A virtually silent air conditioner would be nice too.
That would be GREAT, except that there's also the noise generated by the fan which circulates the cooled air into the room. Granted, it would be much quieter, but I doubt it would be silent.:(
I don't really care for a silent fridge that much, since I don't tend to work or sleep in my kitchen very often..
Yes, BUT I'd have really appreciated a nearly silent fridge in my college dorm room! Or, even today, to have a small fridge in a cubicle at work would be a real plus!
Quiet PC? I'm drooling to think about someday using one of these to cool my PC! Silence IS golden.
Compatibility (rollout) and some Numbers
on
Pictorial Passwords
·
· Score: 2
Agreed, on-screen indication of your image choices would facilitate shoulder-surfing. Not Good.
Compatibility with legacy ATMs. There's even more difficulties than just shoulder-surfing... what happens if your account uses a "visual password" and you find yourself at an "old-fashioned" ATM that requires a numeric PIN? Poof! So much for being able to access your account around the world! Unless, of course, you are also required to memorize a numeric PIN, which will likely be forgotten from disuse! Any additional security from the additional permutations offered by a "visual password" would be lost as a cracker could try and break the numeric PIN, instead.
Physical posession of bank card not required. Further, with more and more banks offering on-line access, there is no longer a requirement that the physical card be present at the time of the transaction. Set up a shell account, use the on-line bill-pay feature to send some funds to it from the hijacked account, and the deal is done.
Computing the number of passwords.Since I went through the work of figuring these for myself, I thought I might as well share it here to save others from the work. Also, there are other ways of viewing this which lead to a vastly larger number of choices, so I'll include those here, as well.
Current practice #1. Many accounts require only a 4-digit PIN. Which offers the user a choice of any 4-digit number from "0000", "0001", "0002",... "9999"; that works out to their being only 10, 000 choices.
Current practice #2. Some accounts permit an 8-digit PIN. Which offers the user a choice of any 8-digit number from "00000000", "00000001", "00000002",... "99999999"; that works out to their being 100,000,000 choices.
Original posting: 53,130 possible choices. That seemed much smaller than I would have thought. For those who are interested, here is how that number was reached.
The calculation resulted from determining the number of combinations of 5 objects taken from a pool of 25 where order is not significant.
First, the calculations which produced this value, and other possible computations which produce a much-larger number of choices.
The original 53,130 can be worked outas follows:
(25!) / ( (25 - 5)! * 5! )
= 25! / (20! * 5!)
= (25 * 24 * 23 * 22 * 21 * 20!) / (20! * 5!)
= (25 * 24 * 23 * 22 * 21) / (5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1)
= (25 * 24 * 23 * 22 * 21) / (5 * 24)
= (5 * 23 * 22 * 21)
= 53,130
The original posting suggested it might be more like 6 million choices. If, we assume that the order IS significant, AND, no re-use of a choice is permitted, then we can come up with the "six-million" choices:
25 * 24 * 23 * 22 * 21 = 6,375,600
If re-use of a previously selected image is permitted, then we have ALL 25 visuals available for EACH of the 5 choices:
25 * 25 * 25 * 25 * 25 = 9,765,625
Summary. In short, there are at best on the order of 10 million choices using the visual password technique, and it would require a tremendous amount of change to the existing ATM infrastructure. Simply using an 8-digit PIN permits 100 million choices, and does NOT require any major changes to existing ATMs. In light of these calculations and costs to implement, I doubt we'll see this new technique implemented any time soon, if at all.
I can see the motivation for this, but I would be much more impressed if they could get people to properly distinguish between bits and bytes as in Mbps (Mega bits per second) vs. MBps (Mega bytes per second). That's a FAR greater difference (800%) than the 4.8% difference between the proposed megabyte/mebibyte.
While I'm at it, I'd like to see them also straighten out those people who write mbps (which actually means millibits per second; i.e. 1/1000 bits per second!):^)
Reporting MO's preliminary observations, scientists said the first pass by the probe's neutron spectrometer had revealed evidence of the element in soil at high latitudes.
Maybe we should not jump to a conclusion before we hear from Larry and Curly, too?;^)
(Posting this as the theme from the "Three Stooges" runs through my mind.)
First off, there happens to be an article in a special section of today's (Monday, Dec. 10, 2001) print edition of the Wall Street Journal which lists some of the payment sites like PayPal, c2it, billpay, etc.
I'm developing a web site that sells links on our site to select merchants. It's building up a following, so we're thinking about how to accept payment on-line. Based on the WSJ story, I was thinking of recommending PayPal to the owner, but after reading this slashdot article, I'm not so sure. Each sale is on on the order of $200 - $200.
Scenario: our sales person calls a potential client and makes the sale (though sales are currently made in person, we're also considering selling over the phone.) The question: What is the best way to get the money from the client to us?
In short, I don't have the slightest idea where to start, and would appreciate hearing other's experiences in setting up such a system. (FWIW: Our web site is hosted on an IIS 5.0 server. I know, I know, but the price is right and we get unlimited bandwidth.:)
I would highly recommend you read the first two parts of: Hackers - Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy (ISBN: 0-385-19195-2). This book provides an extremely readable early history of the hacker ethic (with attendant cracker exploits). One of the chapter titles is illustrative: "The Midnight Computer Wiring Society". It has some minor errors (primarily spelling), but it wonderfully captured the spirit of that time. (I started programming in 1972 and it was a real trip to read this book and remember all those names of people and systems from "long ago"!)
There's an extensive bibliography and index, so it would likely prove helpful in locating additional material.
The link to sprouts mentioned in the original query seems to have an error in attribution.
"Sprouts is an interesting paper and pencil game for two players. It was invented in Cambridge in the 1970's."
Take a look at: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/4_5_97/mathlan d.htm where it states "Sprouts was invented in 1967 by Princeton mathematician John H. Conway and by Michael S. Paterson, when both were at the University of Cambridge in England."
As an aside, I knew a guy at RPI who in 1981 or so wrote a program to play the game and graphically display the results... if you wanted it to, it would show all the possibilities as it tried different moves, too! Pretty amazing feat considering the capabilities of the computers we had available at the time.
WOW! Rarely waited more than 20 seconds between seeing meteors; saw 2 at once at least a dozen times; and a couple of times I saw 3 at once! Saw many with long, orange-colored trails. Definitely well worth it!
Background info: Observed from 4:15 - 5:45 AM EST and saw meteors throughout that period. I was located at a state park about 20 miles west of Boston. I hopes to lessen the impact of light pollution, but could not make out the milky way.:(
And it was COLD! About 25 degrees Fahrenheit. I was prepared with heavy thermal underwear, turtleneck, wool sweater, ski suit, two layers of heavy socks, heavy boots, wool hat, and ski gloves... and I still got cold! Glad I brought a thermos of hot coffee!
Something on the order of 75 cars were parked in the lot and along the roadway to it, so there was a goodly number of us watching together. It was really something to hear simultaneous "Ooooo"s and "Ahhhhh"s!
The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) has held college-level programming competitions for many years. Though the actual problems may be at a level beyond what you are looking for, they have long ago solved the issues of how to hold such a contest.
The basic format is to have a number of problems for the contestant teams to try and solve in a fixed amount of time. (The first one I checked out listed 8 problems for a 5-hour contest.) It included explicit problem specifications, sample input, and sample output for each problem.
I'm sure that by looking down the list, you'll find a baseline of informationt that will go well towards helping you to design your own competition. Good Luck!
Though it was back in the mid-80's, I can attest to IBM's security policies. Especially when I broke into a secured server room at IBM which had one of the two prototypes for the biggest, newest mainframe they were developing. (It's not quite THAT amazing, as I had the proper clearances for access to it, but the point is that others could have done what I did.)
Background: This was only a few years after an IBM competitor (Hitachi?) was found to have stolen plans for one of their still under development mainframes (IIRC it was the 3081). So, there was intense security throughout the site.
There were badge locks everywhere; to get into the parking lot, to get into the building, to get into the server room, and then another to get into the specially-constructed section of the server room where the prototype was located. I was working 3rd shift doing some testing on this new box. (Sweet! It could support hundreds of concurrent users, and I had it all to myself!) Anyway, at one point, I realized I needed some more blank mag tapes and stepped out to the main computer room to get them. Went back to the secured room and realized I had left my badge next to my terminal and I was locked out. What to do? (At that time of night, there was nobody around at all.) Yes, I could have called security at another building and waited about 30 minutes to an hour for them to let me in. But I had way too much to do and couldn't adfford the loss of time on the machine.
Then it hit me. There was raised floor here, and also in the secured area. Popped up one of the raised floor tiles on this side of the badge lock, crawled underneath, and pushed up a floor tile on the other side. Took about a minute to get in.
Told my boss about it the next day, and they soon had a construction crew extending the walls through the raised floor down to the concrete floor below it. And, up beyond the ceiling tiles, too. I was thanked for revealing the security hole, but was also strongly advised to follow proper procedures about calling for help from Security in the future.
So, I'd suggest taking a look at the physical security in YOUR area to see if someone could gain access by climbing over ceiling tiles or under raised floors.
Question: Is this just a benchmark-boosting hack or does it actually improve the frame rate while playing the game?
Observation: With frame rates of 80+ at even the highest resolution on the HardOCP test box, it's difficult to see if there is any ACTUAL BENEFIT resulting from using ATI's drivers.
Suggestion: Repeat their tests with the original and with the quackified executables on a less powerful box so that the actual framerates are more like 10-15 fps.
Result: If the drivers actually help the game play, at that low frame rate, it should be readily apparent. If there's NO difference in the game play, then it's just a hack to boost the benchmark scores.
Thanks for the many excellent points in your post; but, I'd like to offer these additional suggestions. I'm sure there's some mathematical terms (closure? reflexive?) that these are based on, but it's been way too long since I took that college class.
If you can set a parameter, you should be able to query it.
If you can query a parameter, you should be able to set it.
When querying a parameter, the syntax of the output should be the same as the syntax used to set the parameter.
Hypothetical example:
SET foo="bar"/* Set a parameter */
QUERY foo/* Query a parameter */
SET foo="bar"/* Output of the query */
QUERY foo > param.txt/* Same, but saves settings in a file which could be later used to restore the settings */
An advantage is that one can capture ALL the settings that configure an application. AND, one can use those captured settings to EXACTLY restore that configuration.
An added advantage is that one can programatically generate permutations of parameters and their values for AUTOMATED TESTING of the possible configurations. Don't even need to know beforehand what the result is supposed to be -- just permute them, use them, capture what happens, and then sift through to see if everything makes sense. Save valid output as a baseline; fix any bugs that are discovered; repeat until all permutations are covered.
I agree that "man -k some_keyword" works well if you already know what you are looking for. But what if you don't know what you don't know? In other words, what if you want a list of all commands and a brief description of what they can do? Here are some variations that might get you a summary of every command:
man -k " " > cheat.txt
man -k "" > cheat.txt
NOTE: The first example contains a single quoted space character as the argument; the second example contains no characters between the quotes.
The idea is to provide a parameter to the keyword search that would match ALL commands. Hope this helps!
CAVEAT: I don't have a linux box handy to check these on; but I recall using something like this myself, when I was in the same boat many years ago.
This slashdot article (Private Rocketplane Test a Success) suggests:
The primary goal is development of reusable launch technology that leads next to a high altitude sub-orbital rocket vehicle for space tourism, rocket racing (e.g. vertical drag racing at air shows) and the X-Prize competition.
I can just see it now... rocket races televised around the world, with each rocket as coated with advertising as currently exists in NASCAR? Hey! maybe they''ll call it NASACAR racing?;^)
But seriously, auto racing has sponsorship from the major car manufacturers. There's bragging rights at stake when Chevy beats Ford at NASCAR, or Ferrari bests McLauren at Formula 1. As commercialization of space proceeds, I suspect commercial rocket ventures will similarly sponsor racer's rockets to "boost" mind share in the marketplace.
"CNN has a report about a human heart that was kept beating on its own outside a body during a test of a new medical device. Perhaps the success could be replicated for the Brain as well?
Keeping hearts, and maybe someday brains, alive outside the body? Somehow, it's never gonna be the same watching the "Wizard of Oz".;^)
Think about it, though. At the time the Wizard of Oz was written, all three possibilities were deemed equally impossible. (IIRC the Tin Man wanted a heart; the Scare Crow wanted a brain; and the Cowardly Lion wanted courage. I'm sure if I mis-matched things someone will set it straight quickly enough.)
Nowadays, heart transplants are performed often enough they are no longer news worthy UNLESS the heart is artificial AND self-contained. Who knows what another 30-50 years will bring? Maybe they'll be able to transplant brains AND courage, too?
From the article description: Uses include airbag collision detectors,...
Amazing! You'd think they'd fasten those airbags down securely, but it's nice to know that if a couple of them ever got loose, we'll be able to detect when those airbags collide!;^)
I agree it helps to explain things people don't know using things they DO know. The challenge is often in determining just what they do know, AND the environment in which they are going to try and apply what you are teaching. Thus, it is helpful to establish a baseline, and then go into specifics.
Most users, I suspect, would like a "recipe" of steps they can take to protect themselves... in other words they'll quickly fade out with the technical mumbo jumbo, and just want a step-by-step approach for what they need to do.
The problem is, the steps differ depending on each user's:
ISP: AOL, Earthlink, @Home
Mail program: AOL, Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape, Eudora
Web browser: Internet Explorer (4.0, 5.0, 5.5), Netscape
Operating System: Windows (95/NT/2000/Me/XP), Macintosh, Linux
It's good you reached out for the experiences of others here on/. but I'd suggest extending your search more widely. So very often, I find it helpful to ask myself "Am I the very first person to have this problem?" if not, then the next obvious question becomes: "Where can I look to find the answers that others have already found?"
Search for on-line resources: Do a search on google for "computer virus primer"
Look for primers on anti-virus sites: Norton Anti virus, McAffee, IBM, etc.
Check with your local public library: Needham belongs to the Minuteman Library Network and has access to a wealth of materials that can be shared among the network's members.
Local geeks: Ask for help from the Information Services department of where you work, from tech-savy people you know, etc.
Also, it may be a good idea to expect this to be more information than can be covered in a single session. People are receptive up to a point and then reach overload. The benefit of 4 sessions of 15-minutes each can be MUCH greater than a single 1-hour session.
Lastly, think about giving back what you've found. What about the folks who move into town next month or next year? Rather than make periodic presentations to accomodate a growing/changing audience, have the info you've collected put on a web page for later reference (and feedback to keep it up to date!)
Disclaimer: I have no personal experience with ham radio except to see a demo at my college many years ago.
I've seen ham radio mentioned here a few times, and suspect it might be useful to look into what they have to offer. I have no idea of the geography of your area or how large the county is, but it might be possible to have a station at each fire station and link to that from the incident-command vehicle. Though the equipment would cost some money, there'd be no per-minute charge.
An idea: check the phone book for ham equipment, and I'd expect after a few phone calls you could get some pointers to any local ham clubs in your area. Hard to beat hands-on experience. Good Luck!
Google's ranking system provides the most relevant search results of all the current search engines.
I agree the results are the most relevant, but there's one factor I've been unable to specify in a query: TIME. Oftentimes, I'd get 40-50 results of which many were posted years ago, and it's a pain to skim through all those to find the ones that pertain to a recent development and/or announcement!
Some Ideas:
Date Range Qualifier: Prior to submitting a query, I'd like to specify either a relative or absolute starting date. That is, pages that were updated/created:
In the past "N" days.
Since: yyyy / mm / dd
Sort By Date Button: If I'm looking at a result set, I'd like to be able to click a button and see the most-recently created / modified pages listed first.
Workaround: I've tried to do something like including "2001" in a query, but it's not very selective or effective.:(
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 2
Yesterday, immediately after the attack, it was hard to think anything but "nuke the middle east back into stone age", which seemed to fit the would-be nukees' level of cultural development.
I was re-reading "The Great Hunt" by Robert Jordan this afternoon and found this on page 648:
"But men often mistake revenge and killing for justice."
May it be said by all after our response that justice was served.
First off, my heartfelt condolences to those who have lost family, friends, and loved ones in this tragedy.
I met with a number of friends at lunch. Some had loved ones who they had been unable to reach to see if they were okay.
I felt powerless over what had happened, and indeed there is nothing anyone can do to change what has already happened. But, I did what I could, today. I offered a shoulder to cry on. I encouraged them to have hope, to know that not knowing does not mean the worst. That there is already a tremendous pulling together of support. Calls for blood donations, people reaching out to friends they hadn't talked with for a long while, and countless other acts across the country and the world where people offer support to one another.
This tragedy can become a rallying point, an opportunity to show the world what we are made of here in the US of A. The Oklahoma bombing, the flooding of the Mississippi River, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. We are a people that has a long history of reaching out to help.
A proverb I've liked: "If I cannot do great things, then I will do small things in great ways." (Don't know who wrote it, sorry.) Each person who lends a hand, a shoulder, a caring heart does something tangible. And all of those seemingly small acts, when taken together, can show the world, and ourselves, that we are greater, MUCH greater, than these attacks.
First off, my heartfelt condolences to those who have lost family, friends, and loved ones in this tragedy.
I met with a number of friends at lunch. Some had loved ones who they had been unable to reach to see if they were okay.
I felt powerless over what had happened, and indeed there is nothing anyone can do to change what has already happened. But, I did what I could, today. I offered a shoulder to cry on. I encouraged them to have hope, to know that not knowing does not mean the worst. That there is already a tremendous pulling together of support. Calls for blood donations, people reaching out to friends they hadn't talked with for a long while, and countless other acts across the country and the world where people offer support to one another.
This tragedy can become a rallying point, an opportunity to show the world what we are made of here in the US of A. The Oklahoma bombing, the flooding of the Mississippi River, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. We are a people that has a long history of reaching out to help.
A proverb I've liked: "If I cannot do great things, then I will do small things in great ways." (Don't know who wrote it, sorry.) Each person who lends a hand, a shoulder, a caring heart does something tangible. And all of those seemingly small acts, when taken together, can show the world, and ourselves, that we are greater, MUCH greater, than these attacks.
Slashdot Mirror
A virtually silent air conditioner would be nice too.
That would be GREAT, except that there's also the noise generated by the fan which circulates the cooled air into the room. Granted, it would be much quieter, but I doubt it would be silent. :(
I don't really care for a silent fridge that much, since I don't tend to work or sleep in my kitchen very often..
Yes, BUT I'd have really appreciated a nearly silent fridge in my college dorm room! Or, even today, to have a small fridge in a cubicle at work would be a real plus!
Quiet PC? I'm drooling to think about someday using one of these to cool my PC! Silence IS golden.
Agreed, on-screen indication of your image choices would facilitate shoulder-surfing. Not Good.
Compatibility with legacy ATMs. There's even more difficulties than just shoulder-surfing... what happens if your account uses a "visual password" and you find yourself at an "old-fashioned" ATM that requires a numeric PIN? Poof! So much for being able to access your account around the world! Unless, of course, you are also required to memorize a numeric PIN, which will likely be forgotten from disuse! Any additional security from the additional permutations offered by a "visual password" would be lost as a cracker could try and break the numeric PIN, instead.
Physical posession of bank card not required. Further, with more and more banks offering on-line access, there is no longer a requirement that the physical card be present at the time of the transaction. Set up a shell account, use the on-line bill-pay feature to send some funds to it from the hijacked account, and the deal is done.
Computing the number of passwords.Since I went through the work of figuring these for myself, I thought I might as well share it here to save others from the work. Also, there are other ways of viewing this which lead to a vastly larger number of choices, so I'll include those here, as well.
Current practice #1. Many accounts require only a 4-digit PIN. Which offers the user a choice of any 4-digit number from "0000", "0001", "0002", ... "9999"; that works out to their being only 10, 000 choices.
Current practice #2. Some accounts permit an 8-digit PIN. Which offers the user a choice of any 8-digit number from "00000000", "00000001", "00000002", ... "99999999"; that works out to their being 100,000,000 choices.
Original posting: 53,130 possible choices. That seemed much smaller than I would have thought. For those who are interested, here is how that number was reached.
The calculation resulted from determining the number of combinations of 5 objects taken from a pool of 25 where order is not significant.
First, the calculations which produced this value, and other possible computations which produce a much-larger number of choices.
The original 53,130 can be worked outas follows:
(25!) / ( (25 - 5)! * 5! )
= 25! / (20! * 5!)
= (25 * 24 * 23 * 22 * 21 * 20!) / (20! * 5!)
= (25 * 24 * 23 * 22 * 21) / (5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1)
= (25 * 24 * 23 * 22 * 21) / (5 * 24)
= (5 * 23 * 22 * 21)
= 53,130
The original posting suggested it might be more like 6 million choices. If, we assume that the order IS significant, AND, no re-use of a choice is permitted, then we can come up with the "six-million" choices:
25 * 24 * 23 * 22 * 21 = 6,375,600
If re-use of a previously selected image is permitted, then we have ALL 25 visuals available for EACH of the 5 choices:
25 * 25 * 25 * 25 * 25 = 9,765,625
Summary. In short, there are at best on the order of 10 million choices using the visual password technique, and it would require a tremendous amount of change to the existing ATM infrastructure. Simply using an 8-digit PIN permits 100 million choices, and does NOT require any major changes to existing ATMs. In light of these calculations and costs to implement, I doubt we'll see this new technique implemented any time soon, if at all.
I can see the motivation for this, but I would be much more impressed if they could get people to properly distinguish between bits and bytes as in Mbps (Mega bits per second) vs. MBps (Mega bytes per second). That's a FAR greater difference (800%) than the 4.8% difference between the proposed megabyte/mebibyte.
While I'm at it, I'd like to see them also straighten out those people who write mbps (which actually means millibits per second; i.e. 1/1000 bits per second!) :^)
From the referenced article:
Maybe we should not jump to a conclusion before we hear from Larry and Curly, too? ;^)
(Posting this as the theme from the "Three Stooges" runs through my mind.)
First off, there happens to be an article in a special section of today's (Monday, Dec. 10, 2001) print edition of the Wall Street Journal which lists some of the payment sites like PayPal, c2it, billpay, etc.
I'm developing a web site that sells links on our site to select merchants. It's building up a following, so we're thinking about how to accept payment on-line. Based on the WSJ story, I was thinking of recommending PayPal to the owner, but after reading this slashdot article, I'm not so sure. Each sale is on on the order of $200 - $200.
Scenario: our sales person calls a potential client and makes the sale (though sales are currently made in person, we're also considering selling over the phone.) The question: What is the best way to get the money from the client to us?
In short, I don't have the slightest idea where to start, and would appreciate hearing other's experiences in setting up such a system. (FWIW: Our web site is hosted on an IIS 5.0 server. I know, I know, but the price is right and we get unlimited bandwidth.:)
I would highly recommend you read the first two parts of: Hackers - Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy (ISBN: 0-385-19195-2). This book provides an extremely readable early history of the hacker ethic (with attendant cracker exploits). One of the chapter titles is illustrative: "The Midnight Computer Wiring Society". It has some minor errors (primarily spelling), but it wonderfully captured the spirit of that time. (I started programming in 1972 and it was a real trip to read this book and remember all those names of people and systems from "long ago"!)
There's an extensive bibliography and index, so it would likely prove helpful in locating additional material.
Ooops, shoulda checked that last link, it was redirected, and then died. Sorry about that!
The link to sprouts mentioned in the original query seems to have an error in attribution.
Take a look at: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/4_5_97/mathla
There's a bunch more info on game play, theory, and mathematical background on the game at that link, as well as this link: http://www.forum.swarthmore.edu/news.archives/geom etry.research/article399.html to a strategy by John Conway on a strategy for game play.
As an aside, I knew a guy at RPI who in 1981 or so wrote a program to play the game and graphically display the results... if you wanted it to, it would show all the possibilities as it tried different moves, too! Pretty amazing feat considering the capabilities of the computers we had available at the time.
WOW! Rarely waited more than 20 seconds between seeing meteors; saw 2 at once at least a dozen times; and a couple of times I saw 3 at once! Saw many with long, orange-colored trails. Definitely well worth it!
Background info: Observed from 4:15 - 5:45 AM EST and saw meteors throughout that period. I was located at a state park about 20 miles west of Boston. I hopes to lessen the impact of light pollution, but could not make out the milky way. :(
And it was COLD! About 25 degrees Fahrenheit. I was prepared with heavy thermal underwear, turtleneck, wool sweater, ski suit, two layers of heavy socks, heavy boots, wool hat, and ski gloves... and I still got cold! Glad I brought a thermos of hot coffee!
Something on the order of 75 cars were parked in the lot and along the roadway to it, so there was a goodly number of us watching together. It was really something to hear simultaneous "Ooooo"s and "Ahhhhh"s!
The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) has held college-level programming competitions for many years. Though the actual problems may be at a level beyond what you are looking for, they have long ago solved the issues of how to hold such a contest.
Here is the 2001-2002 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest page which lists, by region: a report, the standings, and the programming problems.
The basic format is to have a number of problems for the contestant teams to try and solve in a fixed amount of time. (The first one I checked out listed 8 problems for a 5-hour contest.) It included explicit problem specifications, sample input, and sample output for each problem.
I'm sure that by looking down the list, you'll find a baseline of informationt that will go well towards helping you to design your own competition. Good Luck!
For more info on what Mt. Rainier (CD-MRW) is all about, check out their mt-rainier web site
Though it was back in the mid-80's, I can attest to IBM's security policies. Especially when I broke into a secured server room at IBM which had one of the two prototypes for the biggest, newest mainframe they were developing. (It's not quite THAT amazing, as I had the proper clearances for access to it, but the point is that others could have done what I did.)
Background: This was only a few years after an IBM competitor (Hitachi?) was found to have stolen plans for one of their still under development mainframes (IIRC it was the 3081). So, there was intense security throughout the site.
There were badge locks everywhere; to get into the parking lot, to get into the building, to get into the server room, and then another to get into the specially-constructed section of the server room where the prototype was located. I was working 3rd shift doing some testing on this new box. (Sweet! It could support hundreds of concurrent users, and I had it all to myself!) Anyway, at one point, I realized I needed some more blank mag tapes and stepped out to the main computer room to get them. Went back to the secured room and realized I had left my badge next to my terminal and I was locked out. What to do? (At that time of night, there was nobody around at all.) Yes, I could have called security at another building and waited about 30 minutes to an hour for them to let me in. But I had way too much to do and couldn't adfford the loss of time on the machine.
Then it hit me. There was raised floor here, and also in the secured area. Popped up one of the raised floor tiles on this side of the badge lock, crawled underneath, and pushed up a floor tile on the other side. Took about a minute to get in.
Told my boss about it the next day, and they soon had a construction crew extending the walls through the raised floor down to the concrete floor below it. And, up beyond the ceiling tiles, too. I was thanked for revealing the security hole, but was also strongly advised to follow proper procedures about calling for help from Security in the future.
So, I'd suggest taking a look at the physical security in YOUR area to see if someone could gain access by climbing over ceiling tiles or under raised floors.
Question: Is this just a benchmark-boosting hack or does it actually improve the frame rate while playing the game?
Observation: With frame rates of 80+ at even the highest resolution on the HardOCP test box, it's difficult to see if there is any ACTUAL BENEFIT resulting from using ATI's drivers.
Suggestion: Repeat their tests with the original and with the quackified executables on a less powerful box so that the actual framerates are more like 10-15 fps.
Result: If the drivers actually help the game play, at that low frame rate, it should be readily apparent. If there's NO difference in the game play, then it's just a hack to boost the benchmark scores.
Thanks for the many excellent points in your post; but, I'd like to offer these additional suggestions. I'm sure there's some mathematical terms (closure? reflexive?) that these are based on, but it's been way too long since I took that college class.
An advantage is that one can capture ALL the settings that configure an application. AND, one can use those captured settings to EXACTLY restore that configuration.
An added advantage is that one can programatically generate permutations of parameters and their values for AUTOMATED TESTING of the possible configurations. Don't even need to know beforehand what the result is supposed to be -- just permute them, use them, capture what happens, and then sift through to see if everything makes sense. Save valid output as a baseline; fix any bugs that are discovered; repeat until all permutations are covered.
I agree that "man -k some_keyword" works well if you already know what you are looking for. But what if you don't know what you don't know? In other words, what if you want a list of all commands and a brief description of what they can do? Here are some variations that might get you a summary of every command:
NOTE: The first example contains a single quoted space character as the argument; the second example contains no characters between the quotes.
The idea is to provide a parameter to the keyword search that would match ALL commands. Hope this helps!
CAVEAT: I don't have a linux box handy to check these on; but I recall using something like this myself, when I was in the same boat many years ago.
This slashdot article (Private Rocketplane Test a Success) suggests:
I can just see it now... rocket races televised around the world, with each rocket as coated with advertising as currently exists in NASCAR? Hey! maybe they''ll call it NASACAR racing? ;^)
But seriously, auto racing has sponsorship from the major car manufacturers. There's bragging rights at stake when Chevy beats Ford at NASCAR, or Ferrari bests McLauren at Formula 1. As commercialization of space proceeds, I suspect commercial rocket ventures will similarly sponsor racer's rockets to "boost" mind share in the marketplace.
"CNN has a report about a human heart that was kept beating on its own outside a body during a test of a new medical device. Perhaps the success could be replicated for the Brain as well?
Keeping hearts, and maybe someday brains, alive outside the body? Somehow, it's never gonna be the same watching the "Wizard of Oz". ;^)
Think about it, though. At the time the Wizard of Oz was written, all three possibilities were deemed equally impossible. (IIRC the Tin Man wanted a heart; the Scare Crow wanted a brain; and the Cowardly Lion wanted courage. I'm sure if I mis-matched things someone will set it straight quickly enough.)
Nowadays, heart transplants are performed often enough they are no longer news worthy UNLESS the heart is artificial AND self-contained. Who knows what another 30-50 years will bring? Maybe they'll be able to transplant brains AND courage, too?
Amazing! You'd think they'd fasten those airbags down securely, but it's nice to know that if a couple of them ever got loose, we'll be able to detect when those airbags collide! ;^)
Here are some links to more information:
I agree it helps to explain things people don't know using things they DO know. The challenge is often in determining just what they do know, AND the environment in which they are going to try and apply what you are teaching. Thus, it is helpful to establish a baseline, and then go into specifics.
Most users, I suspect, would like a "recipe" of steps they can take to protect themselves... in other words they'll quickly fade out with the technical mumbo jumbo, and just want a step-by-step approach for what they need to do.
The problem is, the steps differ depending on each user's:
It's good you reached out for the experiences of others here on /. but I'd suggest extending your search more widely. So very often, I find it helpful to ask myself "Am I the very first person to have this problem?" if not, then the next obvious question becomes: "Where can I look to find the answers that others have already found?"
Also, it may be a good idea to expect this to be more information than can be covered in a single session. People are receptive up to a point and then reach overload. The benefit of 4 sessions of 15-minutes each can be MUCH greater than a single 1-hour session.
Lastly, think about giving back what you've found. What about the folks who move into town next month or next year? Rather than make periodic presentations to accomodate a growing/changing audience, have the info you've collected put on a web page for later reference (and feedback to keep it up to date!)
Good luck!
Disclaimer: I have no personal experience with ham radio except to see a demo at my college many years ago.
I've seen ham radio mentioned here a few times, and suspect it might be useful to look into what they have to offer. I have no idea of the geography of your area or how large the county is, but it might be possible to have a station at each fire station and link to that from the incident-command vehicle. Though the equipment would cost some money, there'd be no per-minute charge.
An idea: check the phone book for ham equipment, and I'd expect after a few phone calls you could get some pointers to any local ham clubs in your area. Hard to beat hands-on experience. Good Luck!
I agree the results are the most relevant, but there's one factor I've been unable to specify in a query: TIME. Oftentimes, I'd get 40-50 results of which many were posted years ago, and it's a pain to skim through all those to find the ones that pertain to a recent development and/or announcement!
Some Ideas:
Workaround: I've tried to do something like including "2001" in a query, but it's not very selective or effective. :(
I was re-reading "The Great Hunt" by Robert Jordan this afternoon and found this on page 648:
May it be said by all after our response that justice was served.
First off, my heartfelt condolences to those who have lost family, friends, and loved ones in this tragedy.
I met with a number of friends at lunch. Some had loved ones who they had been unable to reach to see if they were okay.
I felt powerless over what had happened, and indeed there is nothing anyone can do to change what has already happened. But, I did what I could, today. I offered a shoulder to cry on. I encouraged them to have hope, to know that not knowing does not mean the worst. That there is already a tremendous pulling together of support. Calls for blood donations, people reaching out to friends they hadn't talked with for a long while, and countless other acts across the country and the world where people offer support to one another.
This tragedy can become a rallying point, an opportunity to show the world what we are made of here in the US of A. The Oklahoma bombing, the flooding of the Mississippi River, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. We are a people that has a long history of reaching out to help.
A proverb I've liked: "If I cannot do great things, then I will do small things in great ways." (Don't know who wrote it, sorry.) Each person who lends a hand, a shoulder, a caring heart does something tangible. And all of those seemingly small acts, when taken together, can show the world, and ourselves, that we are greater, MUCH greater, than these attacks.
First off, my heartfelt condolences to those who have lost family, friends, and loved ones in this tragedy.
I met with a number of friends at lunch. Some had loved ones who they had been unable to reach to see if they were okay.
I felt powerless over what had happened, and indeed there is nothing anyone can do to change what has already happened. But, I did what I could, today. I offered a shoulder to cry on. I encouraged them to have hope, to know that not knowing does not mean the worst. That there is already a tremendous pulling together of support. Calls for blood donations, people reaching out to friends they hadn't talked with for a long while, and countless other acts across the country and the world where people offer support to one another.
This tragedy can become a rallying point, an opportunity to show the world what we are made of here in the US of A. The Oklahoma bombing, the flooding of the Mississippi River, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. We are a people that has a long history of reaching out to help.
A proverb I've liked: "If I cannot do great things, then I will do small things in great ways." (Don't know who wrote it, sorry.) Each person who lends a hand, a shoulder, a caring heart does something tangible. And all of those seemingly small acts, when taken together, can show the world, and ourselves, that we are greater, MUCH greater, than these attacks.