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Just to flesh this out and offer a few corrections, as someone who works around the AO LGS at Gemini (and Keck):

Tomduck is correct that an adaptive optics (AO) system uses deformable optics to bring a guide star into sharp focus, and the rest of the scene with it. He fails to mention that this process is in no way inherently dependent upon the use of a laser. Indeed, when a bright natural star is close enough to the target to be used, it is in many ways preferable to using the laser. (For one, the brightness of natural stars tends to be pretty constant, and not subject to the usual game of "so, how many watts shy of nominal power are we tonight?" :) So Gemini's AO system, Altair (read all about it here) is quite often used with natural guide stars (NGS).

A NGS can, incidentally, also be used for guiding - keeping the telescope pointed correctly - as its name implies. This isn't the case for a laser guide star (LGS), which in fact has absolutely no use for pointing, since the laser is fastened to, and aligned with, the telescope. It's a horrible misnomer. :( LGS come into play because the field of view of large (8-10m) telescopes is narrow enough that NGS are frequently not visible at the same time as science targets.

There are three large telescopes on Mauna Kea with LGS capabilities - Keck II has an older-technology sodium dye laser (pumped/amped by about six YAGs), Gemini has a solid-state (crystal) laser, and I'm not certain what Subaru has as I haven't worked with them yet. The W.M. Keck Observatory has funding to put a laser on Keck I also, but I'm unsure when it'll be operational. All of the lasers propagate at around 589nm for sodium fluorescence (this is coincidentally about the same frequency put out by the low-pressure sodium streetlights used in the towns on the island, so astronomers can pretty much ignore this frequency).

Each beam is about 8-12W with an objective lens diameter of typically 30-50cm, spreading a little as it goes up. Not enough power to punch holes in stuff, but enough that the FAA requires aircraft spotters to be positioned outside each observatory to make sure they don't blind the pilots of flights between the west coast and Australia/New Zealand. I've done this work sporadically since 2005 at Keck and 2006 at Gemini, so I have tons of pictures and time-lapse video... here's one of the Gemini beam with me ruining the picture by sitting in front of it.

Along with the FAA, AFSC (that's Air Force Space Command, not the American Friends Service Committee) is rather particular about us not shining the bright lights into the sensitive sensors of keyholes and such things. We look up, they look down, etc.

By the way, if there are any Farkers on the Big Island of Hawaii who think this kind of work sounds like fun, it looks like Keck has openings. It's temp-agency work, and probably the coldest, highest-altitude temp-agency work you'll ever get...

To be a little more specific... 5-10mW green lasers (the wavelength is more visible to the eye) are often used in amateur astronomy for "star and constellation tours."

Lasers are also used as part of the adaptive optics systems at large professional observatories, but those tend to be a different wavelength (589nm) and 5-20W with - no "m" before the "W" ;)

I do occasional laser safety work at a couple such observatories (here's a picture), where "safety" involves making sure we don't beam any of the Qantas flights that fly over our general vicinity nightly. (Fortunately, they usually have the sense to miss us by 100km to one side or the other. ANZ, on the other hand, have been known to fly right over us.)

I would to point out that GIMP doesn't have cmyk support, so it's pure insanity to teach students program for graphics which has no use in real print world. If I were you, I would stick with Photoshop 7 (or 6). Except few features (multi-layer selection, smart objects, healing tool) I do not miss anything in PS7 or 6. They are much faster and not bloated with things you will probably never use. Remember, newer is not always better. If you have seen movie Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, it was done using maya 1 beta through maya 2.5. http://www.lava.net/~shiro/Private/essay/gdc2002.html . And so far, I have seen only one movie which surpassed it in quality (another Final Fantasy movie). And today we have version 8.5 and it is not much mirrored in quality of CGI movies made... and that's 6 years from 2001 when FF:SW was made. I do not know about other open-source software you mentioned(Komposer) but my guess would be that they are no match for commercial software (but if you mention Movie Maker, maybe they are :). Still, who would cut video in movie maker... my last sentence: if people could live with old software, so can you...

That is why apropos is included with man.

Lava.net does. I know that a couple of ISPs in Ohio, and a cable modem provider up in Maine did for a period of time (no idea if they still do). DOCSIS standards require multicast support in cable modems. No such requirement for DSL providers, but I've worked with various DSL providers in the past and know they had multicast working.

A big problem is manufacturers of home networking equipment. They don't support multicast. And of course, uneducated network providers. The big boys (MCI, Sprint, Level3, etc.) support multicast, but until Comcast or Verizon decide to actually turn it on in their routers, and Cisco starts forcing Linksys to support it on their low-end equipment, you probably won't see it in your house until IPv6 comes along.

See here for a list of other multicast-savvy ISPs. If your ISP isn't listed, bug them.

http://www.lava.net/~jh/wizardry/

this is where i got mine. you have to mess with the disc drive settings a bit when loading it, but its pretty simple to get up and going.

But then they sold it to General Motors, who shut it down
urban legend.

you mean like this

Background: BroadVoice is a consumer-targeted service from Convergent Networks, which offers VoIP gear/services for businesses. They're based around Boston, maybe the Rt. 128 area, I think.

Anyway, the "Unlimited World" thing costs about $20 a month (roughly what I eliminated in terms of other phone bills) and gives me unlimited calls to landlines in the US, cellphones in the 48 contiguous states, and 19 other countries scattered around the world - a fair chunk of Europe, plus Canada, Chile, China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Australia.

For another $5 a month, I could have had their "Unlimited World Plus" plan which includes another 14 countries, but the per-minute rates to those countries are so low anyway (most are under 25 cents a minute) and I know so few people in them, if any, that I don't think I'll use enough time to make it worth it.

Once I got it set up, I picked up a wire junction (plain old boring el-cheapo kind with screws, not a 66 or 110 block) and got things wired together so that the VoIP service is on line 1 and the POTS service is on line 2 of a couple jacks in the house. There are a couple other jacks that are still POTS-only, and one of the dual-line jacks has a single-line phone so it's effectively VoIP-only for now, but it all works! (I did some diagramming in OmniGraffle before I made the changes, if you want to see.)

Being able to call 20 countries "free" is nice (my wife especially likes calling net friends in England) but another big motivating factor was the idea of being able to talk to a friend in Uganda inexpensively. ATT international long distance charged me 4 or 5 dollars a minute to call Uganda - BroadVoice charges me 14 or 15 cents. That's my kind of pricing. :) And most places in the world are about that cheap or cheaper.

Now I'm considering getting a software client for my laptop, to use when traveling. I recently discovered the horror that is "International Roaming," where I get charged as much as $2.29 a minute extra (pretty sure that's what it was in Hong Kong) for using my phone on someone else's turf. VoIP depends on IP availability, so it's not usable as many places as my mobile phone, but it'd be simpler and quite possibly cheaper than getting a SIM and a prepaid plan for every country I visit - and certainly cheaper than paying to roam internationally.

The earliest racing game I can remember with this style of god-view replay was Papyrus's "Nascar", released in 1994. Here's a web site about the game, with some screenshots -- the screenshots that show more than one car are from the built-in replay system, which gave multiple angles of replay either during the race (when paused) or after the race. I'm not sure if you could save or edit replays, although these capabilities were added in later versions. Same goes for the TV1 and TV2 cameras, which simulated live TV coverage of a real NASCAR race, by following the car you selected with various camera views -- this existed in later versions of the game, and certainly existed in advanced form by 1997's Gran Prix Legends (also a Papyrus title), but I'm not sure if it was part of the original Nascar release.

Again, not sure if this was the first racing game with this feature, but it's the first one I remember.

• Selected Quotes from Mein Kampf underscoring his religiosity
• A collection of links documenting Hitler's devotion to Catholicism
• Many continue to deny Hitler's Catholocism

Hi,
You're wrong.

2001 called, they want you to shut up.

Vendors make mistakes outside of WEP that directly affect WEP. A system isn't strong simply because it uses AES or because it doesn't have weak IVs.

Many systems still send weak frames, you're wrong.

I have cracked WEP many many times and there are multiple methods.

You don't know what you're talking about.

The thought process of the people who promulgate lists of conversion factors (several of which were linked to from my page) appears to be something like this:

We have an exact conversion factor from inches to cm, but if we provide the kids a conversion factor from inches to m, that'll save them the trouble of moving the decimal over, so let's do that!

Sure, sure, here on the island, there are plenty of dual-standard distance markers. "5mi / 8km" or whatever. Not every one, mind you. I think we might even have dual-standard elevation markers... yuppers, my 100km bike ride earlier this year took me past a couple of those things.

But most of it - weights, measures, etc - is being driven by business... which I suspect is in turn being driven by NAFTA, globalization, etc. Why have a factory to make 0.5l bottles for sale in Canada/Mexico and one to make 16oz bottles for sale in the US? Thus we wind up with metric volumes for bottled water, etc.

Sure, sure, here on the island, there are plenty of dual-standard distance markers. "5mi / 8km" or whatever. Not every one, mind you. I think we might even have dual-standard elevation markers... yuppers, my 100km bike ride earlier this year took me past a couple of those things.

But most of it - weights, measures, etc - is being driven by business... which I suspect is in turn being driven by NAFTA, globalization, etc. Why have a factory to make 0.5l bottles for sale in Canada/Mexico and one to make 16oz bottles for sale in the US? Thus we wind up with metric volumes for bottled water, etc.

YOU ASSHOLE! 'virii' is acceptable to those of us who believe that you can coin new terms in a dead language. Since it follows normal latin grammar practice or adding an 'i' to something to pluralize it, it doesn't matter if there was originally no Latin word for the plural of virus. THERE FUCKING IS NOW!!! 'virii' is a real word! Deal with it losers! Check here if you don't believe me. These folks are pros in the business and they have embraced the word. Just fucking get over it!!!

I shudder to think how many things I could run at once on my dual G5... :)

Ouch. Here in Hawaii we have black and banded long-spined venomous urchins, probably pretty similar to what's in Bali. They're pretty visible (if you're watching where you're going) and easily avoided (thank goodness they haven't evolved the ability to launch venomous spines like torpedoes at swimmers!) but yeah, stepping on one would be nasty. I once stepped on a non-venomous collector urchin, and that hurt enough, so I give the venomous ones a wide berth unless I'm taking pictures of them.

I got a PC emulator (VPC6/WinXP Pro) for my Mac (iBook600) because I "need" to run the occasional piece of software that's only available for Windows. $220ish for that is cheaper than that $300 PC, doesn't take up space, doesn't require me to add more outlets, etc. :)

I have a lot of UNIX and Linux experience; I wound up getting a Mac almost 2 years ago because it'd run the apps I was used to from that arena, yet would also do things like playing QuickTime movies and DVD's (which back then were major struggles under Linux). That it can also emulate a PC, and that there are native versions of Microsoft products (MSIE, WMP, Office) for it, is just icing.

There've been a couple switcher stories about technical or scientific people who were able to go from having a Mac, a Windows PC, and a UNIX/Linux system at their desks, to having... a Mac. And going from 3 computers to 1 is usually a cost-saver, not just in acquisition costs, but support as well.

Any Mac under 2 years old with 256MB of RAM can run Virtual PC under MacOS X. And any native G3 or G4 with a CD-ROM and 192MB of RAM can run Virtual PC under MacOS 9. (And I'm talking Virtual PC 6, of course - latest and greatest.)

That means the schools can have their "single platform" in terms of hardware support -- yet also have diversity. OS X? Check -- and of course, you can run Office:X on it, if you want your students to learn to be mice, er, MOUSes. OS 9? Just start Classic. DOS? It's in Virtual PC. Any Windows version you like? Virtual PC. Linux? Probably Virtual PC - or if you just want to run apps, a lot of them are available through Fink. X Window apps? X11's already available for Jaguar, and I've heard it'll be built into Panther.

Schools aren't the only places that want a single platform. Scientific users have glommed onto OS X Macs because they can run "UNIX apps," Mac stuff and "Windows apps" on a single machine. It frees up desk space, and while a Mac may not be cheaper than a Windows PC, it's most certainly cheaper than a Mac plus a Windows PC plus a UNIX or Linux box.

Yeah, it'll get a little slow if they try to run it all at once on a G3, but oh well, don't do that, then. Unless you're going to do a screen capture of it. :)

If you want to build complex systems fast, nobody is going to turn to LISP for a solution. There isn't one. LISP is a beautiful language which I think any programmer would benefit to learn, but its not a language to get things done with.

LISP is a powerful and interesting language and as a language has its merits. I don't mean to pick on LISP.

What irks me is not that Paul Graham is saying this, but that he might get listened to

LOL. That's great. I found some from the 19th century here. -fm

I keep a bunch of "classic" bookmarks around. Some are undisputed gems, others are, well, to my taste. Bytes being cheap here's a batch.

• Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource
• AmbySoft Inc. White Papers: Scott Ambler's Online Writings
• windows.oreilly.com -- Deep Inside C#: An Interview with Microsoft Chief Architect Anders Hejlsberg
• TQ
• The Rise of ``Worse is Better''
  
• A Whirlwind Tutorial on Creating Really Teensy ELF Executables for Linux
  
• Theist Hall of Shame
• Internetworking Technology Overview
  
• Software Technology Review
  Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics
• P.S.: More Than Just Words
• Welcome to the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
• John McCarthy
  
• Slashdot | Net Translations of Dead-Tree IT Classics
  
• advICE
  
• 0xdeadbeef archives
  

How is removing the "under god" part curtailing ALL relgious expression? It is, in fact, supporting the original idea which is to curtail religious oppression. Forcing athiests and buddhists to recite what is effectively a christian prayer every morning is opression.

Strangely enough, removing "under God" from the p.o.a. is more of a cultural problem than a religious one; the idea being that even one annoyed non-christian can now block what had been a cherished tradition for decades... this falls squarely into my complaint that our culture, as pushed by the schools, is going to the lowest common denominator: what can we do that will annoy no one. This is the "clearing house" idea I mentioned earlier. Being buddhist and reciting the p.o.a. ... is that much worse than being christian and being indoctrinated with the views being pushed by Health Ed classes these days?

Point being, no matter what you have in the schools, there is always a cultural or religious force behind it being there. There is a valid disagreement here (despite what AC thinks, whew! ;) about which cultural/religious forces to favor, and how much is the majority allowed to impose on the rest. Right now, I think, we are swinging too far in favor of minority opinions; the government should not be compel us to deny our heritage in order to make immigrants more comfortable.

Right now, by law, secular philosophies are favored, and religious expression is being forced, bit-by-bit, from any public scene, hidden away like an embarrassing relative in the attic. I would as soon we still had nativity scenes on public lands .

I note with special interest that in Hawaii, Christian notices are bad, but Hawai'ian religious symbols are "culture".

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. If you have to TEACH it, then you are doing something wrong.

Hey, when you're born you don't know much. Someone has to teach you patriotism (let's hope it's your folks). The government should also encourage people to love America; it's in their own best interest.

That Packard Hell remote is the only product of theirs I've ever used which wasn't garbage. I entertained the idea of purchasing an X10 RF remote (but their invasive ad campaign still leaves a bad taste in my mouth) and then I found the PB Fast Media remote on eBay for $5. Sure, I had to dig around on the web for drivers, but now I have control over my CD, MP3, DVD, DivX and A/V recorder from one remote, all in one compact system.

How long till somone starts putting these bugs in lollipops or serving then with ketchup?

No can do... We already named her after an old brand of supercomputers. Maybe the second-born, if there's one...

Let's try this again: a short debunking of the myth and a scholarly article in Transportation Quarterly.

They preview fine -- let's see what happens.

Try this link. It pretty debunks the idea. Also this. GM was convicted of conspiring to monopolize "supplies"--that is, to force the companies it owned to buy all their busses from GM. Not of driving streetcars out. Streetcars had already peaked in 1920 and were in decline for a long time. And streetcars were replaced by busses all over the world, including in locations which had no connection to GM and where the busses did not come from GM, and even by companies in Los Angeles which were not owned by GM.

Nonsense.

Scott Bottles wrote a book called Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City which offers a good debunking of this sadly perpetuated urban legend. Coincidentally, it was published by the same university system to which you belong, judging from your email address.

This link also has a good article about this topic.

The upshot: we could genuinely discuss a conspiracy only if GM pursued its course of action and dismantled the nation's systems in spite of the fact that streetcars offered more benefits than buses. Ridership peaked in the late 1920s, and had been falling off consistently for over a decade by the time the systems were dismantled in the 1940s and 1950s. Streetcars are fixed route. Bus routes can be altered. Streetcars require dedicated rights-of-way. Buses share the road with other vehicles. Streetcars do have the ability to move more people in the same amount of time with a high enough level of service, but the plain fact is that they were in decline.

The hearings to which you refer were about GM's monopolistic practices in creating the replacement bus systems. Who could blame them? They were taking advantage of the streetcars' demise--brought about by the economics of the time, I must stress--and getting in on the ground floor by supplying buses. And if I had time, I'd dig up those hearings and provide testimony from people who, DURING those hearings, debunked this conspiracy from the get-go, but were drowned out by the media's coverage of it all.

I'm not terribly surprised that your post got modded up to (Score: 4), but it does disappoint me that so many people believe this when just 10 minutes of the most casual research can unearth mountains of material that debunk this myth.

As others have said, you just repeated the conspiracy theory, while getting all your facts wrong. A few seconds with Google turned up this article from Transportation Quarterly, an article with a lot more references and facts than the conspiracy sites.