Slashdot Mirror

from the google blog:

You may have seen stories today reporting on a new product that we're testing, and speculating about our plans. Here's what's really going on. We are testing a new way for content owners to submit their content to Google, which we hope will complement existing methods such as our web crawl and Google Sitemaps. We think it's an exciting product, and we'll let you know when there's more news.

Perhaps more importantly, this move positions Google as potentially the pre-eminent publishing house with an inherent built in search engine. Anything that goes into the database will be "intimately" searchable. From my perspective as a bioscientist, the ability to be able to search journal articles not just for text, but also for image data or graph data would be absolutely huge.

Google has previously posted their position about Google Print here where they documented superficially their desire to enable people to search for "books". However, more importantly, it is the content within the "books" that will become more ubiquitous and more available.

http://wallpaperfree.blogspot.com/ I want MY cease and desist order, too!

Aluminum can be used more or less directly in an aluminum-air battery, but you've got the same problem with regeneration of the sludge (expensive and can't be done with water-based chemistry). The thing you want is something like zinc, which works fine in zinc-air fuel cells and can be regenerated easily and cheaply by a variety of means.

It would be nice for tech workers to know how screwed they are relative to everyone else. I don't know why I haven't seen a website sort of like fuckedcompany but lets tech worker share salary information with the world (as opposed to reporting how screwed their company is). A while ago, I started a website like this entitled Am I Getting Screwed but no luck so far.

Google has a shuttle between SF and their offices in Mountain View. It significantly reduces the number of car trips and it also runs on biodiesel. Its incentives are that you don't have to be bothered with driving and you can use the wireless on the trip.

I'd rather see companies offer discounted bus passes (many companies subsidize parking for their employees in downtown areas) and shuttles like this rather than encouraging employees to buy "green" cars.

Even better, encourage bicycle use and/or locate your office in a dense neighborhood where employees can live close to work. I'd rather work in a dense urban area (not necessarily downtown, but a neighborhood that is consistently 3-4 stories tall (or on a bike trail, like OmniGroup)) than in a suburban office park.

I was curious as to how rich a programmer would feel in India vs the U.S. That is a comparison of wages programmers receive in the Us vs India divided by the average wage for those countries which dictates the cost of living in general. Perhaps somebody could put together a global index for various professions?

The International Herald Tribune says that the average wage for an experienced programmer in India is $11,423 a year. The average wage for an experienced programmer in the U.S is $83,000 a year. However the average per capita income in India is $3,100 and in the U.S it is $40,100. Per capita income is a good indicator of the relative cost level for people living in a particular country.

So the programmer vs average salary ratio in India is 3.684 while in the U.S it is 2.069. To feel as rich as an experienced Indian programmer an American Programmer would have to make $147,728.

Origional article + links to references, etc over at my blog

I just had some pain trying to register quicktime pro here in New Zealand. Apple don't want to know me. I think i'm going to go back to using an Amiga.

I've been wating for something usable since January of 2004 and even earlier. However, I will say that Looking Glass has been very influential. That new feature in OS X Tiger that allows you to see 3d widgets has the same "flip over for options" feature that was demoed with LG3D.

Will this ever become a usable project? I don't think so, but every time a profound new innovation like this appears it affects the other products that came out in later years. There is some good stuff here and I suspect we'll see it pop-up in very unusual places.

I can't wait to see where.

From http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/03/worrying-abou t-skyline.html, the author also mentions the restriction:

"... city and state laws that limit building height to 187.2 feet within one mile of the Capitol."

Searching around the internet you can also find mention that a few buildings are slightly taller, but that is because they were build before the law went into effect.

SELECT x FROM y WHERE p = '?'
what if '?' = '1; delete employees;'

http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/

Just recently, it was announced that Opera would start a partnership with Answers.com as well, mostly for their upcoming Opera 9 browser (which is available already as a tech preview). Seems like they're gaining popularity, and for having such a clean site I can't say I dislike it. Looks like a good site that aggregates info from various sources.

However, Wikipedia information/vandalism critics may be opposed to that Answers.com heavily use that service, and it's now starting to get seamlessly integrated in web browsers and spread to other parts of the Internet thanks to the GNU Free Documentation License, the reputable Google.com being one of them (they use it for definition queries as in define:slashdot and Who is Rob Malda). A lot of information control in the hands of you and me, in other words.

A good idea for most, but some bloggers would really find that onerous. For example: http://bahatia.blogspot.com/ is a blog for Bahatia Community Centre, who only have a website because it is free. (A dollar is an average day's wage for many over there).

And yet... a default of ref=nofollow for all user links seems to be a good start. Ok, ok, inconvenient, valuable links will be lost forever, yada, yada, yada. Only until a better solution is found and even until then it's better than the spam hell.

This blog post by a lawyer who works mostly within the publishing industry (I think he represented Ellison in the AOL case) lays out the reasons he thinks the fair use defense won't apply. He's been analysing this case quite a lot, and while I don't think you could say he's unbiased, he's at least way more informed than most other people commenting on it.

The title of the article? "A Bill Advancing Digital TV" - when this bill actually pushes back digital TV deployment from 2006 to 2009. The bill is pitched as a way of distributing the wealth to be gained from reselling the analog spectrum - with a 3b sop to "consumers" - but what it really does is defer that for at least another 3 years!

Nay, I say! - let analog go dark as has been planned for over 10 years! It's time to let that spectrum be used for other things, past time.

I was pleased to beat slashdot to this story by a few hours on my blog...

When I heard this story, this went through my head:

If I got one of these converter thingies, was I also required to plug it in and turn it on? Couldn't I just get a coupon for something else, instead? I need a new toaster.

I can think of a lot better uses for 40 bucks a taxpayer... like pay for some better hurricane prediction software, and maybe a couple more high-resolution weather satellites.

And, what could 3 billion do for American broadband... which has slipped to less than 14th among the developed nations?

3 Billion... So that 70 million of the perceived population can tune in. Sure. Like all of them want to tune in. Maybe some would just like a nicer fishing hole, a couple music lessons, or a local library? Maybe most?

Jeeze, what could 3 billion do to distribute 100 dollar laptops? Thats... 30 million... 100 dollar... laptops. With a mesh network that size the last mile... and the coffeeshop mile... and the park in the middle of nowhere mile... all come free.

Ah... the tax and spend Republican senate was as usual, spending money it didn't have, on a subsidy for a dying industry, for a president that doesn't know what a veto is.

I miss the days when all we cared about was who was blowing who in the big house.

I wondered if these well meaning misguided senators counted me among the 70 million that would miss broadcast tv if it went dark in 2006. As if I'd care about missing 3 simultaneous 1024x768 episodes of COPS, or reruns of Survivor in surround sound.

Write your senators! Tell them you want to see analog broadcast die on schedule and a million new technologies take its place. Kill Analog TV in 2006! Let it go the way of the horse and buggy!

Since the PRC settled into power, high Chinese officials have been on record as stating that they do not fear immigration, nuclear war, or pandemics because China simply has too many people. China and India are in unique positions in the world: while other countries worry about loss of population, China and India worries about an excess of population.

China did not follow World Health Organization guidelines on the use of the antiviral adamantine. Instead China produced the drug in mass quantities and distributed it to Chinese poultry growers to feed flocks threatened by avian flu. Consequently new strains of avian flu have arisen in China that are resistant to adamantine and that drug is no longer effective in protecting humans from avian flu.

China would benefit if 10%, 20% or even 50% of the world's human population died tomorrow, because afterwards China would still have too many people! For every other country a pandemic would be a disaster, but for China it would be a relief.

Expect no assistance from China in handling pandemics; their highest government officials want pandemics and include them in their arsenal of weapons.

Apparently, US Google users can sign up by providing a (US) cell phone number, to which a link will be sent via SMS text messaging; i.e. signing up without being invited. No reason is given to why you must provide a cell phone number, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just wanted to throttle HD harvesting.

(I don't personally see the link, but I'm also in Sweden and get the Swedish localization.)

This could be a big advance for LEDs. But as of now, commercially available LEDs do NOT produce as many lumens per watt as Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFLs.) Of course, this new LED discovery may improve LED efficiency to the point where they exceed CFL efficiency. We'll have to wait and see.

CFLs are inexpensive and readily available today. CFLs have a long life, and they save a ton of energy when compared to traditional light bulbs. Even more importantly, they don't suck like the CFLs of a few years ago that had a noticeable/painful "warm up" time.

I save quite a bit off of my energy bill by using CFLs. They really cut down on electricity consumption, and I've never had one "burn out" on me. Ever. Yet.

(taken from http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2005/10/only-d ebate-on-intelligent-design-that.html )
The only debate on Intelligent Design that is worthy of its subject

Moderator: We're here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des---

(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)

Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?

(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate's kneecap.)

Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!

Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn't mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the "naturalistic" explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.

Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!

Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible --- it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!

Intelligent Design advocate: YOU BASTARD! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!

Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can't rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn't prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let's not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.

Intelligent Design advocate: That's a load of bullshit sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we'll see how that plays in court!

Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly privilege naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form bullshit; it's so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu.

I thought you were kidding, but the man quotes the OCLC. It'd be a little more useful if I could cite the original OCLC study or estimate--do you know of any way I can get that? Man, that's a great statistic to use for copyright reform advocacy. Know any others?

I was waiting for the browser with great expectations. But after reading this comparison between Firefox and Flock at the link below -

http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2005/10/flock-new-ex perimental-web-browser-for.html ... I have decided that I will start using it when it reaches ver 1.0

Just my two bits. :)

Fascinating findings. I find that gathering information is a bad habit of mine. My dad once described himself as an encyclopedia of useless information. As they say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He drives a crosscountry rig now (no longer a computer field service technician repairing motherboards as he did in the early 80's and earning far more money) so he's avoided the terrible lure of the internet (except on weekends). I find myself abusing RSS technology to feed this habit of mine. I can't believe how much more info I cram into my brain because of RSS...

Of course, for many these scientific findings produce a "duh" response. Often science is filled with elaborate studies that simply prove what we already commonly believed or "knew". But no harm done. I think it's exciting to understand the process more fully. I wrote a blog about another study that was done on addictive behavior (ADD: Addicted to Information) - specifically drugs - last March. That research worked on showing how this effect of losing willpower to addictive behavior occurs physically/neurologically in the brain. Fascinating stuff. I related it to my addiction for information - an insight of my wife's, btw. I'm not nearly as insightful or clever.

What I'd like to see, however, is more work being done on how to unlearn habits. How to retrain the mind to not need whatever fix ails it. For instance, I'd like to reclaim an hour of my day without feeling compelled to read more and more news as is the problem this week, or watching too much TV as was the problem last month. My ADDled mind shakes off one habit only to pick up another. I try to build barriers, but as an earlier poster pointed out by example of Brian Eno, we simply bypass the artificial detours we construct. It would be better to retrain ourselves and eliminate those neural pathways that fire up upon familiar stimulus.

Someone is already making an MSO filter for ODF. See here: OpenOffice.org Newsletter story

Surprised this wasn't in the article but you can read Google's response from Eric Schmidt here.

Columbia will use 5 Stratellites to provide a wireless broadband network. This seems like the same thing. Nothing new under the sun? Not from this story anyway.

Nothing's been committed to CVS in a few months. One of the developers has a blog, and he said he'd be busy with other things through the end of September, but even so, it's been three weeks since. The dev mailing list has only had five posts in October to date.

New code is not necessary, but I for one wouldn't mind hearing something---anything---recent.

I too use heavens above and have found it useful. I blogged it in my personal blog http://mailvarun.blogspot.com/2005/08/star-gazing. html a few months back and saw a lot of hits to my usually deserted blog (frequented by (utmost) 1-2 visitors ;), including me ).

I think Apple should have "released" their refreshed Powerbook and G5 models in a few weeks, and let the new iPods and iMacs "settle in" a bit. It seems like they are rushing their release milestones a bit. Is piracy to blame? Also, I noticed a small image error on their Apple page, check my blog for details.
http://andyatkinson.blogspot.com/2005/10/new-power books-g5s-aperturebut-why.html

http://linnar.viik.ee/index.php?op=ViewArticle&art icleId=123&blogId=1

http://tume.blogspot.com/2005/10/blog-post_10.html

http://www.valimised.ee/windows.html
http://www.valimised.ee/linux.html

& ID-card in detail

http://www.id.ee/pages.php/0303

... it's just like with opensource software.. it requires interaction... ah different wqay of thinking

But most people don't give ah flying fuck about the process by which something is created. They want good quality end results.

Open source software helps other open source software people write open source software. I can hack together a new driver model for Linux and it would be rejected, because it would be crap.

But lots of bad entries remain in Wikipedia, because the people doing the accept/reject procedures often don't know what they're talking about.

So the peer production model that works for programmers doesn't work on Wikipedia.

I'm *not* American, but my bullshit detectors go off hard when I see China and Saudi Arabia slavering for control of the free-est communication network known to man. And it's sad to see elements in the EU joining with these countries to promote their own bureaucratic agenda (and many Europeans have noticed).

And the ironic bit is that Tunisia, where this free-the-DNS-from-US-shackles gabfest was held, has an extremely lousy record on Net freedom.

This clock is designed to be more of a monument than a useful timepiece - something that will help people understand their short time on earth, versus a science instrument.

However the engineering effort to make this clock as accurate and as long-lasting as promised is truly impressive. Few things built today are designed to last that long (exception: perhaps long-term nuclear waste storage?) The materials : stone, steel, tungsten - and the size of the parts, and the mechanics of the thing that allows for 10,000 years of wear, along with easy maintenance - man, these are not things that even your top-notch mechanical engineer does.

Interestingly enough, this guy is working on a long term clock, while others can't even get little clocks to work right. Some public clocks can be grossly imprecise. It's funny how someone running a time service can't get their own time right. Hopefully the telcos will hook up their time services to this clock - or NTP services. Whichever is easier.

...HaikuOS has a paid developer for a few weeks.

Axel's development blog is available, as is the story on OSNews where I found the link.

Apparently, Haiku should have a bootable CD image soon.

Like this? Our ongoing privacy efforts posted on 10/14/2005 at 04:28:00 PM on Official Google Blog.

Like this? Our ongoing privacy efforts posted on 10/14/2005 at 04:28:00 PM on Official Google Blog.

If this guy wants to play with fire, I suggest somebody put up a site to publish all of Jack's threats and verbal abuse (plus nonsense) and see if he gets institutionalized.

Hit this site to read about him calling Janet Reno a lesbian, trying to ban a 2 Live Crew album, attempting to get the creator of an anti-Thompson buddy icon arrested after the creator took the icon offline, and other fun stuff.

Does anyone else find it ironic that such an outspoken opponent of violence in the media is so vicious in real life?

I'm a major knitter, but frankly, I think this site says it all with respect to this story.

Happy 15th birthday, IMDb! I write about movies on my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/), and IMDb is THE place the go for trivia. The site is a trivia galore. Where else can you find out that Peter Sellers was supposed to play four roles in "Dr. Strangelove", including Major Kong, which was eventually played by Slim Pickens? And in "2001: the Space Odyssey", by incrementing IBM you get HAL, for HAL-9000 the badass computer, although Arthur C. Clarke, the co-screenwriter, claims HAL stands for Heuristic ALgorithmic Computer.

Oh, yeah, geek but not meek! Congrats to the guys and gals who work for IMDb.com.

Isn't it out already? I have seen the O'Reilly cover

There are at least text adventure games out there already, linked from: http://oghc.blogspot.com/

oghc got a reply from Jack Thompson, and he is indeed a jerk.

You can also use italic in place of strong (and probably some other things too, but I haven't ehaustively tested them...)

You can also encrypt the whole thing as a JavaScript and have it dynamically decrypted by a JavaScript and printed out to the Web Browser as mentioned here: http://justfriends4n0w.blogspot.com/

As I understand it -- and have read elsewhere -- Nokia became interested through Apple's interest in kHTML.

After all, Apple have had some success with Quicktime on mobile devices and Nokia like that kind of stuff.

There's been all kinds of talk of Apple and Nokia gettin' all cozy on some smart phone stuff, but nothing has been confirmed, yet...

Aparently you need to stop reading the media and do a bit deeper research into what systemtap is and how unstable it is. You can start with Active Bug, non guru mode. That bug affects non-guru mode, which is supposed to be safe to use in production. Nothing like that ever happens in dtrace. Why you may ask? Because its developed to be safe in Production use at the expense of giving up some features. For a more indepth comparison of systemtap and its problems check out the links mentioned in my blog's SystemTap Links. Systemtap vs. dtrace the debate continues is a good place to start.

Of course, systemtap is still in its infancy, perhaps after a couple re-writes that seem standard in major components in the Linux Kernel, they can make it stable. But today its, not and any where near stable. There for your statement of "Linux has SystemTap, which goes above and beyond what DTrace is capable of. It is still in heavy development by Red Hat (Intel and IBM also helped start up the effort), and it's already quite a product." Is complete rubish. Of course one would have to think about. If its still under heavy development, also shows just how far from ready it is.

Of course, the truth really is that DTrace is far more feature rich than systemtap is, or will be for a long time. Systemtap biggest stumbling block is "guru mode" that allows the user to disable any protection that systemtap engineers have added. Systemtap's language is lacking in some basic concepts, like variable types like struct and typeset, making guru mode necessary for far too many scripts, and in-escapable when userland probes are created. Along with the other problems documented in my blogs.

You may try and dismiss me as a troll, but nothing could be farther from the truth. I'm stating the facts, I have also contributed to the Systemtap product, and commented on code changes. But I refuse to sit quietly as people try and pass Systemtap off as stable or better than DTrace. Dtrace is stable, and Enterprise Production ready and more full featured than Systemtap, even though they have left out features, that have to be worked around by the programmer.

Aparently you need to stop reading the media and do a bit deeper research into what systemtap is and how unstable it is. You can start with Active Bug, non guru mode. That bug affects non-guru mode, which is supposed to be safe to use in production. Nothing like that ever happens in dtrace. Why you may ask? Because its developed to be safe in Production use at the expense of giving up some features. For a more indepth comparison of systemtap and its problems check out the links mentioned in my blog's SystemTap Links. Systemtap vs. dtrace the debate continues is a good place to start.

Of course, systemtap is still in its infancy, perhaps after a couple re-writes that seem standard in major components in the Linux Kernel, they can make it stable. But today its, not and any where near stable. There for your statement of "Linux has SystemTap, which goes above and beyond what DTrace is capable of. It is still in heavy development by Red Hat (Intel and IBM also helped start up the effort), and it's already quite a product." Is complete rubish. Of course one would have to think about. If its still under heavy development, also shows just how far from ready it is.

Of course, the truth really is that DTrace is far more feature rich than systemtap is, or will be for a long time. Systemtap biggest stumbling block is "guru mode" that allows the user to disable any protection that systemtap engineers have added. Systemtap's language is lacking in some basic concepts, like variable types like struct and typeset, making guru mode necessary for far too many scripts, and in-escapable when userland probes are created. Along with the other problems documented in my blogs.

You may try and dismiss me as a troll, but nothing could be farther from the truth. I'm stating the facts, I have also contributed to the Systemtap product, and commented on code changes. But I refuse to sit quietly as people try and pass Systemtap off as stable or better than DTrace. Dtrace is stable, and Enterprise Production ready and more full featured than Systemtap, even though they have left out features, that have to be worked around by the programmer.

The use of cannibinoids for appetite suppression is dicussed here

http://www.acompliareport.com/
and
http://rimonabant.blogspot.com/

The first such drug may be available next year

I just posted a write up on my blog about taking a different approach to consoles. I'm not the best writer but I think I generally get the point across. Check it out if you like. http://frommyheadtoyourhead.blogspot.com/2005/10/o pen-console-community.html

My simplest proof

This one is old school: we're dealing with pointers and very limited memory. Here's the set up:

You are given a pointer to the head of a linked list. Your job is to figure out if the linked list has a cycle (i.e. one of the nodes has a next pointer that points back to some earlier node in the list). The trick is that you only have enough memory on the stack for two node pointers. How do you do it?

I got asked this in a tech intterview as a "bonus question" and it drove me nuts for the better part of an hour. The answer is pretty simple but a little hard to see.

Really... Only the first three letters?
I managed to find all six.

I actually used it in one of my paintings.

- Kevin Stansell