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My best friend will hopefully make it through the weekend. His first appointment with the head of the oncology dept. of the veterinary school at UGA is at 9:30 AM Monday.

I think it will be a very bad day.

Nobody will read this and care, but I love my dog very much. Much more than any of you could possibly know. And the world will be a poorer place without him.

My brave, strong, handsome dog. My friend Giggy Amadeus.

"Go look up background radiation - it exists and using it to pretend that fly ash is nuclear waste is where that study shows that it is pure bullshit."

I'm not certain why you keep bringing up background radiation. Forgive me if I'm misintepreting, but it seems like you are attempting to insinuate that since there are many scattered sources of radioactive materials on the planet; concentrating substances that tend to have higher concentrations of radioactive and heavy metals and pumping them into the local atmosphere does not have a negative impact. Coal is an excellent filter and does a good job of capturing heavy metals (among other contaminents) regardless as to whether it is intentionally used for that purpose. Coal mined from areas that have higher concentrations of heavy metals absorbs a higher concentration of that particulate matter. Some forms of coal processing actually unintentionally enchance these concentrations further. When the coal is later burned to produce power the heavy metals are distrubted via the atmosphere to the surrounding area. This is not pseudo-science.

Most of the coal in the US has a very low concentration of heavy metals. There are a few actively utilized deposits with significantly higher concentrations, but the US has done a relatively good job of preventing an overabundance of heavy metals from being released from coal fired power plants. From a radioactive perspective individuals living within 1 km of a US coal burning plant suffer, at most, only a 1-5% increase in radiation dosage. Though it is worth noting that residents living within 1 km of a nuclear power plant do not receive any increased radiation dosage. This is not to suggest that the radiation dosage caused by living in close proximity to coal plant causes a significant adverse effect on one's health, but it does have an effect. Coal plants have been shown to increase heavy metal concetrations in the environment, however, and without improvements in filtering and disposal systems will continue to do so in many areas. Of particular concern are developing nations with large populations and histories of cutting corners when it comes to minimizing environmental impact.

"everything is radioactive, so nuclear power doesn't need to be treated with respect"

The paper is not suggesting that nuclear power not be treated with respect. No where does it suggest that the handling of such materials is "safe." The article merely points out that the most popular power generation method is equally if not more hazardous and more difficult to contain.

I am not insinuating that nuclear power is completely clean/safe technology. My frustration lies with the popular belief that nuclear power is somehow inherently more dangerous than power generation by traditional methods. This is simply not true. Nuclear power is safer than the general public believes and traditional power sources less so. Living next to a coal plant is not going to kill you or even signifcantly shorten your life, in general. Neither is living next to a nuclear power plant.

"a town of a few thousand people can easily consume 60 megawatts"

I'm not certain where you got those numbers, but they are way off. The average energy consumption of a US home is 1.02 kilowatts. Over the course of a year a US home will consume approximately 8,900 kilowatt-hours (8.9 megawatt-hours) of electricity.

A town of a few thousand residents would consume approximately 3 megawatts. Assuming a minor amount of light industrial and commercial usage in a town that small you might bump that figure up to 4 - 5 megawatts. Over the course of a year the town would consume approximately 35,600 megawatt-hours of electricity.

The Point Beach reactor in Wisconsin (a state I used to l

According to Dante's Inferno, the deepest levels of hell are quite cold, and being frozen in ice is the form of suffering that most of its inhabitants endure (except for poor Judas and Barnabas, who are perpetually chewed upon within the mouths of Satan...I am sure they are cold too, but don't notice due to the perpetual puncturing).

just FYI...

At least they didn't call it teh goats-e.

As for people getting their news from The Daily Show... First it is an indictment of the news. When the popular news is so uninteresting/uninforming/partisan that people simply avoid watching it, that is, at least partly, the news organization's fault. Secondly, The Daily Show is actually quite informative, accurate, and perhaps most importantly, incisive. That aspect in particular seems missing from the news media at large. I mean, the show WON A PEABODY for chrissakes. Frankly, if I have the choice of an uninformed voter getting news from FoxNews or from The Daily Show, I would much prefer the latter. For all the complaint about its left-leanings, it tends to very accurate (while Fox with their right-right-right leanings has been documented to not be accurate). Thirdly, yes there *are* places to get decent news...they just require a lot of extra effort relative to flipping on CNN. That is the problem...those motivated enough will always be able to parse the crap and find the useful information, it is the vast majority that is not that concerns me. While one solution is to somehow, magically, instill that level of interest in the political journalism field in the populace, I'd rather the major news outlets start acting more like responsible news outlets and feed the masses a useful set of information.

-Ted

That boiling frog thing is an urban legend

The actual paper is:
Toole, D. A., and D. A. Siegel (2004), Light-driven cycling of dimethylsulfide (DMS) in the Sargasso Sea: Closing the loop, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L09308, doi:10.1029/2004GL019581.
Unfortunately, you must subscribe to get more than just the abstract.

DMSP and DMS cycles are more complex than this brief article reports. DMSP is produced by algae, and some DMSP is broken down to DMS by algae as well. However, bacteria seem to have a major role in breaking down DMSP to DMS, as well as to another compound, methanethiol, that is not released into the atmosphere in large amounts.

Interestingly, the genome of a bacterium that carries out both pathways of DMSP degradation is being sequenced. Hopefully this will soon allow us to find more about these two competing fates of DMSP. If you really want more information on this bacteria, you could read a discription paper.

I don't know what OS you're using (assuming OS X), but there are email programs that handle using different transports fairly easily. Take Kmail for instance. It easily allows you to switch mail transports whenever you're composing a message, and it keeps that setting for each subsequent sending until you change it again. If you didn't want to do something like that, you could always set up a text based reader like Mutt and just ssh into your machine at one location and have all of your mail facilities available from wherever you happen to be as long as you can ssh...

Some interesting satelite images.

first, thanks to sw155kn1f3 for pointing out the Fedora Legacy Project. I had no idea until then.

Installed yum, but WTF is all that header stuff when I could download a package directly and be done with it?

Then I thought of a faster way. I used to use a program called updateme which allows you to view which packages that need updating. Just point it to an FTP site, and voila. Fortunately, fedoralegacy provides FTP mirrors. Then you just use rpm -Uvh as usual.

I always thought Venus was the worst case scenario.

• First it tells you that 'rm' is good for removing directories, then it tells you that it isn't (unless you are a superuser)
• There's no examples, except for the side case of a file starting with a hyphen, and even that's unclear (why 'rm.td'?)
• There's no reference or link to the rmdir command
• There's no warning about destructive behavior ('rm -r *' etc)
• Of course, it tells you to lookup an info page

Not sure who Velikovsky is ..

Immanuel Velikovsky. His first three books were published in the '50's. I ran across them in the late '70's. His basic thesis was that some ancient myths may be based on actual observed events. Result, he was widely reviled as a crank by defenders of the Holy Writ of both Organized Religion and Organized Science, and apparently still is today. Subsequent discoveries have proven he was wrong about a few things, right about a few others.

Iirc (from over 20 years ago), he never suggested the Noah's flood story as written was accurate. More like .. point out the widespread prevalence and similarities of flood stories in various cultures, plus something such as the existence of seashell bearing strata found high in the Andes, how that didn't fit current theory (Darwinian-type gradualism), suggest a possible explanation that included the anomalous data rather than ignoring it.

Incidentally, if you remember NASA's old distribution system, COSMIC, Open Channel does have some COSMIC softare available. But I see that same "private use" license there.

COSMIC (1966-1998, R.I.P.) policy included:

Unless the program is copyrighted, licensed, patented or otherwise protected, users within the U.S. may freely duplicate programs, and/or may incorporate portions of NASA-developed codes into commercial products for use within the United States. Restrictions with regard to international distribution of NASA products and derivative products apply to some programs. Consult with COSMIC on a program by program basis for details. Users are also permitted to commercialize their own versions of licensed and copyrighted codes. Again, COSMIC can provide details on the terms and conditions.

So... somebody is paying "Andy" to do this. Who would want to attack SCO and Microsoft? Linux zealots? It could be this guy, or this guy, or this guy, or this guy, or this guy, or this guy, but it's not this guy, his name's not Andy.

The FBI can also subpoena a vast array of private information about you by merely writing a letter to themselves branding you as a terrorism suspect. They no longer need the involvement of a judge so they have shredded the constitutional checks and balances the judiciary held on the executive branch.

I really wish the Republican party and conservatives would stop spouting rhetoric about how they are the party against big government. They seem to only want to limit government intrusion in to money making by wealthy party members and to end social programs that benefit the poor. Though, as the recent Medicare bill shows they are now even in favor of big government social programs as long as most of the money is going in to the pockets of their rich friends.

When it comes to the military, spying, dirty tricks, law enforecemnt and shredding the rights of individuals the Republican party really loves the biggest, most malignant government imaginable. Of course the Democrats were bulldozed in to going along with the Patriot act so are almost equally to blame.

Well, in the grand scale of things, asteroids are going to increase dramatically in the next little while. When I say next little while, I mean the next 50 million years.

We're entering a phase where our system is moving back into the galatic disk in our solar system. In fact, we're closer to the middle of the galactic disk now than we have been for about 70 million years.

Think of it this way - as we whip around in the arms of the milky way, we also move up and down in them. I wonder if an attempt at ascii art would help explain...

------+++------ - Milky Way
^- Us

We accually move back and forth from the top of the dash to the bottom of the dash. Comprende? So we're now moving into the more dense part of the disk, so we'll see more asteroids. Coincedence that the last time we were here the dinosaurs mysteriously vanished? I think not.

Now, one the size of a small house could do some decent damage. Assume that a small house is about 15 meters in diameter. An asteroid about 100 meters in diameter hit siberia in 1908 and flattened 2000 Square Miles of forest. These things aint big, but they do good damage.

MOUSE BALLS NOW AVAILABLE AS FRU (Field Replaceable Unit)

Not only is this one not true, it's so damn old it rates it's own prize for age.
Could you not have managed it in less than 1000 lines too please?

chicks dig the bright yellow.

So do whiteflys.

Personally, I find this one much more fitting:
http://www.english.uga.edu/hc/unixrichiejoy.JPG

I guess I was incorrect. Though, I seem to remember reading an article about it some time ago. However, there is a lot of debate about the practice. You can find more information on google about it if you search for "Ability grouping."

According to those sites, the problem isn't so much that the practice itself is illegal, but that it many times yields illegal results under the Civil Rights Acts.

I think it's a load of crap, having experienced classes at both "levels" due to school transferring.

Here's some links: Suburban Parents Fight Achievement Gap Thoughts on Ability Grouping

I found this book by William Dunham to be (inexpensive and) a readable account of some of the greatest discoveries in mathematics throughout history. I'm a math guy by training so I've been used to the circuit of class-homework-test for learning math but I found that a story format was very entertaining. For instance, the proof of the pythagorean theorem which is discussed in chapter 2 of the book was state-of-the-art back in Pythagoras' day, so even though it's something taught early in high school, at one time it was something the world's top intellectuals had to unravel. And the later chapters of the book are not inaccessible either. I think none of the book even goes into calculus. So overall it's an easy way to become involved in some of the historical gems of mathematics.

"Richard Thompson" is a strange way to spell this guy's name. You know, he sang with The Smiths. He's got the most depressing music I've ever heard.

Well, outside REM, of course. Depressing not only for their music (I find Green especially depressing), but none of them even graduated from that famed institution of lower learning, the University of Georgia!

Breaking News:

SCO has announced that is has claim to all IP related to supernovae. SCO claims it bought the rights to view and reproduce all supernovae images from NASA back in 1996. Another suit, targetted against the Catholic Church is insurance in case there really is a God that created the supernovae. If so, then God will be part of a future lawsuit.

Being that NASA uses UNIX computers to do much of it's work, SCO is also including IBM, Novell, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson as defendents in the filings.

Further updates as we get them.

A year is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes (365.2424 Universal days)*.

Ok, so this is slightly off-topic, but if we're going to be nitpicky about these sorts of things, we should remember what we don't know.

Actually, the year is not precisely 365.2424 days long. In point of fact, even the most noble attempt at implementing the Gregorian calendar (Finland, apparently), is successful enough to *round* a year to 365.2424 years. However, the avowed purpose of the Gregorian calendar was focused around the necessity of ensuring that Easter comes at the same time each year. The most rigorous Gregorian calendar in the world still only manages to keep Easter within a 24-hour period. The more "typical" "Gregorian" calendar (which is technically referred to as the "Western" calendar), seen outside of the Catholic church of Finland is only able to guarantee consistency within a 53-hour range.

The point of the matter is that our calendars assume that 365.2424 is the correct number of days for a year, but that number was chosen in order to keep the equinoxes in their proper places. The true solar year can be measured elsewise as 365.2422 days (known as the "mean solar year"). This second measurement apparently (I don't know all the details) takes into account what is often referred to as the "anomalistic" year.

The calendar by which we live is wholly a solar-adjusted calendar, as we are concerned with keeping our equinoxes in line. The *true* Gregorian calendar (as implemented by the Catholic Church of Finland) is technically a luni-solar-adjusted calendar, in which there are additional adjustments on the "Metonic" cycle of 19 years. This (again, "apparently") keeps our moon cycles in tune with our calendar as well as the equinoxes.

As one might imagine, there is not a great deal of published literature on this topic on the web. Most of it is contained in musty books that may not have been checked out of your local library since the years started with an 18. However, for one available online reference, check out http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/ce030499.html

Just FYI.

Josh O

I'm not a betting man, but I figure that this would be the place for it to be announced.

Hmmm, on second thought, some organizations are indeed stupid enough to conduct posthumous trials.

Here is a start for NetBIOS from here:
2K/XP:
Right-click on Local Area Network
Select: Properties
Select: Internet Protocol TCP/IP
Click on Properties
Click on Advanced
Select the WINS tab
Select Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP
Click OK

Lower:
Right-click on My Network Places
Select: Properties
Select: Internet Protocol TCP/IP
Click on Properties
Select the NetBIOS tab
Uncheck: Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP
Click OK

Removing the binding from TCP/IP is the same, up to 'Click on Properties':
Select the Bindings tab
Check: Client for Microsoft Networks
Check: File and Printer Sharing
Click OK

Warning about using NetBEUI: it slows down large networks by only using multicast (i.e. turns your switch into a regular hub). Read about it here. (By the way, that link has screenshots of the directions above.)

yeah, could build new or expensive-to-synthesize proteins with them, or even maybe even useful polymers.

By the way, there are different species of e. coli - there's a good one that actually is *supposed* to be in everyone's intestines....and yes, some bad ones that cause problems: read about that here

Perhaps it's appropriate that the very first Unix systems were used to process patents for Bell labs. See: http://www.english.uga.edu/hc/unixhistory.html

What goes around, comes around...

Ever heard of anything but Red Hat? Check out: mini linux distros

Recently the Open Channel Foundation did begin making it available free. Open Channel apparently hopes to fund itself by commercializing some software.

Keep in mind that most all land borders are defined by either a water line or a sales line. When the colonists came to the new world it was pretty much... I claim everything from here until it stops. Ever see what the state of Louisiana looked like? The other states/colonies just kinda went on in a line to the west until they hit water.. Last time I checked, no water was on the moon. So I suppose it's all part of the US! *grin*

From here (no google cache)

Taxonomic Details for Namalycastis abiuma
Kingdom Animalia
Phylum Annelida
Class Polychaeta
Order Phyllodocida
Genus Taxonomic Details for Namalycastis abiuma
Kingdom Animalia
Phylum Annelida
Class Polychaeta
Order Phyllodocida
Genus Namalycastis
Species abiuma
Habitats Brackish water marsh, Fresh water marsh
Researcher Dale Bishop, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia

Pardon me if I'm incorrect (it been quite few years since I've taken Biology) but, as you can see, the genus is Namalycastis and the species is abiuma. So the picture of the pink worm should be what we're looking for. The description of the photo lists it as such.

You say that because you don't live there. To those of us who spend significant time in Boston, then perhaps you would understand. I have made Boston the home of my 2004 election campaign, and I have already purchased homes in Massachusetts. Let me tell you that Big Dig is not only the most awful thing to plague humanity in all of world history, but it also will play a direct role in Satan's eventual victory over the powers of good, a victory that will mark the beginning of ten million years of pain and suffering. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, you Mac-using pansy. God, I still hear locals talking about the faggot-infestation that followed that particular MacWorld Expo. Thousands of prancing Mac-faggots who can't wait to get their fat little hands on the latest over-priced under-powered plastic-coated turd that Steve Jobs shat out his manicured asshole! Supposedly almost half of them were obese, unkempt librarians, many of which were found hanging out around Boston pre-school playgrounds, offering children rides on their "special seesaws." Fuck, I would trust a San Francisco gigalo or a Catholic priest around my children before I'd let a Mac user get near them. *shudder* Luckily, since my daughter is female, she's relatively safe from Catholic priests and faggots, but there is no bounds to the perversity of the Mac user.

what's important with these types of news releases is the main idea, not the details, if you want details you'll have to read the journal publication...

-tid242

And I'm sorry, adagioforstrings, but UNC actually had students first.

From your own links: UNC actually started its first building on October 12, 1793, and..."Opened to students on January 15, 1795, The University of North Carolina received its first student, Hinton James of New Hanover County, on February 12."

UGA..."was actually established in 1801 when a committee of the board of trustees selected a land site." No mention of the first class or student. Either way, my math (curtesy of a UNC education) says that UNC had students for six years before Georgia even decided where to locate their campus.

Now, for those of you not in on the UNC/UGA argument, this very same thing has been going on for a couple of hundred years. UGA has the oldest public charter; UNC has the oldest campus and has had students for the longest. We both claim to be the first (and are both right, depending on what you think is the beginning of a university).

I just didn't want any 'dawgs to go confusing the general public and making them think the Tarheels are younger ;)

and, UNC is, of course, the best ;)

I'm afraid UNC is not the original...That would be The University of Georgia, chartered in 1785 as opposed to UNC's 1789.

And UGA is, of course, the best. ;-)

I'm afraid UNC is not the original...That would be The University of Georgia, chartered in 1785 as opposed to UNC's 1789.

And UGA is, of course, the best. ;-)

I have also been working on a similar project.
HERE
Enjoy.

5) Sites which are considered 'good' can be quickly changed to be actually 'bad'. In other words, if you allow "pink fuzzy bunny's home page", after spending 6 months making sure it's not got any bad content and none of the images appear to contain messages, then the next day the owner can upload a picture of fuzzy bunny with a secret message.

See this page (I only learned this yesterday, but it worked a treat). Basically you install a postscript printer driver, then print to file, and you have a postscript file. Open that in GSView and 'file|convert' to PDF. w00p.

The fact of the matter is that preventing contamination is impossible - we have pieces of Mars rock entering our atmosphere all the time. Most bacteria is incredibly hardy - the vacuum of space and heat of re-entry are certainly survivable. Please see this essay, entitled "Estimated Flux of Rocks Bearing Viable Lifeforms Exchanged Between Earth and Mars". Realistically, our primary concern is with accidentally seeding Mars with Terran bacteria - if that happens, we may never know whether or not Mars had any native life.

Other very common mistake is leaving a floppy drive set up as the first booting device, or not having password protected BIOS settings.

With e.g. Debian boot floppies or any other mini Linux and mini Unix distribution you can just insert a floppy, hit reset and wait a while until you got r00t and do whatever you want (like change the real root password in /etc/shadow on the main partition to whatever you want).

I'm talking about it, because it's much easier than trying to write a remote exploit, much easier than writing a local exploit and much easier than actually stealing the whole hardware. It's usually also much easier than social engineering.

It wouldn't be even hard to make a floppy which automatically do something to the system (like adding new users and adding them to every group, changing passwords, reading encrypted passwords for later cracking, leaving backdoors, etc.). When you have such a floppy, you only need few seconds to insert it, hit reset, come back after a minute when everything is done, take your floppy and hit reset again.

You can even prepare this floppy in a way, that when everything is done, your files from the floppy are deleted and "shutdown -r" is run. That way even when someone enters the room before you, he'll only find a normally working system with empty floppy in the drive. The chances are that no one will even go there to see what's wrong if the server was down for a minute and now it's OK, especially if it's a lunch brake or something.

Very dangerous and very easy if you can only go near a computer, and if it can boot the system from the floppy. And I've already seen servers without BIOS passwords and those set to boot in order of floppy,cd,hdd. It's very important and often forgotten issue, it's somewhere between physical and non-physical (logical?) security.

I saw this a couple of days ago. Can you spot the irony?

>The interesting thing will be whether they are a different evolutionary track, the origin of the evolutionary track we're on, or a different branch of the evolutionary track.

They (if by they you refer to the crabs, mussels, and worms) are merely species of crabs, mussels, and worms that at some time in the past became adapted to living in a different environment. They're no different in this respect from any other species.

The article was a little unclear:
;"Now that we have them here, we are studying their rate of primary production (the rate of
;carbon fixation) in that environment, where there is no sunlight and they survive by
;chemosynthesis," Childress told NewsFactor."

Actually the crabs, mussels, and worms do not directly get their energy from the hydrogen sulfide. That's the job of chemoautotrophic bacteria, who are the real freaks. These bacteria use the H2S as their energy source (this is where the 'primary production' happens); they are in turn the base of the 'food chain' in the vent communities. See a NASA page or a page from U of Georgia for more.

I would like to seize this opportunity to cordially invite the pedophile open-sores majority of the slashbot community to go anally molest themselves with a Fat-O-Meater and a Tetrapak.

I would like to seize this opportunity to cordially invite the pedophile open-sores majority of the slashbot
community to go anally molest themselves with a
Fat-O-Meater and a Tetrapak.

I would like to seize this opportunity to cordially invite the racist libertarian majority of the slashbot community to go molest themselves anally with a Fat-O-Meater and a Tetrapak.

Have a nice day.

While I don't believe Tiananmen could be justified, I don't think this could be either. Politics? Sure, land disputes are political, right? Darn that Andrew Jackson!

You can not compare the organized slaughter at Tiananmen Square to the actions of a few frightened National Guardsmen at Kent State.

How do you know those Chinese soldiers weren't frightened? I'd be frightened if I was outnumbered by screaming protesters too. Or are you taking the liberty to imply those farmboys in the PLA are conditioned murderers?

The Federal Government didn't order the attack at Kent State. The Chinese Government ordered the attacks.

I submit exhibit A and exhibit B. Right, different eras and different context.

Students at Kent State were not put in prison for thier actions, while protesters at Tiananmen Square were thrown in prison.

There's different reasons you can get thrown in prison. 1. Arrest 2. Detainment

The National Guard at Kent State didn't send in Armored units to put down the protests, like the Chinese did at Tiananmen Square. Read the text of Deng Xiaoping's speech to the Martial Law Units from June 9th, 1989. http://tsquare.tv/chronology/Deng.html

From what I read (no, not published by the PRC), they had officers try to put down the protests, but when the students refused to move, Deng and company got nervous seeing how the country's inability to put down a protest would influence the world's opinion (trail by television). I wouldn't trust a .tv domain even if it spouted stuff I agreed w/.

Those things, coupled with the Chinese oppression of the Fal Lun Gong, Chirstians, Tibet and the 20-40 million that died because of the Great Leap Foreward, give the rest of the world the right to shake our fingers at the Chinese.

Nice, picking out the choice topics. I'm do the same to justify my desire to shake my fingers at people I don't like either. Just like blaming the government for Hurricane Andrew. OTOH, I'd do my own research about said topics before pointing to them. But it's really easy to ignore that, and imply I did, right? btw, don't forget you can create friends and foes lists on slashdot now.