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Ever wonder why the US has the most powerful military (arguably) in the world? I guess it is a trade-off. I'd rather have a more functional military and less functional cell phone than the other way around (as in Europe).

It's that military that keeps me free to use my cell phone in relative security. Oh yeah, one more thing... read this statement by Col Skinner if you want to understand more aobut military spectrum requirements.

Leave the laptop at home, or at least in the hotel. But can I see that the laptop would give you some niceties: storage of digital photos (assuming you have a digital camera on the trip), email for family members so they know you've not been taken by FARC (or any other regional militants), a journal, and of course porn =)

One good way for you to power your laptop would be with a Auto AC Inverter. Course this requires a car with a cigarette lighter, but they are cheap ($20 at Frys), small (mine's a tank at 2"x5"x1") and light (less then a pound).

So in summary... don't take the laptop on the trail and get a Auto AC Inverter (and good luck avoiding FARC =).

Leave the laptop at home, or at least in the hotel. But can I see that the laptop would give you some niceties: storage of digital photos (assuming you have a digital camera on the trip), email for family members so they know you've not been taken by FARC (or any other regional militants), a journal, and of course porn =)

One good way for you to power your laptop would be with a Auto AC Inverter. Course this requires a car with a cigarette lighter, but they are cheap ($20 at Frys), small (mine's a tank at 2"x5"x1") and light (less then a pound).

So in summary... don't take the laptop on the trail and get a Auto AC Inverter (and good luck avoiding FARC =).

A small team of 10 or so in conjunction with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory built a thermo-acoustic refridgerator. It didn't work to well but it sure did make a hell of alot of noise. :)

Our most successful aspect of the project was the prototyping of the stack. We discovered that a form of carbon areogel had some very cool properties that made isolating the heat exchanges easy. To test the new stack we created a "hooter-tube" (or holfer tube) which is the opposite of the refridgerator. We created a difference in temeperature to generate sound. We dipped one end of the tube in liqued nitrogen and then heated the other end with a blow dryer. It was a blast to play with becuase it was about the size of a light saber and becuase the open end was the cold end the air around the tip would condense and allow you to "see" the sound wave (well, a quarter of it anyway).

here are some photos and other stuff:
photo of hooter tube
photo of working refridgerator (very similar to ours)
Navy page with lots of info

BUNNY OF DEATH!

A small team of 10 or so in conjunction with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory built a thermo-acoustic refridgerator. It didn't work to well but it sure did make a hell of alot of noise. :)

Our most successful aspect of the project was the prototyping of the stack. We discovered that a form of carbon areogel had some very cool properties that made isolating the heat exchanges easy. To test the new stack we created a "hooter-tube" (or holfer tube) which is the opposite of the refridgerator. We created a difference in temeperature to generate sound. We dipped one end of the tube in liqued nitrogen and then heated the other end with a blow dryer. It was a blast to play with becuase it was about the size of a light saber and becuase the open end was the cold end the air around the tip would condense and allow you to "see" the sound wave (well, a quarter of it anyway).

here are some photos and other stuff:
photo of hooter tube
photo of working refridgerator (very similar to ours)
Navy page with lots of info

BUNNY OF DEATH!

A small team of 10 or so in conjunction with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory built a thermo-acoustic refridgerator. It didn't work to well but it sure did make a hell of alot of noise. :)

Our most successful aspect of the project was the prototyping of the stack. We discovered that a form of carbon areogel had some very cool properties that made isolating the heat exchanges easy. To test the new stack we created a "hooter-tube" (or holfer tube) which is the opposite of the refridgerator. We created a difference in temeperature to generate sound. We dipped one end of the tube in liqued nitrogen and then heated the other end with a blow dryer. It was a blast to play with becuase it was about the size of a light saber and becuase the open end was the cold end the air around the tip would condense and allow you to "see" the sound wave (well, a quarter of it anyway).

here are some photos and other stuff:
photo of hooter tube
photo of working refridgerator (very similar to ours)
Navy page with lots of info

BUNNY OF DEATH!

Actually, the Navy was there with multiple carriers within days and as I recall the 101st airborne was there within a day or two and the Marines showed up with the first "permanent" ground forces (meaning they brought their own supplies and were self-sustaining) a couple days after that.

U.S.S. Enterprise

Shuttle

Mid-sized

In the 1960s, it looked like the sea was being opened up as a new frontier. Nuclear submarines were cruising the oceans and exploring under the polar icecap, undersea habitats were built, big offshore drilling platforms were constructed, ocean-bottom mining was tried, and deep-submergence research submarines descended into the deepest parts of the ocean. There was even a whole genere of undersea science fiction.

But, like space, it turned out that all the essential tasks could be done without sending people there. Today, there are many underwater robot vehicles, but no underwater habitats. The deep ocean, like space, belongs to machines, not people.

Lojack uses the paging system; you have to report your vehicle stolen; their ops center sends a signal to activate the lojack transmitter, then police have to locate it using radio direction finding techniques (doppler DF system using square array of 4 whip antennas on roof of car).

10-20's system obtains position using GPS and relays it via satellite hourly to once/day depending on the level of service you buy.

It is the SAME concept as Orbcomm's, as well as the proposed system using Eyesat-1 microsatellite Interferometrics launched in 1992. The ham radio ops have something similar using APRS including internet links and real-time mapping and an experimental satellite component PCSAT.

In urban areas, using 2-way pager, CPDP, or cell phone network is going to be cheaper and provide better coverage with less latancy. Most of the potential customers are there. In rural and remote areas, satellite coverage fills in the gaps in terrestrial networks, but the customer density is rather low. So the business model may be a challenge.

I'd like to know which LEO satellite system they're using. I suspect Orbcomm's.

My primary experience has been with APRS, the Automatic Position Reporting System. It's in many ways similar to this system. It's used quite extensively by ham radio operators to coordinate public service activities, track storms out in tornado ally, etc.

The neat thing about APRS is that it isn't just a position tracking system, but it's a distributed network of repeating stations linked via radio and landlines. Here are some neat links you might find interesting:

• My APRS server/digipeater
• These are the results of a baloon tracking exercise I participated in a little while ago
• The APRS homepage
• www.findu.com allows you to locate any ham radio operator's last known position transmitted via aprs from location in the world that has coverage to an APRS internet gateway.

I recall the navy had a system of running current along loops of wire in the hull of the ship to nullify the magnetic signiture of their vessles when they suspeced that they were close to magnetic mines...

It won't make you totally invisible, however.

The US Navy already has something like this in the form of giant guns mounted on some of its ships called "Phalanx" units. The thing fires thousands of bullets per minute, and it's all computer controlled. The purpose of this weapon is to track essentially anything that gets too close to the ship, and blow it to kingdom come. Missiles, planes, etc, are all valid targets. And it works, too.

More info is available. If you poke around online, you can also see some sweet movies of the thing. It just turns, tracks for a second, unleashes a wall of lead, then returns to the 'ready' position like it wasn't a big deal.

War is a daunting task. Fortunately, we've got some relatively clever folks thinking things like this up! :)

I am really opposed against guys who are opposed against Canadians. You, my good man, are a choco-pipe. May I introduce you to a laxative? I used to be like you, until I started using Senokot. Now I FEEL GOOD! My choco-pipe couldn't open to the extreme dimensions that it can now.

Click here for a surprise.

Don't worry... no goatse here.

Just one?

The Panama Canal.

Lockheed Martin's X-33 single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicle concept.

NASA's Mars Global Surveyor

The NEAR space probe (and it was delivered 9 months ahead of schedule!)

The World Trade Center recovery effort.

The US Navy's Super Hornet (upgrade to the old F/A-18 Hornet Naval strike fighter)

The U2 Spy Plane

Also, I remember hearing from the Discovery Chanel or TLC or Discovery Wings or something that the F-117 Stealth Fighter was developed under budget, but I can't seem to find a reliable link.

Golden Grove Prison at St. Croix in the US Vigrin Islands.

The Grand Staircase-Escalante monument in Utah.

It happens. It's rare percentage wise, but it does happen all the time. With the exception of the last two, which I only found out from google searching for links for the rest, I knew of all of these off of the top of my head, so it's not a big secret or anything. Just think of all the mundane projects that come in under budget too. Government buildings, roadways, etc.

I must say, even if you come across as a bit of a jerk here, you're awfully well informed. Who are you?

Rubbish.
I disagree. We are quibbling over subtleties.

Kerberos is alive and well. And the GPL wouldn't have saved it anyway, since I've read several times that Microsoft re-implemented it from scratch for Windows. Please, tell me, how would the original code being GPL'd have changed that?

from the kerberos faq:
Subject: 3.5. I've hear Microsoft will support Kerberos in Windows 2000. Is that true? ...

This article, written by Ted T'so, gives what I feel is a reasonable summary of the situation. ...

From: Ted T'so

Microsoft Embraces and Extends Kerberos V5

There has been a lot of excitement generated by Microsoft's announcement that NT 5.0 would use Kerberos. This excitement was followed by a lot of controversy when it was announced by Microsoft would be adding proprietary extensions to the Kerberos V5 protocol. Exactly what and how Microsoft did and tried to do has been a subject of some confusion; here's the scoop about what really happened.

NT 5.0 will indeed use Kerberos. However, this protocol has been "embraced and extended" by Microsoft, by adding a digitally signed Privilege Attribute Certificate (PAC) to the Kerberos ticket. ...

It seems ironic, however, that Microsoft would choose to design and deploy their implementation with features that are guaranteed to alienate the early adopters of Kerberos, the very people that have helped to create and improve the technology that Microsoft has chosen to "embrace and extend."

Microsoft has issed a number of technical reports explaining how they have implemented Kerberos 5 and procedures for interoperating with "vanilla" Kerberos 5. They include:

* Windows 2000 Kerberos Authentication

* Windows 2000 Kerberos Interoperability

* Step-by-Step Guide to Kerberos 5 (krb5 1.0) Interoperability

Unfortunately, none of the above documents can be read on a non-Microsoft operating system; the FAQ author notes the irony of this situation.

There are two points to be made here- the first is that microsoft muddied the standard and created new ip-related entry barriers to users of kerberos. The second is that had kerberos been GPL'd, these proprietary extensions to the kerberos protocol would have been illegal to distribute without sharing the source code under the same terms they were given.

--- end quoted section, resume abe ferlmans post---

I must concede, however, that Kerberos has not been extinguished; perhaps "fucked with" is a better way to put it.

Classic strategy, insist your opponents arguments don't match the facts regardless of what the facts are.

Er, no. Point out that ad hominem arguments don't relate to the facts. Clearly whether the facts support our positions is in dispute. As it turns out, I've forgotten what the original ad hom was and I'm tired so I'm not going to waste time looking it up anyway.

I'm afraid this argument IS political because the GPL is a license with political intent.

Only in the trivial sense that all economic activity is political. The BSD license can be read as a rejection of the GPL from this simplistic standpoint. Proprietary licenses take a political stance on the nature of intellectual property as well.


Examples? Walk into the store. The software you see on the shelves? Practically none of that would exist.

Can you please prove this? Incidentally, I rarely buy the free software I use off a shelf anyway, what a stupid way to get software in a networked world. So maybe you're right- if no one was afraid of piracy we'd have no middlemen to pay in actual physical stores and the network would fulfill its promise at last.

open source is copying rather than innovating

I would postulate that this is more because the ip system forces free software developers to play catch up than because they are unable to compete on a level playing field with people who lock up their source code under restrictive ip licenses. Games in particular are less necessary and hence less focused on.

In a world where GPL was the norm, people would still want this stuff, and clever marketers would find a way to fund its development- street performer protocol based on reputation for development of previous games- imagine how much John Carmack's next game could rake in before it was released. But that's a very different way of thinking, and current distribution models are based on proprietary thinking.

if your software makes money via people using support, that *encourages* obfuscated software

Not in a truly free market. If the software is a commodity, your competitors won't make it as hard to use as you do and you'll lose out if you play tricks like that.

In fact, your argument here is starting to sound more and more like you want something for nothing.

If that were the case I'd be clamoring for Billy Gates to give us all his source code. No, Mr. Armchair Adhominem Pyschoanalyst, I don't want something for nothing. I just don't want the something the community has in terms of software resource to be whittled into nothing, and I am saddened by the inefficiency created by proprietary software, both in terms of constantly reinventing the wheel and interoperability problems.

those guys aren't cheap. Change the world, and they'll just go elsewhere.

This is the best argument I've heard you make. Dwindling the pool of money available to software firms will dry up the talent pool. But I think you're missing a few points.

1. GPL world = fewer lawyers. I'd be very curious to see a comparison of a software firms salary payouts to developers contrasted against their legal fees.
2. GPL world = more collaboration. There would be less need to constantly reinvent the wheel in-house, so software development would be faster and simpler.
3. Lots of people would code even if it paid jack. Free software developers demonstrate this- many do it for nothing, many professionals would do it for far, far less. The end of the dot-com bubble didn't drain the talent pool, it sharpened it if anything by blowing away some chaff.
4. GPL world = no fear of piracy = more efficient distribution. You could sell your software a lot cheaper without boxes, etc. Different business models would arise.
5. Freedom is worth something. The fact that anyone could modify any software they like in a GPL world gives people options and flexibility they don't currently enjoy. These are worth something, and certainly everyone has a degree to which they'd take slightly lower quality software that was more flexible.

That was the case for me using the 0.9 series of Mozilla releases. IE was still slightly better, but Mozilla gave me a lot of userspace flexibility that IE did not. Now I'm using Mozilla 1.2 and I love it. I would dare say that many of the features in Mozilla (tabbed browsing with useful keyboard shortcuts, popup blcoking built into the browser) have been downright innovative.

Which is fine and dandy, except no-one's going to pay for it. They can't sell existing code as is (for either license) because no-one's going to pay for code they can get for nothing.

I'll cc redhat on the memo, and burn my Debian box set so no one finds the evidence to the contrary.

They can't value-add to it without giving the source to their additions to those who get their binary, and they can't restrict redistribution or use of that source.

Nor can bottled water makers prevent the redistribution of the chemical makeup of water. So?

So, they can't make money off it.

Bottled water, Redhat, yes they can they just have to compete effectively in a mostly commodified market.

Just because the GPL doesn't actually say it can't be sold doesn't mean it doesn't significantly restrict it.

Yes it does. You are trying like hell to conflate "sell" and "take proprietary", but it won't work. The argument that it's hard to compete in a commodity market makes sense, to which I would argue that the government shouldn't be handing out monopolies (idea ownership) in commodity markets anyway, especially if it builds on government code in the first place.

And, again, it does NOT prevent vendor lock-in. It effectively prevents resale of software.

This is exactly wrong. It does prevent lockin. It is forbidden to make proprietary extensions to the software, but explicitly permitted to resell the software.

Except software isn't ownership of ideas. Software is *implementation* of ideas. If software were ownership of ideas, how could the open-source world copy all the ideas that came with the proprietary OSes?

Proprietary software is ownership of a particular idea. The idea/implementation divide is weak in the extreme in a world where judges and patent inspectors don't understand software, and not too strong even in one where they do. What is the implementation and what is the idea? Is the object code the implementation? The source code? The pseudocode?

Implementations are just specific ideas, and their ownership represents the government granting a monopoly in an otherwise commodified market.

Your anti-patent 'discussion' is irrelevent here, since we're not discussing the patent system, but copyright law.

The GPL includes provisions that require that patented software be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

The GNU manifesto clearly states

This is not why everyone uses the GPL. Linus Torvalds is a famous example to the contrary.

it's about preventing companies like Microsoft selling software

Erm, if you put that the other way, "preventing companies from 'selling' software the way microsoft does", I might agree with you. But as stated you are incorrect.

It has nothing to do with reference implementations

I admit I was parroting your language a bit there, but a.) a GPL'd piece of software is a perfectly good ref implementation for any non-proprietary project and b.) it's clear to me that lots of people use the BSD license who intend to create more than just reference implementations of things, they intend their products to be complete but they are only interested in disclaiming warranty. I disagree with them about their motivations, but on any day of the week BSD is still better than proprietary so I thank them just the same.

Much of it even has "proprietary" extensions that, given the licensing, so the changes cannot be added back to the original without being rewritten from scratch! Strange but true, a complete (and intended) inversion.

I know of no such example. Enlighten, please. ... despite the *fact* that the only time you've demonstrated a problem with freedom is when the code involves patents, not licenses.

I have no problem with freedom, I just want more people to have more of it.

Click here for a surprise.

Don't worry... no goatse here.

they don't need orbital mind control lasers, they already have the HAARP instaltaion

I don't know if these rino units will really catch on. The range of these things is only about a half a mile with buildings and stuff around. At that range, you can almost always see a common landmark, if you can't see each other. Still, if you're going to use both a GPS and a radio, it's better than lugging both around. And they look pretty cool, besides. A better application might be on cell phones. Then the first sentence of every conversation wouldn't be "where you at?" Aren't they doing something like this for 911 reasons anyway?

Sure, aruguably javascript and html.

The best example is Microsoft breaking Kerberos.

Ask the people at MIT what they think of what MS did to Kerberos.

Ted T'so's answer is interesting.

• USS Ohio (SSBN 726)
• USS Michigan (SSBN 727)
• USS Florida (SSBN 728)
• USS Georgia (SSBN 729)
• USS Henry M. Jackson (SSBN 730)
• USS Alabama (SSBN 731)
• USS Alaska (SSBN 732)
• USS Nevada (SSBN 733)
• USS Tennessee (SSBN 734)
• USS Pennsylvania (SSBN 735)
• USS West Virginia (SSBN 736)
• USS Kentucky (SSBN 737)
• USS Maryland (SSBN 738)
• USS Nebraska (SSBN 739)
• USS Rhode Island (SSBN 740)
• USS Maine (SSBN 741)
• USS Wyoming (SSBN 742)
• USS Louisiana (SSBN 743)

From the Navy Fact File on Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarines:

Ohio-class/Trident ballistic missile submarines provide the sea-based "leg" of the triad of U.S. strategic deterrent forces. The 18 Trident SSBNs (each carrying 24 missiles), carry 50 percent of the total U.S. strategic warheads. Although the missiles have no pre-set targets when the submarine goes on patrol, the SSBNs are capable of rapidly targeting their missiles should the need arise, using secure and constant at-sea communications links.

When I was living in Bremerton, Washington, a few years ago, the subs at Bangor were always refered to as "nuclear trident subs" by the Navy. Which is approperiate if you think of what SSBN (Ship, Submersible, Ballistic, Nuclear) means and what type of warheads they carry.

If you can prove that you are a US citizen and are in the Seattle area, Bangor once did occasionally has open houses and showed off their subs. I'm not sure if they still do after 9/11, but check on on Navy Region NW's page and see if there is any events listed.

• USS Ohio (SSBN 726)
• USS Michigan (SSBN 727)
• USS Florida (SSBN 728)
• USS Georgia (SSBN 729)
• USS Henry M. Jackson (SSBN 730)
• USS Alabama (SSBN 731)
• USS Alaska (SSBN 732)
• USS Nevada (SSBN 733)
• USS Tennessee (SSBN 734)
• USS Pennsylvania (SSBN 735)
• USS West Virginia (SSBN 736)
• USS Kentucky (SSBN 737)
• USS Maryland (SSBN 738)
• USS Nebraska (SSBN 739)
• USS Rhode Island (SSBN 740)
• USS Maine (SSBN 741)
• USS Wyoming (SSBN 742)
• USS Louisiana (SSBN 743)

From the Navy Fact File on Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarines:

Ohio-class/Trident ballistic missile submarines provide the sea-based "leg" of the triad of U.S. strategic deterrent forces. The 18 Trident SSBNs (each carrying 24 missiles), carry 50 percent of the total U.S. strategic warheads. Although the missiles have no pre-set targets when the submarine goes on patrol, the SSBNs are capable of rapidly targeting their missiles should the need arise, using secure and constant at-sea communications links.

When I was living in Bremerton, Washington, a few years ago, the subs at Bangor were always refered to as "nuclear trident subs" by the Navy. Which is approperiate if you think of what SSBN (Ship, Submersible, Ballistic, Nuclear) means and what type of warheads they carry.

If you can prove that you are a US citizen and are in the Seattle area, Bangor once did occasionally has open houses and showed off their subs. I'm not sure if they still do after 9/11, but check on on Navy Region NW's page and see if there is any events listed.

Did you mean to have that double-entendre or did it happen by accident? :)

(For the curious.)

for instance CSP has a reasonable theoretical foundation and is infinitely nicer to program with than those locks and semaphors invented in the '70s...

here's a brief history and more accessible explanation. plan 9 has a nice C implementation.

so much nicer to program with!

Heard they had a good one in the early NATOPS (Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization) book for the E-2C:
Fast Update Control Knob...

This one?

It's not about spying or ICBM's or anything, the key factor here is, believe it or not, agriculture. I know other patriotic Indians have problems accepting this, but India is still largely an agriculture-based economy, with the population especially concentrated in rural areas. With the exploding population creating pressure on food resources, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research actively involves itself in creating better yielding food varieties .

Students of Indian history would have heard about the green revolution that created self-sustainence in food; a crucial post-independence achievement considering food scarcity situations such as the 1943 Bengal Famine (the one on which Amartya Sen did economic research and won the 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics).

Now with satellite technology, ICAR can identify which land areas are suitable for which crops and therefore goad farmers into growing those varieties (remember that India is a sub-continent; you have all sorts of terrain, from deserts to plains to plateaus to, of course, mountains.

So accurately knowing which crop goes best where is critical information for the hungry masses (over-cliched, but it's true). Methinks that this will be the biggest use, followed closely by telecommunications and satellite television AND then by urban planning (Mumbai will have 24.7 million people by 2005).

PS:- Note that I'm not saying that satellite technology wont be used for other purposes; I definitely want India to use cutting-edge technology against a couple of motherfuckers, but talking only about that would be misleading.

Samrobb wrote:

Nothing seems to indicate he's moved elsewhere. Still working in Australia, heretic?

But he said he was in a "small western nation". Austrialia is so far east it's approaching the International Date Line. It also is over 7.6 million square kilometers, the sixth largest country in the world; I wouldn't call it small.

The biggest problem is due to the immense speed that we predict one of these things will be travelling at. A nuke would have to detonate *just* as it's contacting the asteroid to have maximum impact. If you waited longer, the asteroid will just crush the nuke (no good), or if you detonated it early, the effect is lessened.

It's almost like shooting a 18" shell with a .303. You can slow it down very slighty, or even break it up.. but one bullet is probably not going to do it for you. You have a hail of nukes, sorta like the Phalanx missle-protection system the Navy has. What you can't get in quality, get it in quantity. Throw up a wall of nukes!

Besides, how can you can believe in evolution when it violates basic laws of the universe? There are so many arguments against evolution that it's ridiculous. Even those that ignore the written record of humanity cannot ignore the scientific facts making it impossible.

I very highly suspect this as a troll, but I'll give it a go :)

Evolutionists claim that universe the earth is billions of years old, but how is that possible when the rotation of the earth slows by 30 seconds every century? If the earth were billions of years old the speed at which it would have been rotating four years ago would have been so fast that it could not have held together.

Er, 30 seconds every century indeed! More like 2.2 seconds every 100,000 years. Here are some references.

There's also the second law of thermodynamics to look at. It states that the universe is constantly heading toward disorder. Evolution violates that law, so which one is right?

Well the second law of thermodynamics only makes sense when you understand what it's actually saying :P It says that the universe as a whole is moving towards disorder. This doesn't prevent portions of the universe from achieving states of increased order. And to think otherwise is completely absurd - if everything could only move in the direction of disorder, how could anything really get accomplished? This is a rediculous way to try and twist the 2nd law of thermodynamics, it reeks of manipulation.

Another problem with evolution is that certain nucleic acids cannot form without the help of certain proteins, but those proteins cannot form without certain nucleic acids. That makes it impossible to occur naturally.

Admittedly, I know nothing about nucleic acids and proteins, so I cannot comment on this.

Oh well, so I got 2 out of 3. Perhaps somebody with a biology tilt can comment in on the proteins and acids. :P

I find that our Tomcat does an excellent job of keeping the programmers in line.

Because this Penguin flys very well.

Check the NCARAI which is a always a great source of info on current research in the field, including a number of key technologies used to implement Grace.

At first, I did not believe that such a small change could account for the leap seconds, but you're right :

Through the use of ancient observations of eclipses, it is possible to determine the average deceleration of the Earth to be roughly 1.4 milliseconds per day per century.

[...] Over the course of one year, the difference accumulates to almost one second, which is compensated by the insertion of a leap second into the scale of UTC with a current regularity of a little less than once per year. Other factors also affect the Earth, some in unpredictable ways, so that it is necessary to monitor the Earth's rotation continuously.

In order to keep the cumulative difference in UT1-UTC less than 0.9 seconds, a leap second is added to the atomic time to decrease the difference between the two. This leap second can be either positive or negative depending on the Earth's rotation. Since the first leap second in 1972, all leap seconds have been positive and there were 22 leap seconds in the 27 years to January, 1999. This pattern reflects the general slowing trend of the Earth due to tidal braking.

And maybe it's elves getting angry at the way they're portrayed in the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas specials. Were you asleep in Earth Science (or equivalent) class when they explained the seasons to you?
Distance from sun matters relativley little, it's how direct the solar radiation is against the planet's surface. To quote, "... winter begins in the northern hemisphere at about the time that the Earth is nearest the Sun" ( source ). Obviously, if the purported difference in size were a significant factor, there'd be no snow in Minneapolis in the winter.

Any storage mechanism has its safety downside. If it's not a 36000rpm flywhell, it'll be a compressed gas cylinder or a chemical battery with lots of nasty stuff you don't want leaking out- acid, lithium, or my favorite hot molten sodium and sulfer.

Lasers are common in the military, primarily for range finding and illuminating targets for laser-guided weapons. Although these lasers are not powerful enough to destroy objects, they can cause serious eye damage. In at least one case they were used by a Russian ship in American waters to damage the eyes of a helicopter pilot observing the vessel.

Also, the US Armed Forces have researched this issue extensively, and most aircrew helmets and visors are now designed to protect the wearer from laser-induced eye damage - accidental or otherwise.

Let me suggest an alternative. Since you can build for $5000 or buy for under £3200 a terabyte disk store, why not record all network traffic in a rolling log for a few days or weeks. A background process can look for attack signatures, and see what the response was. So an IDS attack signature of "cat /etc/passwd" won't be reported unless it appears that a password file actually was returned.

The NSWC Shadow project is similar, but does not necessarily record all traffic.

One great advantage of having a historical log is you can see if you had been attacked, during the interval between an exploit being discovered and being notified with a new IDS signature. If you know you were not exploited, you save a lot of time not needing to check systems or reinstall to be on the safe side.

Anyone like to build me one?

It was right. The GPS time epoch is 0000 UT on 6-Jan-1980. Since then UTC has had 13 leap seconds inserted. This offset is available in the NAV message; maybe the version of NTP you used was ignoring that message or maybe that particular GPS receiver didn't implement that message. (Actually, buggy firmware in GPS receivers has been a problem in the past.)

Julian day numbers are the count of days since noon GMT on January 1, 4713 BCE (on the Julian calendar); the fraction is simply an expression of the fraction of the day elapsed. Astronomers have used this scheme for a long time; it's perfect for the nocturnal. Since it resets at noon, it can be confusing for diurnal people in Europe, but it could work well for those in the western hemisphere.

Here is a converter, along with more information.

An extra hour would be nice, but sometimes it is just a few seconds more.

The French didn't help us out of ideals or altruism. They did it because they hated the British. Between the War of Independence and the War of 1812, we fought an undeclared quasi-war with the French. Don't romanticise history too much.

woof.

[*] Please, no lame religious jokes.

On the subject of data transmission with light there is this method

Unfortunately, Gaia is not scheduled to launch until 2010. Until then, I wonder if a spacecraft like SOHO, (particularly the LASCO instrument) could look for asteroids? I've asked one of the project scientists (via email) about it. I'll post again if I find out anything good.

In the meantime, maybe one of YOU would like to search back in the archive of LASCO images and find the asteroid? You'll be famous if you find it!

Recent numerical simulations of Arctic climate suggest that the recent Arctic ice melt (and generally warmer temperatures) may be caused by decadal variability, instead of (or, more likely, in addition to) a general warming trend. This cycle is about to switch, so that in the next ten years, the ice may reform and temperatures could drop. That is, until the cycle switches again, when ice melt and warming could come back with a vengance.

What does this mean for long term climate variability? It means it is much harder to detect permanent changes in climate when there is so much noise in the signal and so little data. It is important not to put too much stock on short term changes -- i.e., an unusually hot summer is not evidence of global warming, and global warming will not have stopped even if it gets cooler for ten years in a row.

wouldn't need to be on any cellular network to send the data. (tho, if you weren't in a populated area with any APRS internet gateways, you'd need to do some more complicated math to figure out if a sat was overhead to send through).

wouldn't need to be on any cellular network to send the data. (tho, if you weren't in a populated area with any APRS internet gateways, you'd need to do some more complicated math to figure out if a sat was overhead to send through).

Furthermore, he was a submarine officer.