Not only does he use polling data to do a good job of predicting the races and the control of the US Senate/House (his track record here and a comparison of his model to Nate Silver), but he has, IMHO, excellent explanations of how the campaign managers are thinking and the likely impact of political news.
It is surprising to me that being located in Europe that he 1) cares and 2) is so wired into the US political scene. I hope he continues.
People want to stay with MS Office because the compatibility of other software with the complex OOXML format is not all that good. That locks people into MS Office. The ODF format is less complex and easier to implement, so presumably Microsoft can control how well Office reads and writes ODF files.
If ODF was the standard, then the question would be reversed from "how compatible is the alternative software with OOXML" to "how compatible is MS Office with ODF".
Microsoft understandably does not want to have to answer the second question.
I got one of these adjustable laptop stands. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005VE27R4 and have been fairly happy with it, although I do not use it alot. It is easy to adjust up and down, but I just move or move it out of the way. In the winter putting my wrist on the metal did become uncomfortable as it conducted heat away, so I tucked some cloth under the laptop and over the bottom edge where my wrist touched. This is really a laptop only solution. The price seems to have gone up 50% since I got mine.
I never have tried it in bed but this might be the solution for jcborro.
The feds (US) created the map you want as part of the Federal Stimulus program (NTIA BTOP http://www2.ntia.doc.gov/about)
I am sure they did not get it all, because the carriers did not like to give up this information. They feel that knowledge of dark fiber would be helpful to their competitors but the feds made it a condition for the grants.
They put some of that information on line, although not in the way you want, as the National Broadband Map. I believe they are interested in public input to this map (where do the hills block the wireless signals, how far out does the DSL stop working) http://www.broadbandmap.gov/technology
I think you will find that almost all fiber in public right of way is paid. At least around here, you cannot plow in some fiber along side a state road with paying the DOT and you cannot put fiber into city conduit without paying the city. Now everyone can have their own opinion about what is a fair price for access, but I am sure that the carriers feel that they are paying their fair share for use of public right of way. Still the price to get the permissions lot by lot would have been much much more than what they are paying the local governments (and power companies?).
I think Barcodes are a good idea, and as the grandparent of this comment mentions they could be on a fixed part of the car say the front right corner of the car. Magnetic signs would be reusable, although a white sheet of paper with blue tape holding it on would make it easy to find the barcode in an image. Then when the car trips a light beam at the start/finish line you can take one frame and the barcode will be approximately in the same location. I would argue in favor of 2d codes vs QR codes. If you use 2D barcodes so that the lines are horizontal, then the system could tolerate a fair amount of blur. Since you only need an identifying number for the car the ability of QR codes to code a good deal of data is not needed.
A good starting point for UltraSurf and some of the other options is a consortium of several organizations including the folks behind gTunnel which is at: http://www.internetfreedom.org/
Their web site has not been updated very recently, but I don't know how the individual organizations are doing.
The real target here was the federal stimulus money (NTIA, BTOP) that was being used to create coops in Wisconsin. The Building Community Capacity through Broadband project which would have connected together anchor institutions (city and county governments, libraries, schools, hospitals) and allow them to buy bandwidth wholesale rather than retail. That did not sit too well with some telecom folks and in the press they are saying that the University should not compete with the private sector. Well the University has to get bandwith in most of the state anyway to feed the various Univ of Wisc campuses. So including some school systems in the process makes sense if you believe in efficiency and cost savings. Gov Walker is "open for business" so he does not believe in government efficiency.
WiscNet was, as I understand it a secondary concern, although the telecoms have wanted it to die for a decades. It is the same pattern of schools banding together and riding together on common infrastructure. ATT would like that to go away with WiscNet in favor of Badgernet which they run or even better, from their point of view, to sell everyone T-1 lines retail.
This is the second effort for this. The first successful effort (from ATT's perspective) was to give back $37 million of the same stimulus money (NTIA, BTOP) for a different state run project. The spin there was that the Feds did not want to give the money to a private company. But insiders tell me that it was not the feds but ATT. (
wisconsins-stimulus-rejection-too-many-strings-or-too-much-scrutiny)
And how many kids that did not play Oregon Trail know that people ever got in wagons and had a hard time getting to the West. (Where is the West anyway? Why didn't they just fly or take the bus?) I do not suggest that Oregon Trail was great for teaching history. It was not. But it did teach some history.
Civilization is a better example. I have run programs that used Civilization with close to realistic maps and poor middle school kids. Did they become historians - No. But did they have a better idea of the map of the world and how technology changed with different era's in world history. Well Yea. Did they find it hard to learn. Surprisingly yes.
I guess it depends on where you are, what looks like progress?
Probably not as relevant as the Paparazzi team since they tend to fly straight up and straight down:) But if you are looking for alternative architectures (distributed processing) this might be of interest.
We (DANEnet) did several robotics groups in mandatory summer school a couple of years ago. We started kids off with Robosapiens. That is a controller based pre built robot. This was good for 1-2 sessions. Then we moved them onto the great Robodance program (free software to do visual programming on a pc using a USB wireless remote to control the Robosapiens). Another couple of sessions. Finally we went to Lego Robotics based program.
We lost some kids at each step. The step to Lego Robotics was particularly hard for these kids. One of the best groups was a mix of bilingual and solely Spanish speaking kids. Shades of the undocumented high school students that won a national college robotics competition http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html
Vitamin D deficiency is linked to all kinds of health degradation. So I started taking 2,000 IU a day. Now vitamin D is stored in your body so you can build up concentrations over time. Earlier this year (maybe a year and a half after starting) I started to experience nausea about 15 to 30 minutes after dinner, which is when I took my vitamin D. Looking it up it turns out nausea is one symptom of vitamin D poisoning. I stopped taking vitamin D and the nausea stopped immediately. My wife continues to take that same dose and not to experience any problems so your mileage may vary.
Actually a generator which will generate puzzles at a given level of difficulty is not too hard if you organize the solver as a rule based system (Rule 1: first look to see if there is a square that only allows one number; Rule 2: look for pair of numbers that must exist in a pair of cells{sometimes called hidden pairs} . . . )
After you create the rules that will solve the puzzles you categorize the rules as easy, medium or hard.
Now if you want to create an easy puzzle you start randomly adding in (legal) numbers and each time you try to solve it using only the easy rules. The first time the solving part of the program solves the puzzle you are done. Alternatively you can start with a completed puzzle and remove a number and see if the number you removed is recoverable with the level of rules (easy, medium, hard) that you choose for the final puzzle.
I am working on a Drupal site. Fortunately, I am doing the Web programming so the revision control stuff works for me. It seems that for the content creators it is a bit harder. In the development environment there is going to be a bunch of cruft that you will not want in production, and the production site never sleeps. So what are the best practices for keeping track of new stuff, dumping it out of several tables and then merging it back into the production site.
This article is more topical than most people think because it ties into a current legislative fight about Low Power FM (LPFM) radio.
Partly in response to a legal case in which this same Stephen Dunifer was acquitted from FCC prosecution by pointing out that the FCC had not provided a mechanism for him to get a valid licence, the FCC created a Low Power FM service in 2000. http://www.diymedia.net/feature/micro/f100901.htm describes this process in Michigan and Washington DC. Congress then rushed to gut this service by limiting the number of locations that could get these licenses (by increasing the required spacing in frequency between LPFM stations and other FM stations the third adjacent rule http://www.prometheusradio.org/low_power_radio/bac kground/some_facts_about_low_power_fm.html [at the bottom]). They did this even though FCC tests demonstrated that this was not necessary. As the above link suggests, there are also currently many radio stations that do operate at the closer frequency spacing without problems.
In 2004 a report commissioned by congress as part of the don't-allow-new-stations-we need-more-study legislation was released (Mitre report). This report suggested that the frequency specifications could be relaxed. There are now bills in congress (House Bill 3731, Senate Bill 312) to relax these restrictions. Currently two FCC commissioners (Copps and Adelstein) are traveling around taking public comments abut this and other public issues.
If either the increasing concentration media ownership or the sameness of radio programming bother you, it might be wise to let your congress people know that you care about these issues
Under subsection 7d, the added part may require the program to contain functioning facilities that allow users to obtain copies of the program's Complete Corresponding Source Code. This is intended to enable compatibility with licensing terms that, for example, require modified versions of a program that interacts with users through a network to preserve an opportunity for users to request network transmission of the source code.
I think if you read the article it will remind you that is not the volume of the ocean per ce but the presence of less dense water in the places where currently the water becomes chilled and sinks.
So it is more like this.
1. Temperature warms up. Surface ice in the northern/southern reaches melt. This is something we've been seeing with the shrinking glaciers/nothern ice cap/Antartic icebergs melting.
2. Additional fresh water in the northern latitudes decreases the density of the water which does not sink as it becomes colder. This in turn reduces the south to north current and consequently the transfer of heat to the North.
3. The arctic ice cap grows (maybe dramaticaly by freezing all that less saline water) and the white surface absorbs less sunlight (lowers albedo).
4. With no warm ocean currents and less absorbed sunlight, weather patterns are altered. Cold air that would have been warmed by the ocean currents remain cold.
I think this is the killer reason. The schools can give out cd's with OO (and maybe some other Open Source software) students can take it home and have THE SAME software they are using at school.
This turns the everyone-is-using-Word argument on its head. You can create a micro-environment where the same tools are used, not only in the school, but at home and in other school related organizations (after school, youth centers, etc).
As for Java, that would be fine as well and probably has some similar resources but why start (as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) with a bunch of detail you have to master before you can start getting something done <flame> indeed why get into it at all -- unless you need it </flame>.
This is even better for the the Bells since they have recently gotten the FCC to say they don't have to share any wires with other high speed providers. See this old
slashdot article about the court case. I looked but do not see the reference to the recent FCC ruling. Presently DSL is growing faster than Cable. This type of digital TV might tip the balance back (with the cable folks using their better bandwidth), but it might not since the cable companies seem to be struggling to keep going, rather than to roll out new serivices.
For myself I prefer more variety in the competion, including smaller vendors who will talk to me even
after they sell you services.
Although most people are talking about broadcast, I think this may be important first for the kind of thing Sonic Blue is/was doing with home networks will be even easier - with more vendors.
We are doing exactly this same thing. We run an after-school program for kids without computers at home where they build up a computer from parts, install the operating system, Open Office and as many games as fit on the CD. We get the hardware from a computer recycling company ( Cascade Asset Management) Pentium 200+, the Win98 licences from CompuMentor (now at the less apealing name
DiscountTech) and Open Office from http://www.openoffice.org/" of course.
We do the class in two weeks using 8 afterschool
sessions.
I undoubtably have a bias (but one formed from
working in a similar environment) that 6.0 is WAY better than 5.2. I liked that the 5.2 photo editor was by itself (to the extent anything was by itself in 5.2) rather than included in drawing. But I think that 6.0 (either Star or Open) is generaly much better and we also
install GIMP when we have enough time.
One limitation of OpenOffice vs StarOffice that I have not seen discussed is that the templates are curtailed in OpenOffice - maybe Sun licenced them as well or maybe they were just not in 641 and will be in 1.0
Although it may not meet every need. I have made sample documents in Word with the right styles and saved them as html. This gives you the cascading style sheet that word needs. Then you slap that on the begining of the documents that come out of your XML system (I used a lot of
type tags and then inported the files back into Word. At that point I had a styled Word file.
To my mind the critical thing is to make a link between these policies and the Computer Science Departments so that:
The schools that are doing theoretical work are encouraged to apply their work to open source software (sort of how Berkley created so much software for Unix which then became BSD).
Schools that are focused on teaching system administrators - turn out open source administrators etc.
Local companies could be contracted to do localization for software that needed it.
In this way the local computer infrastructure would be developed/supported. I see the reference to France and Germany but I have the impression that the Linux/Schools connection is occuring more strongly in China although it is not so clear in
this 1999/. story about Linux possibly becoming the official OS in China
and this/. story about Linux in the University is not official.
I would be interested in a follow up on the China situation (or Africa for that matter).
Slashdot Mirror
Not only does he use polling data to do a good job of predicting the races and the control of the US Senate/House (his track record here and a comparison of his model to Nate Silver), but he has, IMHO, excellent explanations of how the campaign managers are thinking and the likely impact of political news.
It is surprising to me that being located in Europe that he 1) cares and 2) is so wired into the US political scene. I hope he continues.
People want to stay with MS Office because the compatibility of other software with the complex OOXML format is not all that good. That locks people into MS Office. The ODF format is less complex and easier to implement, so presumably Microsoft can control how well Office reads and writes ODF files.
If ODF was the standard, then the question would be reversed from "how compatible is the alternative software with OOXML" to "how compatible is MS Office with ODF".
Microsoft understandably does not want to have to answer the second question.
I got one of these adjustable laptop stands. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005VE27R4 and have been fairly happy with it, although I do not use it alot. It is easy to adjust up and down, but I just move or move it out of the way. In the winter putting my wrist on the metal did become uncomfortable as it conducted heat away, so I tucked some cloth under the laptop and over the bottom edge where my wrist touched. This is really a laptop only solution. The price seems to have gone up 50% since I got mine.
I never have tried it in bed but this might be the solution for jcborro.
The feds (US) created the map you want as part of the Federal Stimulus program (NTIA BTOP http://www2.ntia.doc.gov/about)
I am sure they did not get it all, because the carriers did not like to give up this information. They feel that knowledge of dark fiber would be helpful to their competitors but the feds made it a condition for the grants.
They put some of that information on line, although not in the way you want, as the National Broadband Map. I believe they are interested in public input to this map (where do the hills block the wireless signals, how far out does the DSL stop working)
http://www.broadbandmap.gov/technology
I think you will find that almost all fiber in public right of way is paid. At least around here, you cannot plow in some fiber along side a state road with paying the DOT and you cannot put fiber into city conduit without paying the city. Now everyone can have their own opinion about what is a fair price for access, but I am sure that the carriers feel that they are paying their fair share for use of public right of way. Still the price to get the permissions lot by lot would have been much much more than what they are paying the local governments (and power companies?).
I think Barcodes are a good idea, and as the grandparent of this comment mentions they could be on a fixed part of the car say the front right corner of the car. Magnetic signs would be reusable, although a white sheet of paper with blue tape holding it on would make it easy to find the barcode in an image. Then when the car trips a light beam at the start/finish line you can take one frame and the barcode will be approximately in the same location. I would argue in favor of 2d codes vs QR codes. If you use 2D barcodes so that the lines are horizontal, then the system could tolerate a fair amount of blur. Since you only need an identifying number for the car the ability of QR codes to code a good deal of data is not needed.
Ultrasurf was developed to evade the Great Firewall of China. I would not be surprised if Turkey is getting consultation from China. There is a wired article at http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/ff_firewallfighters/
A good starting point for UltraSurf and some of the other options is a consortium of several organizations including the folks behind gTunnel which is at:
http://www.internetfreedom.org/
Their web site has not been updated very recently, but I don't know how the individual organizations are doing.
The real target here was the federal stimulus money (NTIA, BTOP) that was being used to create coops in Wisconsin. The Building Community Capacity through Broadband project which would have connected together anchor institutions (city and county governments, libraries, schools, hospitals) and allow them to buy bandwidth wholesale rather than retail. That did not sit too well with some telecom folks and in the press they are saying that the University should not compete with the private sector. Well the University has to get bandwith in most of the state anyway to feed the various Univ of Wisc campuses. So including some school systems in the process makes sense if you believe in efficiency and cost savings. Gov Walker is "open for business" so he does not believe in government efficiency.
WiscNet was, as I understand it a secondary concern, although the telecoms have wanted it to die for a decades. It is the same pattern of schools banding together and riding together on common infrastructure. ATT would like that to go away with WiscNet in favor of Badgernet which they run or even better, from their point of view, to sell everyone T-1 lines retail.
This is the second effort for this. The first successful effort (from ATT's perspective) was to give back $37 million of the same stimulus money (NTIA, BTOP) for a different state run project. The spin there was that the Feds did not want to give the money to a private company. But insiders tell me that it was not the feds but ATT. ( wisconsins-stimulus-rejection-too-many-strings-or-too-much-scrutiny)
And how many kids that did not play Oregon Trail know that people ever got in wagons and had a hard time getting to the West. (Where is the West anyway? Why didn't they just fly or take the bus?) I do not suggest that Oregon Trail was great for teaching history. It was not. But it did teach some history.
Civilization is a better example. I have run programs that used Civilization with close to realistic maps and poor middle school kids. Did they become historians - No. But did they have a better idea of the map of the world and how technology changed with different era's in world history. Well Yea. Did they find it hard to learn. Surprisingly yes.
I guess it depends on where you are, what looks like progress?
We talked about the California free textbook program And there is some followup
Another open source Avonics system is from the Portland State Aerospace Society. http://psas.pdx.edu/AvionicsTeamHome/
Probably not as relevant as the Paparazzi team since they tend to fly straight up and straight down :) But if you are looking for alternative architectures (distributed processing) this might be of interest.
We (DANEnet) did several robotics groups in mandatory summer school a couple of years ago. We started kids off with Robosapiens. That is a controller based pre built robot. This was good for 1-2 sessions. Then we moved them onto the great Robodance program (free software to do visual programming on a pc using a USB wireless remote to control the Robosapiens). Another couple of sessions. Finally we went to Lego Robotics based program.
We lost some kids at each step. The step to Lego Robotics was particularly hard for these kids. One of the best groups was a mix of bilingual and solely Spanish speaking kids. Shades of the undocumented high school students that won a national college robotics competition http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html
Vitamin D deficiency is linked to all kinds of health degradation. So I started taking 2,000 IU a day. Now vitamin D is stored in your body so you can build up concentrations over time. Earlier this year (maybe a year and a half after starting) I started to experience nausea about 15 to 30 minutes after dinner, which is when I took my vitamin D. Looking it up it turns out nausea is one symptom of vitamin D poisoning. I stopped taking vitamin D and the nausea stopped immediately. My wife continues to take that same dose and not to experience any problems so your mileage may vary.
Actually a generator which will generate puzzles at a given level of difficulty is not too hard if you organize the solver as a rule based system (Rule 1: first look to see if there is a square that only allows one number; Rule 2: look for pair of numbers that must exist in a pair of cells{sometimes called hidden pairs} . . . )
After you create the rules that will solve the puzzles you categorize the rules as easy, medium or hard.
Now if you want to create an easy puzzle you start randomly adding in (legal) numbers and each time you try to solve it using only the easy rules. The first time the solving part of the program solves the puzzle you are done. Alternatively you can start with a completed puzzle and remove a number and see if the number you removed is recoverable with the level of rules (easy, medium, hard) that you choose for the final puzzle.
I am working on a Drupal site. Fortunately, I am doing the Web programming so the revision control stuff works for me. It seems that for the content creators it is a bit harder. In the development environment there is going to be a bunch of cruft that you will not want in production, and the production site never sleeps. So what are the best practices for keeping track of new stuff, dumping it out of several tables and then merging it back into the production site.
This article is more topical than most people think because it ties into a current legislative fight about Low Power FM (LPFM) radio.
Partly in response to a legal case in which this same Stephen Dunifer was acquitted from FCC prosecution by pointing out that the FCC had not provided a mechanism for him to get a valid licence, the FCC created a Low Power FM service in 2000. http://www.diymedia.net/feature/micro/f100901.htm describes this process in Michigan and Washington DC. Congress then rushed to gut this service by limiting the number of locations that could get these licenses (by increasing the required spacing in frequency between LPFM stations and other FM stations the third adjacent rule http://www.prometheusradio.org/low_power_radio/bac kground/some_facts_about_low_power_fm.html [at the bottom]). They did this even though FCC tests demonstrated that this was not necessary. As the above link suggests, there are also currently many radio stations that do operate at the closer frequency spacing without problems.
In 2004 a report commissioned by congress as part of the don't-allow-new-stations-we need-more-study legislation was released (Mitre report). This report suggested that the frequency specifications could be relaxed. There are now bills in congress (House Bill 3731, Senate Bill 312) to relax these restrictions. Currently two FCC commissioners (Copps and Adelstein) are traveling around taking public comments abut this and other public issues.
If either the increasing concentration media ownership or the sameness of radio programming bother you, it might be wise to let your congress people know that you care about these issues
I think if you read the article it will remind you that is not the volume of the ocean per ce but the presence of less dense water in the places where currently the water becomes chilled and sinks.
o llux.nss.nima.mil/NAV_PUBS/SD/pub155/155sec8.pdf winter it is often -20 C/-4 F and with blizzards as often as every 10 days in December and January. YMMV
So it is more like this.
1. Temperature warms up. Surface ice in the northern/southern reaches melt. This is something we've been seeing with the shrinking glaciers/nothern ice cap/Antartic icebergs melting.
2. Additional fresh water in the northern latitudes decreases the density of the water which does not sink as it becomes colder. This in turn reduces the south to north current and consequently the transfer of heat to the North.
3. The arctic ice cap grows (maybe dramaticaly by freezing all that less saline water) and the white surface absorbs less sunlight (lowers albedo).
4. With no warm ocean currents and less absorbed sunlight, weather patterns are altered. Cold air that would have been warmed by the ocean currents remain cold.
5. Climate in London becomes more like the northern part of the Sakhalin penisula (similar Latitude) where in the http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/websites/pollux/p
I think this is the killer reason. The schools can give out cd's with OO (and maybe some other Open Source software) students can take it home and have THE SAME software they are using at school.
This turns the everyone-is-using-Word argument on its head. You can create a micro-environment where the same tools are used, not only in the school, but at home and in other school related organizations (after school, youth centers, etc).
I think the title of this July 05, 2004 article from Groklaw answers alot of your questions SCO Spent $2,414,000 Buying Back Its Own Shares Last Quarter --Sifting Through SCO's 10Q and S3
I was asked this question two months ago and for a home schooled high school student and I said python. Because:
As for Java, that would be fine as well and probably has some similar resources but why start (as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) with a bunch of detail you have to master before you can start getting something done <flame> indeed why get into it at all -- unless you need it </flame>.
This is even better for the the Bells since they have recently gotten the FCC to say they don't have to share any wires with other high speed providers. See this old slashdot article about the court case. I looked but do not see the reference to the recent FCC ruling. Presently DSL is growing faster than Cable. This type of digital TV might tip the balance back (with the cable folks using their better bandwidth), but it might not since the cable companies seem to be struggling to keep going, rather than to roll out new serivices.
For myself I prefer more variety in the competion, including smaller vendors who will talk to me even after they sell you services.
Although most people are talking about broadcast, I think this may be important first for the kind of thing Sonic Blue is/was doing with home networks will be even easier - with more vendors.
We are doing exactly this same thing. We run an after-school program for kids without computers at home where they build up a computer from parts, install the operating system, Open Office and as many games as fit on the CD. We get the hardware from a computer recycling company ( Cascade Asset Management) Pentium 200+, the Win98 licences from CompuMentor (now at the less apealing name DiscountTech) and Open Office from http://www.openoffice.org/" of course. We do the class in two weeks using 8 afterschool sessions.
I undoubtably have a bias (but one formed from working in a similar environment) that 6.0 is WAY better than 5.2. I liked that the 5.2 photo editor was by itself (to the extent anything was by itself in 5.2) rather than included in drawing. But I think that 6.0 (either Star or Open) is generaly much better and we also install GIMP when we have enough time.
One limitation of OpenOffice vs StarOffice that I have not seen discussed is that the templates are curtailed in OpenOffice - maybe Sun licenced them as well or maybe they were just not in 641 and will be in 1.0
type tags and then inported the files back into Word. At that point I had a styled Word file.
To my mind the critical thing is to make a link between these policies and the Computer Science Departments so that:
- The schools that are doing theoretical work are encouraged to apply their work to open source software (sort of how Berkley created so much software for Unix which then became BSD).
- Schools that are focused on teaching system administrators - turn out open source administrators etc.
- Local companies could be contracted to do localization for software that needed it.
In this way the local computer infrastructure would be developed/supported. I see the reference to France and Germany but I have the impression that the Linux/Schools connection is occuring more strongly in China although it is not so clear in this 1999I would be interested in a follow up on the China situation (or Africa for that matter).