Case in point: My 3 year old knows how to use a screwdriver and can easily find screws around the house to take out and put into things. Yesterday I was, for the first time, wishing I had bought those little electrical outlet cover things.
I went to plug in a 3 prong electrical cord (US style) and it wouldn't go in. I decided to get down on my knees and look into the outlet. Turns out there is a tiny screw driven deep into the ground hole part of one of the outlets. Arrg.. We had to have a talk about that.
Anyway, I still haven't taken the time to go find the breaker for this outlet and proceed to disassemble the faceplate/recepticle to a point to see if I can get the screw out.
Now that I think about it...never mind. She would have most like just taken the outlet kiddy protector/cover plastic thing off anyway, then inserted then screw. After she realized her mistake, she would have most likely replaced the plastic cover. Then, it would have really blown my mind.
Oh well. Smart 3 year old, slow dad.
(BTW, I tried using a high-power neodymium magnet against the screw....but, it looks like the screw is aluminum...appears to have come from a disassembled HDD.)
People who use GPS for accurate timing need to be aware that GPS doesn't account for leap-seconds. As such, GPS is ahead of UTC by about 14 seconds. You can read more about the problem here.
It gets more complicated, however, as some receivers correct for this. You can read more about the correction here.
Some have wondered how accurate the time display is on Garmin GPS receivers such as G-12XL, G-II+, and the G-III. Here is an answer provided by Garmin Engineering. This also explains why the GPS can be locked for awhile and still differ from UTC by 11 or 12 seconds. (This answer applies to other brands of GPS receivers as well.)
Start of Garmin quote>
Provided the unit has collected current leap second count from the navigation message, (current leap second difference from GPS time is only broadcast once in a 12.5 minute Nav. message), or current leap second has not changed since the last time the unit collected this variable, the time displayed on the front of the unit should be accurate to within 1 second of UTC.
>end of Garmin Quote
Joe Mehaffey comments: This means that IF your GPS does not have (or does not save) the leap second offset from last time it was operated, your time may be off by perhaps 12 seconds until the complete NAV MESSAGE is received by the GPS. Jack and I have observed that "typically" Garmin GPS receivers display time which is delayed from about 1/2 to 1 second behind UTC. Lowrance GPS receivers are usually between 1 and 2 seconds delayed behind UTC. In both cases, this is a result of the display driver subroutine having low priority as the "GPS internal clock" is within a few nanoseconds of correct.
Similarly, the NMEA time output on the serial link is typically delayed a second or two depending on various factors.
Just over a month ago, Slashdot reported 1000Mb connections (up and down) to the home for $349.99 per month covering all of Chattanooga, TN.
I can order it where I live...and, no contract for this fiber to the home connection either. If you want to hear it from the horses mouth, read it here.
Also, I discovered that by adding a home phone (delivered via the same fiber) to that quote, the total price actually drops to $317.03 per month.
I have no personal affiliation with EPB, but I do think it is uber-cool that I could upgrade to 1Gb by making a phone call and paying [a lot] more each month. Their 30Mb up/down for $57.99 is enough for me.:)
I get the joke, but it is also a bit interesting to consider this seriously:
So, how much does it cost to maintain a horse?
Food/grain
If not grain, how much acreage is required to have the horse(s) mainly subsist from the naturally occurring grasses?
How much will that acreage cost in property taxes?
What about local zoning ordnances that disallow "farm" animals?
Vet costs/medical care/medicine/ (don't want my horses getting ticks/flees/etc)
What about shoeing?
Barn, infrastructure to support proper care when temperatures drop/bad weather, etc.
Speaking of care, how much time to spend brushing, cleaning, etc? This is an animal with a personality, you know. Needs some regular attention if you want it to listen/behave when you decide to go out.
I am just guessing, but doesn't sound real practical right now...the economy would have to really really tank bad to make these even seem slightly reasonable.
However, I do like your idea of allowing youth to be doing something useful. Shoveling horse apples is the kind of thing that will cause a kid to want to pay attention in school so that he doesn't have to do that for the rest of his life...unless he likes it...then, more power to him.
...is more compute power, memory and disk than the Cray-2 I did my dissertation work on.
yes yes, but could you actually do your dissertation work on your droid today?
<rant> I have heard many people claim things like, "my wristwatch has more power than a supercomputer in the 60's that took up an entire floor of the building". The next question to ask is, what did that computer that took so much space do? The response is something along the lines of, "it ran the payroll for 190k employees." I then ask if their wristwatch can run the payroll for 190k employees. Then it dawns on them that the old systems of yesteryear weren't quite so simple and trivial. </rant>
Dude! Lemme guess....your "secret" non-standard ssh port is 2242.;)
don't worry, you secret is safe with us!
All joking aside, thanks for posting the iptables rules! I plan to add these rules in addition to fail2ban, ssh riding on a high-port, and certificate based authentication...oh, and direct root logins are also not permitted on my boxen. Long live su/sudo
This is why I moved the wii, dvd, receiver/amp down low. We allow, and encourage, our 2 year old switch out dvds, adjust volume, etc. We went from having a upset/frustrated child (due to wanting to help and be involved) to having a child that is careful and loves to help by letting the child be involved and help. When we sit down to watch a DVD, the little one ejects the carsole, drops in the proper DVD, with it oriented correctly, pushes the carosole back in, and turns off the overhead lights: all this started at about 20 months of age.
With the DVDs, the worst we have had to deal with is the finger prints (which can be cleaned very easily in the sink with some dawn liquid dish soap and warm water).
I feel it is better that kids be given the opportunity to learn as much as they desire as young as possible, provided they aren't risking serious injury to themselves or others....or aren't breaking stuff needlessly. This concept is also why we purchased some cheap plastic wine goblets (for drinking apple juice/water). If they get dropped, no biggy. But at the same time, they look like grown-up glassware and thereby can teach how to be careful and respect nice things.
This TED Talk entitled, 5 Dangerous things for kids really captures the idea I am trying to convey. I know that not all kids have the focus and attention to detail that is necessary for interacting with a home entertainment center, but for those that can, they should not be stifled.
Well, maybe they just decided that it is time for you to drink more Ovaltine. (ie: MS closes the old service out, planning that you will buy a new xbox)
Carrier Wave (Morse code) would be way more useful than packet for rescue work. The only issue is that the splunkers would need to learn it. CW is a simple on/off sequence. It travels far, and is understandable even with a noisy signal.
You might consider reading a bit about PSK31 packet as it is much lower bandwidth than CW. The clear advantage of CW is that you can use a "transmitter" that doesn't require electronics. ie: a rock banging against another rock.
I am giving up the mod points from this thread by posting, but thought you might be interested in something else:
Forget both CW and RTTY. Use PSK31. It uses less RF frequency bandwidth than CW and is a quite common modulation on HF (low frequencies such as 1.838.15 MHz/160meters) right now.
There is also a version that includes error correction: QPSK
PSK31 uses 16 times less transmit power than a CW station.
The difference between a CW filter of 500 Hz and the bandwidth of PSK31 of 31 Hz (10*log(500/31) db = 12 db) is 12 db, which demonstrates that a CW transmitter must transmit 16 times more power than a PSK31 transmitter to achieve the same signal to noise ratio. Therefore, a PSK31 station can operate at 16 times less power than a CW station.
There is also a slower implementation that is less prone to interference; these versions operate at 10 and 5 baud (PSK10 and PSK05, respectively). Seems very slow, but for simple critical communications, there are fast enough.
Linuxrocks123: what do you consider "fairly moderate sales tax"?
Case in point, Cleveland, TN (just north east of Chattanooga, TN) has a 10.25% sales tax. The local municipality decided to add 1% to cover basic infrastructure improvements such as roads to the already high 9.25% statewide sales tax.
The good side of living in Tennessee is that there is no state income tax and low real estate property taxes. So, it is a great place to earn a living, as long as you don't buy a lot of stuff.
Oh, and that 10.25% tax applies to food purchases too; even groceries.
Slashdot Mirror
The old joke was that Ubuntu is Swahili for "can't install Debian". I may even have heard it here.
Great quote! Thanks for sharing. It made my day!
It is also like kid-proofing your house. Don't. The kid will get some bumps and that is how you learn: by failing.
I agree with you; the scrapes and falls are a long-term benefit to the child, but it is rarely a short-term benefit to the parent.
And, if you haven't seen it, this is a great TED talk.
Case in point: My 3 year old knows how to use a screwdriver and can easily find screws around the house to take out and put into things. Yesterday I was, for the first time, wishing I had bought those little electrical outlet cover things.
I went to plug in a 3 prong electrical cord (US style) and it wouldn't go in. I decided to get down on my knees and look into the outlet. Turns out there is a tiny screw driven deep into the ground hole part of one of the outlets. Arrg.. We had to have a talk about that.
Anyway, I still haven't taken the time to go find the breaker for this outlet and proceed to disassemble the faceplate/recepticle to a point to see if I can get the screw out.
Now that I think about it...never mind. She would have most like just taken the outlet kiddy protector/cover plastic thing off anyway, then inserted then screw. After she realized her mistake, she would have most likely replaced the plastic cover. Then, it would have really blown my mind.
Oh well. Smart 3 year old, slow dad.
(BTW, I tried using a high-power neodymium magnet against the screw....but, it looks like the screw is aluminum ...appears to have come from a disassembled HDD.)
> Good analogy, and I second that.
Agreed! However, can you convert this into a car analogy? ;)
Dude, your GPS receiver is 14 seconds off!
People who use GPS for accurate timing need to be aware that GPS doesn't account for leap-seconds. As such, GPS is ahead of UTC by about 14 seconds. You can read more about the problem here.
It gets more complicated, however, as some receivers correct for this. You can read more about the correction here.
Some have wondered how accurate the time display is on Garmin GPS receivers such as G-12XL, G-II+, and the G-III. Here is an answer provided by Garmin Engineering. This also explains why the GPS can be locked for awhile and still differ from UTC by 11 or 12 seconds. (This answer applies to other brands of GPS receivers as well.)
Start of Garmin quote>
Provided the unit has collected current leap second count from the navigation message, (current leap second difference from GPS time is only broadcast once in a 12.5 minute Nav. message), or current leap second has not changed since the last time the unit collected this variable, the time displayed on the front of the unit should be accurate to within 1 second of UTC.
>end of Garmin Quote
Joe Mehaffey comments:
This means that IF your GPS does not have (or does not save) the leap second offset from last time it was operated, your time may be off by perhaps 12 seconds until the complete NAV MESSAGE is received by the GPS. Jack and I have observed that "typically" Garmin GPS receivers display time which is delayed from about 1/2 to 1 second behind UTC. Lowrance GPS receivers are usually between 1 and 2 seconds delayed behind UTC. In both cases, this is a result of the display driver subroutine having low priority as the "GPS internal clock" is within a few nanoseconds of correct.
Similarly, the NMEA time output on the serial link is typically delayed a second or two depending on various factors.
Man, I haven't had any issues with ATI either, since about 2004 when I decided to go with nVidia. [ducks!]
What, then, does common carrier mean?
OS X is Mach, not BSD
sorta. OS X is both Mach and BSD.
The kernel is Mach, the OS is based on BSD (net and free).
Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X#History
Just over a month ago, Slashdot reported 1000Mb connections (up and down) to the home for $349.99 per month covering all of Chattanooga, TN.
I can order it where I live...and, no contract for this fiber to the home connection either. If you want to hear it from the horses mouth, read it here.
Also, I discovered that by adding a home phone (delivered via the same fiber) to that quote, the total price actually drops to $317.03 per month.
I have no personal affiliation with EPB, but I do think it is uber-cool that I could upgrade to 1Gb by making a phone call and paying [a lot] more each month. Their 30Mb up/down for $57.99 is enough for me. :)
I get the joke, but it is also a bit interesting to consider this seriously:
So, how much does it cost to maintain a horse?
Food/grain
If not grain, how much acreage is required to have the horse(s) mainly subsist from the naturally occurring grasses?
How much will that acreage cost in property taxes?
What about local zoning ordnances that disallow "farm" animals?
Vet costs/medical care/medicine/ (don't want my horses getting ticks/flees/etc)
What about shoeing?
Barn, infrastructure to support proper care when temperatures drop/bad weather, etc.
Speaking of care, how much time to spend brushing, cleaning, etc? This is an animal with a personality, you know. Needs some regular attention if you want it to listen/behave when you decide to go out.
I am just guessing, but doesn't sound real practical right now...the economy would have to really really tank bad to make these even seem slightly reasonable.
However, I do like your idea of allowing youth to be doing something useful. Shoveling horse apples is the kind of thing that will cause a kid to want to pay attention in school so that he doesn't have to do that for the rest of his life...unless he likes it...then, more power to him.
Interesting thought at 2am.
...is more compute power, memory and disk than the Cray-2 I did my dissertation work on.
yes yes, but could you actually do your dissertation work on your droid today?
<rant>
I have heard many people claim things like, "my wristwatch has more power than a supercomputer in the 60's that took up an entire floor of the building". The next question to ask is, what did that computer that took so much space do? The response is something along the lines of, "it ran the payroll for 190k employees." I then ask if their wristwatch can run the payroll for 190k employees. Then it dawns on them that the old systems of yesteryear weren't quite so simple and trivial.
</rant>
mod parent up. grandparent is wrong.
;) Lady Java
my fingers still occasionally, start to type http://altavista.digital.com/ when my brain wants results from something that isn't google.
You are wrong. The car is going with the wind...in the same direction as the wind. ie: downwind faster than the wind.
+5 funny, indeed!
I have heard said a number of times that the pilot is always the first one to the crash site.
For the love of moderation, will somebody please mod this the parent to +5 Funny/insightful!!!
That comment is best I have read all week...you actually made me laugh out loud.
Dude! Lemme guess....your "secret" non-standard ssh port is 2242. ;)
don't worry, you secret is safe with us!
All joking aside, thanks for posting the iptables rules! I plan to add these rules in addition to fail2ban, ssh riding on a high-port, and certificate based authentication...oh, and direct root logins are also not permitted on my boxen. Long live su/sudo
fail2ban also handles other stuff too...like apache failed password attempts, etc.
Yes, it is log scraping, but, the log scraping takes place within a second of the log entry occurs. With that said, fail2ban uses iptables underneath.
If you care to know.
This is why I moved the wii, dvd, receiver/amp down low. We allow, and encourage, our 2 year old switch out dvds, adjust volume, etc. We went from having a upset/frustrated child (due to wanting to help and be involved) to having a child that is careful and loves to help by letting the child be involved and help. When we sit down to watch a DVD, the little one ejects the carsole, drops in the proper DVD, with it oriented correctly, pushes the carosole back in, and turns off the overhead lights: all this started at about 20 months of age.
With the DVDs, the worst we have had to deal with is the finger prints (which can be cleaned very easily in the sink with some dawn liquid dish soap and warm water).
I feel it is better that kids be given the opportunity to learn as much as they desire as young as possible, provided they aren't risking serious injury to themselves or others....or aren't breaking stuff needlessly. This concept is also why we purchased some cheap plastic wine goblets (for drinking apple juice/water). If they get dropped, no biggy. But at the same time, they look like grown-up glassware and thereby can teach how to be careful and respect nice things.
This TED Talk entitled, 5 Dangerous things for kids really captures the idea I am trying to convey. I know that not all kids have the focus and attention to detail that is necessary for interacting with a home entertainment center, but for those that can, they should not be stifled.
Just by $0.02.
Well, maybe they just decided that it is time for you to drink more Ovaltine. (ie: MS closes the old service out, planning that you will buy a new xbox)
For those of you that might not get the reference, here is a video clip that just came to mind: Secret circle - decoder ring scene from "A Christmas Story"
Interesting insight! Thanks for pointing that out.
Carrier Wave (Morse code) would be way more useful than packet for rescue work. The only issue is that the splunkers would need to learn it. CW is a simple on/off sequence. It travels far, and is understandable even with a noisy signal.
You might consider reading a bit about PSK31 packet as it is much lower bandwidth than CW. The clear advantage of CW is that you can use a "transmitter" that doesn't require electronics. ie: a rock banging against another rock.
I posted a comment with more detail on PSK31 earlier see here: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1531648&cid=30977832
I am giving up the mod points from this thread by posting, but thought you might be interested in something else:
Forget both CW and RTTY. Use PSK31. It uses less RF frequency bandwidth than CW and is a quite common modulation on HF (low frequencies such as 1.838.15 MHz/160meters) right now.
There is also a version that includes error correction: QPSK
Here is a comparison between RTTY and PSK31: http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/psk31/index.html
PSK31 uses 16 times less transmit power than a CW station.
The difference between a CW filter of 500 Hz and the bandwidth of PSK31 of 31 Hz (10*log(500/31) db = 12 db) is 12 db, which demonstrates that a CW transmitter must transmit 16 times more power than a PSK31 transmitter to achieve the same signal to noise ratio. Therefore, a PSK31 station can operate at 16 times less power than a CW station.
Cite: http://www.larkfield.org/pdf/psk31.pdf
There is also a slower implementation that is less prone to interference; these versions operate at 10 and 5 baud (PSK10 and PSK05, respectively). Seems very slow, but for simple critical communications, there are fast enough.
Here is what PSK31 sounds like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PSK31_sample.ogg
Ran across PSK31 a few months ago and was fascinated by the ingenious insight put forth in the specification.
Just thought you might want to know...
Linuxrocks123: what do you consider "fairly moderate sales tax"?
Case in point, Cleveland, TN (just north east of Chattanooga, TN) has a 10.25% sales tax. The local municipality decided to add 1% to cover basic infrastructure improvements such as roads to the already high 9.25% statewide sales tax.
The good side of living in Tennessee is that there is no state income tax and low real estate property taxes. So, it is a great place to earn a living, as long as you don't buy a lot of stuff.
Oh, and that 10.25% tax applies to food purchases too; even groceries.