Physorg.org, an organization that apparently exercises little oversight over the articles it runs.
Got any references to back this up?
This is an article on PhysOrg about alien spacecraft parts being found that was referenced in the comments of a recent Slashdot story. In the comments below the article a PhysOrg editor explains "As scientists, we truly believe that even some irrational theories have the right to be announced" and "It's up to the readers to trust the facts or not and to form his/her own opinion. Our mission is to deliver science news content released by official institutions". I'm not saying that there is no merit to any particular article on the site, but the original poster's description as "an organization that apparently exercises little oversight over the articles it runs" seems fairly apt.
Re:BadAstronomy has covered it already...
on
3 Ton Meteorite Stolen
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· Score: 3, Informative
Covered? The "coverage" consists of:
the claim that no meteorite remain from Tunguska has ever been found (proof by bold assertion)
a comment that the writer couldn't find the foundation's website. Gee, I wonder if the writer was searching for websites in Russian?
mockery and sarcasm as soon as the subject of aliens arises. After all, scientists know that aliens can't be visisting the earth, because the Fermi Paradox says so.
Hmm, the PhysOrg story is just a press release by the foundation, there is an official statement in the comments below the story stating "this new theory was announced at the press conference on results of the recent expedition to the crash site. It is not our own conclusion, but theory made by scientists who claim they found some proving evidences. As scientists, we truly believe that even some irrational theories have the right to be announced."
If the Bad Astronomer is not good enough for you, how about articles from Space.com and MSNBC which were written in August 2004, when the foundation claimed to have found the alien spacecraft parts. Neither article gives much credence to the claim that the team's claimed dicovery. The foundation said at the time that they would be providing evidence (the recovered "spacecraft parts") but 3 years later they have yet to do so. The Bad Astronomer did not write a lengthy article because any rational being already knows that this foundation is full of shit. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and they have provided none.
I'd read somewhere that Directv broadcast their guide data (for DirecTivo use) as paid programming at night on the Discovery channel but I've been unable to spot it. Does anyone know exactly when/where it's being shown? Actually, it was Tivo that did that for standalone units, DirecTivo units received their data from the satellite, in the same stream DirecTV boxes receive their program guide. I don't know if they still do it, but it was called "Teleworld Paid Program" and started around 3-4 AM on the Discovery Channel.
I am not a bug fan of the single server multi frontend system since HD content requires too much bandwidth.
Have you considered upgrading to SVN and using storage groups that prefer the local disk for each tuner? You would not have the bandwidth of recording shows on your network, although if you played a show that was recorded on a remote tuner it would have to be streamed. If each tuner only writes to its own disk but shares common recordings and scheduling information it would seem to be the best of both worlds for you.
100% correct. However, we're not talking about broadcasters, we're talking about distributors, i.e. cable companies. Individual subscribers are most definitely on the supply side of their world.
Not exactly true, cable companies also sell/produce commercials which they insert into the network stream.
A massive asteroid will have worldwide impact anyway, spreading the impact will not change the effects very much. Breaking up an asteroid could possibly mitigate tsunami height in the event of an ocean strike, but the total effect on the earth would be near the same. The atmosphere does not incinerate large objects, most objects will make landfall. Getting shot with a shotgun can be just as lethal as being hit with a slug.
The way it works on my local city-owned fiber network the city just provides the pipe (or tube, or truck). I have the option of choosing between several competing ISPs for data service on the network. The ISP handles my transport to and from the internet, the city-owned network only handles the transport between my ISP and me. I can choose different providers for data, phone and TV or I can get all 3 services from 1 provider or I can just get 1 service (or zero). The city is just providing the road, FedEx, UPS and DHL are still free to compete for my business.
The problem is that the municipalities are granting monopolies on last-mile transport to private enterprise instead of handling it themselves. If I have to pay Comcast or Qwest for my connection, they insist that they make a profit off of it. However, if my city owns the network all they demand is that they break even on it.
My current connection is 15 Mb/s symmetrical fiber. It costs me about $36/mo. Previously I was paying Comcast $45-$50/mo for a 3Mb/512Kb connection. Yes, it cost the city some money to lay the fiber but now that it is installed the maintenance is fairly cheap and EVERY house in the city has a connection to the network. There are multiple service providers for data, phone and TV so there is no monopoly pricing, if you don't like your current provider you can switch. You can rant about government pork, but the local government generally does a better job of controlling overhead and grift than the federal.
You are criticizing hypothetical networks but I am sitting on a real one and from my perspective, it is sweet. I am getting way better speeds at a lower price than I was before. Yes, some of my tax dollars had to be used to build the network, but with the monthly cost savings I am coming out ahead. I am generally not for expanded government but where it comes to natural monopolies like utilities and roads, sometimes government does a better job than business.
Though in this case the OS in question is irrelevant, I doubt how "Knoppix" would have prevented this:
In September 21, 1997 while on maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, Virginia, a crew member entered a zero into a database field causing a divide by zero error in the ship's Remote Data Base Manager which brought down all the machines on the network, causing the ship's propulsion system to fail.
I just don't see how the operating system plays into this.
A database application on one machine should not be able to crash the OS of several machines, especially command and control machines. Using NT in this instance was a politically motivated decision, not a technical one. If you had bothered to read the article at Government Computer News that the wikipedia quote was from, you would have seen gems like this:
But according to DiGiorgio, who in an interview said he has serviced automated control systems on Navy ships for the past 26 years, the NT operating system is the source of the Yorktown's computer problems.
"Using Windows NT, which is known to have some failure modes, on a warship is similar to hoping that luck will be in our favor"
"Because of politics, some things are being forced on us that without political pressure we might not do, like Windows NT," Redman said. "If it were up to me I probably would not have used Windows NT in this particular application. If we used Unix, we would have a system that has less of a tendency to go down."
"If you understand computers, you know that a computer normally is immune to the character of the data it processes," he wrote in the June U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings Magazine. "Your $2.95 calculator, for example, gives you a zero when you try to divide a number by zero, and does not stop executing the next set of instructions. It seems that the computers on the Yorktown were not designed to tolerate such a simple failure."
These are people who are intimately familiar with the command and control systems of a large battleship who say the underlying cause of the failures was related the the operating system. A simple operator error should not have the ability to compromise critical systems. An application should not be able to make a system unavailable, not to mention multiple systems.
And diesel trucks are designed to drive for hundreds and hundreds of miles pulling huge payloads - not something that's practical with electricity yet. Trains,
Actually, pulling a large payload is more efficient with electric motors. If you are already hauling a large load then adding some heavy batteries is not that much of an addition to your weight compared to the load.
Almost all modern freight trains in the US are diesel-electric, which means their wheels are already driven by electric motors. It would be a fairly simple operation to convert a locomotive to run on batteries or fuel cells, providing the efficiency is increased or the hydrogen infrastructure is built, respectively.
So you would be OK if Microsoft purchased all searches for RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu, Mac, etc.... And every time you tried to search for any of those Items in any search engine you got nothing but links to Microsoft Vista?
I tried to search "RedHat" on this search engine and all I got was links to Microsoft products. Call the police right away!
Google is not a human right, it is a company. They can choose to display whatever they want on their pages. You can choose not to use them if you don't like the results they display. If they continue to return relevant results then I'll continue to use them, if they start returning nothing but MS ads for my Linux searches or start giving me goatse.cx boy every time I click "I'm Feeling Lucky" then I'll probably start using a different search engine.
Your example of a car dealership would not apply because a Toyota dealer sells Toyotas, etc.
What if it linked to a used car dealer that sold a variety of cars? When you show up on the lot, must he sell you a Toyota? What if you like the Mazda better?
. The mentally retarded have to be taken care of, and cannot be expected to behave responsibly, and therefore have to be protected in varying degrees. You would not hand a gun to one, would you? And if you did and he/she shot you, would a mentally retarded person be held legally responsible for it?
Our current president has signed death warrants to execute mentally retarded people. A chimp certainly has more of a soul (and possibly more cognitive intelligence) than President Bush, pehaps they should have rights.
Re:Every time I think of taking the plunge and do
on
MythTV Vs. TiVo, Round 2
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Judging the state of MythTV by the posts on the users list is not an accutate metric. It's like going to the local Toyota dealership, only visiting the service department then saying "I don't want a Toyota, they are always broken down!". Generally the people posting to the list are the ones having the problems, you don't hear from the people for whom installation went smoothly.
the killer part is what will happen when something screws up while I'm not around, and my wife gets mad because something didn't work
FWIW, the only issues I usually see is when I change something. As with most Linux applications, once it is stable it will usually stay stable unless you change the configuration (hardware failures notwithstanding).
still, major kudos to Jarod Wilson for having created this amazing open-source wonder.
IIRC, it was Isaac Richards that originally developed MythTV. I think Jarod is the guy with the most popular install guide.
Oh, and put a watt-meter on your cable box+MythTV combo. I'll bet you spend more on additional electricity than you would on the monthly Tivo service fee.
Are you claiming the TiVo itself does not use any electricity? I'll wager (Tivo Electricity + Monthly Fee) > MythTV Electricity.
Yes, and if if people on slashdot starting saying the earth was actually a giant cube, they owuld have the same results.
Hardly. Say something blatantly stupid, and people call you stupid. They don't (typically) - claim you're a fascist - attack your personal motivations - attack your religion
Huh? This is/., that is exactly what happens if somebody disagrees with you on ANY subject. You must be new here....
--
The "sitting US president?" You mean, sort of like Clinton before him? Or Carter? Or Kennedy?
Carter? Kennedy? Until Ronald Reagan became President, only 75 statements had been issued and very few were of a constitutional nature. While Clinton did issue a large number of signing statements, again very few were a direct challenge to the law. President Bush has issued 147 signing statements since taking office, directly challenging an estimated 750 statutes. It amounts to a line-item veto, which the Supreme Court has previously ruled is unconstitutional.
If the President does not like the provisions of the law, the Constitution has provided a way for him to prevent the enactment - it's called a veto. To sign the bill into law and attach a statement that says "oh BTW, this law is bullshit and shouldn't be enforced" is not the way the system is designed to work.
Is anyone else weirded out that a piece of paper Certifying your Birth, your License to Drive and your Social Security card are the main means of identifying you?
A Social Security card is not and has never been a form of identification. The card simply shows that a certain name has a certain SSN, it does not show that the person carrying the card is the person named on the card.
In fact, I always got kind of pissed that although I knew how many centimeters were in a meter, my entire school career NEVER taught me how many feet were in a mile, or pints in a gallon. Not very practical.
That is one of the reasons that metric is better. You don't need to know there are 5280 feet in a mile or 2 pints in a quart. You don't even need to be taught how many meters are in a kilometer, you just need to be taught that kilo = 1000. That knowledge then extends over ALL metric measurements. You don't have to learn obscure conversions from 1 scale to another (inches to feet to yards to miles; ounces to pounds [to stones] to tons; [fluid ounces to] teaspoons to tablespoons to cups to pints to quarts to gallons to hogsheads). Metric is much simpler to learn because you only have to remember the prefixes and you can convert scale when performing any kind of measurement. Remembering different conversions for each measurement and each scale of that measurement is not very practical.
Slashdot Mirror
This is an article on PhysOrg about alien spacecraft parts being found that was referenced in the comments of a recent Slashdot story. In the comments below the article a PhysOrg editor explains "As scientists, we truly believe that even some irrational theories have the right to be announced" and "It's up to the readers to trust the facts or not and to form his/her own opinion. Our mission is to deliver science news content released by official institutions". I'm not saying that there is no merit to any particular article on the site, but the original poster's description as "an organization that apparently exercises little oversight over the articles it runs" seems fairly apt.
Covered? The "coverage" consists of:
I don't think that's particularly good coverage
Anyway, here is a 2004 story from what looks to be a reputable science website on the discovery of the meteorite, with photo
Hmm, the PhysOrg story is just a press release by the foundation, there is an official statement in the comments below the story stating "this new theory was announced at the press conference on results of the recent expedition to the crash site. It is not our own conclusion, but theory made by scientists who claim they found some proving evidences. As scientists, we truly believe that even some irrational theories have the right to be announced."If the Bad Astronomer is not good enough for you, how about articles from Space.com and MSNBC which were written in August 2004, when the foundation claimed to have found the alien spacecraft parts. Neither article gives much credence to the claim that the team's claimed dicovery. The foundation said at the time that they would be providing evidence (the recovered "spacecraft parts") but 3 years later they have yet to do so. The Bad Astronomer did not write a lengthy article because any rational being already knows that this foundation is full of shit. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and they have provided none.
Have you considered upgrading to SVN and using storage groups that prefer the local disk for each tuner? You would not have the bandwidth of recording shows on your network, although if you played a show that was recorded on a remote tuner it would have to be streamed. If each tuner only writes to its own disk but shares common recordings and scheduling information it would seem to be the best of both worlds for you.
Not exactly true, cable companies also sell/produce commercials which they insert into the network stream.
A massive asteroid will have worldwide impact anyway, spreading the impact will not change the effects very much. Breaking up an asteroid could possibly mitigate tsunami height in the event of an ocean strike, but the total effect on the earth would be near the same. The atmosphere does not incinerate large objects, most objects will make landfall. Getting shot with a shotgun can be just as lethal as being hit with a slug.
The way it works on my local city-owned fiber network the city just provides the pipe (or tube, or truck). I have the option of choosing between several competing ISPs for data service on the network. The ISP handles my transport to and from the internet, the city-owned network only handles the transport between my ISP and me. I can choose different providers for data, phone and TV or I can get all 3 services from 1 provider or I can just get 1 service (or zero). The city is just providing the road, FedEx, UPS and DHL are still free to compete for my business.
The problem is that the municipalities are granting monopolies on last-mile transport to private enterprise instead of handling it themselves. If I have to pay Comcast or Qwest for my connection, they insist that they make a profit off of it. However, if my city owns the network all they demand is that they break even on it. My current connection is 15 Mb/s symmetrical fiber. It costs me about $36/mo. Previously I was paying Comcast $45-$50/mo for a 3Mb/512Kb connection. Yes, it cost the city some money to lay the fiber but now that it is installed the maintenance is fairly cheap and EVERY house in the city has a connection to the network. There are multiple service providers for data, phone and TV so there is no monopoly pricing, if you don't like your current provider you can switch. You can rant about government pork, but the local government generally does a better job of controlling overhead and grift than the federal. You are criticizing hypothetical networks but I am sitting on a real one and from my perspective, it is sweet. I am getting way better speeds at a lower price than I was before. Yes, some of my tax dollars had to be used to build the network, but with the monthly cost savings I am coming out ahead. I am generally not for expanded government but where it comes to natural monopolies like utilities and roads, sometimes government does a better job than business.
A database application on one machine should not be able to crash the OS of several machines, especially command and control machines. Using NT in this instance was a politically motivated decision, not a technical one. If you had bothered to read the article at Government Computer News that the wikipedia quote was from, you would have seen gems like this:
But according to DiGiorgio, who in an interview said he has serviced automated control systems on Navy ships for the past 26 years, the NT operating system is the source of the Yorktown's computer problems.
"Using Windows NT, which is known to have some failure modes, on a warship is similar to hoping that luck will be in our favor"
"Because of politics, some things are being forced on us that without political pressure we might not do, like Windows NT," Redman said. "If it were up to me I probably would not have used Windows NT in this particular application. If we used Unix, we would have a system that has less of a tendency to go down."
"If you understand computers, you know that a computer normally is immune to the character of the data it processes," he wrote in the June U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings Magazine. "Your $2.95 calculator, for example, gives you a zero when you try to divide a number by zero, and does not stop executing the next set of instructions. It seems that the computers on the Yorktown were not designed to tolerate such a simple failure."
These are people who are intimately familiar with the command and control systems of a large battleship who say the underlying cause of the failures was related the the operating system. A simple operator error should not have the ability to compromise critical systems. An application should not be able to make a system unavailable, not to mention multiple systems.
Area 51
I have 15/15 in the US for $30/mo. It's a government-funded fiber network over which any provider can sell data, voice or video.
Actually, pulling a large payload is more efficient with electric motors. If you are already hauling a large load then adding some heavy batteries is not that much of an addition to your weight compared to the load.
Almost all modern freight trains in the US are diesel-electric, which means their wheels are already driven by electric motors. It would be a fairly simple operation to convert a locomotive to run on batteries or fuel cells, providing the efficiency is increased or the hydrogen infrastructure is built, respectively.
I tried to search "RedHat" on this search engine and all I got was links to Microsoft products. Call the police right away!
Google is not a human right, it is a company. They can choose to display whatever they want on their pages. You can choose not to use them if you don't like the results they display. If they continue to return relevant results then I'll continue to use them, if they start returning nothing but MS ads for my Linux searches or start giving me goatse.cx boy every time I click "I'm Feeling Lucky" then I'll probably start using a different search engine.
FWIW, the only issues I usually see is when I change something. As with most Linux applications, once it is stable it will usually stay stable unless you change the configuration (hardware failures notwithstanding).
IIRC, it was Isaac Richards that originally developed MythTV. I think Jarod is the guy with the most popular install guide.
Are you claiming the TiVo itself does not use any electricity? I'll wager (Tivo Electricity + Monthly Fee) > MythTV Electricity.
Carter? Kennedy? Until Ronald Reagan became President, only 75 statements had been issued and very few were of a constitutional nature. While Clinton did issue a large number of signing statements, again very few were a direct challenge to the law. President Bush has issued 147 signing statements since taking office, directly challenging an estimated 750 statutes. It amounts to a line-item veto, which the Supreme Court has previously ruled is unconstitutional.
If the President does not like the provisions of the law, the Constitution has provided a way for him to prevent the enactment - it's called a veto. To sign the bill into law and attach a statement that says "oh BTW, this law is bullshit and shouldn't be enforced" is not the way the system is designed to work.
A Social Security card is not and has never been a form of identification. The card simply shows that a certain name has a certain SSN, it does not show that the person carrying the card is the person named on the card.
It is? You obviously were asleep during math class.
That is one of the reasons that metric is better. You don't need to know there are 5280 feet in a mile or 2 pints in a quart. You don't even need to be taught how many meters are in a kilometer, you just need to be taught that kilo = 1000. That knowledge then extends over ALL metric measurements. You don't have to learn obscure conversions from 1 scale to another (inches to feet to yards to miles; ounces to pounds [to stones] to tons; [fluid ounces to] teaspoons to tablespoons to cups to pints to quarts to gallons to hogsheads). Metric is much simpler to learn because you only have to remember the prefixes and you can convert scale when performing any kind of measurement. Remembering different conversions for each measurement and each scale of that measurement is not very practical.
Cut him some slack, at least he was close. Most of the posters on