main thing there is that everthing is done on current accounts. You use energy as it arrives at the planet rather than exhausting reseviors built up over geological time. In many ways, this removes scarcity considerations because we are never competing for sunlight that illuminates China or India. You don't really compete for renewable resources because they are not centralized.

I've been trying to think about these issues a little at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/. See what you think.
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Disclosure: I sell solar power (see my home page).

...without Every Extend :

Description

Download link

My Electric Coop keeps me informed through new letters included with my bill about legislative developments that affect rates and such. I'm a member of the coop so I guess that would be excluded.

My cable company tries to get me to write congress so they can take over the land line market. This might be included because I am a customer not a memeber.

My cell phone company has had some gripes too and again I'm a customer not a member.

Now, the solar power company I sell for has a definite agenda when it comes to net metering laws: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/solar-power-am way-way.html. I'm not an employee, I'm an associate. I might however initiate a company-wide announcement that makes it to most of the customers that supports the agenda to increase access to net metering. Am I retained? Maybe. Am I communicating with more that 500 people? Yes, sales are growing incredibly. Am I a lobbyist in the way the bill intended? Very hard to say but I'd guess yes.

I feel pretty good that this was removed from the bill just because it was so vauge that many many activities might come under its scope.

This is actually what I feel that is happening in Germany, as well. We have (had) technical colleges (in German "Fachhochschule") and Universities. Currently I have the impression that Universities are trying to move more into the direction of technical colleges and vice-versa. In summary, I think the main drivers are: money (for Universities) and reputation (for the technical colleges).

Being at a University my main concerns obviously is the impression that we are producing fewer and fewer thinkers. For German Universities third party funding (i.e. "projects"), especially with industry involved, is a very important monetary resource - and of growing in importance. But of course, it is hard to produce thinkers, when you are tightly working together with industrial partners. because industry focuses on their products.

On the other hand, it is "cool" to have good industry contacts, if you are an University. Being theoretical and abstract is kinda out. I'm not sure, what the reason for this is, but it might have something to do with the job market (as quoted above) and the funding depending on the number of students that you have.

Maybe, a diversification is needed? Maybe one day, there will be Universities that find the slogan "we produce the most abstract thinking theorists" appealing? But the current development to equalize the engineering schools and university degrees (to some extend) by introducing the master and bachelor degree is not in favor of this development.

I have the hope that over time, maybe industry accepts bachelor as an engineering degree - THE engineering degree. Maybe it would be feasible then to have the lecture for master to be far more theoretical?

alex (http://alexander-behring.blogspot.com/2007/01/tra ders-and-thinkers.html)

And this story hit the UK Guardian on 9 Nov 2006. (via CS maven my slice of pizza.)

What you call "giving the populace the chance to vote" others call "giving the populace the chance to think that they voted."

The Crabster.

There are plenty of things in science that are proven beyond a doubt, from the act that pouring water into a glass container will not suddenly be on the ground to the mixing of multiple chemicals injecting that into a person and appling an outside invisible ray will help to cure illness.
We are talking government based research not some theoretical paper, when a paper is release for the government it is for policy purposes so why would you want some guess that cannot be proven?
Also the examples people have talked about during President Bush have been in the area whre the writer is saying and advocating an action should be based on non-proven guesses from position friendly and unfriendly to the President. That is not to say the government does not censure papers on political impllecations it happened numerious time during the mid to late 90s however under Bush it has not been to common.
That stuff about the Grand Canyon has been proven absolutly false and the only people not interest in the truth are thoses that keep spreading stuff like that.