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If you want information including things that you might be able to do take a look at Bumble Bee Watch (http://www.bumblebeewatch.org/) or the Xerces Society page on bumblebees (http://www.xerces.org/bumblebees/). The University of Maine in Farmington has also been tracking the decline of several of the species native to Maine (http://mainebumblebeeatlas.umf.maine.edu/), and other state universities may have similar programs going on.

Man. That is so awesome. I had no idea that running Florn directly would improve my yields. Nature Gwibbomethods, here I come!

Great one! I found one link to the translated petition: http://www.usm.maine.edu/~phillips/candle.html

Grabbing multiple files from a website and saving them:
# curl http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk%5B150-152%5D.mp3 [maine.edu] -o "bsdtalk#1.mp3"

I bet you had to think for a while to come up with a non-porn application of this trick.

X WINDOWS:
----------
alt + left-click and drag any window to move it... you don't have to use the top of the window! This gets me all the time in Windows.
alt + middle-click any window to send it to the background
alt + right-click and drag any window to resize it

copy text simply by highlighting it, paste simply by middle clicking

setting up the window manager to use multiple workspaces and scrolling on the desktop to switch between them

starting a second X session as another user with "X :1" and switching between them with ctrl+alt+f9 and ctrl+alt+f10 (or just use a login manager that handles this for you)

FROM THE COMMAND LINE:
----------------------
Using xargs to add .jpg to a bunch of files that have spaces in their names (using the interactive mode of xargs.)
# find . -print0 | xargs -p -0 -IX mv X X.jpg

rot13 "decryption"
# cat filename | tr 'a-zA-Z' 'n-za-mN-ZA-M' | less

follow a log file in realtime, even when it gets rotated:
# tail -f /var/log/messages --follow=name --retry

creating a VPN (not just port forwarding) with SSH... a bit too big to put here

Rotating (losslessly) JPEG images based on the EXIF tags
# jhead -autorot *.jpg

Run a command from an empty environment
# env -i command

Look up an IP via a specific DNS server:
# dig @server ip
Look up the host name for an IP:
# dig -x ip

Grabbing multiple files from a website and saving them:
# curl http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk%5B150-152%5D.mp3 -o "bsdtalk#1.mp3"

That was just a sample from my notes... which brings me to another topic, keeping notes when you learn a new command. The man pages are great, and you should learn to read them, but when you combine multiple commands to accomplish a task, or there is tricky syntax, a notebook (digital or physical) is an excellent thing to have.

Learning a scripting language helps too. Bash, perl, python, and many others are options. I use scripts to do some very simple things, but they still save me a lot of time. For example: Download new pictures from my camera, and auto-rotate them. Set up passwordless SSH on any machine that I have an account and password to. Parse the (monster and item list) data files from an open source game and update the game's wiki (including logging in, changing text, and uploading images if required.)

Why don't you listen Stallman talk about this in his own words. He starts talking about operating systems including non-free programs at 20:30 and BSD specifically at 22:01.

I mean, just because you're still adding features to it, doesn't mean that it has to be called beta, does it?

Actually, there's a simple solution to this.

I am unhappy with the various distributions of BSD, because all of them include, in their installation systems, the ports system, they all include some non-free programs.

-- RMS
Source: http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk132.ogg

http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk132.ogg (@ 22 min 10 sec)

Warning: nitpicking bellow.

Professor Deirdre M. Smith is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Maine School of Law, and the Director of the Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic. The University of Maine School of Law is actually a part of the University of Southern Maine, which is a part of the University of Maine System. The University of Maine, which has a flagship campus in Orono and a few other campuses, is also a part of the University of Maine System. The University of Maine and the University of Southern Maine are separate. Therefor, Professor Deirdre M. Smith is not "of the University of Maine".

Oh, and the p2pnet article linked to in TFA looks like it has a poorly resized picture turned black and white pulled from this website: http://mainelaw.maine.edu/faculty-details.aspx?facultyID=18

Let me quote the great-grandparent poster, the one I originally replied to:

Did you start hiring those people to help you improve the free program yet? I like free software too... But apparently, nobody else think its worth it to support GIMP with developers and/or money.

And then, the parent to that post, which I also replied to:

Why stress software freedom? I want the social solidarity that you only get in freedom; I want to be independent from masters and make sure my computer only obeys me. I'd rather have less functional or powerful free software than a more powerful or reliable proprietary program because I can hire people to improve the free program or I can ask the community to help me improve the free program. I can't free Photoshop. The catch here is that most people haven't been taught to value their software freedom, so they don't know to look for it and they haven't been taught to think of the consequences when their freedom is absent. I aim to change this by teaching people to value freedom for its own sake. I hope you will too.

I think you misunderstood me, sir. I did buy Photoshop. I like Photoshop a lot, it does what I need it to do. My point is that there are things the GIMP cannot do, and Photoshop does well.

I don't have the time to work on The GIMP, and I don't really have the inclination to get involved in a project with the kind of horrific-management stories I hear about. Would I rather use an open-source tool than a closed-source one? This is an unqualified yes. All other things being equal (or even close), I pick the open-source tool over the closed-source; I use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office and I use Firefox over IE or Opera, even though Opera is arguably a better browser. Hell, I develop open-source software (and really need to get cracking on getting my Google Summer of Code project, WPM, into a releasable state; school's been kicking my ass).

Here's the thing. Since I don't have the time to work on it, I'd gladly donate money to the GIMP project. But I want assurances of returns. The "bounty" system seems to work well for open-source programming, after all. It doesn't work so well with a large-scale group, though; you can't really offer a bounty to an entire team. But you can turn it around. If the GIMP developers said "pay us $X and we'll implement CMYK", I'm sure they'd get that money from various sourcess who also value open-source software. I would not pay for that; I don't personally need CMYK except in very rare cases.

"Pay a non-GIMP dev" doesn't work very well for this sort of thing, because they lack commit access. If I pay Joe Dev $Y to change the GIMP user interface to ape Photoshop exactly, I can't upgrade because I'd risk breaking Joe Dev's patches (and that's assuming that I want to go through the hassle of compiling new versions myself. It needs to be a GIMP dev with source access, or it needs to be a group willing to commit to a long-term fork of the GIMP. (GIMPshop is a nice try, but it's not really even close to Photoshop. I'm very tempted to say that it's not really possible for GIMP to function like Photoshop, and a large part of it's GTK+, which works okay on Linux and badly elsewhere. But that's my own personal Qt bias showing.)

You can't just say "donate money." I won't donate money when I don't know how it'll be used, and I don't think many other people will either. But when that money will be used for a purpose? I can see them getting the funding they need.

Dude. This one has hot college geek girls... with a phone number, no less.
http://ithccam.umecit.maine.edu/view/view.shtml?vi deos=&id=14517

Again you say he owes you nothing but...
Did you read the post on the website?
The author is having problems paying the bills. If someone would step up and help him pay his bills he will keep working on the program. If that group wants him to open source he would consider it.
I see nothing mercenary about it.
Simple question. Did you buy a manual or subscription?
If not frankly I find the comment that you wish you could get the latest and greatest to be a bit mercenary. Not a thank you or good work I am sorry that you are having problems, or an even can I help with your last hosting bill. Just can I get the latest and greatest.
Maybe if you checked on the mailing list for the program you could post if anyone has a copy of the latest and greatest that could download instead of complaining that this poor guy didn't provide you with one last chance to grab his work for free.

But to make your lazy self feel a little less "cheated" here is a link to the latest and greatest ftp://ftp.usm.maine.edu/pegasus

Funny but it wasn't that hard for me to find and I don't even use the program.

I-295 NORTH OR SOUTH: Take Exit 6B. Go west (straight) on Forest Avenue to the second light. Turn left onto Falmouth Street. The Planetarium is on the left in the Science Building on the USM campus. Parking: There is on-street parking on Falmouth Street. A special parking place for busses is now available next to the Science Building.

I-295 NORTH OR SOUTH: Take Exit 6B. Go west (straight) on Forest Avenue to the second light. Turn left onto Falmouth Street. The Planetarium is on the left in the Science Building on the USM campus. Parking: There is on-street parking on Falmouth Street. A special parking place for busses is now available next to the Science Building.

I actually JUST finished building a computer in an old Nintendo case. It has front USB ports, Slot loading DVD-ROM, audio/video out, and carefully placed power, network, and vga ports. I know I'm not the first person to do something like this, but it sure has been fun! I even have an ATI remote that I configured to control the Freevo menu. I also bought two SNES controllers with USB connectors from RetroZone that work great with ZSNES. The box is running Ubuntu and actually boots up pretty quick. The board is a VIA Epia 6000 Mini-ITX.

If this site is correct then you've got your exchange rate backwards, and a teacher makes about 189 US dollars per month. That's not very much...

People are starting to notice that traditional Computer Science curriculum doesn't match the job market or peoples expectations.

Traditional Computer Science has a place, but it isn't in IT.

Many people applying for jobs in the IT industry with a CS degree are finding out that employers want more than just a CS degree. Knowing how to write a good compiler is great if you work for a company that creates programming languages, but it's not very useful if you're working for an ecommerce company.

I think we're starting to see a shift away from Computer Science. In its place are new and more specialized programs that are tailored to meet the demands of today's job market.

With that said there will always be a need for Computer Scientists, just like there will always be a need for Physicists. The amount of people who become Computer Scientists will be limited to those perusing research or academic careers.

Here in Maine for example one of our public universities has been building up alternative curriculum for computer science for a number of years. See http://www.cs.umfk.maine.edu/ for details. The site is a bit sparse at the moment... it is my understanding that a student is working on it. Keep in mind that this is a smaller university (only about 1,200 students enrolled).

The Ace/K-Mart example was a great example. Those are two stores that WENT OUT OF BUSINESS ALREADY because they couldn't compete. What were they competing with? NOTHING! There wasn't a competing hardware store that I can find, and there isn't a single discount store other than a K-Mart fifteen minutes away!

Yes, but few stores can survive just on selling the things that Wal Mart doesn't. Wal Mart's strategy is to sell the lowest common denominator products at the lowest common denominator prices, to maximize foot traffic (and sales). There simply isn't enough profit to sell other products to uphold a store.

Maybe in your reality. I lived for 22 years in an area where Wal-Mart was in every town. I can't think of any stores that closed because of Wal-Mart (except Fred's and K-Mart, both of which are comparable big-box discount stores). The stores that I've watched close have clsoed for one of two reasons: A. the owners retired, B. the store opened after Wal-Mart entered the area, found the market was too small, and died off. These aren't established local stores. Those rarely close because of Wal-Mart.

Having a surviving Target store in the area, on the other hand, means Wal Mart has to compete, and if they only want to sell ubercheap DVD players that die in 2 weeks, Target has better ones to sell, and they have the muscle and bone to survive the hits from Wal Mart. But make no mistake, if Wal Mart could force Target out of business, they would; just like they are trying, right now with studios doing business with iTunes.

Guess what? Target sells the same crappy imported junk electronics that Wal-Mart and everybody else does. The only difference is that Wal-Mart does direct importing and sells the goods under a house brand, while many of the other companies like Target pay importers who stamp it with the importers' brands. You'd be amazed how many names some of those junk players go under (for exactly the same hardware, built at the same plant).

Case in point: the cheapest TV set I ever saw was $15. It was not at a Wal-Mart. It was at a CVS pharmacy. Wal-Mart isn't the only company selling cheap junk. :-)

Allow me to dumb it down: go visit a city with a Wal Mart and ask yourself why so many stores closed down right afterwards, and why so few new ones came up, and then ask yourself where are all the newly unemployed people going to work, since Wal Mart typically closes down 5000 jobs in a city, in exchange for about 500-1000?

Um... No. Studies show that Wal-Mart has no statistically significant effect on the number of retail jobs in an area, though at least two studies have shown very slight (but again, statistically insignificant) retail job GROWTH as a result of Wal-Mart moving into an area.

In fact, your numbers are so wrong, they're laughable. The average place where Wal-Mart moves into doesn't even HAVE 5000 jobs TOTAL. Your incorrect statistics are starting to make me laugh out loud.

Did you know that wherever Wal Mart opens up shop, the taxpayers wind up picking up the extra burden of many of their workers' health care costs?

Did you know that five out of every six Wal-Mart employees have health insurance? That's better than almost ANY non-unionized retail sector employer. It is better than K-Mart and Target. Get your facts straight.

Our health care system would be better off if these Wal Mart workers just accepted their lot and dropped dead instead of trying to get medicaid when they can't afford cancer treatment or antibiotics for a bacterial infection on a Wal Mart salary.

Funny that you should mention that. Wal-Mart just announced a plan to reduce prices from 20-90% on various generic prescription drugs.

Reality: Wal-Mart is not evil. The people who try to scare people into chasing Wal-Mart out to protect the price-gouging of major supermarket chains are evil. Don't fall for it. Do the research and get the facts for yourself.

>some banks, when communicating via email, will tell you to log into your account by manually TYPING in an URL in your browser

Except a phisher could do the same and simply ask someone to type in the wrong URL (foobank-visa.com instead of foobank.com, for example). At least it would prevent the obfuscated link problem and force phishers into providing a lead for investigators at a domain registry.

"Use a bookmark" would be better advice because it would require DNS poisoning in order to make the phishing scam work.

SSL was supposed to solve this problem. Maybe if the UI displayed the organization name as well as the URL, and if CAs all checked (as long as there's a single CA in the browser's list of trusted CAs that will issue a cert without checking the organization name then there is no protection).

Then, as Bruce Schneier pointed out, it's dead easy for malware to add a new and crooked CA to the browser's list of trusted CAs. Marketscore does just that to create a proxy that can pass SSL, and they've been accused of being spyware. See also the account from Roger Grimes. If you need to explain this to someone nontechnical, point them to my Security Mentor article about Marketscore.

Interesting theory, especially since the viscosity of sea water *decreases* with temperature. See: http://www.marine.maine.edu/~jumars/classes/SMS_48 1/Viscosity.pdf

http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/oracle/

It is my opinion that the legal system doesn't want to set a precedent by admitting that Breathalyzers don't actaully measure ethyl alcohol. They measure chemicals that contain methyl groups and ethanol is one of them. There are many others. See: 1 2 3 4 5

Looks like Gates' team has similar ideas...

http://specialed.umf.maine.edu/Images/magnadoodle. jpg

http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/oracle/ Very simple, starts with nothing, only a simple script that learns.

I'm not sure I got that "bar of soap" idea right

You handle the phone functionality, then, and I'll handle the soap aesthetics. Maybe the grandparent is talking about this?

The UMaine Solar Vehicle Team has it right. The site's outdated, but the truck is still running - I see it around town periodically.

Paradigm shifts!

We have at least two... the University of Maine at Presque Isle has one at the scale of 1 mile = 1 a.u., which is not only a larger scale than the one in Illinois, but is also lined up along U.S. Route 1 from the nearest I-95 exit to the campus, so you can visit the planets in order, instead of wandering all over Peoria trying to find them!

We have at least two... the University of Maine at Presque Isle has one at the scale of 1 mile = 1 a.u., which is not only a larger scale than the one in Illinois, but is also lined up along U.S. Route 1 from the nearest I-95 exit to the campus, so you can visit the planets in order, instead of wandering all over Peoria trying to find them!

This reminded me of an article on /. detailing the construction of a scale model of the Solar System in Maine, USA. It was posted in an article from June of last year on /..
Here is the link
The Maine model is to scale, 1:93 million.

At forty miles from Pluto to Sun, the largest complete three-dimensional scale model of the Solar System in the World.

Professor Turing would like to have a word with you...

"The Maine model is not the largest, and Peoria, IL, my hometown, has had the largest model for many years now, the Pluto model (in Kewanee, IL) being over 60 miles away from the sun model."

***
Maybe 60 **km**, but *not* 60 miles.
***

Both the Lakeview IL model and the Maine model have SunPluto distances of about 40 miles. (64km).

Lakeview Jupiter: 45" diameter
Maine Jupiter: 61.4" diameter
Lakeview Scale: 1:140,000,000
Maine Scale: 1:93,000,000
Lakeview Earth: 4" diameter
Maine Earth: 5.5" diameter

Go Maine!
Go Illinois!
Go Sweden!

Plus while the first post only claimed (correctly) that it was North America's largest model, the second post claimed it's the World's largest, which as many other posters have pointed out, is wrong.

Is it just me, or do the guys erecting Neptune look like they just hit the power line in the background? :-)

SB

A much more useful link: The Main Solar System Model. It includes a map, pictures of the sun and planets, and lots of other info.

Take a look at what they are a calling a three dimensional model of the sun. To me it looks very much like a two dimensional model of a section of the the Golden Arches.

If this were to really be a 3d model, shouldn't the sun be sphere instead of an arch?

Somewhat offtopic, but what's the deal with this picture:

http://www.umpi.maine.edu/info/nmms/solar/images/S olarSysNeptune04.jpg

Thats an odd way to fix the colors...

Looking at the Jupiter webpage, it appears that they got carried away with the paint job. The earlier layers of painted bands look more faithful to me, then somebody put a "tomato soup" coat on it, hiding the rather even banding that is found on the real thing. Plus, the real thing is mostly light-tan, not red. I have seen the real thing through small telescopes, and Nasa tends to increase the contrast and color of their photos to bring out detail. But even those photos don't have so much red. The Mars team had extra paint or something? :-)

Further, it appears the models are round, but the larger planets are noticably "flattened" due to centrifugal rotational force.

With recent, excessive, and pervasive corporate sponorship, Earth shall henceforce be known as Chrysler, Plymouth, Dodge, Jeep Earth.

Earth

Man, they really wussied out on the sun. It's just a two-dimensional arch. I want to see a fifty-foot ball of fire, godammit!

Strangely enough, the world's largest rotating globe is also in Maine. It is far more impressive.

I apologize in advance, but, Huh, huh, huh, they said Checking the progress of Uranus".

Check out the UMaine Solar Vehicle Team's projects.

The Phantom Sol (fully electric) has a top speed of well over 120MPH, 400ft/lbs of torque, and a range of over 100 miles at highway speeds (65-75 mph). The 0-60mph time is around 8-9 seconds, depending on road conditions.

Using a 280HP 9" DC motor with 1800-amp controller (yes, 1800 DC amps - there's some thick wires inside), a 6-speed Camaro transmission and a 75-lb dual-friction racing clutch, the drive train is still relatively inexpensive (about $4000). And it has the performance of a slightly modified V-8 block. And all that's backed-up with 40 large lead-acid batteries. (another $4000)

It's street legal...and a joy to drive :oD

And since this always comes up:
Yes, electricity is often generated by burning oil. But burning it in a power plant is far more efficient than burning it in your car. And, with electric cars...the potential is there for green energy, should such a situation arise.

P.S. Did I mention the cool rear-view cameras recently installed? :o)

• I enjoy activities requiring hand skills.
• I draw a recognizable person.
• I am skilled and accurate with simple tools.
• I can sit still for brief periods.
• I enjoy jumping, running and skipping.
• I have adult-like posture in throwing and catching.
• I have great physical drive.
• I like dancing, am rhythmic and graceful.
• I sometimes roughhouse and fight.
• I am well coordinated.

• I am curious about everything.
• I am ready for short trips into the community.
• I know my family name and address.
• I talk clearly about my ideas.
• I am self-centered about my ideas.
• I like to be busy making something.
• I make a plan before starting a project.
• My attention span is 12 to 28 minutes long.
• I can carry over play interests for more than one day.
• I play on a realistic level in dramatic play.
• I readily use complete sentences.
• I count 10 objects.

• I am becoming poised and self-confident.
• I copy adult behavior and act grown-up.
• I am aware of rules and define them for others.
• I play in groups of two to five children.
• I am less competitive than at age 4.
• I am sensitive to teasing and get hurt feelings easily.
• I like the companionship of adults.
• I have to be right.
• I am sociable and like to visit.
• I may get wild, silly and giggly.

Specific problems I see in their article:

• False analogy to radio, TV, and newspapers: with them I receive the benefit (content) along with some cost to me (time or page space devoted to ads), but *all costs are accounted for by someone- they are internalized* The paper/station charges what they need to run their business. With spam the spammers creates costs that they don't have to pay.
• in other words Radio/TV/newspaper ads are *solicited.* They have large sales departments seeking advertisers.
• Tying / making equivalent "internet" to "email" in leveling the playing field: anyone can have a web site, and you don't need too much money to have a nice one. This doesn't mean you should spam people to get them to go to your website. If I can't afford a billboard it doesn't mean I get to spray paint my message in grafitti just to "level the field."
• They want the results you only get from opt-in lists without requiring opt-in lists: if you don't use opt-in lists you don't know your email is going to the right groups, or even to the right state (or country). Without opt-in, how will you keep email from the thousands of elections happening each year from clogging inboxes?
• a "recipient can choose to...unsubscribe": Again, they're forgetting that the email field is already muddy from plain ol' cow spam. We the people already know you cannot trust unsubscribe links within email. "We're different, trust us" doesn't work- within a few weeks regular scammer spammers will fake the exact same disclaimers.
• Thinking that antispammers were overreacting: again, TOTC- we've already seen spam ruin usenet and half-ruin our email boxes. We have to start early to keep the first political spams from becoming a giant herd.

(1)My definition: bulk email from a stranger. This definition catches damaging email, although not all annoying email. I think definitions that include content (i.e. "commercial" alone is bad), non-bulk email, or email from a pre-existing business relationship aren't good because laws based on them won't be upheld.

here at the missiles pad.

Share and enjoy

Anyone who's taken a high school chemistry class knows that Bill Gates earned $667,000 last year.

• Get to know the night staff - I eat my lunch at about the time the janitors finish, so I usually sit around with them and talk for a while. I've heard some amazing stories
  
• Read manuals - check the tops of racks of equipment that outside people (like EMC) maintain. Sometimes they'll leave the manuals there.
  
• Read documentation - SGI and Apple have lots of cool reading, not to mention Other Places.
  
• Write throwaway code - They may own it, so just try things out. See how fast you can get a parallel matrix multiply to go when you spread it over all 16 or so of the processors of a nice beefy box.
  
• Automate things - write scripts to make life easier for everyone, and give yourself even more free time to worry about!
  
• Read good books - I've been catching up on my reading backlog.
  
• Check HR's web page to double check your benefits - I found a nice discount on books from fatbrain that I had missed.
  
• See if the zone where managers sit has better toilet paper in the bathrooms.
  

Okay, I'm not gonna jump in on this, but this is incorrect. Any emulator can run a piece of code through to see if it halts... or you can run it on the "programming" on the native environment.

Tell that to Alan Turing.

Running the program in an emulator (or 'on the "programming" on the native environment') wouldn't work. How long do you need to run the program before you know that it's halted? If you want a complete proof, go here, or ask your friendly neighborhood CS professor.