I'm in my early 40s. In 20 years time (when they'd be ready) I'll be in my early 60s. My kids will have left home, and I'll be looking forward to an unexciting retirement. I'm reasonably fit, I've got 20 years of experience as a scientist, some experience as a pilot, and I'm a pretty good general purpose engineer. I'm also pretty self-reliant. Probably roughly the sort of person they'd want.
Would I go? You bet I would. I'm quite serious. I'd far rather do something incredible and useful with the little time I have left than sit around gardening or playing golf.
I'd still go if I knew there were only enough resources to last me 6 months on Mars, and then I had to quietly pop the little red pill. Trading 6 months doing something completely amazing for 20 (expected) rather boring years going slowly senile seems a pretty good trade to me. I'll bet there are quite a few people like me out there.
Tcpcrypt is about 25x faster on the server than SSL.
Whether it prevents MITM attacks depends on what authentication you do over tcpcrypt using tcpcrypt's session IDs. There's a drop-in replacement for libssl that can do batch-signing using SSL certs. It provides equivalent protection from MITM attacks to SSL, but maintains the performance advantage.
Even for unauthenticated sessions, it means the attack needs to be MITM, rather than just passive eavesdrop, which raises the bar quite a bit in many situations.
Just hook your gas-powered generator trailer up to the tow hitch for that once-a-year trip where you need unlimited range. Leave it in the garage the rest of the year.
The crash of an airliner these days is rarely due to a single cause. There's a saying in the industry that a crash occurs when the holes in the Swiss cheese happen to line up. This appears to have been the case with this particular crash.
The direct cause was that the pilots attempted to take off without setting take-off flaps.
They were rushing because they'd had a technical issue, and returned to the terminal after previously taxiing to the runway and completing the take-off checks. So they accidentally skipped the critical check that the flaps were deployed when they lined up to take off the second time.
There's a take-off configuration alarm that is supposed to alert the pilots, but it wasn't working.
It wasn't working because the engineer removed the circuit breaker that powered it, in order to turn off a stuck heater on a pitot tube that was due to a malfunctioning switch.
This particular fault had been noted on previous flights, so should have flagged a warning on the airline's fault monitoring system.
The fault monitoring system had a trojan.
Yup, the holes in the cheese certainly lined up that day. None of these, by itself, would have caused the crash.
But I'd bet a fair sum that VP8 was specifically designed by On2 to skirt, but carefully avoid, every MPEG-LA patent (which is why it uses a standard DCT, and why it doesn't have B-frames). (Remember you have to infringe all of the claims of a patent to be infringing.)
No, that's not how patents work (and yes, I've successfully contested a few in court). You infringe a patent if you infringe all the terms of any single claim.
The claims of a patent are independent unless they say otherwise. Often they say "Claim 3: The system in claim 2, plus X", in which case it's not completely independent. But suppose you find prior art (and it needs to be a single piece of prior art) that invalidates Claim 2. Well, if your system does what Claim 3 says, and the prior art only invalidates Claim 2, then you still lose.
Unfortunately our experience teaching undergrad CS students Java first is that they build a mental model of what's going on that is completely abstracted away from the concept of memory. They then struggle to understand performance issues, and when we try to get them to learn C later, they struggle because they not only need to learn C's idiosyncracies but also unlearn their mental model, which is a lot harder.
We're actually about to switch back to teaching C in the first year (via long low-level projects for which it is well suited), as we've concluded the Java-first approach we've been using for at least ten years isn't working terribly well. It's nearly impossible for students to understand the advantages of object orientation when they haven't written complex code and haven't made the mistakes that lead to spaghetti code. So they use object orientation by rote-learning, which means they don't really understand when a lighter weight approach or a different language is appropriate and when it isn't. We'll still teach them Java and a range of other languages, but only when they've learned the reasons those languages help.
Having said that, I don't really care what they teach at A-level. A-level CS is pretty nearly worthless - any reasonable university CS department will prefer you didn't do it, and that you'd done more maths or science instead.
Agreed - I've been an AAISP customer for five years now. They're excellent all round, both technically and their service. I've got IPv6 and a/27 static IPv4 subnet. Never see any congestion in their network - pretty much always get the sync rate (minus the headers, etc).
What I really appreciate is their "no-bull$hit" service. As with any network, occasionally things will go wrong - not very often - but when they do, they're always very upfront with frequent status update. You always know where you stand with them. One time I spotted a routing loop - so nice to be able to send them a traceroute, and have someone clueful respond immediately.
As others have said, they're not cheap. But you do get what you pay for.
All the other versions of you in all the other branches of spacetime are toast. The only branch of spacetime where you can still reach Slashdot's server is this one where you got really lucky.
xv! xv is ancient, but it did pretty much all this back in 1994. "xv 3.10a, Last release 12/29/94" it says on the splash window. And it still works well after all these years. Can't say that about many pieces of software. For simple editing, I still use it, even on my Mac (though you do need a two-button mouse).
With the end of the cold war we no longer feel the need to prove our superiority by building ever bigger and more impressive projects. This has left us without a clear goal.
Don't worry - the rise of China will soon cure that.
Step 1. Turn on HTTP Compression on your server (msnbot supports it).
Step 2. Write a little cgi script that checks if the agent is msnbot, and if so for every image on your web site, returns a really really large file of zeros. It wont cost you any bandwidth because gzip will compress all the zeros to very little for transmission.
Step 3. Invest in shares of Seagate and Western Digital. Short Microsoft.
Me, my eldest son, the neighbours' three kids, and their mother all got swine flu around the end of November. Not too surprising as the kids all play together. We're all pretty healthy active people. Of the six of us, four had relatively mild flu - not nice, but not a big deal. One of the neighbours' kids and I got it a lot worse. The flu itself was very unpleasant, but the bigger issue was the whole series of secondary infections that followed on afterwards. I'm finally getting properly well again now, six weeks later, but I'm still on antibiotics. The neighbour's kid is still advised by his doctor to stay off sports, but he's mostly recovered now too.
Having seen what it can be like for healthy people, and that most of us have no immunity to this version, I'm really happy they did order lots of vaccine. I'd hate to think what it would be like if you did have some health problem. I've got an appointment to get my youngest son vaccinated on Monday. Maybe the risk is over, maybe it's not. Either way, I think it makes sense. If another H1N1 pandemic comes along in a few years time, maybe he'll have a little immunity the way the over-60s seem to have had for this one.
Don't fly Air China then. I had to endure a flight with them from Beijing to London recently, and my legs would simply not fit behind the seat in front. Fortunately I had an aisle seat, so could sit sort of sideways. But then they couldn't get the drinks carts past unless I undid my seatbelt and stood up. Another airline on the list I'll never fly with again.
I await the US and Britain's change to the 'universal' standard with interest.
Um, maybe look again. Most of Asia including India, China and Japan uses a decimal point rather than a decimal comma. If you want a popularity contest, dot wins.
But it's not really about popularity is it? If the accompanying text is English, it should be a dot. If the accompanying text is French it should be a comma. Unless you're Canadian, in which case you're probably just confused.
I wonder if Microsoft understand what they've started? Wikipedia should immediately demand payment from Microsoft to be listed on Bing. I've pretty sure Microsoft gains more out of that relationship that Wikipedia does.
And Murdoch's competitors will see a minor rise in their readers and hence their advertising profits immediately this takes effect. As a result they'll be more dependent on Google than before. This is nicely self-limiting - if anyone else is tempted by Microsoft's money, the ones that remain with Google will become still more influential and more profitable. There's also a nice positive feedback loop between "influential" and "profitable". This will be fun to watch.
ATSC lasted so long because it was implemented directly in hardware. MPEG2 (DVD) and H.264 (BluRay) are software. New systems will play back old formats because including the software is cheap, but adding newer codecs and formats is simple.
But you don't even need to add new codecs. H.264, level 5.1 is already spec'ed for 4096×2304. Sure, Bluray doesn't use such resolutions, but small shiny discs as a video distribution format are yesterdays technology. Just as soon as flat-panel technology makes it cheap enough to have a wall-sized screen at 100dpi, your can bet that you'll be able to stream full iMax resolution movies online. Maybe not in Britain, with our pathetically slow DSL, but in Korea or Japan for sure.
Now, cheap holographic discs for backup - maybe, but I'll probably still be using rsync.
I'm in my early 40s. By the time any ship is ready to go, I'll probably be in my early 60s and my kids will be finishing university. I'd go. I'd sign up right now, and spend the next 20 years training and working to make it happen if I thought there was a reasonably high chance they'd actually send me.
I'd go, even if I knew there was a high chance the radiation on the way would give me cancer, and I'd likely not live more than a year or two on Mars. I'd go, even if the chances of a successful landing were only 80%. I'm not looking for a long drawn out old age. I've accepted my mortality, and it doesn't scare me. I'd rather go out doing something I believe strongly in, and sometimes that involves very high risks. Too few people are willing to take risks for what they believe in. Trouble is I bet 75% of old ex-astronauts would think the same way, and they'd be in the queue in front of us.
According to TFA, the men are separated by 13 generations. I assume that means something like one of them is a 6th generation descendant and one is a 7th generation descendant of the same ancestor, or something like that, but even the original paper doesn't say.
They found 23 SNPs given by the initial fast sequencing, but when they looked into each of these only four of them were actual naturally occurring mutations. The rest were errors given by the fast sequencing mechanism they used to get the whole sequence. These weren't on the whole of the Y-chromosome, but on a 10 million base pair part of it that they searched. A man has about 3 billion base pairs in his chromosomes. So extrapolating, that gives 1200 mutations overall. Divide that by 13 generations gives 92 per generation, or about 1 in 30 million base pairs per generation.
Given that in the wireless world we use CDMA to allow operation in the presence of noise, and ultra-wideband codes so much as to operate below the noise floor, I'd say that in at least some technology areas we're well versed in working with very low signal-to-noise ratios. Maybe its possible to do similar things with electronics to operate in the presence of very high quantum noise? How useful this is though is another question - presumably you get into diminishing returns beyond some point.
I think the only time most of my students write with a pen is during an exam. About 3/4 of them (CS undergrads and postgrads) can write passable cursive writing. A few are hard to read, but often those are the best students. Not writing neatly certainly doesn't lose you marks in my exams. Not being able to explain your ideas does though. I've never had a script that was so hard to read I couldn't mark it properly. But about 1/4 of my students can't write cursive, or choose not to in exams. There does seem to be some correlation between not writing cursive and doing poorly in these exams. It's all anonymized - I can't tell exactly who they are, so it's difficult to separate cause and effect. But I would certainly speculate that these students who can't write quickly with a pen are at a disadvantage in University exams.
Slashdot Mirror
Would I go? You bet I would. I'm quite serious. I'd far rather do something incredible and useful with the little time I have left than sit around gardening or playing golf.
I'd still go if I knew there were only enough resources to last me 6 months on Mars, and then I had to quietly pop the little red pill. Trading 6 months doing something completely amazing for 20 (expected) rather boring years going slowly senile seems a pretty good trade to me. I'll bet there are quite a few people like me out there.
Whether it prevents MITM attacks depends on what authentication you do over tcpcrypt using tcpcrypt's session IDs. There's a drop-in replacement for libssl that can do batch-signing using SSL certs. It provides equivalent protection from MITM attacks to SSL, but maintains the performance advantage.
Even for unauthenticated sessions, it means the attack needs to be MITM, rather than just passive eavesdrop, which raises the bar quite a bit in many situations.
What we really need is for tcpcrypt to be widely deployed. That would make the cost negligible.
Just hook your gas-powered generator trailer up to the tow hitch for that once-a-year trip where you need unlimited range. Leave it in the garage the rest of the year.
Yup, the holes in the cheese certainly lined up that day. None of these, by itself, would have caused the crash.
No, that's not how patents work (and yes, I've successfully contested a few in court). You infringe a patent if you infringe all the terms of any single claim.
The claims of a patent are independent unless they say otherwise. Often they say "Claim 3: The system in claim 2, plus X", in which case it's not completely independent. But suppose you find prior art (and it needs to be a single piece of prior art) that invalidates Claim 2. Well, if your system does what Claim 3 says, and the prior art only invalidates Claim 2, then you still lose.
We're actually about to switch back to teaching C in the first year (via long low-level projects for which it is well suited), as we've concluded the Java-first approach we've been using for at least ten years isn't working terribly well. It's nearly impossible for students to understand the advantages of object orientation when they haven't written complex code and haven't made the mistakes that lead to spaghetti code. So they use object orientation by rote-learning, which means they don't really understand when a lighter weight approach or a different language is appropriate and when it isn't. We'll still teach them Java and a range of other languages, but only when they've learned the reasons those languages help.
Having said that, I don't really care what they teach at A-level. A-level CS is pretty nearly worthless - any reasonable university CS department will prefer you didn't do it, and that you'd done more maths or science instead.
What I really appreciate is their "no-bull$hit" service. As with any network, occasionally things will go wrong - not very often - but when they do, they're always very upfront with frequent status update. You always know where you stand with them. One time I spotted a routing loop - so nice to be able to send them a traceroute, and have someone clueful respond immediately.
As others have said, they're not cheap. But you do get what you pay for.
All the other versions of you in all the other branches of spacetime are toast. The only branch of spacetime where you can still reach Slashdot's server is this one where you got really lucky.
xv! xv is ancient, but it did pretty much all this back in 1994. "xv 3.10a, Last release 12/29/94" it says on the splash window. And it still works well after all these years. Can't say that about many pieces of software. For simple editing, I still use it, even on my Mac (though you do need a two-button mouse).
The Register got it right. It's a portable TV for the 21st century. If you think of it that way, you will be less disappointed.
Don't worry - the rise of China will soon cure that.
Having seen what it can be like for healthy people, and that most of us have no immunity to this version, I'm really happy they did order lots of vaccine. I'd hate to think what it would be like if you did have some health problem. I've got an appointment to get my youngest son vaccinated on Monday. Maybe the risk is over, maybe it's not. Either way, I think it makes sense. If another H1N1 pandemic comes along in a few years time, maybe he'll have a little immunity the way the over-60s seem to have had for this one.
Don't fly Air China then. I had to endure a flight with them from Beijing to London recently, and my legs would simply not fit behind the seat in front. Fortunately I had an aisle seat, so could sit sort of sideways. But then they couldn't get the drinks carts past unless I undid my seatbelt and stood up. Another airline on the list I'll never fly with again.
Are you implying that Bin Laden is eight feet high, red, and visible from the nearest road? Interesting intel, that. Perhaps you should call the CIA?
Um, maybe look again. Most of Asia including India, China and Japan uses a decimal point rather than a decimal comma. If you want a popularity contest, dot wins.
But it's not really about popularity is it? If the accompanying text is English, it should be a dot. If the accompanying text is French it should be a comma. Unless you're Canadian, in which case you're probably just confused.
I wonder if Microsoft understand what they've started? Wikipedia should immediately demand payment from Microsoft to be listed on Bing. I've pretty sure Microsoft gains more out of that relationship that Wikipedia does.
And Murdoch's competitors will see a minor rise in their readers and hence their advertising profits immediately this takes effect. As a result they'll be more dependent on Google than before. This is nicely self-limiting - if anyone else is tempted by Microsoft's money, the ones that remain with Google will become still more influential and more profitable. There's also a nice positive feedback loop between "influential" and "profitable". This will be fun to watch.
But you don't even need to add new codecs. H.264, level 5.1 is already spec'ed for 4096×2304. Sure, Bluray doesn't use such resolutions, but small shiny discs as a video distribution format are yesterdays technology. Just as soon as flat-panel technology makes it cheap enough to have a wall-sized screen at 100dpi, your can bet that you'll be able to stream full iMax resolution movies online. Maybe not in Britain, with our pathetically slow DSL, but in Korea or Japan for sure.
Now, cheap holographic discs for backup - maybe, but I'll probably still be using rsync.
I'd go, even if I knew there was a high chance the radiation on the way would give me cancer, and I'd likely not live more than a year or two on Mars. I'd go, even if the chances of a successful landing were only 80%. I'm not looking for a long drawn out old age. I've accepted my mortality, and it doesn't scare me. I'd rather go out doing something I believe strongly in, and sometimes that involves very high risks. Too few people are willing to take risks for what they believe in. Trouble is I bet 75% of old ex-astronauts would think the same way, and they'd be in the queue in front of us.
They found 23 SNPs given by the initial fast sequencing, but when they looked into each of these only four of them were actual naturally occurring mutations. The rest were errors given by the fast sequencing mechanism they used to get the whole sequence. These weren't on the whole of the Y-chromosome, but on a 10 million base pair part of it that they searched. A man has about 3 billion base pairs in his chromosomes. So extrapolating, that gives 1200 mutations overall. Divide that by 13 generations gives 92 per generation, or about 1 in 30 million base pairs per generation.
Given that in the wireless world we use CDMA to allow operation in the presence of noise, and ultra-wideband codes so much as to operate below the noise floor, I'd say that in at least some technology areas we're well versed in working with very low signal-to-noise ratios. Maybe its possible to do similar things with electronics to operate in the presence of very high quantum noise? How useful this is though is another question - presumably you get into diminishing returns beyond some point.
When you are taking notes quickly, how do you add the quick rough diagrams you need to properly capture the fully meaning?
I think the only time most of my students write with a pen is during an exam. About 3/4 of them (CS undergrads and postgrads) can write passable cursive writing. A few are hard to read, but often those are the best students. Not writing neatly certainly doesn't lose you marks in my exams. Not being able to explain your ideas does though. I've never had a script that was so hard to read I couldn't mark it properly. But about 1/4 of my students can't write cursive, or choose not to in exams. There does seem to be some correlation between not writing cursive and doing poorly in these exams. It's all anonymized - I can't tell exactly who they are, so it's difficult to separate cause and effect. But I would certainly speculate that these students who can't write quickly with a pen are at a disadvantage in University exams.