Slashdot Mirror

As a newbie sysadmin, I feel I'm living in an Infocom adventure for some reason. Here's a write-up of my work day about a week ago.

Using this illustration and my trusty piece of paper straight edge, I estimate the long axis of the orbit to be 21000 AU and the minor axis to be 16000 AU. Using Ramunjan's Approximation for the circumference of the elliptical orbit and converting to light years, I guesstimate the circumference of the orbit to be ~1.99 (call it 2) light years.

For a 12 year orbital period this means that the orbiting black hole is AVERAGING 1/6c (~49965km/sec, call it 50k km/sec)... meaning at periquaserion it's really booking! Much faster than The Dash!

Tom.

Well, actually most models I've seen move up and to the left until turnoff. I was not all that happy with the movie because when you set it to one solar mass if givens the wrong luminosity and lifetime but it does get the basics of the evolutionary track. Here is another link that looks like what I remember from grad school, though without references http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/122/feb23/LMS.htm l. At higher mass what you say may be true. Fig. 10.3 in this link http://www.astro.utu.fi/~cflynn/Stars/l10.html shows a 5 solar mass star behaving as you describe.

My mistake was getting the direction of the axis wrong, something every one of my teachers has warned me about.

Discipline is not on Three of a Perfect Pair. It is on Discipline.

Of The Toaster Story?

http://staff.cs.utu.fi/staff/juha.kivijarvi/story. txt

But I'm a purist when it comes to software design. Creeping featurism is a BAD THING. Just look at Microsoft Office.

The university through which my own university's connectivity is provided, has quite a hefty firewall setup, with the capacity to classify traffic based on content rather than port usage. They then later used this to setup traffic shaping and limit p2p activity to a mere fraction of what it was before.

As the hotlinking whore I am, I will just link to their week-long sampling of traffic, which shows that BitTorrent accounted for 44% of outgoing traffic. This is before traffic shaping. No graphs of after-traffic shaping has been provided (yet).

In: http://www.cc.utu.fi/verkko/maarat/sisaan.png
Out: http://www.cc.utu.fi/verkko/maarat/ulos.png

Translation:
Muut = Other
Rest should be self-explanatory.

The university through which my own university's connectivity is provided, has quite a hefty firewall setup, with the capacity to classify traffic based on content rather than port usage. They then later used this to setup traffic shaping and limit p2p activity to a mere fraction of what it was before.

As the hotlinking whore I am, I will just link to their week-long sampling of traffic, which shows that BitTorrent accounted for 44% of outgoing traffic. This is before traffic shaping. No graphs of after-traffic shaping has been provided (yet).

In: http://www.cc.utu.fi/verkko/maarat/sisaan.png
Out: http://www.cc.utu.fi/verkko/maarat/ulos.png

Translation:
Muut = Other
Rest should be self-explanatory.

Did you know Wagner was an Anarchist?
http://users.utu.fi/hansalmi/anarc.html/
http://www.lucidcafe.com/lucidcafe/library/96may/w agner.html/
http://consumerinfo.tultur.com/-/B0000AZW7O/The-Tr istan-Chord/

Der Ring des Nibelungen, the other ring story.

Mittens YES vs. Mittens NO limits the confounding variables, but they have to allot for time spent on mitten-interaction, hence their caveat.

They've stopped auctioning stuff in 98, but the website is still available at http://com.utu.fi/huutokauppa/ (only in Finnish, sorry)

University of Turku has had an online aucion server for 10 years or so. They used to e.g. auction all their old computer gear, instead of throwing them away. It was pretty popular, although I think they have taken the service offline now.

• The Lambda Library for C++, last updated May 2000.
• FC++: Functional Programming in C++, last updated July 2001.
• FACT!, last updated September 2001.

Kitchen sink syndrome: There are a lot of features in STL, and to use some of them you need functors, etc. Sometimes it's just easier to read if you use a normal for loop instead of using for_each, etc.

This is a known problem in the STL. As some gurus have put it, "STL is not STL enough." What that means is that the STL falls short of using the full power of templates. Check out the Boost bind library (and later, the Lambda Library) for a solution to the for_each problem.

verbose type syntax: When you use the containers, like (say) std::vector, you have to declare your iterators as:

std::vector::iterator i;

If you change to a std::list container, you'll have to change your declarations. Of course, you can mitigate that by using typedefs, and then you only have to change the typedef, but it can still get a bit wordy.

typedef makes this a non-issue. I find the "wordiness" a nice form of in-code documentation.

unexpected results: Understand the difference between remove() and erase() in the containers.

It's unfair to label this "unexpected," but you're right in that knowledge of the API is important. As it is for all libraries.

The benefits of using STL are wonderful. If you write your custom containers/streams/etc. using the STL interface, you can seamlessly use the algorithms portion of the library.

This is the real power of the STL. IMHO too many people concentrate on "containers of X." This goes doubly for the C++ template engine as a whole.

I recommend reading the first part of Generic Programming and the STL. It'll help you undestand the thinking behind the design.

Then get Modern C++ Design , join the Boost mailing list and take it to the next level.

The STL is great. Some of the stuff coming in the next library standard revision is even better. The stuff in Boost is outstanding.

The biggest problem I have had with the STL is convincing people to use it. The available implementations could be better (smaller, more template specialization, etc.) but the savings in programmer time is well worth the slight cost.

However, for C++ check out The Lambda Library, it's an extension to STL that, among other things, blows my mind.

I'd be more worried about the tendency of some universities to build strong firewalls around their networks that filter out all incoming traffic, thus preventing the use of any private servers and peer-to-peer clients of students as well as researchers.

Our university did this, which has annoyed especially many computer science students. For me, it closed down my largeish website, together with many CGI programs for research (such as a data equalizer for neural net research) and personal purposes.

I wrote a long complaint (in Finnish sorry) about the problem, but since most people don't need (or don't know they need) the service, they don't care. The students still can put up their web page to a poorly administered and always outdated main server, which doesn't have any DB or other softwares, and has very severe restrictions on disk space (on the order of 10 megs while I'd need some 10 gigs).

I see this also as a serious threat to the development of new Internet services. If you look at most of the existing Internet technologies (http, nntp, smtp, bind...), they were all created in universities as "gray research", often by students. In a tightly firewalled Internet, they might never have made it out.

Sure, researchers and deparments of our university can theoretically have their own servers, if the department's head takes personal official responsibility and the department officially allocates money for the upkeep. This means absolute ban for almost all "gray research" projects (often part of larger projects.)

In our case, firewalling was explained with need for tighter security. However, an easy-to-use unofficial port registration would have solved most of the security problems. It's difficult to say what's the real reason; perhaps over-enthusiasm for "high-end security tech", or perhaps just low interest to administer the system - if the net isn't used it doesn't cause so much work, right?

Oh, and we pay for our connections, although they are partly subvented. Well, it might even be profitable for the university. (Note that studying doesn't cost anything here.)

I like this one better.
--

...or if it doesn't, we'll soon find out. The results might be funny, shattered pieces of rats on the floor.

http://magi.yok.utu.fi/~magi/kuvia/series/display. cgi/ratputer.ser?height=768 and http://magi.yok.utu.fi/~magi/kuvia/series/display. cgi/ratputer.ser?current=1&height=768

Luckily, I had to replace just the ground wire and the IDE cable, as most other wires are useless anyways (who needs a reset button?). Also the processor's cooler fan wire was cut, but I couldn't figure where it should be connected. Luckily, the processor runs very cool without it, so I guess the cooler is there just to give an impression of a powerful processor?

(The computer in the pictures is now the web server serving the pictures, so please don't slashdot the poor old non-cooled processor too much... )

http://magi.yok.utu.fi/~magi/kuvia/series/display. cgi/ratputer.ser?height=768 and http://magi.yok.utu.fi/~magi/kuvia/series/display. cgi/ratputer.ser?current=1&height=768

Luckily, I had to replace just the ground wire and the IDE cable, as most other wires are useless anyways (who needs a reset button?). Also the processor's cooler fan wire was cut, but I couldn't figure where it should be connected. Luckily, the processor runs very cool without it, so I guess the cooler is there just to give an impression of a powerful processor?

(The computer in the pictures is now the web server serving the pictures, so please don't slashdot the poor old non-cooled processor too much... )

There is already some solution for this. See tuples here.

Szo

http://magi.yok.utu.fi/~magi/kuvia/series/display. cgi/aurora.ser?height=768

They were taken with Casio QV-3000EX/Ir digital camera. Unfortunately there's no serial or USB driver for Linux for the camera, so I have to boot to the damned winshit to download the pics (it's actually the only thing I use it for). It would be great if the USB storage driver guys or gPhoto guys would get a driver working at last.

The first panorama was made with the Casio Panorama program; it works under WINE just fine. Two panoramas were done with GIMP. Other pics were brightened with xv. The despecle filter of GIMP helps a little with noisy pictures, but perhaps not enough.

I chose Casio QV-3000 especially for its bright lens (F/2.0) and long exposure time (60s), which are important for astrophotography.

Some sounds of the owl which I recorded from the movie are here:

http://magi.yok.utu.fi/~magi/foo/bubo-r2d2.mp3

The similarity is striking! There were also some other very similar themes between the BotT and Star Wars. I don't remember the movie too well anymore, but you definitely should watch it. The characters and themes were very "starwarsy". Or...perhaps we should say that Star Wars was very battle-of-the-titanous. I think there was some obiwankenobish character there (you can hear his voice on the short mp3 above). And princess Andromeda was turned to princess Leia, of course. And they laughed in a very similar manner.

The robotic owl was dropped in a stream and rescued, it was damaged during the final combat, etc. It behaved very much like R2D2: a funny and 'cute' character.

This means that I can't even publish them in my home computer, because it is connected to the Internet through our university. (I'm actually not even allowed to give user accounts to non-university people - which would clearly mean also family members...on a Windows machine there obviously wouldn't be such restrictions...)

Since I had no other server in Finland where I could relocate the drugs information pages, they now reside at Lycaeum.

The university apparently is allowed to censor the publications of its students and researchers, and of persons who pay money for their Internet connection.

I have met similar problems as an administrator of ftp.funet.fi, one of the historically most significant FTP servers. It is maintained by FUNet (Finnish University Network). They also banned keeping drugs information there. ftp.funet.fi is funded by the Ministry of Education, and the administrators feared of cuts in funding, if it were to become public knowledge that the MoE is funding drugs information.

Disclaimer: I am personally not a user of any illicit drugs, nor do I recommend their use to anyone. I might personally have some interest in medical use of marihuana, and perhaps also in recreational use of marihuana and some other drugs. I definitely think that the current prohibition laws of many drugs are bad, because they themselves make drugs much worse thing than they would otherwise be.

Censorship is baad, o'kay?

This means that I can't even publish them in my home computer, because it is connected to the Internet through our university. (I'm actually not even allowed to give user accounts to non-university people - which would clearly mean also family members...on a Windows machine there obviously wouldn't be such restrictions...)

Since I had no other server in Finland where I could relocate the drugs information pages, they now reside at Lycaeum.

The university apparently is allowed to censor the publications of its students and researchers, and of persons who pay money for their Internet connection.

I have met similar problems as an administrator of ftp.funet.fi, one of the historically most significant FTP servers. It is maintained by FUNet (Finnish University Network). They also banned keeping drugs information there. ftp.funet.fi is funded by the Ministry of Education, and the administrators feared of cuts in funding, if it were to become public knowledge that the MoE is funding drugs information.

Disclaimer: I am personally not a user of any illicit drugs, nor do I recommend their use to anyone. I might personally have some interest in medical use of marihuana, and perhaps also in recreational use of marihuana and some other drugs. I definitely think that the current prohibition laws of many drugs are bad, because they themselves make drugs much worse thing than they would otherwise be.

Censorship is baad, o'kay?

Funny thing about Finland is that you can't pay your daily groceries with checks anymore here. Personally I find direct money transfers from online banks much more reliable than using my credit card online. God only knows what kind of MS servers each netstore is using, I'd rather use the banks IT to handle my money and personal data.
I hate money as we used to know it! ;-) -- users.utu.fi/juhehe