Ditto. I'm a huge fan of Ron Paul, but I swear some of his supporters are trying to deliberate annoy people away from the campaign. It's the "geek syndrome", well known here on Slashdot. Like a Debian advocate at a Redhat shareholder's meeting. You would rather make a point than to make friends.
But, why would I want to go to a Heathen shareholder's meeting?;)
Seriously, I think I know what you mean about "geek syndrome." A lot of us do have a tendency to see some issues as "my way is 100% correct, and any other way is 100% wrong." Whether it is Linux vs. all other kernels, or vi vs. all other editors, or PPC vs. all other architectures, we tend to think that our own choice is perfect, and that any reasonable person will agree with us if only we bash them over the head with enough facts to support our perspective. Lord knows I've done it often enough.
The great thing about the fellow posting all the video links is that, since he is at least enough of a geek to spend time posting to slashdot, he probably won't hold a grudge against me for being a dick and replying to a bunch of his posts. He's much more likely to take it as a data point, and will now try to keep conscious track of how many times he brings up Ron Paul in any given context so that he can try to avoid annoying people as badly. If he was a mundane instead of a geek, he'd just get pissy and defensive and start trolling me relentlessly without learning anything.:) We aren't very good at picking up on subtle clues for behavior, but us geeks usually manage to take clear advice gracefully!
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
Meh, I'm though half of these posts, I'll give up now.
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
This is taking far more time than I had hoped. Of course, when I started, I hadn't realised just how many times you had posted the damned video links.
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
Man, the "slow down cowboy" message is starting to get really annoying as I try to respond to all of your video posts.
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
I have to wonder how patient you are to have spent so much time posting these videos. I mean, slashdot will only allow you to post so quickly, and you have managed almost 20 posts in this discussion so far...
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
Of course, in responding to your many video links, I'll need to change my wording slightly, because duplicate comments are forbidden.
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
And, I'll slightly change my wording every time I post this response, so that I can avoid the duplicate comment block, just like you did the many times you posted your video link.
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
I work for an ad serving company and most of the ads we serve are in iframe elements. The growing popularity of script elements (they seem to be used for most third-party ads now) confounds me. Generally, I'm continually surprised at how much control over the user experience most websites are willing to give to ad serving companies.
One curious perk of the popularity of script advertising is that by using noscript, I'm often unaware of ads that are supposed to be on a page. It isn't that I'm fanatical about blocking ads. I mean, I don't particularly like them. I'm much more fanatical about hating Javascript! Consequently, I'll occasionally hear people complain about the ads on a particular site, and simply be confused because even though I don't do anything to block the ads, I never even knew I was missing out on them.
Technically correct and wrong at the same time. EM64T has a kludge in the way that memory is addressed. The EM64T chips cannot access memory above 4GB without using pointers.
Could you clarify that at all? I'm not the end-all, be-all expert on these things, but I do know enough to be sure that what you wrote is so not-correct as to not even be wrong...
Pointers really only matter from a relatively high-level software perspective. From a low level hardware perspective, you can either say that pointers don't exist, or that all memory is accessed via pointers. The distinction of pointer vs. some other conceptual model for accessing data (such as Java) just doesn't exist at that level. Consequently, talking about needing to use pointers to access memory above 4 GB is like trying to decide if a Senator from Alaska rambling about the Internet smells more like cyan of yellow. You can certainly say he doesn't smell very yellow, and be somewhat correct, but the statement carries no information.
I question your numbers. Using current launch capabilities your figure is way too low. Personally, I'm not too interested in NY to LA. I'm more interested in NY to London or Sydney. For that you're actually going to have to hit orbit. SpaceX's Falcon 1 is the world's lowest cost per flight to orbit of a production rocket. A standard Falcon 1 mission is $7 million.
Now, explain to me why you need to go into orbit to get from one point on Earth to another? If you hit orbit, then you need to actively fight your way back down, so it's probably just a silly waste of resources to enter orbit for Earth-Earth transit when a ballistic trajectory will do fine. I won't say I know just what a NY to Sydney trip would be in a practical transport rocket, but I imagine that it wouldn't need to be seven million dollars.
"So far, the researchers have achieved power densities of 1.5 kilowatts per kilogram in the supercapacitor version and tested it over 100 cycles of discharge and recharge, well short of the million or so typical for current commercial capacitors."
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but that just refers to charge/discharge rate, rather than storage capacity, right? I mean, they don't say how long it can sustain 1.5 kilowatts. If it can put out 1.5 kw for a femtosecond, that's naturally less significant than if it could put out 1.5 kw for a second, or a minute, or an hour, etc. The article didn't seem to have any reference to farads or watt-hours that I noticed.
>There is a saying amongst psychologists that at some point, each must come up with a reason why humans are fundamentally different from the other animals, only for someone to eventually prove them wrong.
I accept your challenge!
"Humans are fundamentally different from other animals, because we can travel into space using only tools we built."
Plenty of species can travel into space using only tools that we built.
And, are you saying that humans suddenly became fundamentally different in the 50's, but were basically just ordinary creatures before then?
If a bank's website - any website, really - is dependant on the presense of certain fonts or the use of certain font sizes in order to be useful, the designer needs to be take out and severely beaten.
I Agree! But, I think that when you say "severely," that word needs to be in 24 point bold italic print in order to get the point across more precisely.
I am really sick of the following two terms, and they seem mostly confined to slashdot (NONE of my gaming friends outside of/. have even heard them): AAA Title, and SKU. The former just sounds stupid. Oh noes, AAA? What about AAAAAAAA?! AAA? Like, the battery size?
I encountered such terms many years ago in game *development* circles. You know, the guys who actually make the games. When I encountered the terms years ago, they were clearly widespread and well known to the guys in that field. Personally, I really don't care if gamers are afraid of words. They have a well understood meaning among the people who need to use them. What do you want people to do instead of use nice short concise terms? Use a full sentence explaining what they mean every time they want to use the word? That only matters when communicating with a layman who is too lazy to look up the term. If they get scared off, good riddance.:)
Are there B titles? O titles? S titles? So could there be a BOOBS title? (Would that be those volleyball games?)
Yes, No, No, See Tomb Raider or BMXXX or Leisure Suit Larry.
Both of these terms have come around somewhat recently, and it irks me. It reminds me of computer terminology thrown out there on bad TV by an idiot: "It has Megagigs!"
No they haven't. You've just started encountering them recently.
Ubuntu is more Mac-like than this. This is the perfect example of just plain not getting it. Copying a general layout isn't good enough.
"Mac-Like" in this context refers chiefly to the fact that programming for this is very similar to Cocoa development on Mac OS X. The guts are quite Mac-like compared to writing for Qt/KDE or GTK/Gnome.
OTOH, I expect that your criticism is quite valid. You may want to consider contributing some art to the project, or submitting patches to make it more aesthetic. Personally, the way it looks doesn't bother me, but don't let my bland tastes stop you from scratching your itch!:)
A passport is required to get a TOURIST visa, which does not allow you to take up residence or work. You're right, they don't want his "kind" there. That would be the illegal alien kind.
It's one thing to argue the benefits of controlling the migration of labour, but it's not rational to assume this is because he's a "hacker" [oooh spooky!]. Most of the time when I told the US customs that I was going to give talks at Toorcon [or whatever] they didn't even know what cryptography was, let alone that it was all dangerous and "against the interests of the united states government." Mostly they just asked if I was paid, once I said it was a free presentation they told me to fuck off and board my plane.
Tom
I don't know that he was singled out, but I do think that the policy goes too far. I mean, fine, the border agent says, "Hey, I see you haven't got a work permit, but you are apparently here to do some work." Then, there are two options...
- "You are allowed to have a tourist visa, so you can come and hang out and get some vacation snapshots. If, while you are here, you can get your paperwork straightened out, then you can do some work for money. Otherwise, you could lecture for free or something, so long as it isn't for money. If our records indicate that you got paid for work while on the tourist visa, you'll be prosecuted, and we do have an extradition treaty with Germany."
- "OUT, Foreign CUR! AWAY!"
I don't see why turning him back at the border was an effective use of American resources. It cost me tax money to put him on the next airplane out, and it cost my country in terms of knowledge that would have been shared at the conference. That's without any of the public relations issues.
I still don't see why the Slashdot crowd cares one way or the other about the length of copyright terms
It's because the slashdot crowd is concerned about freedoms, and freedoms lost. It's because many in the slashdot crowd believe in standing on the shoulder's of giants to make their own works. (which can't be done with the current copyright).
Also, we want to finally be able to trade our 1337 wArEz for the PDP-11 in the open at long last and without fear of prosecution. No more midnight rendezvous in the park to swap DECtapes in secret!
I mean seriously -- we all know that physical access to the hardware == compromised security. Most datacenters exist inside a building, with card keys, reinforced walls, etc. etc. It seems like all you'd need to gain physical access to the servers in one of these things is a blowtorch.
A blowtorch will get you into most data centers anyway. Seriously, some super high security places may have super high end physical safe guards, but in most places, your whizzy electronic card reader can be dealt with pretty quickly if nobody is watching, and you don't mind if the door is "tamper evident." Likewise, somebody can probably cut into a shipping container, but the probability of somebody noticing is generally high enough to make it not worth the trouble.
Would each person own a robot and collect a check from home or would the more likely scenario be that a few large companies would run huge armies of these robots? How might all those people who never heard of 'knowledge work' make a living? I'm thinking that the current scheme for distribution of wealth based on labor might not work in that scenario. Finally, I wonder what system, short of some socialist or communist nightmare, would.
Well, to address the issue of would everybody let their robot earn them a paycheck... If robots are cheap enough to be owned by an individual, why the heck would any sane corporation hire individual robots from many small contractors instead of either leasing from another large company or buying their own? I've heard other people ponder the notion of each individual owning a robot and letting it do their work, but this seems like a really silly idea, and nobody has ever explained to me how it could actually work in practice...
As for how somebody who isn't in knowledge work makes a living... Land speculation. Ultimately, location is the only scarce tangible. There is a lot of space, but people want to be in particular places, so a particular location will always have some intrinsic value, even after robotic exploitation of asteroids and the like makes the mineral value of land for raw resources negligible.
Really? How much exactly do these robots cost? Is it more than about $3 an hour, including maintenance?
Well, no Americans will work doing Robot maintenance for $3.00 and hour. On the other hand, if you are flexible about who you hire, I'm sure you could find somebody willing to do it at that price...
Hey, I recently saw a job posting which involves posting to Antarctica, so I have been doing a little reading on the subject of working in Antarctica, and it was a lucky coincidence that I ran across your slashdot posting today. I tried to send you a private message on your website, but the contact form gave me an error message that "The requested URL/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. " So, I am replying here on slashdot in hopes of getting in touch with you. Of course, if anybody else reading this thread wants to jump in, I'd love to hear it!
If it isn't too much trouble, I'd love to pick your brain about working "on the ice." (I've been contacting a couple of people with websites that I have found, so this has sort of turned into a form letter. My apologies for that.)
The posting I saw was for a cook position. I've worked as a cook before, and this sounds like a good job, but I haven't been able to find much online about just who stays for "winterover." Do the cooks, or at least some of them, stay all winter, or are the cooks mostly there to serve the expanded Summer population? (If I got a job which deployed me to Antarctica, I'd prefer to stay a full year.) Also, can you see the aurora much at McMurdo? I have read that the southern lights are visible in Antarctica, but I haven't yet read about exactly where you can see them and whatnot.
Also, from reading your slashdot profile, I have noticed that you are a self described "UNIX hacker." Pretty much my whole career has been in IT, so I'm curious to know what it takes to try to break into Antarctic IT. I'm currently taking some time for myself doing writing and whatnot, but my last day job was the System Administrator for the Department of Applied Mathematics at University of Colorado at Boulder. (Aside from being a good job, it was also my most verbose title.) So, I'm used to doing IT in a situation with a bunch of academics and researchers. (Also, at an elevation of several thousand feet, but that doesn't really apply to McMurdo as near as I can tell.) Do you know of anywhere in particular that I should go, or someone that I should get in touch with regarding possible IT openings?
Is there anything else you feel someone looking to apply for a posting in Antarctica ought to know? Any advice? Questions I've forgotten to ask?
Anyhow, I hope you are having a good time in Antarctica and everything is going well. Say hi to the Penguins for me.
Slashdot Mirror
But, why would I want to go to a Heathen shareholder's meeting?
Seriously, I think I know what you mean about "geek syndrome." A lot of us do have a tendency to see some issues as "my way is 100% correct, and any other way is 100% wrong." Whether it is Linux vs. all other kernels, or vi vs. all other editors, or PPC vs. all other architectures, we tend to think that our own choice is perfect, and that any reasonable person will agree with us if only we bash them over the head with enough facts to support our perspective. Lord knows I've done it often enough.
The great thing about the fellow posting all the video links is that, since he is at least enough of a geek to spend time posting to slashdot, he probably won't hold a grudge against me for being a dick and replying to a bunch of his posts. He's much more likely to take it as a data point, and will now try to keep conscious track of how many times he brings up Ron Paul in any given context so that he can try to avoid annoying people as badly. If he was a mundane instead of a geek, he'd just get pissy and defensive and start trolling me relentlessly without learning anything.
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
Meh, I'm though half of these posts, I'll give up now.
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
This is taking far more time than I had hoped. Of course, when I started, I hadn't realised just how many times you had posted the damned video links.
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
Man, the "slow down cowboy" message is starting to get really annoying as I try to respond to all of your video posts.
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
I have to wonder how patient you are to have spent so much time posting these videos. I mean, slashdot will only allow you to post so quickly, and you have managed almost 20 posts in this discussion so far...
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
Of course, in responding to your many video links, I'll need to change my wording slightly, because duplicate comments are forbidden.
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
And, I'll slightly change my wording every time I post this response, so that I can avoid the duplicate comment block, just like you did the many times you posted your video link.
I like Ron Paul. However, you do him no favors by posting the same video link many times in one discussion. You would do him no favors if you posted the same video link one time in many discussions, but you can only manage to annoy people by posting this many times. Now, I'm going to go and repost this response many times in hopes of drawing moderator attention. Despite the fact that we support the same candidate, I would like to see you modded into oblivion so I don't have to see any more of your posts, and that is a shame.
One curious perk of the popularity of script advertising is that by using noscript, I'm often unaware of ads that are supposed to be on a page. It isn't that I'm fanatical about blocking ads. I mean, I don't particularly like them. I'm much more fanatical about hating Javascript! Consequently, I'll occasionally hear people complain about the ads on a particular site, and simply be confused because even though I don't do anything to block the ads, I never even knew I was missing out on them.
Could you clarify that at all? I'm not the end-all, be-all expert on these things, but I do know enough to be sure that what you wrote is so not-correct as to not even be wrong...
Pointers really only matter from a relatively high-level software perspective. From a low level hardware perspective, you can either say that pointers don't exist, or that all memory is accessed via pointers. The distinction of pointer vs. some other conceptual model for accessing data (such as Java) just doesn't exist at that level. Consequently, talking about needing to use pointers to access memory above 4 GB is like trying to decide if a Senator from Alaska rambling about the Internet smells more like cyan of yellow. You can certainly say he doesn't smell very yellow, and be somewhat correct, but the statement carries no information.
Now, explain to me why you need to go into orbit to get from one point on Earth to another? If you hit orbit, then you need to actively fight your way back down, so it's probably just a silly waste of resources to enter orbit for Earth-Earth transit when a ballistic trajectory will do fine. I won't say I know just what a NY to Sydney trip would be in a practical transport rocket, but I imagine that it wouldn't need to be seven million dollars.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but that just refers to charge/discharge rate, rather than storage capacity, right? I mean, they don't say how long it can sustain 1.5 kilowatts. If it can put out 1.5 kw for a femtosecond, that's naturally less significant than if it could put out 1.5 kw for a second, or a minute, or an hour, etc. The article didn't seem to have any reference to farads or watt-hours that I noticed.
Plenty of species can travel into space using only tools that we built.
And, are you saying that humans suddenly became fundamentally different in the 50's, but were basically just ordinary creatures before then?
Ugh. I was really hoping that the Mini would return to $499. Oh well.
I Agree! But, I think that when you say "severely," that word needs to be in 24 point bold italic print in order to get the point across more precisely.
I encountered such terms many years ago in game *development* circles. You know, the guys who actually make the games. When I encountered the terms years ago, they were clearly widespread and well known to the guys in that field. Personally, I really don't care if gamers are afraid of words. They have a well understood meaning among the people who need to use them. What do you want people to do instead of use nice short concise terms? Use a full sentence explaining what they mean every time they want to use the word? That only matters when communicating with a layman who is too lazy to look up the term. If they get scared off, good riddance.
Yes, No, No, See Tomb Raider or BMXXX or Leisure Suit Larry.
No they haven't. You've just started encountering them recently.
As long as anybody who gets raped also gets a free TV, that's logical.
"Mac-Like" in this context refers chiefly to the fact that programming for this is very similar to Cocoa development on Mac OS X. The guts are quite Mac-like compared to writing for Qt/KDE or GTK/Gnome.
OTOH, I expect that your criticism is quite valid. You may want to consider contributing some art to the project, or submitting patches to make it more aesthetic. Personally, the way it looks doesn't bother me, but don't let my bland tastes stop you from scratching your itch!
I don't know that he was singled out, but I do think that the policy goes too far. I mean, fine, the border agent says, "Hey, I see you haven't got a work permit, but you are apparently here to do some work." Then, there are two options...
- "You are allowed to have a tourist visa, so you can come and hang out and get some vacation snapshots. If, while you are here, you can get your paperwork straightened out, then you can do some work for money. Otherwise, you could lecture for free or something, so long as it isn't for money. If our records indicate that you got paid for work while on the tourist visa, you'll be prosecuted, and we do have an extradition treaty with Germany."
- "OUT, Foreign CUR! AWAY!"
I don't see why turning him back at the border was an effective use of American resources. It cost me tax money to put him on the next airplane out, and it cost my country in terms of knowledge that would have been shared at the conference. That's without any of the public relations issues.
Also, we want to finally be able to trade our 1337 wArEz for the PDP-11 in the open at long last and without fear of prosecution. No more midnight rendezvous in the park to swap DECtapes in secret!
A blowtorch will get you into most data centers anyway. Seriously, some super high security places may have super high end physical safe guards, but in most places, your whizzy electronic card reader can be dealt with pretty quickly if nobody is watching, and you don't mind if the door is "tamper evident." Likewise, somebody can probably cut into a shipping container, but the probability of somebody noticing is generally high enough to make it not worth the trouble.
Well, to address the issue of would everybody let their robot earn them a paycheck... If robots are cheap enough to be owned by an individual, why the heck would any sane corporation hire individual robots from many small contractors instead of either leasing from another large company or buying their own? I've heard other people ponder the notion of each individual owning a robot and letting it do their work, but this seems like a really silly idea, and nobody has ever explained to me how it could actually work in practice...
As for how somebody who isn't in knowledge work makes a living... Land speculation. Ultimately, location is the only scarce tangible. There is a lot of space, but people want to be in particular places, so a particular location will always have some intrinsic value, even after robotic exploitation of asteroids and the like makes the mineral value of land for raw resources negligible.
Well, no Americans will work doing Robot maintenance for $3.00 and hour. On the other hand, if you are flexible about who you hire, I'm sure you could find somebody willing to do it at that price...
It happened near a test facility in Betaverse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Jade
How has nobody made the Ob. SF ref. yet with this many comments?!
Hey, I recently saw a job posting which involves posting to Antarctica, so I have been doing a little reading on the subject of working in Antarctica, and it was a lucky coincidence that I ran across your slashdot posting today. I tried to send you a private message on your website, but the contact form gave me an error message that "The requested URL /cgi-bin/FormMail.pl was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. " So, I am replying here on slashdot in hopes of getting in touch with you. Of course, if anybody else reading this thread wants to jump in, I'd love to hear it!
If it isn't too much trouble, I'd love to pick your brain about working "on the ice." (I've been contacting a couple of people with websites that I have found, so this has sort of turned into a form letter. My apologies for that.)
The posting I saw was for a cook position. I've worked as a cook
before, and this sounds like a good job, but I haven't been able to
find much online about just who stays for "winterover." Do the cooks,
or at least some of them, stay all winter, or are the cooks mostly
there to serve the expanded Summer population? (If I got a job which
deployed me to Antarctica, I'd prefer to stay a full year.) Also, can
you see the aurora much at McMurdo? I have read that the southern
lights are visible in Antarctica, but I haven't yet read about exactly
where you can see them and whatnot.
Also, from reading your slashdot profile, I have noticed that you are a self described "UNIX hacker."
Pretty much my whole career has been in IT, so I'm curious to know
what it takes to try to break into Antarctic IT. I'm currently taking
some time for myself doing writing and whatnot, but my last day job
was the System Administrator for the Department of Applied Mathematics
at University of Colorado at Boulder. (Aside from being a good job,
it was also my most verbose title.) So, I'm used to doing IT in a
situation with a bunch of academics and researchers. (Also, at an
elevation of several thousand feet, but that doesn't really apply to
McMurdo as near as I can tell.) Do you know of anywhere in particular
that I should go, or someone that I should get in touch with regarding
possible IT openings?
Is there anything else you feel someone looking to apply for a posting
in Antarctica ought to know? Any advice? Questions I've forgotten to
ask?
Anyhow, I hope you are having a good time in Antarctica and everything
is going well. Say hi to the Penguins for me.